The Will To Live Quotes

But surely the will to create was a form of the will to live...? ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

The will to live that possesses us to create medicine, to become firefighters or teachers, is the same will to live that is woven into all living beings. ~ Ian Somerhalder

He has exchanged part of his spirit for just the will to live. ~ Sarah Noffke

Thus the will to live everywhere preys upon itself, and in different forms is its own nourishment, till finally the human race, because it subdues all the others, regards nature as a manufactory for its own use. Yet even the human race ... reveals in itself with most terrible distinctness this conflict, this variance of the will with itself; and we find homo homini lupus. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

At 10 a.m. the first customer came throught the door: 'I'm not really interested in books' followed by 'Let me tell you what I think about nuclear power.' By 10.30 a.m. the will to live was but a distant memory. ~ Shaun Bythell

HECTOR
Well, I don't mean to be drowned like a rat in a trap. I still have the will to live. What am I to do?
CAPT. SHOTOVER
Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an Englishman.
HECTOR
And what may my business as an Englishman be, pray?
CAPT. SHOTOVER
Navigation. Learn it and live; or leave it and be damned. ~ George Bernard Shaw

I'd rather be encouraged by an ant to live than taught to doubt by fifty skeptics. ~ Marty Rubin

People who don't get seasick have no idea what it's like. It's not just nausea. It's nausea plus losing the will to live. ~ Maria Semple

The will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. ~ Tom Robbins

Ronan was a national bad boy now, the wild boy who should not be left alone with virgin debutantes. Only, the world did not know it was Ronan who was the frightened virgin and Emily the drunken temptress on the night in question. He was beyond despair and had lost the will to live. He was a dead man walking, His heart and soul was ripped out of his chest. He would never get his decent girl now, his life was over. ~ Annette J. Dunlea

The greatest discovery is to find a hero within oneself that will choose life over death; and fight for hope through despair to possess the will to live. ~ Ellen J. Barrier

Judd kissed me gently, comforting me with his touch. "I would die without you, angel. I would fucking lose the will to live. My old life wouldn't be worth shit. Not now that I've seen what it could be. ~ Bijou Hunter

I give up. Stop speaking, responding, refuse food and
water. They can pump whatever they want into my arm, but
it takes more than that to keep a person going once she's
lost the will to live. ~ Suzanne Collins

What we shall desire for individuals is now clear: strong creative impulses, overpowering and absorbing the instinct of possession; reverence for others; respect for the fundamental creative impulse in ourselves. A certain kind of self-respect or native pride is necessary to a good life; a man must not have a sense of utter inward defeat if he is to remain whole, but must feel the courage and the hope and the will to live by the best that is in him, whatever outward or inward obstacles it may encounter. So far as it lies in a man's own power, his life will realize its best possibilities if it has three things: creative rather than possessive impulses, reverence for others, and respect for the fundamental impulse in himself. ~ Bertrand Russell

Suffering can kill. Not always physically. But it can kill dreams and it can deaden hope and the will to live. ~ Mary Balogh

God is dead," wrote Mainländer, "and His death was the life of the world." Once the
great individuation had been accomplished, the momentum of its creator's selfannihilation would continue in a piecemeal fashion until nothing remained standing. And those who committed suicide, as did Mainländer, would only be following God's example. Furthermore, the Will-to-live that Schopenhauer argued activates the world - a concept logically developed but only within a mythological framework - was revised by his disciple Mainländer as evidence not of a movement of a tortured life within beings, but as a deceptive cover for an underlying death wish in all things to burn themselves out as hastily as possible in the fires of becoming . . . or begoing, as it were. In this light, the raging of human progress is thus shown to be a mightily apparent symptom of a downfall into extinction that has just gotten underway. ~ Thomas Ligotti

How do you weigh a soul?
Is it heavy with love or hate?
Does it deny the things it's done?
Does it even remember its own name?
Does it miss those it has loved?
Does it long for the life it's lost?
How do you weigh a soul?
After it has paid the highest cost,
Does it lose the will to live?
Without a physical shell
Does it sense without hands
That can touch and truly feel
Does it need sustenance to last?
A cold drink or warm meal
How do you weigh a soul?
Are souls even real? ~ Ashley Jeffery

