Question Of Life Quotes

If you start parsing the cause-and-effect chain backward through time, eventually you land in cosmology - does the story begin with the Big Bang or the out-of-nothing creation of the world by the word of a Southern Baptist god? And that question is even more fraught than any of the others. The stakes couldn't be any higher, because not it's not just a question of life and death, but also a question of life after death or eternal torture after death. ~ Kyle Minor

The great question of life is not the question of death but the question of life. Fear of death shames us all. ~ Edward Abbey

This primary question of life organization is immensely important. If making money is the main goal, a person can often forget what his or her true interests are or how he or she wants to deserve recognition from others. It is much more difficult to add on other values to a life that started out with just making money in mind than it is to make some personally interesting endeavor financially possible or even profitable. ~ Pekka Himanen

But there was no equation or series of questions that could turn this moment into an answer. ~ Catherine Lacey

The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves. ~ Ludwig Wittgenstein

So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks. Do you accept that premise? Of course you do. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. In fact, high school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad? ~ Jesse Andrews

So those are the direct answers human wisdom gives when it answers the question of life. "The life of the body is evil and a lie. And therefore the destruction of this life of the body is something good, and we must desire it," says Socrates. "Life is that which ought not be - an evil - and the going into nothingness is the sole good of life," says Schopenhauer. "Everything in the world - folly and wisdom and riches and poverty and happiness and grief - all is vanity and nonsense. Man will die and nothing will remain. And that is foolish," says Solomon. "One must not live with awareness of the inevitability of suffering, weakness, old age, and death - one must free oneself from life, from all possibility of life," says Buddha. And what these powerful intellects said was said and thought and felt by millions and millions of people like them. And I too thought and felt that. ~ Leo Tolstoy

What does it mean to be alive? ~ Debasish Mridha

The enemy is at the gate. It is a question of life and death. ~ Andrei Zhdanov

There are so many things to be considered in making music. The whole question of life itself ... I know that I want to produce beautiful music, music that does things to people that they need. ~ John Coltrane

At the time we were all convinced that we had to speak, write,and publish as quickly as possible and as much as possible and that this was necessary for the good of mankind. Thousands of us published and wrote in an effort to teach others, all the while disclaiming and abusing one another. Without taking note of the fact that we knew nothing, that we did not know the answer to the simplest question of life, the question of what is right and what is wrong, we all went on talking without listening to one another. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A child grows up to be a man of sixty. Certainly the man of sixty is not the same as the child of sixty years ago, nor is he another person. Similarly, a person who dies here and is reborn elsewhere is neither the same person, nor another. It is the continuity of the same series. The difference between death and birth is only a thought-moment: the last thought-moment in this life conditions the first thought-moment in the so-called next life. … During this life itself, too, one thought-moment conditions the next thought-moment. So from the Buddhist point of view, the question of life after death is not a great mystery, and a Buddhist is never worried by this problem. ~ Walpola Rahula

Our heart glows, and secret unrest gnaws at the root of our being. Dealing with the unconscious has become a question of life for us. ~ Carl Jung

Face to face with the
question of life and my personal being, my soul and its eternal destiny. ~ D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Their box, their great common anxiety, what was it, in this grim breathing−space, but the practical question of life? They could live if they would; that is, like herself, they had been told so: she saw them all about her, on seats, digesting the information, recognising it again as something in a slightly different shape familiar enough, the blessed old truth that they would live if they could. All she thus shared with them made her wish to sit in their company; which she so far did that she looked for a bench that was empty, eschewing a still emptier chair that she saw hard by and for which she would have paid, with superiority, a fee. ~ Henry James

It's ... well, it's a long story," he said, but the question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-tw0 ... "
"I'm afraid," he said at last,"that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can be known about the same Universe."
"Except," said Prak, struggling to sort a thought out, "if it happened, it seems the Question and the Answer would just cancel each other out, and take the Universe with them, which would be replaced by something even more bizarrely inexplicable. It is possible that this has already happened," he added with a weak smile, "but there is a certain amount of uncertainty about it. ~ Douglas Adams

The grand question of life is, Is my name written in heaven? ~ Dwight L. Moody

To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want. ~ Wendell Berry

High school sucked. It was a universal truth, and whoever said these were supposed to be the best years of your life was probably drunk or delusional. ~ Kami Garcia

