Quotes & Sayings About Accepting Life

The impulse that led you to make an image is a thing that you cannot share with anyone, even if you explain it. What remains is a surface that will live its own life, that will belong to everybody. I accept that surface. — Jeanloup Sieff

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss. — Joan Didion

A witness, in the sense that I am using the word, is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences. — Whittaker Chambers

The zest for life of those unusual men and women who make a great zealous success of living is due more often in good part to the craftiness and pertinacity with which they manage to overlook the misery of others. You can watch them watch life beat the stuffing out of the faces of their friends and acquaintances, although they themselves seem to outwit the dense delays of social custom, the tedious tick-tock of bureaucratic obfuscation, accepting loss and age and change and disappointment without suffering punctures in their stomach lining. — Edward Hoagland

By accepting and learning to embrace the inevitable sorrows of life, we realize that we can experience a more enduring sense of happiness. — Sharon Salzberg

I had already made a decision early on that I would be a plain girl with lots of personality, and accepting it made everything a lot easier. If you are lucky, there is a moment in your life when you have some say as to what your currency is going to be. — Amy Poehler

Awareness is a choiceless consciousness. Awareness is the capacity to embrace, accept and include both joy and sadness, love and aloneness, light and darkness, male and female qualities and life and death.
Through saying "yes" and accepting both tendencies and including whatever aspect that happens in the moment, we meet our unlimited and boundless inner being. The inner man and woman need to find their own independence and integrity. — Swami Dhyan Giten

The key to accepting responsibility for your life is to accept the fact that your choices, every one of them, are leading you inexorably to either success or failure, however you define those terms. — Neal Boortz

Being an Irishwoman means many things to me. An Irishwoman is strong and feisty. She has guts and stands up for what she believes in. She believes she is the best at whatever she does and proceeds through life with that knowledge. She can face any hazard that life throws her way and stay with it until she wins. She is loyal to her kinsmen and accepting of others. She's not above a sock in the jaw if you have it coming. — Maureen O'Hara

This world is made for the living, Dan. Death, and accepting death, is a part of life. — Karen McQuestion

One of the obvious implications is that a person will have to face the fact that she cannot meet other people's expectations. This signals the end of what might be called the "camel" phase of human development. I believe it was Nietschze who suggested that for the first part of life, we are camels, trudging through the desert, accepting on our backs everybody's "shoulds" and "don'ts." Camels only know how to spit; they don't think for themselves or talk back. As the camel dies, a lion is born in its place. Lions discover both their roar and the art of preening. The lion may be a little shaky at first, so support and encouragement are vital. But once the camel begins to die (e.g., signaled by depression), there is no turning back. Symptoms occupy the space between the death of the camel and the birth of the lion. A therapist can be a good midwife during this liminal phase. — Stephen Gilligan

Part of what the psychedelic point of view represents is living a certain portion of your life without answers. Just accepting that certain dilemmas will never resolve themselves into some kind of a complete answer. That's why psychedelics are so different from any system being sold, from one of the great elder systems like Christianity, to the latest cult out of Los Angeles. — Terence McKenna

When accepting the American Film Institute Life Achievement award: I beg permission to mention by name only four people who have given me the most affection, appreciation, and encouragement, and constant collaboration. The first of the four is a film editor, the second is a scriptwriter, the third is the mother of my daughter Pat (Patricia Hitchcock), and the fourth is as fine a cook as ever performed miracles in a domestic kitchen. And their names are Alma Reville. — Alfred Hitchcock

It was simply that Morgan was right for Theo in ways he couldn't begin to explain. From little things such as Morgan already knowing so much about Theo - like the fact that he had no siblings - and accepting the way that Ben was still a very important part of his life, all the way through to arguing about absolutely fucking everything, Morgan was just right for him. It wouldn't have mattered if he'd been twenty-one or sixty-one instead of twenty-eight. He was perfect for Theo. — Con Riley

Contentment is accepting God's sovereign control over all of life's circumstances. — Linda Dillow

Saving faith is an immediate relation to Christ, accepting, receiving, resting upon Him alone, for justification, sanctification, and eternal life by virtue of God's grace. — Charles Spurgeon

My life is a series of invitations accepted and invitations rejected, and the place I now find myself is often a result of accepting the wrong invitations and rejecting the right ones. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Without accepting our personality, we try to meet the requirements of the society and do everything to be accepted — Sunday Adelaja

