Reasons For Living Quotes

The character and the play of Hamlet are central to any discussion of Shakespeare's work. Hamlet has been described as melancholic and neurotic, as having an Oedipus complex, as being a failure and indecisive, as well as being a hero, and a perfect Renaissance prince. These judgements serve perhaps only to show how many interpretations of one character may be put forward. 'To be or not to be' is the centre of Hamlet's questioning. Reasons not to go on living outnumber reasons for living. But he goes on living, until he completes his revenge for his father's murder, and becomes 'most royal', the true 'Prince of Denmark' (which is the play's subtitle), in many ways the perfection of Renaissance man.
Hamlet's progress is a 'struggle of becoming' - of coming to terms with life, and learning to accept it, with all its drawbacks and challenges. He discusses the problems he faces directly with the audience, in a series of seven soliloquies - of which 'To be or not to be' is the fourth and central one. These seven steps, from the zero-point of a desire not to live, to complete awareness and acceptance (as he says, 'the readiness is all'), give a structure to the play, making the progress all the more tragic, as Hamlet reaches his aim, the perfection of his life, only to die. ~ Ronald Carter

. . .the most important philosophical question we can each ask ourselves is, 'Do I or do I not wish to commit suicide?' If we say, 'No I do not,' as most of us would, it is because we have reasons for living, or at the very least real hope that we can find such reasons. Then the next question is: what are the reasons I personally have for saying 'No' to that question? The answer contains the meaning of my life. ~ A.C. Grayling

Riches are the reasons for living! ~ Anyaele Sam Chiyson

do not just take a risk ; take the risk. When you are taking the risk, ponder! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

He said that some people can live from birth to death and have no more thoughts in their heads about the reasons for living than a beetle. But that we were different, he and I. We needed more than a clod of dirt to make our rising up and lying down worth something. ~ Kathleen Kent

Hold it the greatest sin to prefer existence to honour, and for the sake of life to lose the reasons for living. ~ Juvenal

Remind yourself of your reasons for living. You have a future worth enduring for, and you deserve to have a renewed sense of purpose and pleasure in your life. ~ Karen Katafiasz

My father, a Palestinian, and my mother, an Israeli, met in a bar in New York. Their encounter was a blue shift. An anomaly. A collision. In the end, I understand, it is only for this we live. All I ever wanted was to love. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I think that where you go wrong is that you imagine that your reasons for living ought to fall on you, ready-made from heaven, whereas we have to find them for ourselves. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Take away grievances from some people and you remove their reasons for living; most of us are nourished by hope, but a considerable minority get psychic nutrition from their resentments, and would waste away purposelessly without them. ~ Sydney J. Harris

I no longer needed a reason for my existence, just a reason to live. And imagination, free will, love, humor, fun, music, sports, beer, and pizza are all good enough reasons for living. But living an honest life - for that you need the truth. ~ Ricky Gervais

at man's height the mouth utters its cries, tosses forth its oracles, gives vent to its puns. To allow words to come to life, bare themselves, and show us by chance, for the space of a lightning bolt bony with dice, a few of our reasons for living and dying ~ Michel Leiris

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

Nature, with her customary beneficence, has ordained that man shall not learn how to live until the reasons for living are stolen from him, that he shall find no enjoyment until he has become incapable of vivid pleasure. ~ Giacomo Leopardi

Youth does not require reasons for living, it only needs pretexts. ~ Jose Ortega Y Gasset

I am not in pursuit of wealth, neither am I in want of fame! I am not after applauds that shall turn into slaps after a least slip. I do not need absolute acceptance or absolute rejection; neither am I after a total approval nor disapproval! I am in pursuit of wisdom! I am in pursuit of a true and a solemn dignity; I am in pursuit of nurturing a true and a great destiny in my journey to the final destination! I do not seek for carnal reward, but if the world will reward me, it shall be for good; If the world will accept who I am as I am and what I stand for, fine, if not, I only look up to my Heavenly Father to accomplish a solemn duty for a solemn reward! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I don't want to die while I still have beautiful reasons to die for. ~ Amit Abraham

