quotations and passages on life

As I grow to understand
life less and less,
I learn to live it
more and more.

Jules Renard

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

Okakura Kakuzo

Life only demands from you the strength that you possess.
Only one feat is possible--not to have run away.

Dag Hammarskjold

Pythagoras used to say that life resembles the Olympic Games: a few people strain their muscles to carry off a prize; others bring trinkets to sell to the crowd for gain;
and some there are, and not the worst, who seek no other profit than to look
at the show and see how and why everything is done; spectators of the life
of other people in order to judge and regulate their own.

Michel de Montaigne

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence,
and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

Helen Keller

Robert Browning

The aim, if reached or not, makes great the life: try to be Shakespeare, leave the rest to fate.

Life is not always what one wants it to be, but to make the best of it, as it is, is the only way of being happy.

Jennie Jerome Churchill

The need to make wise choices encompasses every area of our lives.
Since we have time for only a limited amount of stuff,
we need to choose wisely what stuff we're going to allow to take up that time.
Since we have only a limited amount of time to spend with friends or to engage
in leisure activities, we need to choose our friends and our activities wisely.

Elaine St. James

If I had my life to live over, I'd dare to make more mistakes
next time. I'd relax, I would limber up. I would be sillier
than I have been this trip. I would take fewer things seriously.
I would take more chances. I would climb more mountains and
swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less beans.
I would perhaps have more actual troubles, but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who lived sensibly and sanely,
hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I've had my moments, and if
I had to do it over again, I'd have more of them. In fact, I'd
try to have nothing else. Just moments, one after another,
instead of living so many years ahead of each day. I've been
one of those persons who never goes anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot water bottle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had to do
it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefoot earlier
in the spring and stay that way later in the fall. I would go
to more dances. I would ride more merry-go-rounds. I would pick more daisies.

This passage is attributed to Nadine Stair,
who was 85, 87, or 89 when she wrote it, depending
on the source. However, it's worth noting that the
following article appeared in October of 1953.
You be the judge about the source:

Of course, you can't unfry an egg, but there is no law against thinking about it.

If I had my life to live over, I would try to make more mistakes. I would relax. I would be sillier than I have been this trip. I know of very few things that I would take seriously. I would be less hygienic. I would go more places. I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers. I would eat more ice cream and less bran.

I would have more actual troubles and fewer imaginary troubles. You see, I have been one of those fellows who live prudently and sanely, hour after hour, day after day. Oh, I have had my moments. But if I had it to do over again, I would have more of them - a lot more. I never go anywhere without a thermometer, a gargle, a raincoat and a parachute. If I had it to do over, I would travel lighter.

It may be too late to unteach an old dog old tricks, but perhaps a word from the unwise may be of benefit to a coming generation. It may help them to fall into some of the pitfalls I have avoided.

If I had my life to live over, I would pay less attention to people who teach tension. In a world of specialization we naturally have a superabundance of individuals who cry at us to be serious about their individual specialty. They tell us we must learn Latin or History; otherwise we will be disgraced and ruined and flunked and failed. After a dozen or so of these protagonists have worked on a young mind, they are apt to leave it in hard knots for life. I wish they had sold me Latin and History as a lark.

I would seek out more teachers who inspire relaxation and fun. I had a few of them, fortunately, and I figure it was they who kept me from going entirely to the dogs. From them I learned how to gather what few scraggly daisies I have gathered along life's cindery pathway.

If I had my life to live over, I would start barefooted a little earlier in the spring and stay that way a little later in the fall. I would play hooky more. I would shoot more paper wads at my teachers. I would have more dogs. I would keep later hours. I'd have more sweethearts. I would fish more. I would go to more circuses. I would go to more dances. I would ride on more merry-go-rounds. I would be carefree as long as I could, or at least until I got some care--instead of having my cares in advance.

More errors are made solemnly than in fun. The rubs of family life come in moments of intense seriousness rather that in moments of light-heartedness. If nations -- to magnify my point -- declared international carnivals instead of international war, how much better that would be!

G.K. Chesterton once said, "A characteristic of the great saints is their power of levity. Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly. One 'settles down' into a sort of selfish seriousness; but one has to rise to a gay self-forgetfulness. A person falls into a 'brown study,' and reaches up at a blue sky."

In a world in which practically everybody else seems to be consecrated to the gravity of the situation, I would rise to glorify the levity of the situation. For I agree with Will Durant that "gaiety is wiser than wisdom."

I doubt, however, that I'll do much damage with my creed. The opposition is too strong. There are too many serious people trying to get everybody else to be too darned serious.

Don Herold

Every day is a little life. . . live every day as if it would be the last.
Those that dare lose a day are dangerously prodigal;
those that dare misspend it are desperate.

Joseph Hall

Learn as if you were going to live forever.
Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.

Anon

Most of life is routine--dull and grubby,
but routine is the mountain that keeps a person going.
If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner
after the parade is a mile down the street.

Ben Nicholas

To learn new habits is everything,
for it is to reach the substance of life.
Life is but a tissue of habits.

Henri
Frederic
Amiel

I have always found that each step we take in life is to be regretted--
if we once begin to wonder how many other steps might have been possible.

John Oliver Hobbes

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it.
If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.