No one dies of nausea, but it can seriously sap the will to live. ~ Yann Martel

That's how lonely and sad I was. Dying is not that hard. Lime the air being sucked slowly out of a room, the will to live was slowly seeping out of me. When you feel like rhat, dying doesn't seem like such a big deal. ~ Haruki Murakami

It's necessary to have an energy that carries you forward. You need the will to live, to have a great curiosity. To look for the best in life, to find new interests. ~ Sophia Loren

And let's face it people, no one is ever honest with you about child birth. Not even your mother. "It's a pain you forget all about once you have that sweet little baby in your arms." Bullshit. I CALL BULLSHIT. Any friend, cousin, or nosey-ass stranger in the grocery store that tells you it's not that bad is a lying sack of shit. Your vagina is roughly the size of the girth of a penis. It has to stretch and open andturn into a giant bat cave so the life-sucking human you've been growing for nine months can angrily claw its way out. Who in their right mind would do that willingly? You're just walking along one day and think to yourself, "You know, I think it's time I turn my vagina into an Arby's Beef and Cheddar (minus the cheddar) and saddle myself down for a minimum of eighteen years to someone who will suck the soul and the will to live right out of my body so I'm a shell of the person I used to be and can't get laid even if I pay for it. ~ Tara Sivec

People tell you to keep your "courage" up. But the time for courage is when she was sick, when I took care of her and saw her suffering, her sadness, and when I had to conceal my tears. Constantly one had to make a decision, put on a mask and that was courage.

--Now, courage means the will to live and there's all too much of that. ~ Roland Barthes

To die is to move on with the invisible. To die is also a joy, a joy of submitting to that which is greater than the known, namely, the pure unknown. That is a joy. But to live mechanized and cut off within the motion of the will, to live as an entity absolved from the unknown, that is shameful and ignominious. There is no ignominy in death. There is complete ignominy in an unreplenished, mechanized life. Life indeed may be ignominious, shameful to the soul. But death is never a shame. Death itself, like the illimitable space, is beyond our sullying. ~ D.H. Lawrence

He had seen how the spirit, the reserves in [Bond], could pull him out of badly damaged conditions that would have broken the normal human being. He knew how a desperate situation would bring out those reserves again, how the will to live would spring up again in a real emergency. He remembered how countless neurotic patients had disappeared for ever from his consulting rooms when the last war had broken out. The big worry had driven out the smaller ones, the greater fear the lesser. He made up his mind. He turned back to M. Give him one more chance. ~ Ian Fleming

Affirmation of the world, which means affirmation of the will-to-live that manifests itself around me, is only possible if I devote myself to other life. ~ Albert Schweitzer

Love has the power to destroy you.
Love has the power to bury you alive in a coffin full of pain and despair, robbing you of air, of the will to live. ~ Mia Asher

Where there's life, death is inevitable. Dying's easy; it's living that's hard. The harder it gets, the stronger the will to live. And the greater the fear of death, the greater the struggle to keep on living. ~ Mo Yan

Pain is a coward. He flees when faced by the irresistible power of the will-to-live, which is more strongly rooted in the flesh than the intensest passion is rooted in the spirit. ~ Stefan Zweig

The scene that made me furious was watching Padme, a woman who just gave birth to two beautiful children, just giving up the will to live. ~ Timothy Zahn

When you love too hard, you can lose the will to live without them. Everywhere you look is a great big sucking absence of what you once had and will never have again. And life gets weirdly flat and too sharp and painful at the same time, and nothing feels right and everything cuts. ~ Karen Marie Moning

You don't realize what fine fighting material there is in age ... You show me any one who's lived to over seventy and you show me a fighter - some one who's got the will to live. ~ Agatha Christie

Nothing holds her in, nothing holds her together. Through all those holes and rents she has dispersed, though yet living. Neither the will to live not the will to kill herself. No will at all. This is a state I had not thought possible. I am dead but not deadened; she is deadened but not dead. ~ Amit Majmudar

