Better Place To Live Quotes & Sayings

It's better to look at the sky than live there. Such an empty place; so vague. Just a country where the thunder goes. — Truman Capote

My whole aim in whatever I say, whatever I do, is to follow the peaceful line of having people live together ... If we can all play in that game, the world will be a better place. — Cat Stevens

What is the point of living this beautiful life if you do not have a mission that ends up making the world a better place to live. — Manoj Arora

Peter's mother was grand, in her way. She managed to complain almost ceaselessly without ever seeming trivial or kvetchy. She was regal rather than crotchety, she had been sent to live in this world from a better one, and she saved herself from mere mean-spiritedness by offering resignation in place of bile - by implying, every hour of her life, that although she objected to almost everybody and everythng she did so because she'd presided over some utopia, and so knew from experience how much better we all could do. She wanted more than anything to live under a benevolent dictator who was exactly like her without being her - if she actually ruled she would relinquish her right to object, and without her right to object who and what would she be? — Michael Cunningham

Politics will always mean more to the poor. Always. That's why we strike and march, and despair when our young say they won't vote. That's why the poor are seen as more vital, and animalistic. No classical music for us - no walking around National Trust properties or buying reclaimed flooring. We don't have nostalgia. We don't do yesterday. We can't bear it. We don't want to be reminded of our past, because it was awful: dying in mines and slums without literacy or the vote. Without dignity. It was all so desperate then. That's why the present and the future is for the poor - that's the place in time for us: surviving now, hoping for better later. We live now - for our own instant hot, fast treats, to pep us up: sugar, a cigarette, a new fast song on the radio. — Caitlin Moran

I won't wax poetic about the land in a perfectionist sense: we work hard out here, and things constantly threaten the tiny equilibrium we've established in the market garden. Whatever peace we find is often hard won. But I stand firmly with Berry and Kingsolver and so many other writers who possess a deep need to step outside the city to find a place of calm. I don't like the word "authentic"; at best, it's divisive and antagonistic, implying one way of being is intrinsically better than another. But I do very much favour the notion of alignment. I'm convinced that at the heart of the matter lies a desire to draw what we do into alignment with how we live. Some of us aren't in a place where we can live consistently on the land that holds our hearts, but come mishaps or miracles, we're bound and determined to make that land as much a part of who we are as humanly possible. — Jenna Butler

We are the sum of our experiences," Anna said. "No more, no less. But I'd like to believe there's something more to all of us. That we have the strength to defy our experiences and rise above them, to push back against the world that has treated us so cruelly. To hold out arms and make it a better place to live. Sometimes, all that gets lost in the madness. It all gets overwhelmed. Yet, here we are. Still standing. — Kyle West

Pets make the world a better place to live. — Susan W. Lyons

The thing that drew them to her was the thing that had made all of them come to Sexton in the first place: they were all outsiders, people on the fringe. And no one, it seemed, understood this better than Suz. She turned her difference into a source of power, power that radiated from her, humming, a live thing that sent sparks out to anyone who listened. — Jennifer McMahon

This country would be a better place to live in if all the resources we currently put toward criminalizing marijuana were instead spent by law enforcement on protection from real crime, as opposed to victimless crime. — Gary Johnson

It's true that the hatred is still there. But it doesn't change anything. Our obligations are the same - to live and sanctify all life with our own. To participate in the world the best we know how, leaving it a better place than we found it. To raise families and teach our children to value life. What more can we do? Should we refuse to live because of the threat of death hanging over us? We've always been under sentence of death. Every generation that lives out its days in peace is a victory. Every day we live is a victory. — Ovadya Ben Malka

It really is a blessing when two people who are so full of dignity and kindness and really live to make the world a better place get together. — Karen Duffy

If only, we could stop taking our job as an OPPORTUNITY and work honestly as a DUTY, this world would be a much better, peaceful and loving place to live in. — M.ralte

It is our job, as members of parliament, to legislate with an eye to the long term future, to look over the horizon beyond the next election and ensure that as far as we can what we do today will make Australia a better place, a safer place, for future generations to live in. — Malcolm Turnbull

History teaches us that the great revolutions aren't started by people who are utterly down and out, without hope and vision. They take place when people begin to live a little better - and when they see how much yet remains to be achieved. — Hubert H. Humphrey

I think he likes you."
I watched Paci join the others, noticing that he was still glancing at me occasionally, and watching other guys who were looking over at Peter and me.
"Really?"
"Yeah. He keeps watching you. Once he heard Bodo wasn't your boyfriend, he was all over that."
I sighed. "Shit."
"Yeah. Exactly. You'd better not go around advertising you're single. There's not a hell of a lot of available jawbreakers if you know what I mean."
My mind raced with the implications. It was stupid of me not to have been thinking about all this stuff before. I guess I was so wrapped up in finding food to eat, a place to live, and companions who wouldn't eat me, I hadn't much considered the other human needs, other than on the most basic level. God, I hope there are no rapists in this group. The last thing I wanted to do was kill a guy in the swamp. — Elle Casey