Have you ever loved someone so intensely, so entirely ,that it's painful to be apart from them? I'm not talking about being in a long-distance relationship or even a particularly painful case of unrequited love. I'm talking about being in a completely different world from the other person, a world where you can see them and hear them but you can't touch them and they can't see or hear you. ~ Stacey Field

Remember this, if you can
there is nothing, nothing more precious than time. You probably feel you have a measureless supply of it, but you haven't. Wasted hours destroy your life just as surely at the beginning as at the end
only in the end it becomes more obvious. ~ Herman Wouk

V-day is a movement: an organized effort to finally end violence against women.
V-Day is a vision: we see a civilization where women live in freedom and safety.
V-Day is a spirit: affirming that life should be live creating and thriving rather than surviving or recovering from terrible atrocities.
V-Day is a catalyst: by raising wide public awareness of the issue, it will reinvigorates efforts already under way and commence new initiatives in publicity, education, and law.
V-Day is a vital ongoing process: we proclaim Valentine's Day as V'day until the violence against women stops, and the it will become Victory Day. ~ Eve Ensler

Maybe the way death folds into the most private of spaces encourages us to underestimate the shattering weight of such a devastating loss. Perhaps uninterrupted routines and the daily flow of life force us to forget that losing a loved one to death is confounding, excruciating, sometimes even unbearable. That is, until it is our turn to grieve, and no matter how many people surround us, we end up, at one point or another, feeling totally alone. ~ Edwidge Danticat

Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 z Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but a our sufficiency is from God, 6who has made us sufficient to be b ministers of c a new covenant, not of d the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but e the Spirit gives life. ~ Anonymous

The critical mind is too thin and cold, thinking itself will help little and reason will be of small avail; only the spirit of reasonableness, a sort of warm, glowing, emotional and intuitive thinking, joined with compassion, will insure us against a reversion to our ancestral type. Only the development of our life to bring it into harmony with our instincts can save us. I consider the education of our senses and our emotions rather more important than the education of our ideas. ~ Lin Yutang

The hour arrives, the moment wish'd and fear'd,
The child is born by many a pang endear'd
And now the mother's ear has caught his cry;
O grant the cherub to her asking eye!
He comes
she clasps him. To her bosom press'd
He drinks the balm of life, and drops to rest. ~ Samuel Rogers

I dreamt about you last night and woke up with such a great feeling because I know that you are not just a dream but the reality of my life. -Anonymous
#romanceweek ~ Swapna Rajput

Behold the Child among his new-born blisses
A six years' Darling of a pigmy size!
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he lies,
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses,
With light upon him from his father's eyes!
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart,
Some fragment from his dream of human life,
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art. ~ William Wordsworth

The average man has no central core of moral assurance, no spring within his breast, no inner strength to place him above the need for repeated psychological shots to give him the courage to go on living. He has become a parasite on the world, drawing his life from his environment, unable to live a day apart from the stimulation which society affords him. ~ A.W. Tozer

Poems are my link with the times, with the new life of my people. ~ Anna Akhmatova

Dr. Lawrence Burton ... in fighting cancer.( Many of his patients are now living normal lives after being told there was nothing more the conventional treatments could do for them, and that death was imminent ... Why are Americans being forced to go off shore for treatment for cancer from an American doctor and for a program that was developed in America? ~ Larry McDonald

This world isn't perfect. That means it isn't perfectly good; but it isn't perfectly bad, either. The ease comes with the hardship. Shift the focus of what you see, and your experience of this life will change. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

Some things in life could not be solved or even contemplated by a rational mind. Roger's mind, however, had ceased being anywhere near rational about half a bottle of Grand Marnier ago. ~ Andrew Barrett

Just speak your truth, it's an important cornerstone of how your life ends up sort of unfolding in front of you. Even if it's painful, if it's honest, it's going to bring you to the place you deserve to be. ~ Sara Bareilles

Allah is the forger of time, the molder of space, the weaver of souls, the turner of hearts, the One who creates everything in stages yet is beyond the limits of time. Life is created from His breath, the cosmos forms from the vibration of His speech, and love is birthed from the womb of His mercy. He is the One who said, "Be!" to the vast nothingness, and existence sprouted into being. His words inspire light to break the darkness of nothing into the dawn of life. ~ A. Helwa

I was thirty years old and still living by the seat of my pants. I probably should have had my life together a little bit more by then. But the thing was, my friends all had these stressed-out lives, and they came to our place and it felt like we were just living this laid-back, beautiful, no-stress life. We made being poor look fun. ~ Chip Gaines

And then she realized that his presence was the wall, his presence was destroying her. Unless she could break out, she must die most fearfully, walled up in horror. And he was the wall. She must break down the wall. She must break him down before her, the awful obstruction of him who obstructed her life to the last. It must be done, or she must perish most horribly. ~ D.H. Lawrence

For a while now, I have been conscious of a tension in my relationship with you," Svetlana said. "And I think that's the reason. It's because we both make up narratives about our own lives. I think that's why we decided not to live together next year. Although obviously it's also why we're so attracted to each other."

