The Life Unlived Quotes

How historians explain time is one thing, but how we live time is quite another. ~ Andre Aciman

We are born haunted, he said, his voice weak, but still clear. Haunted by our fathers and mothers and daughters, and by people we don't remember. We are haunted by otherness, by the path not taken, by the life unlived. We are haunted by the changing winds and the ebbing tides of history. And even as our own flame burns brightest, we are haunted by the embers of the first dying fire. But mostly, said Lord Jim, we are haunted by ourselves. ~ Jonathan Evison

Or are "being" and "having" thoroughly inaccurate verbs in the twisted skein of desire, where having someone's body to touch and being that someone we're longing to touch are one and the same, just opposite banks on a river that passes from us to them, back to us and over to them again in this perpetual circuit where the chambers of the heart, like the trapdoors of desire, and the wormholes of time, and the false-bottomed drawer we call identity share a beguiling logic according to which the shortest distance between real life and the life unlived, between who we are and what we want, is a twisted staircase designed with the impish cruelty of M. C. Escher. ~ Andre Aciman

Dance is the art closest to nature, to real life. ~ Marty Rubin

The Church's stand on birth control is the most absolutely spiritual of all her stands and with all of us being materialists at heart, there is little wonder that it causes unease. I wish various fathers would quit trying to defend it by saying that the world can support 40 billion. I will rejoice the day when they say: This is right whether we all rot on top of each other or not, dear children, as we certainly may. Either practice restraint or be prepared for crowding ... ~ Flannery O'Connor

Your life is far too valuable to be wasted on the life that everyone else is choosing. ~ Joshua Becker

the life of a slave must be different from a master but living life its self is the same ~ Mariam

I have searched everywhere to find an answer to my question, 'Is there enlightenment?' but have never questioned the search itself. Because I have assumed that goal of enlightenment exists, I have had to search. It is the search itself which has been choking me and keeping me out of my natural state. There is no such thing as spiritual or psychological enlightenment because there is no such thing as spirit or psyche at all. I have been a damn fool all my life, searching for something which does not exist. My search is at an end. ~ U.G. Krishnamurti

...those in this world who have the courage to try and solve in their own lives new problems of life are the ones who raise society to greatness! Those who merely live according to rule do not advance society, they only carry it along. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

Childfree women have the power to leave an amazing legacy that lasts well beyond their life on earth. They can have happy, rewarding lives that are filled with unconditional love. ~ Jenn Sadai

Guilty people apologize and also take steps to avoid repetition. Shame, in contrast, is a more global emotion, which can emerge in response to the same kind of wrong act and violation of standards. It may develop earlier in life than guilt-- guilt requires more cognitive sorting capacity-- but above all it emphasizes self-abasement. It is the self that is at fault, not the commission of the act. This creates greater pain and intensity than guilt. A shamed person feels very bad indeed-- but also makes it more difficult to escape. ~ Peter N. Stearns

Life management begins with mind management. The quality of your life is influenced by the quality of your thoughts. Your thoughts do form your world. Scarce thoughts create a life of scarcity. Thoughts of abundance lead to abundant circumstances. ~ Robin Sharma

Humanity's "progress of knowledge" and the "evolution of consciousness" have too often been characterized as if our task were simply to ascend a very tall cognitive ladder with graded hierarchical steps that represent successive developmental stages in which we solve increasingly challenging mental riddles, like advanced problems in a graduate exam in biochemistry or logic. But to understand life and the cosmos better, perhaps we are required to transform not only our minds but our hearts. For the whole being, body and soul, mind and spirit, is implicated. Perhaps we must go not only high and far but down and deep. Our world view and cosmology, which defines the context for everything else, is profoundly affected by the degree to which all out faculties–intellectual, imaginative, aesthetic, moral, emotional, somatic, spiritual, relational–enter the process of knowing. How we approach "the other," and how we approach each other, will shape everything, including out own evolving self and the cosmos in which we participate. ~ Richard Tarnas

Be courageous, not brave. Bravery was to dash out of the bomb shelter and grab the child left crying on the veranda. Courage was to go to the stream the day after a bomb had scattered your friend on that path because water must be fetched to sustain the life that was left. ~ Chibundu Onuzo

The will of God for us is that we know the all-inclusive Christ, experience Him, and live Him as our life. To know Christ in this way is to have the full knowledge of God's will. ~ Witness Lee

Whenever you read a cancer booklet or website or whatever, they always list depression among the side effects of cancer. But, in fact, depression is not a side effect of cancer. Depression is a side effect of dying. ~ John Green

After you married, Crispin, she said, my heart was broken. I will not deny it. But I did not slip into a sort of suspended life that would be forever gray and meaningless if you did not somehow come back to me. I put back the pieces of my heart and kept on living. I am not the woman I was when I was in love with you and expecting to marry you. I am not the woman I was when I heard that you were married. I am the woman I have become in the five years since then, and she is a totally different person. I like her. I wish to continue living her life. ~ Mary Balogh