Love isn't jealous. It's kind and patient. It's accepting--it's late night talks and early morning kisses. It's arguing and making up. It's life with the one you can't live without. — Marquita Valentine

By becoming clearly contemplative in a matter of weeks, my prayer had been given a particular and novel cast; and this was matched by the distinctness in the reprecussions my daily sessions of exercises were having on my everyday life, as well as on the many different occupations which a monk is vowed to carry out. The genuine sense of euphoria that followed the exercises persisted in me and transfigured my day. During the early months I had to face up to the sort of difficulties which put one's nerves to the test, and which would certainly have put me on my back before. As it was, everything went off so smoothly and I took it all so well that I trained everyone under my charge to develop the attitude of 'accepting rather than undergoing. — Jean Dechanet

Second choice always comes as a result of being realistic and lowering your sights. If you want to go through life accepting second best, or worse still, third or fourth, then don't be surprised if you end up feeling unfulfilled with your lot. Set a goal that puts fire in your belly and keep striving until you reach it. Providing you want it badly enough, you will do whatever it takes. ~ "Once you say you're going to settle for second, that's what happens to you in life." - John F. Kennedy ~ — Jack The Crack

Drop jealousy and envy, for they make you ugly. Be loving, be accepting, and most of all ... be happy just the way you are. — Leon Brown

In the old days he had clutched life with such violence that the juice of it ran out between his fingers and was lost, but now he would touch it delicately, thankful for the good and accepting the ills with patience. — Elizabeth Goudge

The key to life is accepting challenges. Once someone stops doing this, he's dead. — Bette Davis

If in the least particular, one could derange the order of nature, who would accept the gift of life? — Ralph Waldo Emerson

By accepting life's limits and inevitabilities and working with them rather than fighting them, we become free. — Epictetus

True healing comes from owning and accepting all of life's energies within ourselves ... When they are allowed to be expressed, they take their places as important facets of our nature. There is no split between 'good' and 'bad.' — Shakti Gawain

One of the greatest challenge in life is not having an attitude but knowing or accepting that you have one — Ikechukwu Izuakor

If we could learn to trust and rest and be instead of always striving to do, we would find ourselves face to face with some of life's most perplexing paradoxes. First, that transformation comes only when we stop trying to transform ourselves. Second, that love can flow out of us only after we've allowed it to flow freely into us. And third, that you can't catch God by chasing him; you catch him only by accepting his pursuit of you. — Tim King

The reason to be an atheist is not that it makes us feel better or gives us a more rewarding life. The reason to be an atheist is simply that there is no God and we would prefer to live in full recognition of that, accepting the consequences, even if it makes us less happy. — Julian Baggini

Failure teaches you more in life than success does. Dealing with success is easy; accepting disappointments with equanimity and harnessing the energy of failure to achieve greater heights are the greatest lessons in life, — Indu Bhan

Locke's essay on Toleration of 1689 argued for the toleration of opinions and ways of life with which you do not agree, as one of the virtues of a liberal society. But many who call themselves liberal today seem to have little understanding of what this virtue really is. Toleration does not mean renouncing all opinions that others might find offensive. It does not mean an easy-going relativism or a belief that 'anything goes'. On the contrary, it means accepting the right of others to think and act in ways of which you disapprove. It means being prepared to protect people from negative discrimination even when you hate what they think and what they feel. But — Roger Scruton

I have been surfing for my whole life. I love it and I don't know that I can get much better now, I have peaked, which bothers me but I have to accept it. — Paul Walker

Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness. — Albert Camus

Perhaps the problem is the seeming need that people have of making black-and-white cutoffs when it comes to certain mysterious phenomena, such as life and consciousness. People seem to want there to be an absolute threshold between the living and the nonliving, and between the thinking and the "merely mechanical," ... But the onward march of science seems to force us ever more clearly into accepting intermediate levels of such properties. — Douglas Hofstadter

Would we as a nation be better off dealing with the truth rather than believing fantasies that prop up the Status Quo and the Fed's dearly beloved measure of the economy, the stock market? How often does accepting illusion help us navigate real life? Short answer: never. — Charles Hugh Smith

The "sayings" of a community, its proverbs, are its characteristic comment upon life; they imply its history, suggest its attitude toward the world and its way of accepting life. Such an idiom makes the finest language any writer can have; and he can never get it with a notebook. He himself must be able to think and feel in that speech - it is a gift from heart to heart. — Willa Cather