Mhisery found comfort in the fact Quinn saw her as a woman. He saw past the tattoos, the piercings, and the attitude. She had built walls around her heart since her mother's death; fearing if she let anyone in she would lose herself. If she let anyone in they would see her dysfunctional family, and would look down on her for it. She didn't want anyone to see the man her father had become. She wanted them to remember him as he was before her mother died, and he lost his mind - along with the will to live. ~ Shyloh Morgan

The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die. ~ Michel Houellebecq

There's this exhausting energy from you getting your lines out and your words right, especially if it's a complicated scene. And as soon as the camera is off you and goes on the other person, you're talking garbled garbage and you feel so sorry for them because you've lost the will to live, after 18 hours of saying those lines. That's terribly unfair. So, I do love the quick-paced nature of it. ~ Dominic Cooper

Hope and trust are beautiful things. One gives a person the will to live, the other makes it worth living. ~ Jacob Gralnick

Love is the ultimate expression of the will to live. ~ Tom Wolfe

Emotions can override ... the more powerful fundamental motives that drive our lives: hunger, sex, and the will to survive. People will not eat if they think the only food available is disgusting. They may even die, although other people might consider that same food palatable. Emotion triumphs over the hunger drive! A person may never attempt sexual contact because of the interference of fear or disgust, or may never be able to complete a sexual act. Emotion triumphs over the sex drive! And despair can overwhelm even the will to live, motivating a suicide. Emotions triumph over the will to live! ~ Paul Ekman

All the cruelty and torment of which the world is full is in fact merely the necessary result of the totality of the forms under which the will to live is objectified. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Arben was large. Strong. Armed. And these, his strengths, were his greatest weaknesses.
Brute force and the ability to control others through fear and intimidation made men lazy. Overconfident. Slow.
She would never be as fast as a bullet, but in close contact, would always be faster than the hand that drew the gun. Speed was life. Speed was survival. Speed born from the will to live, from the necessity of staying one move ahead, speed carved into her psyche one sadistic knife slice after another. That which hadn't killed her had made her faster. ~ Taylor Stevens

When Nietzsche made his famous definition of tragic pleasure he fixed his eyes, like all the other philosophers in like case, not on the Muse herself but on a single tragedian. His "reaffirmation of the will to live in the face of death, and the joy of its inexhaustibility when so reaffirmed" is not the tragedy of Sophocles nor the tragedy of Euripides, but it is the very essence of the tragedy of Aeschylus. The strange power tragedy has to present suffering and death in such a way as to exalt and not depress is to be felt in Aeschylus' plays as in those of no other tragic poet. He was the first tragedian; tragedy was his creation, and he set upon it the stamp of his own spirit. It was a soldier-spirit. Aeschylus was a Marathon-warrior, the title given to each of the little band who had beaten back the earlier tremendous Persian onslaught. ~ Edith Hamilton

When Magnus looked at Imasu, he saw Imasu had dropped his head into his hands.
"Er," Magnus said. "Are you quite all right?"
"I was simply overcome," Imasu said in a faint voice.
Magnus preened slightly. "Ah. Well."
"By how awful that was," Imasu said.
Magnus blinked. "Pardon?"
"I can't live a lie any longer!" Imasu burst out. "I have tried to be encouraging. Dignitaries of the town have been sent to me, asking me to plead with you to stop. My own sainted mother begged me, with tears in her eyes - "
"It isn't as bad as all that - "
"Yes, it is!" It was like a dam of musical critique had broken. Imasu turned on him with eyes that flashed instead of shining. "It is worse than you can possibly imagine! When you play, all of my mother's flowers lose the will to live and expire on the instant. The quinoa has no flavor now. The llamas are migrating because of your music, and llamas are not a migratory animal. The children now believe there is a sickly monster, half horse and half large mournful chicken, that lives in the lake and calls out to the world to grant it the sweet release of death. The townspeople believe that you and I are performing arcane magic rituals - "
"Well, that one was rather a good guess," Magnus remarked.
" - using the skull of an elephant, an improbably large mushroom, and one of your very peculiar hats!"
"Or not," said Magnus. "Furthermore, my hats are extraordinary."
"I will not argue with that." I ~ Cassandra Clare