The Making of Friends Life is sweet because of the friends we have made And the things which in common we share; We want to live on, not because of ourselves, But because of the ones who would care. It's living and doing for somebody else On that all of life's splendor depends, And the joy of it all, when we count it all up, Is found in the making of friends ... ~ Edgar Guest

Am driving us home to Mrs. Lush in her shiny kitchen with a checked tablecloth in a house where the grass looks as if it's been Hoovered. You see, only in the land of Croca-Colas does the sun shine in Technicolor. Life lived at the end of the rainbow. ~ Sally Gardner

Through the good times and bad, the quality of your relationships will ultimately determine the quality of your life. So be grateful for your loved ones and focus on adding as much value to their lives as you possibly can. ~ Hal Elrod

Once God and grace move us to the second half of life, religion becomes a mystical matter, rather than a moral matter. ~ Richard Rohr

When you write for children and young adults, you have much more affect and influence on them than when you write for adults. The books that get us through our childhood stay with us for life. ~ O.R. Melling

Apparently even the most awful tragedies, and the people they'd ruined, got a little stale after a while. ~ Tom Perrotta

My days of being the tardy employee at the record store gave me a cultural and musical understanding that was more unique than if I'd just listened to garbage-y pop on the radio my entire life. ~ Sophia Amoruso

I tried golf for a while, but I wasn't very good at it, so I didn't play a lot of golf. I enjoy all sports, not just football. I like basketball, baseball, and I got into the World Cup. So really, sports in general are my life, and football specifically. ~ John Madden

Like Molière's M. Jourdain, who spoke prose all his life without knowing it, mathematicians have been reasoning for at least two millennia without being aware of all the principles underlying what they were doing. The real nature of the tools of their craft has become evident only within recent times A renaissance of logical studies in modern times begins with the publication in 1847 of George Boole's 'The Mathematical Analysis of Logic'. ~ Ernest Nagel

Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

There was beauty in the idea of freedom, but it was an illusion. Every human heart was chained by love. ~ Cassandra Clare

Do the best that can be done and then ... be resigned. ~ Robert Green Ingersoll

You are a word doctor. Repair the breaches of the soul. Rebuild the broken walls of the personality. Comfort those who have lost their hearts. Speak words that contain life, power, and health. Use your tongue as a weapon to destroy the mental strongholds in people's lives. ~ Ivan Tait

To live greatly, we must develop the capacity to face trouble with courage, disappointment with cheerfulness, and triumph with humility. ~ Thomas S. Monson

How we feel (emotions) determines what we do (our actions/behavior) which directly determines the results manifested in
our life. ~ Derric Yuh Ndim

I made a mistake by being ejected from the presidency. Next time, I will choose a Cabinet which will allow me to be life President. ~ Nelson Mandela

The idea of a finished human product not only appears presumptuous but even, in my opinion, lacks any strong appeal. Life is struggle and striving, development and growth - and analysis is one of the means that can help in this process. Certainly its positive accomplishments are important, but also the striving itself is of intrinsic value. ~ Karen Horney

Treasure the journey, BE the destination. ~ Anna Silver

The Christian life from start to finish is based upon this principle of utter dependence upon the Lord Jesus. ~ Watchman Nee

Keep your head up, your eyes forward & your heart open. Great things are coming to you ahead on the roads of your life. ~ Timothy Pina

One of the most fruitless, irritating wastes in the world is arguing-the contentious, endless kind of arguing that is akin to quarreling, and causes feuding in families and among friends, and leaves resentful feeling in homes, in hearts, in businesses and professions, and in all kinds of gatherings in public and private places, and in all relationships of life-and with so little that it ever seems to settle! ~ Richard L. Evans

I believe that none of us can conceive the full import of what Christ did for us in Gethsemane, but I am grateful every day of my life for His atoning sacrifice in our behalf. At the last moment, He could have turned back. But He did not. He passed beneath all things that He might save all things. In doing so, He gave us life beyond this mortal existence. He reclaimed us from the Fall of Adam. To the depths of my very soul, I am grateful to Him. He taught us how to live. He taught us how to die. He secured our salvation. ~ Thomas S. Monson

People say it's not what happens in your life that matters, it's what you think happened. But this qualification, obviously, did not go far enough. It was quite possible that the central event of your life could be something that didn't happen, or something you thought didn't happen. Otherwise there'd be no need for fiction, there'd only be memoirs and histories ... ~ Geoff Dyer

Indians do not hinder the progress of their dead by embalming or tight coffining. When the spirit has gone they give the body back to the earth. the earth welcomes the body-coaxes new life and beauty from it, hurries over what men shudder at. Lovely tender herbage bursts from the graves, swiftly, exulting over corruption. ~ Emily Carr

We use the word "God" as representative of that which is timeless, immortal and infinite, that which produces order, which holds together the nucleus of an atom, which gives us life and death, neither masculine nor feminine, not a person, beyond any comprehension. ~ Frederick Lenz