Shane lingered over a sickly sweet bit of doggerel comparing accepting Christ into one's life with turning a pumpkin into a Jack-o-Lantern. "It sounds like God is seriously going to mutilate you."
Roselyn took the pamphlet from Shane, her eyes flickering over the text. "I always pictured it a bit more like a lobotomy than an evisceration. — Thomm Quackenbush

Stop telling me that love is blind. Love doesn't need to be blind; it is accepting. It can see everything and still be unconditionally strong. Love sees you and accepts you for who you are. — Steve Maraboli

Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up opportunities to hang out with people. The loss of control in any situation can lead to this state. — David McRaney

Every year, I might almost say every day, that I live, I seem to see more clearly how all the rest and gladness and power of our Christian life hinges on one thing; and that is, taking God at His word, believing that He really means exactly what He says, and accepting the very words in which He reveals His goodness and grace, without substituting others or altering the precise modes and tenses which He has seen fit to use. — Frances Ridley Havergal

The doctor who willingly accepts destroying life will have no grounds on which to object if the state should compel that doctor to destroy life, — Mildred Fay Jefferson

If you can cut yourself - your mind - free of what other
people do and say, of what you've said or done, of the things
that you're afraid will happen, the impositions of the body
that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling
chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from
fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance
- doing what's right, accepting what happens, and speaking
the truth
If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind,
free of the future and the past - can make yourself, as
Empedocles says, "a sphere rejoicing in its perfect
stillness," and concentrate on living what can be lived
(which means the present) ... then you can spend the time
you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace
with the spirit within you. — Marcus Aurelius

The moment a student gives up his right of personal judgment, he is in for accepting all the humbugs of life — Lin Yutang

When actually, you have one identity made of different parts. Depending on where you are, at what time in your life, some things are higher or deeper. That's what I understood later: that I'm French and Tunisian, and I'm accepting the French part of my identity. — EL Seed

Your hope lies in accepting your life as it now lies before you, forever changed. If you can do that, the peace you seek will follow. Forever changed. I am forever changed. — Jennifer Niven

Life is accepting what is and working from that. — Gloria Naylor

The essence if hope is accepting uncertainty. — Debasish Mridha

The hefty price for accepting information uncritically is that we go through life unaware that what we've accepted as impossible may in fact be quite possible. — Ellen J. Langer

True satisfaction is to be found in accepting life as it is, instead of struggling to change it into something we imagine that we wish. — Stefan Stenudd

There have been times in my life I prayed for change.

For rescue.

For strength.

For answers.

There have been times in my life I blamed others for everything that went wrong, bypassing accepting responsibility, because it was easier. — Kim Holden

Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept. — Ken Keyes Jr.

Until you are willing to accept total and complete responsibility for every aspect of your life, your life will keep sending you experiences designed to get your attention. — Iyanla Vanzant

The process of letting go is an act of accepting. — Debasish Mridha

But then it occured to him that any progress he had made on his quest so far he had made by accepting the help that had been offered to him. — Neil Gaiman

Healing is more about accepting the pain and finding a way to peacefully co-exist with it. In the sea of life, pain is a tide that will ebb and weave, continually.
We need to learn how to let it wash over us, without drowning in it. Our life doesn't have to end where the pain begins, but rather, it is where we start to mend. — Jaeda DeWalt

I think America may be growing up and accepting the fact that the bulk of life exists beyond 50. Because demographically ... the vast population is over 50. — Carmen Dell'Orefice

I don't ever want to feel that way. Feel as if there are no surprises left. The surprises make life worth living. Expecting nothing, accepting it all. Accepting isn't the right word. ACKNOWLEDGING it all. I suppose I'll just try to figure it out as I go or at least try to understand it. Or f***, just think about it. I'll face whatever comes my way ... — John O'Callaghan

Having no expectations for some people in your life can be depressing, if not devastating. But with others, it's what is necessary. The hard part is not just figuring out which one applies, but accepting it. — Sarah Dessen

Accept your life and what it brings, I know tomorrow you find better things. — Ray Davies

In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt ... In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accepting life, and everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don't need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way. — Thomas Merton

Studies show that neurotic and psychiatric disorders are more common among those who attempt to keep conscious control of life and suppress its unwelcome quirks. Sanity, paradoxically, may lie in accepting that you are not in control. — Michael Brooks

Peacefully and lovingly accepting who we are today requires honestly looking at our past. — Rob Martin