Without love and affection, they lost the will to live. ~ David R. Hawkins

How could he explain to her that it was better this way, that yes, an object could hold a person, that you could talk to a photograph, that you could kiss a ring, that by breathing into a harmonica, you can give voice to someone far away. But photographs can be lost. In your sleep, a ring can be slipped from your finger by the thief in your barracks. Ga had seen an old man lose the will to live - you could see it go out of him - when a prison guard made him hand over a locket. No, you had to keep the people you loved safer than that. They had to become as fixed to you as a tattoo, which no one could take away. ~ Adam Johnson

There is in every one of us an unending see-saw between the will to live and the will to die. ~ Rebecca West

It's very interesting, I had an extremely intense experience with my dad in 2002, when he was an old man and very ill and I was taking care of him and my mother, and he was extremely depressed, virtually lost the will to live, and I realized my main job was cheering him up to save his life. ~ John Lithgow

Be proud of your scars. They remind you that you have the will to live. ~ Paulo Coelho

But now, as it is, sorrows, unending sorrows must surge within your heart as well - for your own son's death. Never again will you embrace him stiding home. My spirit rebels - I've lost the will to live, to take my stand in the world of men - ~ Homer

The will to live is as strong as the will to love and be loved. ~ Tyler Perry

The need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost it's meaning ~ Jean Baudrillard

I saw other people there. Old men sitting alone. Young girls with blue eye shadow and awkward jaws. Little kids who looked tired. Fathers in nice coats who looked even more tired. Kids working behind counters of the food places who looked like they hadn't had the will to live for hours. The machines kept opening and closing. The people kept giving money and getting their change. And it all felt very unsettlingly to me. ~ Stephen Chbosky

In addition, Dr. Dannyboy has suggested a fifth element: positive thinking. Pointing out that their breathing, bathing, dining and screwing brought Alobar and Kudra much physical pleasure, and that an organism steeped in pleasure is an organism disposed to continue, he has said that the will to live cannot be overestimated as a stimulant to longevity. Indeed Dr. Dannyboy goes so far as to claim that ninety percent of all deaths are suicides. Persons, says Wiggs, who lack curiosity about life, who find minimal joy in existence, are all too willing, subconsciously, to cooperate with- and attract- disease, accident and violence. ~ Tom Robbins

Altruism is for those who can't endure their desires. There's a world as ambiguous as a moan, a pleasure moan our earnest neighbors might think a crime. It's where we could live. I'll say I love you, Which will lead, of course, to disappointment, but those words unsaid poison every next moment. I will try to disappoint you better than anyone else has.
Mon Semblable ~ Stephen Dunn

Surely, I must at all times attempt to obey the law of the state. But when the will of God and the will of the state conflict, I am compelled to follow the will of God. ~ Bayard Rustin

The power of fear of failure, with will to win, is an incredible force. I don't think we should be worried about having a fear of failure; I think it's quite natural. If you surveyed any top businessman or any top athlete, I bet if they were truthful, they would all say they've got a fear of losing and a fear of failure. ~ John Caudwell

Be happy,
You will never be able to please everyone out there. So be happy and live your life to please yourself. ~ P.J.Prospere

I've decided the act that cannot wait / is the important will to create / But, ah, if my belly is ignored / the pantry door I shall implore / But I've been known to reach the bed / ideas still famished in my head. ~ Roman Payne

You may have it," he said. His voice was very low, but he met my eyes straight on. "All of it. Anything that was ever done to me. If ye wish it, if it helps ye, I will live it through again. ~ Diana Gabaldon

