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Be not
afraid of life.
Believe that life
is worth living
and
your belief will
help create the fact.
William
James
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life
- life 3 - life 4 |
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None but a good
person is really a
living one,
and the more good any person does,
the more he or she really lives.
All the rest is death, or belongs with it.
Cotton Mather |
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The
value of life lies not in the length of days,
but in the use we make of them; a man may
live long yet live very little.
Montaigne |
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At end of
Love, at end of Life,
At end of Hope, at end of Strife'
At end of all we cling to so--
The sun is setting--we must go.
At dawn of Love, at dawn of Life,
At dawn of Peace that follows Strife,
At dawn of all we long for so--
The sun is rising--let us go.
Louise Chandler Moulton
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Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace.
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
where there is
injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith;
where there
is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light;
and
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so
much seek
to be consoled as to console; to be understood
as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in
giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are
pardoned;
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal
life.
St. Francis of Assissi
(attributed) |
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As a
doctor, I studied survivors--people who got sick but
exceeded expectations.
Many of those exceptional patients
had been given little time to live,
yet they were some of
the happiest people I'd ever met. They knew,
or they
discovered through their illness, which became their
teacher,
that if you want to be happy, you must answer
some key questions.
What are you here for? And how do you
want to spend your limited time?
If your answer is that
you are here to love, to serve others and not to be
served,
then you already have everything you need to be
happy. If you wake up
in the morning, that's enough; you
are grateful for life and
the opportunity to contribute
in your way.
Bernie
Siegel |
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A Psalm of Life
WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG
MAN SAID TO THE PSALMIST
Tell me not, in
mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!--
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.
Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave. |
In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!
Trust no future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,--act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;
Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.
Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow |
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Ari Kiev
Your life
has been designed to work, and your hidden potential
contains what you seek and all that you need in your life.
It is OK to be who you are and to choose what you have.
The Quakers call it the "still, small voice within,"
that place of full awareness within that is in touch with
the entire universe and is the source of wisdom.
In
effect, you don't have to keep searching for confirmation
by focusing on being someone else or being somewhere else.
There is no place else to be and nothing else to get.
You
will be able to grasp the levers of change in your life
when you can allow yourself to be present in the moment,
accept the world as it is, and trust that everything is
as it was intended to be. |
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It is a
glorious privilege to live, to know, to act, to listen,
to behold, to love. To look up at the blue summer sky; to
see the sun sink slowly beyond the line of the horizon;
to watch the worlds come twinkling into view, first one
by one, and the myriads that no man can count, and lo!
the universe is white with them; and you and I are here. |
Marco
Morrow |
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No one has success
until he or she has the abounding life.
This is made up of the
many-fold activity of energy,
enthusiasm and gladness. It
is to spring to meet the day
with a thrill at being alive.
It is to go forth to meet the morning
in an ecstasy of
joy. It is to realize the oneness of humanity
in true
spiritual sympathy.
Lillian
Whiting |
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Rabbi
Harold Kushner
When
your life is filled with the desire to see the holiness
in everyday life,
something magical happens: ordinary
life becomes extraordinary,
and the very process of life
begins to nourish your soul!
With each new
circumstance that comes your way,
another opportunity
presents itself to nourish your soul. |
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| I wish there were a
book I could read each day to tell me exactly what to do
to live consciously from my heart and soul. But
part of the mystery and magic, part of the reason I'm
here, is to try to stumble through and hear what the soul
has to say about what it needs at each moment--whether it
is to work through an emotional block, discover what the
next lesson is, meet the next soul mate (my children are
soul mates; my best friends are soul mates), or finish my
business with the one I'm with now. Ultimately, for most
of us, the journey comes down to the same issue: learning
to love freely. First ourselves, then other people.
Melody
Beattie |
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What
is this thing called life, and why do we have so many
problems trying to get through it? Why do so many people
hate it so much, while others love it and live it fully
until they die? Part of the goal of this series of pages
is to examine life from different perspectives, looking
at different aspects of who we are. Maybe we're feeling
badly about ourselves because of how we're treating one
particular aspect of ourselves, and if we can focus on
that, we can start living more. I know that I want to
reach my death and look back and say that even though I
didn't do everything right, even though I ended up
hurting people, even though I made many mistakes, I still
did the best that I could, and I still got the most I
could out of each moment.
I try to do so, for I know I
could die tomorrow. So could you--sorry, but it's true.