I grow spiritually when I accept responsibility for my life. — Louise Hay

The interests of the deaf child and his parents may best be served by accepting that he is a deaf person, with an elaborate cultural and linguistic heritage that can enrich his parent's life as it will his own. — Harlan Lane

Accepting the facts is always tough, so we search for forgiveness to this universe everyday to break the shackles, hurt is a prison and I from a very young young age refused to be held prisoner or even conform. — Aidan McNally

Accept, forgive and forget. Forgive not only the people who hurt us, but also forgive ourselves, accepting whatever is the outcome, then forget the wrongs, learn from them and move on. Holding on to the guilt and pain would just make life miserable for us. — Kcat Yarza

Strength doesn't necessarily come from resisting fear, weakness, or any other feeling and overcoming it. Strength comes from looking at those things straight on
and accepting them as they really are. — Kat Von D.

Her mother likes to say that novels have ruined Amelia for real men. This observation insults Amelia because it implies that she only reads books with classically romantic heroes. She does not mind the occasional novel with a romantic hero but her reading taste are far more varied than that. Furthermore, she adores Humbert Humbert as a character while accepting the fact that she wouldn't really want him for a life partner, a boyfriend, or even a casual acquaintance. She feels the same way about Holden Caulfield, and Misters Rochester and Darcy. — Gabrielle Zevin

I think writing is like ministry. You get this call and you run before accepting it. If you run right to it, there's a good chance you were not called. — Robin Caldwell

Every one of us gets to find our way, hopefully surrounded by love, but we still have to pick out our own way through the land mines of life. By accepting this and relinquishing control, there's just extraordinary beauty. — Ali MacGraw

By acknowledging and accepting the ultimate commonality, we can naturally and voluntarily develop the attitude of compassion and benevolence toward other people, other life-forms, and all beings. We will want to live for the good of all because we know that's the way we benefit ourselves, too. — Ilchi Lee

Perfection is an illusion which often prevents us from accepting the realities of life. — Sandeep Sharma

In any situation in life, you only have three options. You always have three options. You can change it, you can accept it, or you can leave it. What is not a good option is to sit around wishing you would change it but not changing it, wishing you would leave it but not leaving it, and not accepting it. It's that struggle, that aversion, that is responsible for most of our misery. The phrase that I probably use the most to myself in my head is just one word: accept. — Timothy Ferriss

I had learned that there were substitutes
for a mother who couldn't be a mother. You
could find love with other people. You could
find it in places you weren't even looking.
But the original wound would never heal. I
would carry it with me forever, and so would
Tara. That was the trick ... accepting it, going
on with your life, knowing it was part of
you. — Lisa Kleypas

Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. — Mike Yaconelli

Odd: I wish I could believe in reincarnation.
Chief Porter: Not me. Once down the track is enough of a test. Pass me or fail me, Dear Lord, but don't make me go through high school again.
Odd: If there's something we want so bad in this life but we can't have it, maybe we could get it the next time around.
Chief Porter: Or maybe not getting it, accepting less without bitterness and being grateful for what we have is a part of what we're here to learn. — Dean Koontz

Accepting a religion, any, is a lot like someone in love. It doesn't matter what the beloved does or says, he or she will get a pass ... Forever. It's easier that way. It's too difficult to accept fault or to admit contradictions or falsehoods. Someone who is religious is in love, and there is no talking them out of it, regardless of what others would take as silly notions or irrational thinking. I no longer try. Life is brief, despite what those longing for an afterlife might really need to believe. Peace and acceptance is something, however, I'll always back, no matter what vehicle it rides in on. — Benjamin Kane Ethridge

Humility is understanding gratefulness oppose to self-praise & accepting envy as the answer to your actions of excellence. — Ace Antonio Hall

Grief is accepting the reality of what is. That is grief's job and purpose-to allow us to come to terms with the way things really are, so that we can move on. Grief is a gift of God. Without it, we would all be condemned to a life of continually denying reality, arguing or protesting against reality, and never growing from the realities we experience. — Henry Cloud

I had individuals in my life to help me make the right decisions because it wasn't about them accepting handouts. It was about them making the right decisions for me. — Alonzo Mourning

To accept on faith is the basic requirement for getting on with life. — Robert Breault