The perturbations, anxieties, depravations, deaths, exceptions in the physical or moral order, spirit of negation, brutishness, hallucinations fostered by the will, torments, destruction, confusion, tears, insatiabilities, servitudes, delving imaginations, novels, the unexpected, the forbidden, the chemical singularities of the mysterious vulture which lies in wait for the carrion of some dead illusion, precocious & abortive experiences, the darkness of the mailed bug, the terrible monomania of pride, the inoculation of deep stupor, funeral orations, desires, betrayals, tyrannies, impieties, irritations, acrimonies, aggressive insults, madness, temper, reasoned terrors, strange inquietudes which the reader would prefer not to experience , cants, nervous disorders, bleeding ordeals that drive logic at bay, exaggerations, the absence of sincerity, bores, platitudes, the somber, the lugubrious, childbirths worse than murders, passions, romancers at the Courts of Assize, tragedies,-odes, melodramas, extremes forever presented, reason hissed at with impunity, odor of hens steeped in water, nausea, frogs, devilfish, sharks, simoon of the deserts, that which is somnambulistic, squint-eyed, nocturnal, somniferous, noctambulistic, viscous, equivocal, consumptive, spasmodic, aphrodisiac, anemic, one-eyed, hermaphroditic, bastard, albino, pederast, phenomena of the aquarium, & the bearded woman, hours surfeited with gloomy discouragement, fantasies, acrimonies, monsters, demoral ~ Comte De Lautreamont

You and I can become so dedicated to the will of God, we can be so driven by a false sense of purpose, that we might inadvertently take matters into our own hands and leave God completely out of the loop. ~ Charles R. Swindoll

If a person plays dissonance long enough, it will sound like consonance. It's a language that was alien and then it's less and less alien as it continues to live. ~ Keith Jarrett

An individual in despair despairs over something ... In despairing over something, he really despair[s] over himself, and now he wants to get rid of himself. Consequently, to despair over something is still not despair proper ... To despair over oneself, in despair to will to be rid of oneself-this is the formula for all despair. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

I feel simply carried along each hour, doing my part in a plan which is far beyond myself. [ ... ] My part is to live this hour in continuous inner conversation with God and in perfect responsiveness to His will. This seems to be all I need to think about. ~ Frank Laubach

Do not ask that your kids live up to your expectations. Let your kids be who they are, and your expectations will be in breathless pursuit. ~ Robert Breault

Cells will die in minutes to days if they lack their genetic information system. They will not evolve, they will not replicate, and they will not live. ~ Craig Venter

He will live ill who does not know how to die well ~ Seneca.

Genius everywhere is one. In the Orient and in the Occident the deep thinkers are kin, the poets are cousins, the pioneers of the spirit are the messengers of peace and good will to the world. Their works are the open highways between nations, and they themselves are the ever living guardians and guides. ~ Ameen Rihani

Color, in the outward world, answers to feeling in man; shape, to thought; motion, to will. The dawn of day is the nearest outward likeness of an act of creation; and it is, therefore, also the closest type in nature for that in us which most approaches to creation
the realization of an idea by an act of the will. ~ John Sterling

In most important ways, leaders of the future will need the traits and capabilities of leaders throughout history: an eye for change and a steadying hand to provide both vision and reassurance that change can be mastered, a voice that articulates the will of the group and shapes it to constructive ends, and an ability to inspire by force of personality while making others feel empowered to increase and use their own abilities. ~ Rosabeth Moss Kanter

We have all grown up, one might say, thinking of nature as an
adorable, helpless bunny that some people want to protect and
others, motivated by the will to power that is the unmentionable
force behind so much of contemporary culture, want to stomp into
a bloody pulp just to show that they can. Both sides are mistaken,
for what they have misidentified as a bunny is one paw of a sleep-
ing grizzly bear who, if roused, is quite capable of tearing both sides
limb from limb and feasting on their carcasses. The bear, it must be
remembered, is bigger than we are, and stronger. We forget this at
our desperate peril. ~ John Michael Greer

If we only have the will to walk, then God is pleased with our stumbles. ~ C.S. Lewis

We look for happiness in every other thing and being around us. We live in an "if and then" model of happiness. If that happens, then I will be happy. This list of "if and then" never finishes, and we continue through our entire life learning how to be unhappy. ~ Rakesh Sethi