I believe we are here on the planet Earth to live, grow up and do what we can to make this world a better place for all people to enjoy freedom. — Rosa Parks

I'm always confused when people say how much they miss 'Invader Zim' because the show never stopped running in my head, and then I remember everyone else isn't in my head. I try to imagine the world for all those people who don't know what Zim's been up to since the show went off the air and it makes me shudder. How can people live that way? Hopefully this comic helps make the world a better place. — Jhonen Vasquez

We were talking the other evening about the phrases one uses when trying to comfort someone who is in distress. I told him that in English we sometimes say, 'I've been there.' This was unclear to him at first-I've been where? But I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific loacation, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.
'So sadness is a place?' Giovanni asked.
'Sometimes people live there for years,' I said. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Even though we live in a world that people are much more conscience about being politically correct. The truth is if all children were taught from young (at home, church and school) that in our short existence on this planet, that we are all here to help humanity and to not hurt it and that hands are not for hurting but for trying to help all ... our world would be a much better place to live in. — Timothy Pina

Be sure to enjoy language, experiment with ways of talking, be exuberant even when you don't feel like it because language can make your world a better place to live. — Deborah Levy

You know what happens to guys? There's what I call the individual time of their career, and the team time of their career. This is the team time. You don't care about all the other stuff. You just want to live in one place, and watch your kids grow up and go to the same school. You say, 'Hey, maybe I'd better play well and be a good enough guy that they keep me.' — Mike Babcock

Martin Luther King Jr's agenda was not to help Negroes overcome American apartheid in the south. It was to make America democracy a better place, where everyday people, from poor people who were white and red and yellow and black and brown, would be able to live lives in decency and dignity. — Cornel West

That's why it's important to try to live in the present. The present is the only place we can live. When we live in the present, we are alert to what's actually happening -- to us and in the world at large. We can then act based on that awareness. And financial planning based on reality tends to lead to better results.

By contrast, when we live in the future, we are lost in fantasy or fear. When we live in the past, we are lost in regret or nostalgia. Financial planning based on fantasy, fear, regret, and nostalgia is likely to lead to more of the same. — Carl Richards

[ ... ] we will turn this place around, and a new civilization can be born that does not know boundary lines but knows better how to live in the garden and knows that we are one thought away from paradise. — Jon Ronson

As I do not live in an age when rustling black skirts billow about me, and I do not carry an ebony stick to strike the floor in sharp rebuke, as this is denied me, I rap out a sentence in my note book and feel better. If a grandmother wants to put her foot down, the only safe place to do it these days is in a note book. — Florida Scott-Maxwell

We must not only control the weapons that can kill us, we must bridge the great disparities of wealth and opportunity among the peoples of the world, the vast majority of whom live in poverty without hope, opportunity or choices in life. These conditions are a breeding ground for division that can cause a desperate people to resort to nuclear weapons as a last resort. Our only hope lies in the power of our love, generosity, tolerance and understanding and our commitment to making the world a better place ... — Muhammad Ali

If we all make a concerted effort and try to improve the life of someone else, then this world would be a better place to live in. — Alonzo Mourning

There are people who want to change the world, make it a better place ... but what they don't know, is that to make a difference in the life of one person and to make a single person's life a better thing to live, is just as valuable as changing the whole world. And most of the time, that's the only thing that we should be doing. You can gain the whole world but lose your own soul in the process, and in that case, the whole world just isn't worth it. — C. JoyBell C.

If every decision would reflect our feelings as well as our reason, the world would be a better place to live. — Susan Polis Schutz

By doing something positive in this world, you're helping people and the future. We're all trying to help the world ... make it a better place to live. We're actually still changing the world, aren't we? — Rick Danko

All human beings desire to be in a better space and a better place. We all want a peaceful and prosperous life for ourselves and our families. When you don't manage your emotions in high stress, high-pressure situations, you get the opposite of what you want. The domino affect impacts how you live, eat and provide for your family. Is it worth it? Never. Control your emotions. Manage your choices. Your life is depending on it. — Bobby F. Kimbrough Jr.

