Quotes & Sayings About Alive

Dolor
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplicaton of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate gray standard faces. — Theodore Roethke

When I noticed other people, I wondered what it was like to be alive. They did not know, could not know, how I felt inside. My shell still passed for normal. I felt like I should scream for help, someone should help, but I knew that the time for screaming had passed. Best to just keep on walking, walking dead, one of the few things I could still do. So I kept walking. — Jonathan Rottenberg

And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 4:2-3) — Anonymous

The verdict of this court is that the accused are guilty of witchcraft. The maximum penalty the law allows is to be burned to death.However, in view of your previous good background I am disposed to be lenient. I therefore sentence you to be burned alive. — Richard Curtis

As for major obstacles keeping young Latinos from becoming filmmakers, I think our communities are still coming into their identities as storytellers. It's such an important identity to reclaim - it's how our ancestors kept our cultures alive. But a long history of silencing, invisibility, and marginalization has kept generations of Latinos from believing in themselves, from seeing themselves as agents of their own lives. I think there needs to be a focus on this aspect to help cultivate young Latinas to see themselves as cultural producers and defenders. — Aurora Guerrero

After you're dead and buried and floating around whatever place we go to, what's going to be your best memory of earth? What one moment for you defines what it's like to be alive on this planet. What's your takeaway? Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive. — Douglas Coupland

Open a magazine from the 1930s and '40s and look at the illustrations in it. There's nobody alive that could touch the way they could draw back then. — John Kricfalusi

To be a good storyteller one must be gloriously alive. It is not possible to kindle fresh fires from burned-out embers. I have noticed that the best of the traditional storytellers whom I have heard have been those who live close to the heart of things-to the earth, the sea, wind and weather. They have been those who knew solitude, silence. They have been given unbroken time in which to feel deeply, to reach constantly for understanding. They have come to know the power of the spoken word. These storytellers have been sailors and peasants, wanderers and fisherman. — Ruth Sawyer

So much of what I love about poetry lies in the vast possibilities of voice, the spectacular range of idiosyncratic flavors that can be embedded in a particular human voice reporting from the field. One beautiful axis of voice is the one that runs between vulnerability and detachment, between 'It hurts to be alive' and 'I can see a million miles from here.' A good poetic voice can do both at once. — Tony Hoagland

Bad news is, they've figured out I'm alive. Worse news, I can't be sure about them. Their decomposing stench burns my throat. They don't sound very big. Maybe they're pygmy zombies. — A.G. Howard

Isn't it better to die while you're alive than to live the life of a dead person? — Emmanuel Carrere

Look, I've been doing this a long time. If I'm honest with you, then yes. The Families could have done both. The car thing is absolutely their style, like you said."

Luc frowned. "But you don't think they did it."

David shook his head. "No. Because you're alive. The Families wouldn't screw up twice." He left, closing the door behind him.

"If that was supposed to make me feel better," Curtis said, "it needed way more puppies. Or something from the chocolate family. — Nathan Burgoine

We're all going to die, love. I don't know anyone who's gotten out of this life alive — Joey W. Hill

If art serves any purpose at all, it is to keep alive the spirit of freedom. — Marty Rubin

We all knew that we could grieve only for a short while in order to continue staying alive. — Ishmael Beah

Reading is pleasure and happiness to be alive or sadness to be alive and above all it's knowledge and questions. — Roberto Bolano

Did anybody ever come back from the dead any single one of the millions who got killed did any one of them ever come back and say by god i'm glad i'm dead because death is always better than dishonor? did they say i'm glad i died to make the world safe for democracy? did they say i like death better than losing liberty? did any of them ever say it's good to think i got my guts blown out for the honor of my country? did any of them ever say look at me i'm dead but i died for decency and that's better than being alive? did any of them ever say here i am i've been rotting for two years in a foreign grave but it's wonderful to die for your native land? did any of them say hurray i died for womanhood and i'm happy see how i sing even though my mouth is choked with worms? — Dalton Trumbo

And in my night confusion it is as if I can hear the leaves being gnawed, the forest being eaten alive, shred by shred. I cannot bear it. They are not mild, these moths. Their appetites are blindingly voracious, obsessive. An acquaintance has told me that the Navahos refer to someone with an emotional illness as "moth crazy. — Charles Baxter

One hundred and ten years from now no one who is here now will be alive. — Morrie Schwartz.