I don't think I'm severely politically active. I care deeply, and I have my strong personal beliefs. I think America is dancing on thin ice. But I think it's bigger even than a political issue. I wonder about the evolution of the human race and spirit and what our goals and reasons for living are. ~ Garry Shandling

Today, as cities and suburbs reinvent themselves, and as cynics claim that government has nothing good to contribute to that process, it's important that institutions like libraries get the recognition they deserve. After all, the root of the word "library," liber; means both "book" and "free." Libraries stand for and exemplify something that needs defending: the public institutions that -- even in an age of atomization and inequality -- serve as bedrocks of civil society. Libraries are the kinds of places where ordinary people with different backgrounds, passions, and interests can take part in a living democratic culture. They are the kinds of places where the public, private, and philanthropic sectors can work together to reach for something higher than the bottom line. ~ Eric Klinenberg

But I do like a certain standard of living - I think it's fair to say the garbage shouldn't literally overflow, and the plates shouldn't sit in the sink for a week with smears of bean burrito dried on them. That's just being a good grown-up roommate. And Nick's not doing anything anymore, so I have to nag, and it pisses me off: ~ Gillian Flynn

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for. ~ Tom Robbins

Anybody who's ever mattered, anybody who's ever been happy, anybody who's ever given any gift into the world has been a divinely selfish soul, living for his own best interest. No exceptions. ~ Richard Bach

There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety. ~ M.J. Rose

Society can take two roads - the road to genuine prosperity, or the road to artificial stimulus. The first results in a permanent higher standard of living for all; the latter creates an inflationary boom that cannot last. ~ Mark Skousen

My spirit thirst for the living water. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can't. You know, it's an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living. ~ Christopher Walken

I don't write for a living. I live to write. ~ Marwa Ayad

There are too many over-fed, under-motivated Christians hiding behind the excuse that God has not spoken to them. They are waiting to hear voices or see dreams - all the while living to make money, to provide for their future, to dress well and have fun. ~ Floyd McClung

We must eschew anything trivial. We must embrace all that is frivolous ... Trivial things take up all your time and dull your senses, whereas frivolity is meaningful, profound, worth living and dying for ... If we devote our lives to frivolity, the world will be a far, far better place. Humanity will be better able to fulfill its primary goal, that of having a good time. ~ Cynthia Heimel

For me to make a living acting silly for as long as I can get away with it, I think the most viable way to make that happen is to evolve into more traditional comedy. I've really been putting in the work. ~ Steve-O

It took a year for us to conceive our second child. This is a common ordeal for the average middle-class American couple that puts off having children until their thirties. We knew so many other couples that had experienced fertility problems and miscarriages that it was more surprising when someone we knew had a child without being consigned to thirty-eight consecutive weeks of bed rest. Turns out God WANTS you to conceive when you're eighteen years old, apparently so that you can spend your twenties miserable and penniless and living in a camper. ~ Drew Magary

The whole set of stylizations that are known as "camp" (a word that I was hearing then for the first time) was, in 1926, self-explanatory. Women moved and gesticulated in this way. Homosexuals wished for obvious reasons to copy them. The strange thing about "camp" is that it has been fossilized. The mannerisms have never changed. If I were now to see a woman sitting with her knees clamped together, one hand on her hip and the other lightly touching her back hair, I should think, "Either she scored her last social triumph in 1926 or it is a man in drag. ~ Quentin Crisp

In 1952, when I was 15 and living on Governors Island, which was then First Army Headquarters, I encountered the newly-published 'The Catcher in the Rye.' Of course, that book became the iconic anti-establishment novel for my generation. ~ Lois Lowry

Why all of these broken homes? What happens to marriages that begin with sincere love and a desire to be loyal and faithful and true one to another? There is no simple answer. I acknowledge that. But it appears to me that there are some obvious reasons that account for a very high percentage of these problems. I say this out of experience in dealing with such tragedies. I find selfishness to be the root cause of most of it. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

Nico had proven himself in other ways. He'd kept the camps' secrets for the best of reasons, because he feared a war. He had plunged into Tartarus alone, voluntarily, to find the Doors of Death. He'd been captured and imprisoned by giants. He had led the crew of the Argo II into the House of Hades ... and now he had accepted yet another terrible quest: raking himself to haul the Athene Parthenos back to Camp Half-Blood. ~ Rick Riordan