One guy yelled at me, 'You stupid bitch, how do you live like that with nothing in your brain?' Well, that did it. I wasn't going to put up with that. Ok, I'm not so smart. I'm working class. But it's the working class that keeps the world running, and it's the working classes that get exploited. What kind of revolution is it that just throws out big words that working-class people can't understand? What kind of crap social revolution is that? I mean, I'd like to make the world a better place, too. If somebody's really being exploited, we've got to put a stop to it. That's what I believe, and that's why I ask questions. Am I right, or what? — Haruki Murakami

My words to each of you, although completely inadequate, are simple and heartfelt: Go live a purposeful, authentic, God-filled life. Don't get so caught up in the "after" that you forget how to "become," or why you started your journey to a better you in the first place. You have the ability to face your fears and live the life you never thought possible. Go live life. God will be patiently waiting as you find out what becoming fearless means in your own story. — Michelle Aguilar

The number of those endowed with human life is as small as the amount of earth one can place on a fingernail. Life as a human being is hard to sustain
as hard as it is for the dew to remain on the grass. But it is better to live a single day with honor than to live to 120 and die in disgrace. — Gautama Buddha

It's not prettier or better than other places and it sure a shell isn't an easy place, but I know how to live here. And that counts. — Deborah Coates

In moments of considerable strain, I tend to take to bread-and-butter pudding. There is something about the blandness of soggy bread, the crispness of the golden outer crust and the unadulterated pleasure of a lightly set custard that makes the world seem a better place to live. — Clement Freud

What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? — Winston Churchill

Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

From the outside, people think it's drug-related. But wherever you come from, people are driven by a sense of belonging. What I say to kids all the time is you don't own streets. We don't own the paving stones we are fighting over. Instead of fighting each other, you should be fighting the government to make this a better place to live. — Ashley Walters

Our founding fathers started this country and built it on God and His Word, and this country sure would be a better place to live and raise our children if we still followed their ideals and beliefs. — Phil Robertson

Before any sinner can be saved he must come to the place of realized weakness. This is what the conversion of the dying thief shows us. What could he do? He could not walk in the paths of righteousness for there was a nail through either foot. He could not perform any good works for there was a nail through either hand. He could not turn over a new leaf and live a better life for he was dying. And, my reader, those hands of yours which are so ready for self-righteous acting, and those feet of yours which are so swift to run in the way of legal obedience, must be nailed to the Cross. The sinner has to be cut off from his own workings and be made willing to be saved by Christ. A realization of your sinful condition, of your lost condition, of your helpless condition, is nothing more or less than old-fashioned conviction of sin, and this is the sole prerequisite for coming to Christ for salvation, for Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. — Arthur W. Pink

Suffice it to say, if one hopes to live in a world of wonders, he had better locate himself in a place where wondrous stories abound. — Jonathan Auxier

It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty. — Chanakya

Congress is going to meet with you or without you, I tell them. Don't turn away in disgust and leave those decisions to someone else. You don't like politics today? Grab the wheel of history and steer us to a better place. Run for office. Be a strategist or policy aide. Work for a government agency or a nonprofit. Become a thoughtful, probing journalist. Get in the arena. Help shape the world in which you're going to live. At a minimum, be the engaged citizen a healthy democracy demands. — David Axelrod

Should he give free reign to his desires, the bibliomaniac can ruin his life along with the lives of his loved ones. He'll often take better care of his books than of his own health; he'll spend more on fiction than he does on food; he'll be more interested in his library than in his relationships, and, since few people are prepared to live in a place where every available surface is covered with piles of books, he'll often find himself alone, perhaps in the company of a neglected and malnourished cat. When he dies, all but forgotten, his body might fester for days before a curious neighbor grows concerned about the smell. — Mikita Brottman

Play hard, work hard, love hard ... The bottom line for me is to live life to the fullest in the here-and-now instead of a hoped-for hereafter, and make every day count in some meaningful way and do something-no matter how small it is-to make the world a better place. — Michael Shermer

Anyway. People will come and go from your life, but you will walk hand in hand with yourself forever. Whatever you do, don't choose to be something you hate. I walked that path for far too long, and it's an ugly place to live. I want you to be better, because I know for a fact that you are better than I ever — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Art is not necessary at all. All that is necessary to make this world a better place to live in is to love - to love as Christ loved, as Buddha loved. — Isadora Duncan

I think the therapists around this place think that if you know yourself, then somehow you'll be better and healthier and you'll be able to leave this place and live out your days as a happy and loving human being. Happy. Loving. I hate those words. I'm supposed to like them. I'm supposed to want them. I don't. Don't like them, don't want them. This is the way I see it: if you get to know yourself really well, you might discover that deep down inside you're just a dirty, disgusting, and selfish piece of shit. What if my heart is all rotted out and corrupted? What about that? What am I supposed to do with that information? Just tell me that. Most of the time I get the feeling that I'm just an animal disguised as an eighteen-year-old guy. At least I'm hoping that maybe deep down inside I'm a coyote. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