Food cost rather than the absolute absence of food can often be the key factor in shortages and possible starvation. During the height of the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, Ireland was actually exporting food to England. The peasants starved because they could not afford to buy food at the local prices, enhanced by the loss of the potato crop. There was enough food, in absolute terms, to keep everyone alive; they died because they had no money to buy it. — Peter Wadhams

The fact that you are even here, alive, on this planet is a mathematical miracle, and you should not spend the time that you have being busy being miserable. — Philip DeFranco

Do you qualify to be alive or is the limit of your senses so as to survive? — Ray Stevens

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day. — Vincent Van Gogh

I stay up late; I'm like a vampire. I stay up until, like, 6 A.M. and then sleep till 4 P.M. I lay in bed till it's dark, and then I come alive in the night. — Jacob Whitesides

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. — Henry Miller

She had to get used to her new name, The Drummer. Twelfth, and last in line, but on a good note, she had the most money, and more importantly, she was alive. — Dayna S. Rubin

Normally, to decide whether we are alive we do not look outside of ourselves to find out if we are nourishing and generating life. We look into ourselves to find out how strong and healthy and vital we are. But the notion of the seed that dies demands an extraordinary redirection of the sense of life. Now to know if anyone is alive, we do not look at them; look beyond them to the mode of their expenditures and the life that they nourish and preserve beyond themselves. — Arthur C. McGill

Love is more than just feeling something Syn, it's the connection of two souls that intertwine and cannot be without the other. It's not just saying you love someone, it's showing them with every fucking breath you take, every look. It just is, simple as that. That kind of love doesn't die. It withers the soul without the other to keep it alive. — Amelia Hutchins

I'm the only American alive or dead who presided unhappily over the removal of a vice president and a president. — Alexander Haig

The sky this evening bloomed
like a broken purple flower,
like a ripped-in-half and
colour-bleeding-everywhere
flower, like a lavender only
just discovering what it means
to be a lavender.

Like a lavender only just discovering
how to fit into itself. Only just
discovering what it means
to be alive.

We are like this, too. — Darshana Suresh

It's 103 comedians, or however many it is, and how would everyone tell it. It's enough people of substance that it makes you think of the people who aren't there that are alive. — Bob Saget

You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished. — Neil Gaiman

When we're alive, life consumes us. But when we die, all of the color and the motion is gone so quickly, it's as though it can no longer stand to be wasted on us. — Lauren DeStefano

I'm very anxious not to fall into archaism or 'literary' diction. I want my vocabulary to have a very large range, but the words must be alive. — James Agee

Life is precious and it's what you do with it that keeps you alive on the inside.It's not enough just to live and take that gift for granted.Each one of us has fears,but the more we work to overome them,the more we are able to enjoy our lives. — Demi Lovato

I chop the broccoli into pieces with ZigZag Knife, sometimes I swallow some when Ma's not looking and she says, "Oh, no, where's that big bit gone?" but she's not really mad because raw things make us extra alive. — Emma Donoghue

First and foremost, [Writing] reminds us that we are alive and that it is gift and a privilege, not a right. We must earn life once it has been awarded us. Life asks for rewards back because it has favored us with animation. — Ray Bradbury

I am alive and I am alone in a land of so much space. — Sarah Crossan

Whatever distinguishes one lump of flesh from another when we're alive, we're all the same once we're dead. Just used-up shells. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

If I am more alive because love burns and chars me,
as a fire, given wood or wind, feels new elation,
it's that he who lays me low is my salvation,
and invigorates the more, the more he scars me. — Michelangelo Buonarroti

I cannot really play. Either at piano or at life; never, never have I been able to. I have always been too hasty, too impatient; something always intervenes and breaks it up. But who really knows how to play, and if he does know, what good is it to him? Is the great dark less dark for that, are the unanswerable questions less inscrutable, does the pain of despair at eternal inadequacy burn less fiercely, and can life ever be explained and seized and ridden like a tamed horse or is it always a mighty sail that carries us in the storm and, when we try to seize it, sweep us into the deep? Sometimes there is a hole in me that seems to extend to the center of the earth. What could fill it? Yearning? Dispair? Happiness? What happiness? Fatigue? Resignation? Death? What am I alive for? Yes, for what am I alive? — Erich Maria Remarque

Life is movement. The more life there is, the more flexibility there is. The more fluid you are, the more you are alive. — Arnaud Desjardins