"Everyone makes up narratives about their own lives."

"But not to the same extent. Think about my roommates. Fern, for example. I don't mean that she doesn't have an inner life, or that she doesn't think about the past or make plans for the future. But she doesn't compulsively rehash everything that happens to her in the form of a story. She's in my story – I'm not in hers. That makes her and me unequal, but it also gives our relationship a kind of stability, and safeness. We each have our different roles. It's like an unspoken contract. With you, there's more instability and tension, because I know you're making up a story, too, and in our story, I'm just a character."

"I don't know," I said. "I still think everyone experiences their own life as a narrative. If you didn't have some kind of ongoing story in mind, how would you know who you were when you woke up in the morning?"

"That's a weak definition of narrative. That's saying that narrative is just memory plus causality. But, for us, the narrative has aesthetics, too."

"But I don't think that's because of our personalities," I said. Isn't it more about ~ Elif Batuman

We are separated from God on two sides; the Fall separates us from Him, the Tree of Life separates Him from us. ~ Franz Kafka

A single girlfriend can play an important role in success of your career but a bunch of girlfriends can seriously ruins your successful life. ~ Wiz Khalifa

Today I trust me. I trust in my perceptions. Today I will live my own truth that glows within, a life of no deceptions. ~ Patricia Robin Woodruff

Friendship means only one thing: you don't create fences around you, but try to remove fences from the life of another person. ~ Harbhajan Singh Yogi

After a cup of tea (two spoonsful for each cup, and don't let it stand more than three minutes,) it says to the brain, Now, rise, and show your strength. Be eloquent, and deep, and tender; see, with a clear eye, into Nature and into life; spread your white wings of quivering thought, and soar, a god-like spirit, over the whirling world beneath you, up through long lanes of flaming stars to the gates of eternity! ~ Jerome K. Jerome

Leena and Kelly Davidson have always lived a comfortable life. Neither girl has ever held a job nor did they intend to get one. All they wanted was to live off their parents' money for their rest of their lives. What could be better than that? ~ Valenciya Lyons

Manufacturers have long chosen plastic for their products on the basis of price and functionality., But creating a more sustainable relationship with plastics will require a new dexterity on our part. It will require us to think about the entire life cycle of the products we create and use. ~ Susan Freinkel

Lend your voices only to sounds of freedom, no longer lend your strength to that which you wish to be free from. Fill your life with love and bravery, and you shall live a life uncommon. ~ Jewel

Life goes on, end of tunnel, TV set
Spot in the middle
Static fade, statistic bit
And soon I fade away, fade away ~ Dave Matthews

When I describe for my far-away friends the Northwest's subtle shades of weather - from gloaming skies of 'high-gray' to 'low-gray' with violet streaks like the water's delicate aura - they wonder if my brain and body have, indeed, become water-logged. Yet still, I find myself praising the solace and privacy of fine, silver drizzle, the comforting cloaks of salt, mold, moss, and fog, the secretive shelter of cedar and clouds.

Whether it's in the Florida Keys, along the rocky Maine coast, within the Gulf of Mexico's warm curves, on the brave Outer Banks; or, for those who nestle near inland seas, such as the brine-steeped Great Salk Lake or the Midwest's Great Lakes - water is alive and in relationship with those of us who are blessed with such a world-shaping, yet abiding, intimate ally.

Every day I am moved by the double life of water - her power and her humility. But most of all, I am grateful for the partnership of this great body of inland sea. Living by water, I am never alone. Just as water has sculpted soil and canyon, it also molds my own living space, and every story I tell.