Tallulah Bankhead

This is another day! Are its eyes blurred with maudlin grief
for any wasted past? A thousand thousand failures
shall not daunt! Let dust clasp dust, death, death; I am alive!

Don Marquis

Henry
Ford

We want to live in the present, and the only history
that is worth a tinker's damn is the history we make today.

You are younger today than you ever will be again.
Make use of it for the sake of tomorrow.

Anon

Edmund Pollard

I would I had thrust my hands of flesh
Into the disk-flowers bee-infested,
Into the mirror-like core of fire
Of the light of life, the sun of delight.
For what are anthers worth or petals
Or halo-rays? Mockeries, shadows
Of the heart of the flower, the central flame!
All is yours, young passer-by;
Enter the banquet room with the thought;
Don't sidle in as if you were doubtful
Whether you're welcome--the feast is yours!
Nor take but a little, refusing more
With a bashful "Thank you," when you're hungry.
Is your soul alive? Then let it feed!
Leave no balconies where you can climb;
Nor milk-white bosoms where you can rest;
Nor golden heads with pillows to share;
Nor wine cups while the wine is sweet;
Nor ecstasies of body or soul,
You will die, no doubt, but die while living
In depths of azure, rapt and mated,
Kissing the queen-bee, Life!

Edgar Lee Masters
from Spoon River Anthology

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Life was meant to be lived and curiosity must be kept alive.
One must never, for whatever reason, turn one's back on life.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Our life is what our thoughts make it.	Do every act of your life as if it were your last.
In a word, your life is short. You must make the most of the present with the aid of reason and justice.	Since it is possible that you may be quitting life this very moment, govern every act and thought accordingly.
Marcus Aurelius

It is astonishing how much more anxious people
are interested in lengthening life than improving it.

Charles C. Colton

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats
nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts:
to return love for hate, to include the excluded,
and to say “I was wrong.”

Sydney J. Harris

All animals, except man, know that
the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler

I have never been bored an hour in my life. I get up every morning wondering what new strange glamorous thing is going to happen and it happens at fairly regular intervals. Lady Luck has been good to me and I fancy she has been good to everyone. Only some people are dour, and when she gives them the come hither with her eyes, they look down or turn away and lift an eyebrow. But me, I give her the wink and away we go.

William Allen White

I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before
how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way,
and that so many things that one goes around worrying about
are of no importance whatsoever.

Isak Dinesen

We can make these three dynamic words -- "reverence for life" -- a part of our lives
by becoming aware that God is the source of all life and that we are one with life.
"The good person," said Schweitzer, "is the friend of all living things."

Wilferd A. Peterson

Life holds no promises as to what will come your way.
You must search for your own ideals and work toward reaching them.
Life makes no guarantees as to what you’ll have.
It just gives you time to make choices and to take chances
and to discover whatever secrets that might come your way.
If you are willing to take the opportunities you are given
and utilize the abilities you have, you will constantly fill your life
with special moments and unforgettable times.

Dena Dilaconi

Life is a building. It rises slowly, day by day throughout the years.
Every new lesson we learn lays a block on the edifice, which is rising
silently within us. Every experience, every touch of another life on ours,
every influence that impresses us, every book we read, every conversation we
hear, every act of our commonest days, adds something to the invisible building.

James R. Miller

If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon
in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

Lin Yutang

The most instructive experiences are those of everyday life.

Friedrich Nietzsche

One of the things we must develop is a capacity for exploration,
a searching for meanings and connections. The search itself
is crucial. If you are not asking the hard questions of life,
if you are not carefully testing what others tell you, then you
are not engaged with all the potential aspects
of your own unique and wonderful life.

Sallirae Henderson

Life is a magic vase filled to the brim, so made that you cannot
dip from it nor draw from it; but it overflows into the hand that
drops treasures into it. Drop in malice and it overflows hate;
drop in charity and it overflows love.

John Ruskin

Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love
the questions themselves. . . . Don’t search for the answers, which could not
be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is,
to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps, then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Those who have a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is not mean, it is grand; if it is mean to any, he or she makes it so.
God made it glorious. It is paved with diamonds; its banks He fringed
with flowers. He overarched it with stars. Around it He spread the glory
of the physical universe—suns, moon, worlds, constellations, systems—all
that is magnificent in motion, sublime in magnitude, and grand in order and
obedience. God would not have attended life with this broad march
of grandeur if it did not mean something.

Orison Swett Marden

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you
as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens
to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

John H. Miller

Life is tension. Without tension, there could be no life.
Too little tension or too much tension interferes with the
process of life in the same way a string of a guitar interferes
with the melody when it is either too loose or too tight.

Bruno Geba

Remember, life is for living and learning. So listen to your life and the
lessons it offers. What choices must you make this day to help you move
forward? Make your list of the things you can do right now to create what
you want and begin to do the work. You can say yes to happiness, wholeness,
and prosperity. You can live fully and creatively. You can
claim your power to choose. Why not claim it now?

Susan L. Taylor

A thin line separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy,
humor and hurt. Our lives constantly walk that line. When we
slip off on one side or the other, we’re taken by surprise.
But who said there wouldn’t be surprises? Knowing God just means
that all the rules will be fair; at the end of our life drama,
we’ll see that. We never know how things will turn out,
but if we know with certainty they will make sense regardless
of how they turn out, we’re on to something.

Barbara Johnson