Darnley, who, like Banquo's ghost, seemed to play a much more effective part in Scottish politics once he was dead than when he was alive. — Antonia Fraser

Faith is the accepting of what God gives. Faith is the believing what God says. Faith is the trusting to what Jesus has done. Only do this and you are saved, as surely as you are alive! — Charles Spurgeon

If we say that monsters [people who do terrible evil] are beyond forgiving, we give them a power they should never have ... they are given the power to keep their evil alive in the hearts of those who suffered most. We give them power to condemn their victims to live forever with the hurting memory of their painful pasts. We give the monsters the last word. — Lewis B. Smedes

The passion for seeking the truth for truth's sake ... can be kept alive only if we continue to seek the truth for truth's sake. — Franz Boas

While we were being bombed in Dresden sitting in a cellar with our arms over our heads in case the ceiling fell, one soldier said as though he were a duchess in a mansion on a cold and rainy night, 'I wonder what the poor people are doing tonight.' Nobody laughed, but we were still all glad he said it. At least we were still alive! He proved it. — Kurt Vonnegut

Apparently, when people travel between dimensions, their physical forms are "no longer observable," which is a quantum mechanics thing, and explaining it involves this whole story about a cat that's in a box and is simultaneously alive and dead until you open the box, and it gets seriously complicated. Never ask a physicist about that cat. — Claudia Gray

Extreme cold when it first arrives seems to generate cheerfulness and sociability. For a few hours all life's dubious problems are dropped in favor of the clear and congenial task of keeping alive. — E.B. White

My biggest fear ever is to be involved in a plane crash, so when that happened ... well, I'm just thankful to be alive. I'm just grateful to be here at all. — Travis Barker

I discovered that my imagination came alive when I moved away from the immediate world around me. — Kazuo Ishiguro

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born. — Henry David Thoreau

He gives him of his joy, of his interest, of his understanding, of his knowledge, of his humor, of his sadness - of all expressions and manifestations of that which is alive in him. — Erich Fromm

Autumn always fascinated me - so much beauty in dying. Leaves holding on until the bitter end, finally going down in a blaze of glory, almost as if they were trying to convince us to keep them alive. — Myra McEntire

Be alive, be wide awake, be anything but boring. — Shey Stahl

There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world. — Kevin Brockmeier

Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation, the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed. — Wilhelm Reich

Henceforth we are dead to everything pertaining to ourselves and alive to His Spirit alone. This requires our exercising faith. — Watchman Nee

You've gotta dive into the abyss if you wanna get anything good. Every record, you've gotta go down in the abyss and hope that you come out of it alive. — King Tuff

I think Elvis would be alive today, probably, if he had been allowed to mix and mingle with his fans. I think it was a great cross for him to bear that he couldn't get out and be with his fans. — Minnie Pearl

A ship doesn't look quite the same from inside, does it? A wise sailor,' Robert said, fanning his arms, 'will one time stand upon the shore and watch his ship sail by, that he shall from then on appreciate not being left behind.' He grinned and added, 'Eh?'

George gave him a little grimace. 'Who's that? Melville? Or C.S. Forrester?'

It's me!' Robert complained. "Can't I be profound now and again?'

Hell, no.'

Why not?'

Because you're still alive. Gotta be dead to be profound.'

You're unchivalrous, George. — Diane Carey

She herself had certainly never been more alive. She felt electric. She would not have been surprised if sparks had come crackling out of the tips of her sober gloves. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Golf is a game, and talk and discussion is all to the interests of the game. Anything that keeps the game alive and prevents us being bored with it is an advantage. Anything that makes us think about it, talk about it, and dream about it is all to the good and prevents the game becoming dead. — Alister MacKenzie

This is my heart. You are touching it with your left hand. You are touching it with your left hand, not because you are left-handed, although you might be, but because I am holding it against my heart. What you are feeling is the beating of my heart. It is what keeps me alive. — Jonathan Safran Foer

The price for being intelligent enough to be the first species to be fully aware of the cosmos might just be a capacity to feel a whole universe's worth of darkness. — Matt Haig

The water is alive. It is alive. If we could get a mask and fins and drop down off these docks, we'd see snook and redfish and probably goliath grouper. And it's an amazing world unto itself and a very thin demarcation between one world and the other. You know, the distance of the water surface. — Randy Wayne White