…Living by water restores my sense of balance and natural rhythm - the ebb and flow of high tides and low tides, so like the rise and fall of everyday life. Wind, water, waves are not simply a backdrop to my life, they are steady companions. And that is the grace, the gift of inviting nature to live inside my home. Like a Chambered Nautilus I spin out my ~ Brenda Peterson

Some people are content in the midst of deprivation and danger, while others are miserable despite having all the luck in the world. This is not to say that external circumstances do not matter. But it is your mind, rather than circumstances themselves, that determines the quality of your life. Your mind is the basis of everything you experience and of every contribution you make to the lives of others. Given this fact, it makes sense to train it. Scientists and skeptics generally ~ Sam Harris

Even after four thousand years, I could still learn important life lessons. For instance: never go shopping with a satyr.
Finding the store took forever, because Grover kept getting sidetracked. He stopped to chat with a yucca. He gave directions to a family of ground squirrels. He smelled smoke and led us on a chase across the desert until he found a burning cigarette someone had dropped onto the road.
"This is how fires start," he said, then responsibly disposed of the cigarette butt by eating it.
I didn't see anything within a mile radius that could have caught fire. I was reasonably sure rocks and soil were not flammable, but I never argue with people who eat cigarettes. ~ Rick Riordan

The fact 'Twin Peaks' had a life at all took most of us in the cast by surprise. We thought it would be too unusual for network television. The original intention was that it would be a two-hour movie. If the network didn't want to pick it up as a series, it could just show that. But ABC took a chance. ~ Kyle MacLachlan

After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realized there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

Life is made up of compromises. ~ Edith Wharton

All that we fear from all the kinds of adversity, severally, is collected together in the life of a soldier on active service. Like sickness, it threatens pain and death. Like poverty, it threatens ill lodging, cold, heat, thirst, and hunger. Like slavery, it threatens toil, humiliation, injustice, and arbitrary rule. Like exile, it separates you from all you love. Like the gallies, it imprisons you at close quarters with uncongenial companions. It threatens every temporal evil - every evil except dishonour and final perdition, and those who bear it like it no better than you would like it. ~ C.S. Lewis

The vital relationship which the Christian has to the Bible is not that he worships the letter, but that the Holy Spirit makes the words of the Bible spirit and life to him. ~ Oswald Chambers

A man can have sexual pleasure from a child as young as a baby. However, he should not penetrate; sodomising the child is OK. If the man penetrates and damages the child then he should be responsible for her subsistence all her life. This girl, however, does not count as one of his four permanent wives. The man will not be eligible to marry the girl's sister. ~ Ruhollah Khomeini

My sons served excellent missions, and returned to participate in college athletics. In their letters home, and even now that they have been back for some time, they frequently mention that the experiences in the mission field were the choicest and most gratifying of their lives. You young men, begin to prepare yourselves now for this marvelous experience. ~ LaVell Edwards

Where I found the living, there I found the will to power; even in the will of servants I found the will to be master. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

What we want in students is creativity and a willingness to fail. I always say to students, 'If you've never at some point stayed up all night talking to your new boyfriend about the meaning of life instead of preparing for the test, then you're not really an intellectual.' ~ Alison Gopnik

Given the profound alienation of modern society, when combat vets say that they miss the war, they might be having an entirely healthy response to life back home. Iroquois warriors did not have to struggle with that sort of alienation because warfare and society existed in such close proximity that there was effectively no transition from one to the other. ~ Sebastian Junger

Did they want what I wanted?
Did they want to understand, to unlock it? To decode it? To glean, to touch, to learn, to get something, to proceed, to get somewhere, to graduate, to work, to thrive; to someday, sometime, finally earn the luxury, the permission to ... stop, to stop all of this, to relax, and forget? ~ Chip Kidd

Life seems somehow less shocking, painful, and lonely - and more hopeful, agreeable, and beautiful - when our experiences are confirmed by those of others. Although each of us is unique, there are familiar responses and doubts and joys that let us know we have kin. We are not, after all, too strange to live. ~ Rosalie Maggio

Train the body and develop stamina and endurance. But the spirit of competition and power that presides over them is not good, it reflects a distorted vision of life. The root of the martial arts is not there. ~ Taisen Deshimaru

There is something deeply authentic about grappling with our fate. It is looking at a long trail of twisted life-decisions that got us spinning into the abyss – so like all things, we have a choice - and for better or worse we spiral.
Embrace the chaos. Go to ruins. ~ Debbie Lynn - 360 Degrees Full Circle

I have an immensely understanding partner who does something creative herself, and we both need a lot of time alone. I structure my life around getting my work done, first and foremost. Everything else is secondary. That's the only way I've been able to do it. ~ Tom Bissell