Our insistence on being different from everything around us is one of the greatest mistakes of mankind. We stubbornly maintain an illusory distinction that sets us apart from rock and ice, water and fire, plant and animal. Both religion and rationality try to explain it through an elaborate vocabulary of separation - soul, atman, spirit, ghosts in the machine or simply the idea of selfhood. We have dreamed up gods so that we can reassure ourselves that somewhere, someday, somehow, after this life is over, something awaits us: a presence that recognizes who we are. But if we approach a mountain instead, accepting that we are nothing more or less than an integral part of its existence, our ego merges with the nature of the mountain. In — Stephen Alter

Yes, the life of an adult entails accepting and in some way being responsible for pain. — James A. Autry

One of the hardest things in life to accept is a called third strike. — Robert Frost

Jesus' whole life and mission involve accepting powerlessness and revealing in this powerlessness the limitlessness of God's love. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

When you pray to God resignedly, as though patiently accepting the punishment of grief at the death of a loved one, and you say: "Thy will be done O Lord. The Lord giveth, and he taketh away", you have not yet known the God of love, for God giveth only. God never takes that which has not been given. What God gives to you you regive to Him for His regiving.
You rejoice when God gives birth to life, yet you deeply grieve when you give rebirth to new life - for that is what death is. — Walter Russell

Remaining stable and not accepting all the ideas, is my religion. — Ali Shariati

The more you learn the biology behind your every action, emotion and behavior, the better you become at accepting others the way they are. — Abhijit Naskar

I've given up listening to people. What can they tell me that is so much more to the point than what I've always known? All the mistakes in my life came from accepting advice. — Curt Siodmak

love can give you is how to live a complete life by accepting its incomplete ways. — Novoneel Chakraborty

Accepting our greatness means no longer playing small. It often starts with baby steps. But eventually it means making major changes - in our lives, jobs, relationships, and dreams.

If I had believed in my own self-worth, I would never have been willing to make the financial moves I made in the past.

If I'd known my value, I couldn't have spent so many years ignoring the whispering - and sometimes screaming - voice that told me to leave my marriage. For a long time, that truth was just too scary and painful for me to face. Talk about keeping my head in the sand!

But how many years did I waste, postponing what has proven to be a much better life - simply because I went into hiding and didn't see that I was worthy of something better? — Nancy Levin

By replacing fear of the unknown with curiosity we open ourselves up to an infinite stream of possibility. We can let fear rule our lives or we can become childlike with curiosity, pushing our boundaries, leaping out of our comfort zones, and accepting what life puts before us. — Alan Watts

All of the great leaders down through history have told us we become what we think about. In fact, they have been in complete and unanimous agreement on this point while they disagree on almost every other point. Unfortunately, the vast majority of people rarely think, they simply accept what they see or hear. The next time someone gives you a suggestion, rather than simply accepting and acting on the suggestion - THINK - exercise your reasoning factor. Ask yourself if the suggestion will improve the quality of your life. — Bob Proctor

Accepting others' life choices is something most people only learn with age. — Neil Strauss

Surrender means accepting this moment, this body, and this life with open arms. Surrender involves getting out of your own way and living in accord with a higher will, expressed as the wisdom of the heart. Far more than passive acceptance, surrender uses every challenge as a means of spiritual growth and expanded awareness. — Dan Millman

We begin by accepting that we have problems, that we're miles away from perfect. But some people take this too far: they turn acceptance of the world into an excuse for passivity in the face of their own failings, and even in the face of evil. Yes, you have to accept some unpleasant, upsetting, tragic facts about life. But you also have to accept your responsibility to act in the world. — Eric Greitens

Accepting a religion may be more like enjoying a poem, or following the football. It might be a matter of immersion in a set of practices. Perhaps the practices have only an emotional point, or a social point. Perhaps religious rituals only serve necessary psychological and social ends. The rituals of birth, coming of age, or funerals do this. It is silly to ask whether a marriage ceremony is true or false. People do not go to a funeral service to hear something true, but to mourn, or to begin to stop mourning, or to meditate on departed life. It can be as inappropriate to ask whether what is said is true as to ask whether Keats's ode to a Grecian urn is true. The poem is successful or not in quite a different dimension, and so is Chartres cathedral, or a statue of the Buddha. They may be magnificent, and moving, and awe-inspiring, but not because they make statements that are true or false. — Simon Blackburn

You must accept that you can change and that a pattern of principles adhered to and used repeatedly will not only direct your life, but change it permanently. — Peter J. Daniels

What will happen in your life if you accept the invitation to stillness cannot be known ... what can be known is you will have a larger capacity to truly meet whatever appears. — Gangaji