A word, Sir Jamie. Quickly!"
You may speak freely, Alwyn," Jamie sighed. "You are always making too mcuh of minor incidents."
You're no' going to believe it, Sir Jamie," Alwyn gasped. "But I swear every male Fergusson alive is outside our gate. — Johanna Lindsey

I suspect there isn't an actor alive who was able to truthfully answer his family's questions after his first day's activity in his future profession. — Simone Signoret

If he was paralyzed, we'd have to put in ramps and have things altered for wheelchair access; you can get kitchens refitted; bathrooms altered ... I'd get him a really fast wheelchair. It'd be OK. If he couldn't talk, I'd get him a great computer. Anything can be dealt with, everything can be overcome. Just be alive. Just, please God, I beg you, please, please keep him alive for me. — Mindy Hammond

I always said it kept me alive - photography - because it did. It was my catharsis. — Bruce Gilden

What does it mean to be alive except to court disaster and suffering at every moment? — Thomas Ligotti

We are alive within mystery, by miracle ... We have more than we can know. We know more than we can say. — Wendell Berry

As long as we're alive there is always hope. — Kenneth Eade

think I was inspired by a commercial for an old board game called Stay Alive. — John Darnielle

In an instant, everything in the room came alive. Like the sunshine had a melody and the sounds of footsteps had a texture I could feel in my fingertips each time anyone moved — Kiera Cass

What makes horror movies work is the idea that "oh my God, what would I do if I were in that situation? How would I get out of that alive? What would I do if I saw the door to my closet creaking open in the middle of the night and a doll on a tricycle comes riding out?" — James Wan

You crawled inside my
ribs to die.

Giant becomes squirrel
becomes a dirt-wet girl

feverishly alive. — Virginia Petrucci

From the mountain peaks for streams descend and flow near the town; in the cascades the white water is calling, but the mistis do not hear it. On the hillsides, on the plains, on the mountaintops the yellow flowers dance in the wind, but the mistis hardly see them. At dawn, against the cold sky, beyond the edge of the mountains, the sun appears; then the larks and doves sing, fluttering their little wings; the sheep and the colts run to and fro in the grass, while the mistis sleep or watch, calculating the weight of their steers. In the evening Tayta Inti gilds the sk, gilds the earth, but they sneeze, spur their horses on the road, or drink coffee, drink hot pisco.
But in the hearts of the Puquios, the valley is weeping and laughing, in their eyes the sky and the sun are alive; within them the valley sings with the voice of the morning, of the noontide, of the afternoon, of the evening. — Jose Maria Arguedas

For it was the light, that was flowing in her veins but not blood. Every time she was wounded, she killed the demons in the dark, rather than feeding and keeping them alive. — Akshay Vasu

The American system of civilian control of the military recognizes that soldiers' attention must be fixed on winning battles and staying alive, and that the fog of war can sometimes obscure the rule of law. — Andrew Rosenthal

Thoreau's writings feel more alive to me than any thing that I've ever read. When I read anything by Thoreau, I see his subject. I feel it. I taste it. I smell it. I feel as though he's walking beside me, showing me with gestures and soft-spoken words the marvelous natural wonders that he's written about. — Nicholas Trandahl

Women do not avoid fighting because they are dainty or scared, but because they have a greater stake than men in staying alive to rear their offspring. Women compete with each other just as tenaciously as men, but with a stealth and subtlety that reduces their chances of being killed or injured. — Anne Campbell

Hang onto your sense of humor. I picture my obituary : The sexiest man alive is now dead. — Mark Harmon

Full democracy requires the full participation of women. Your voices are vital. The word 'vital' means necessary for life. A democracy, to be fully alive, must include all its citizens. — Swanee Hunt

You know you're the only man alive I'd ever follow after what I've been through. You're also the only one I respect. (Urian)
And you're one of the extremely few I trust. (Acheron)
Brothers? (Urian)
Brothers to the end. Now before we get all girly and cry, get your ass upstairs and prepare for what's coming. (Acheron) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

For me at age 11, I had a pair of binoculars and looked up to the moon, and the moon wasn't just bigger, it was better. There were mountains and valleys and craters and shadows. And it came alive. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