Her [Mary's] motherhood extends beyond view. In the will of the Son, she becomes at once mother and maid: sheltering him, but sheltered in him, forming him, but formed by him ... When she pronounces the words: 'Be it done to me according to thy word', the Mother conceives the mystery from the Trinity, in order to give it to the Son. The Son gives the word back to the Trinity by giving everything he has back to the Father in the Spirit. Then, after the Father has received it again, it is distributed to mankind by means of that extravagant expansioning-the Eucharist and the Holy Spirit. ~ Adrienne Von Speyr

More sensitive than others in the beginning, we have to develop the will, the stamina, the determination, and the insensitivity to take critical abuse. A good writer, therefore, does well to see himself as a strong, weak person, full of brave timidity, sensitive and insensitive. ~ Norman Mailer

Reaching a general understanding that sustainability is the ultimate issue will finally bring us face-to-face with the political challenge of forging a sustainable society during the next few decades. It is a challenge we can meet if we have the leadership and the political will to do so. ~ Gaylord Nelson

He turned his head just then and for a moment, our eyes met. I would like to tell you that I saw the face of evil when I looked at the Grand Inquisitor, but in fact he seemed like so many men who serve Holy Mother Church: a bureaucrat for whom the suffering of humanity is of no account compared to his imagined visions of the will of God. It is said that the Devil enters through back doors and in disguise, but men such as Torquemada never seemed to consider that. He is dead now, as I tell this tale. I wonder how warmly the One he served welcomed him into eternity. ~ Sara Poole

Within the overall context of loving his wife, a husband's first and primary role is to be the spiritual head and covering and teacher in the home. Through his words, lifestyle, and personal behavior the husband should teach the Word, the will, and ~ Myles Munroe

As you grow and mature, you will want and will earn more freedom to live your lives your way and to make your own choices. This you should do. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

When you are going through something like compaign run nothing happens without Allah's permission. So a lot of the times you just have to surrender to his will and learning how to surrender was a major thing for me, getting me out of the way, surrendering to the will of God. ~ Kwame Kilpatrick

I do not desire power, but rather to submit to the will of Elamm'. ~ Benita J. Prins

Art will not solve your problems. It will not enable you to live merrily. ~ Robert Pinsky

Certain vocations, e.g., raising children, offer a perfect setting for living a contemplative life. They provide a desert for reflection, a real monastery. The mother who stays home with small children experiences a very real withdrawal from the world. Her existence is certainly monastic. Her tasks and preoccupations remove her from the centres of social life and from the centres of important power. She feels removed. Moreover, her constant contact with young children, the mildest of the mild, gives her a privileged opportunity to be in harmony with the mild and learn empathy and unselfishness. Perhaps more so even than the monk or the minister of the Gospel, she is forced, almost against her will, to mature. For years, while she is raising small children, her time is not her own, her own needs have to be put into second place, and every time she turns around some hand is reaching out demanding something. ~ Ronald Rolheiser

Discernment and detachment (Jurists and apatheia) are two characters of the mature Christian soul. They are not yet the mark of a mystic, but they bear witness that one is traveling the right way to mystical contemplation, and that the stage of beginners is passed. The presence of discernment and detachment is manifested by a spontaneous thirst for what is good - charity, union with the will of God - and an equally spontaneous repugnance for what is evil. The man who has this virtue no longer needs to be exhorted by promises to do what is right, or deterred from evil by threat of punishment. ~ Thomas Merton

Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson. Richard Nixon did, famously, go on 'Laugh In' in 1968, but as a candidate; and to his credit, he rued the day and hated every second of it. ~ Christopher Buckley

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe. ~ Colin Wilson

I personally believe that those who are leaders with political power over the world will be forced some day, sooner or later, to give way to common sense and the will of the people. ~ Alva Myrdal

Elvis [Presley] had a stepstool, if you will, to success because he came from the dominant culture. They identified with him. Michael Jackson had to come further and go deeper into the pit of possibility of American democracy and of cultural expression. ~ Michael Eric Dyson