The truth is, success often occurs for reasons we don't expect, under circumstances over which we have little control and sometimes unrelated to our own efforts. There is only one other lesson that success should teach us: Be as amazed by your own success as your friends are. If you truly are, you stand the best chance to repeat it. ~ Harvey MacKay

Sometimes the right thing gets done for the wrong reason and sometimes, unfortunately, the wrong thing gets done for the right reason. ~ James Carville

My friend, nearly all major purchases and decisions are made by people for emotional reasons and your goal as an honest salesperson is to prove how your product or service
can help your clients feel the way they want to feel, because your product or service will deliver the results for them that they need to solve their problems now. ~ Clay Clark

There are no tarts in there, Charles. They were much too expensive, and Mr. Jenkins would not be reasonable. I told him I would buy a whole dozen, but he would not reduce the price by so much as a penny, so I refused to buy even one-on principle. Do you know," she confided with a chuckle, "last week when he saw me coming into his shop he hid behind the flour sacks?"
"He's a coward!" Charles said, grinning, for it was a known fact among tradesmen and shopkeepers that Elizabeth Cameron pinched a shilling until it squeaked, and that when it came to bargaining for price-which it always did with her-they rarely came out the winner. Her intellect, not her beauty, was her greatest asset in these transactions, for she could not only add and multiply in her head, but she was so sweetly reasonable, and so inventive when she listed her reasons for expecting a better price, that she either wore out her opponents or confused them into agreeing with her ~ Judith McNaught

It is memory that is the somnambulist. It will come back in its wounds from across the world, like Phil, calling us by our names and demanding its rightful tears. It will never be impervious. The memory can be hurt, time and again -- but in that may lie its final mercy. As long as it's vulnerable to the living moment, it lives for us, and while it lives, and while we are able, we can give it up its due. ~ Eudora Welty

Time is the only constant. For the living it never stops ... For the dead it doesn't matter ... And for the undead? For the undead, time is a joke to be laughed at! ~ Scott Snyder

There are scores of thousands of women who are denominated prostitutes, and who are supported by hundreds of thousands of men who should, for like reasons, also be denominated prostitutes, since what will change a woman into a prostitute must also necessarily change a man into the same. ~ Victoria Woodhull

We believe in the rights of every individual to seek his fortune, in respect for others and in tolerance. Let us reply to the terrorists by resolutely living our values and by redoubling those values across all of Europe - now more than ever. ~ Angela Merkel

And I know it would be hard - for all sorts of reasons. But I think we can handle whatever comes our way, so long as we keep loving each other like this. ~ Richelle Mead

Ellie's head sinks into her hands, and she weeps for the unknown Boot, for Jennifer, for chances missed and a life wasted. She cries for herself, because nobody will ever love her like he loved Jennifer, and because she suspects that she is spoiling what might have been a perfectly good, if ordinary, life. She cries because she is drunk and in her flat and there are few advantages to living on your own except being able to sob uninhibitedly at will. ~ Jojo Moyes

We habitually compare ourselves to others to a debilitating degree, believing our successes can only be captured by how much we've outpaced someone else. We deal in acceptable ideas. We disregard our own capabilities. We waste a lot of time and emotion on what everyone else is doing well or badly, when we should be investing in and celebrating ourselves. And sometimes we simply forget that we like our own company, or that we love things for our own, deeply personal, individualistic reasons.

In short, we forget ourselves, and how to be alone. ~ Stacey May Fowles

I've never forgotten a word of advice my father gave to me. 'Never lose sight of your dream,' he said 'Of that person you want to be. You can make it come true, No matter how high or how far, If all down the way In your living each day, You never forget who you are.' 'For the you-that-you-are this minute, this day; Is molding the you-that-will-be, And every action and thought and word is shaping its entity.' 'It's a good thing,' he said 'To look on ahead and fix your gaze on a star, if along the way in your living each day you never forget who you are. ~ Helen Lowrie Marshall

If you work for a living why work yourself to death ~ Thabiso Monkoe