And even if I live to be eighty, eighty years isn't
enough to experience everything that's available to us in
this world. Live life, don't just walk through it. This
isn't a dress rehearsal--this is the real thing. Take
advantage of it. As Maude says, "Get hurt even."
You belong here just as much as any other one of God's
creations, and God wants you to thrive, to live. He's not
going to hand life to you on a platter, though--you've
got to go out and get it.
Sometimes
I think we make it more difficult on ourselves by viewing life in very
general terms. We look at "life"--this vast,
all-encompassing term--rather than at "my life," a much more
specific term that we actually can get a grip on if we try hard
enough. My life is made up of my experiences and how I react to
the experiences of others, and my life is quite a fascinating
thing. My life is lovable and livable, and I can live it only in
the way that I choose to live it.
We
also tend to see life in the way that others see it for us.
Other people seem to think that they know better how we should live
our lives, and we cave in and obey them far too often. There's a
huge difference between doing what others tell us to do and learning
from others and putting the lessons into practice. If we do the
former, we lose our sense of self, our sense of who we are, and it's
difficult to be satisfied with ourselves. If we do the latter,
we keep our integrity (what an important word!), and our lives truly
are our lives.
Life
is a beautiful experience. Accept that reality, and live as if
it were true, and you'll be amazed at how beautiful life actually
is. We're not here to fight, but to cooperate, and when we put
that principle into practice, we start to find the peace our hearts
yearn for.
tdw
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Charles Kingsley |
The people whom I have
seen succeed best in life have always been cheerful and
hopeful, who went about their business with a smile
on their faces, and took the changes and chances of this
mortal life with strength, facing rough and smooth alike as it
came. |
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Herman
Hesse
Look at an animal, a cat, a dog, or a bird, or one of
those beautiful great beasts
in the zoo, a puma or a
giraffe. You can't help seeing that all of them are
right.
They're never in any embarrassment. They always
know what to do and
how to behave themselves. They
don't flatter and they don't intrude.
They don't
pretend. They are as they are, like stones or
flowers or stars in the sky. |
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We live
in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs.
They most live
Who think most, feel the noblest, act the best.
Philip James
Bailey |
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The world is a looking-glass,
and gives back to everyone the reflection
of our own faces. Frown at it, and it in turn will look sourly
on you;
laugh at it and with it, and it is a jolly, kind companion.
William Makepeace
Thackeray |
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I am in
love with this world. . .
I have climbed its mountains, roamed its forests,
sailed its waters, crossed its deserts, felt the sting of its frosts,
the oppression of its heats, the drench of its rains, the fury of its winds,
and always have beauty and joy waited upon my goings and comings.
John Burroughs |
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Is life
so wretched? Isn't it rather your hands are too small,
your vision which is muddled? You are the one who must
grow up.
Dag Hammarskjold |
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Nobody has things just as
they would
like them. The thing to do
is to make a success with what
material I have. It is
a sheer waste of time and soul-power
to imagine
what I would do if things were different.
They
are not different.
Frank Crane |
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The
secret of success is to be in harmony with existence, to
be always calm. . .
to let each wave of life wash us a
little farther up the shore.
Cyril Connolly |
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A life spent
making mistakes is not only more honorable
but more useful than a life
spent doing nothing.
George Bernard
Shaw |
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Prepare
to live by all means, but for Heaven's sake do not forget to
live.
Arnold
Bennett |
Nothing
in life is to be feared.
It is only to be understood.
Marie
Curie |
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The things
that are most worthwhile in life are really those within the reach
of
almost every normal human being who cares to seek them out.
Charles B.
Forbes |
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You
come into the world with nothing, and the purpose
of your life
is to
make something out of nothing.
Henry
Louis Mencken |
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Life's under no
obligation to give us what we expect.
We take what we get and
are thankful it's no worse than it is.
Margaret Mitchell |
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People say that
what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think
that's
what we're really seeking. I think that what we're
seeking is an experience
of being alive, so that our life experiences
on the purely physical plane
will have resonances within our own
innermost being and reality,
so that we actually feel the rapture of
being alive.
Joseph
Campbell |
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To
live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury;
and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable;
and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act
frankly;
to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart;
to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never;
in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden, and unconscious to grow up
through the common.
This is to be my symphony.
William Henry Channing
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You
must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it.
That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies,
that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems,
and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
J. Krishnamurti
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