He stroked her pale cheek with his thumb, willing her to open those dark gypsy eyes he loved so much. He needed her impish gaze, her light laughter and intoxicating touch. He needed everything about her. She'd made him feel more alive than when he was human. Needing her kiss as much as he needed blood to survive, he pressed his lips to hers. "I beg of you, wake. Please, my precious Angel," he prayed as he held her in his arms. "Wake so I can tell you how sorry I am, and how much I love you. God, I love you." He couldn't say the words enough. "I love you. I love you." He repeated the litany over and over again until exhaustion overcame him and he fell asleep, still clinging to her with a vow never to let her go again. — Brooklyn Ann

Kenspeckle was your friend."
"When all this is over, we'll see who's alive and who's dead and then I'll cry, OK? ... Clarabelle's going to feel so bad when this is done with. — Derek Landy

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak,
Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties
My hair ... now could I but unloose my soul!
We are sepulchred alive in this close world,
And want more room. — Elizabeth Barrett Browning

If you say, Well, OK, I don't believe in God. There's no evidence of God, then you're missing the stars in the sky and you're missing the sunrises and sunsets and you're missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design. — Stephen King

I need you to make a choice, Breanna. If you want things to stay as they are between us, then I need you to walk out that door. Otherwise, it's going to change."
She tilts her head as if she's as lost in emotion as I am. "It's already changed."
A part of me mourns for her. She's the firefly I'm not sure I'll be able to keep alive, but I shove those thoughts away. Breanna is here, and she isn't leaving, which means she's mine. — Katie McGarry

Glenn used to say the reason you can't really imagine yourself being dead was that as soon as you say, 'I'll be dead,' you've said the word I, and so you're still alive inside the sentence. And that's how people got the idea of the immortality of the soul - it was a consequence of grammar. — Margaret Atwood

With a strength I can be proud of, I live only for myself, and only die for myself. I'll never die for someone, cause I know the pain of who remains alive, this is my pride. — Kazuya Minekura

In our day, we thought that the bards would sing of us for generations to come, but we did not believe it. But in fact Arthur now occupies a higher throne than he ever did when he was alive. The fragments of all our lives have been put together to form legend. Camelot has become the nursery of Britain: the glorious past that never was and always will be. — Clara Winter

His principle can be quite simply stated: he refuses to die while he is still alive. He seeks to remind himself, by every electric shock to the intellect, that he is still a man alive, walking on two legs about the world. For this reason he fires bullets at his best friends; for this reason he arranges ladders and collapsible chimneys to steal his own property; for this reason he goes plodding around a whole planet to get back to his own home; and for this reason he has been in the habit of taking the woman whom he loved with a permanent loyalty, and leaving her about (so to speak) at schools, boarding-houses, and places of business, so that he might recover her again and again with a raid and a romantic elopement. He seriously sought by a perpetual recapture of his bride to keep alive the sense of her perpetual value, and the perils that should be run for her sake. — G.K. Chesterton

Being certain one is alive isn't something to which one pays mind. If you could ask the question, you were fine. If you could not, hopefully you had a cozy coffin. — Thomm Quackenbush

Not speaking and speaking are both human ways of being in the world, and there are kinds and grades of each. There is the dumb silence of slumber or apathy; the sober silence that goes with a solemn animal face; the fertile silence of awareness, pasturing the soul, whence emerge new thoughts; the alive silence of alert perception, ready to say, "This ... this ... "; the musical silence that accompanies absorbed activity; the silence of listening to another speak, catching the drift and helping him be clear; the noisy silence of resentment and self-recrimination, loud and subvocal speech but sullen to say it; baffled silence; the silence of peaceful accord with other persons or communion with the cosmos. — Paul Goodman

The liturgy of the Eucharist is best understood as a journey or procession. It is the journey of the Church into the dimension of the Kingdom. We use the word 'dimension' because it seems the best way to indicate the manner of our sacramental entrance into the risen life of Christ. Color transparencies 'come alive' when viewed in three dimensions instead of two. The presence of the added dimension allows us to see much better the actual reality of what has been photographed. In very much the same way, though of course any analogy is condemned to fail, our entrance into the presence of Christ is an entrance into a fourth dimension which allows us to see the ultimate reality of life. It is not an escape from the world, rather it is the arrival at a vantage point from which we can see more deeply into the reality of the world. — Alexander Schmemann

He leaned towards me, and I did what any reasonable person would do when facing imminent death by being eaten alive. I screamed. — Donald G. Firesmith

I think the great livers, the people who are fully self-actualizing and alive, are the great givers. — Mark Victor Hansen