The world was incomprehensibly intricate, and yet this forest made a simple sense in her heart that she felt nowhere else.
[S]he wanted only her own strawberry farm, the fragrance of the fields and the cedar trees, and to live simply in this place forever.
[S]he had fallen into loving him long before she knew herself, though it occurred to her now that she might never know herself, that perhaps no one ever does, that such a thing might not be possible.
[Y]ou should learn to say nothing that will cause you regret. You should not say what is not in your heart
or what is only in your heart for a moment. But you know this
silence is better. — David Guterson

Going further back, have the seventy or so turbulent millennia since the Cognitive Revolution made the world a better place to live? Was the late Neil Armstrong, whose footprint remains intact on the windless moon, happier than the nameless hunter-gatherer who 30,000 years ago left her handprint on a wall in Chauvet Cave? If not, what was the point of developing agriculture, cities, writing, coinage, empires, science and industry? — Yuval Noah Harari

We want to encourage investors to target businesses that focus on achieving more than just profits - by placing their money into businesses that also positively contribute to social or environmental benefits in Ontario. Angel investors can help social enterprises grow and succeed, and through our partnership with the Network of Angel Organizations and the Impact Angel Alliance, we are making it easier for social ventures and angel investors to connect, contribute, and make our society a better place to live. — Brad Duguid

The world is a better place to live in because it contains human beings who will give up ease and security in order to do what they themselves think worth doing. They do the useless, brave, noble, divinely foolish, and the very wisest things that are done by Man. And what they prove to themselves and to others is that Man is no mere creature of his habits, no automaton in his routine, but that in the dust of which he is made there is also fire, lighted now and then by great winds from the sky. — Walter Lippmann

Our meaning is to make our little planet Earth a better place to live, to stop wars, disarm nuclear missiles, to stop diseases, AIDS, plague, cancer and to stop pollution. — Uri Geller

If humans are kind to each other, if really humanity do exist, the world would have been a better place and we wouldn't need to fight so much for innocent lives. This would have made our struggles easier. As I get involved more and more in protecting innocent lives my faith in Humanity fades away. What a world we live in? Can we have faith in humanity? We humans are here to protect others, but we are the very reason that their lives are in danger. How long can we fight for the week, for the voiceless? The future is so dark!!! — Ama H. Vanniarachchy

If we want the world to be a better place to live, we have to treat it as one unit. If we want economic growth to be pervasive, we have to make people its partners. If we want the process of development to be sustainable, we have to work with the environment. — Narendra Modi

We are all one family in the world. Building a community that empowers everyone to attain their full potential through each of us respecting each other's dignity, rights and responsibilities makes the world a better place to live. — Pope John Paul II

If everyone could spend some time self analysing, spend some quiet time with nothing to do and nowhere to go, then without a doubt the world would be an infinitely better place to live and play. It would probably be the cause of the end of bullying, teen suicide, anxiety, depression, stress, and fear and the start of a more genuine and authentic world. I have found that my tranquillity and peacefulness grew significantly stronger as I began to live comfortably with my desires and cravings. — Evan Sutter

My imagination was a great place to escape from all the anxiety and disapproval of my life ... I had to live in my head ... art was a way of making myself feel better. — Philip Schultz

Somehow, the fact that more poor people are on welfare, receiving more generous payments, does not seem to have made this country a nice place to live - not even for the poor on welfare, whose condition seems not noticeably better than when they were poor and off welfare. Something appears to have gone wrong; a liberal and compassionate social policy has bred all sorts of unanticipated and perverse consequences. — Irving Kristol

Next I want to try living apart together, live in the same country, the same city, even the same building as whomever I'm in a relationship with, yet in a different apartment than him. Then it would be possible to pay him visits and still invite good friends over to my place. Do you think you have that it takes to maintain such a French arrangement? he asked. Well, no, probably not...but then again...? Maybe it would be better in the long run to stay in a more lasting relationship and not need to move so often. — Oddny Eir

If I had two lives, in one life I could invite her to stay at my place, and in the second life I could kick her out. Then I could compare and see which had been the best thing to do. But we only live once. Life's so light. Like an outline we can't ever fill in or correct ... make any better. It's frightening. — Milan Kundera

Kindness is a lamp that we should always kindle in our heart. The warmth of it not only make us happy from inside and give light to others. But also makes the world a little more beautiful place everytime it lights the lamps in other hearts. — Akshay Vasu

Stand up, on this Thanksgiving Day, stand upon your feet. Believe in man. Soberly and with clear eyes, believe in your own time and place. There is not, and there never has been a better time, or a better place to live in. — Phillips Brooks

It felt increasingly, as I became more whole, that I had made it all up, and that I was a phoney. I had to come to some place of acceptance. If I made it all up, then I am an unspeakably evil person, leading so many wonderful, intelligent people astray. What a scheming mind I must have. I knowledge will be hard too live with. But harder still is the thought that perhaps, just perhaps it is all true; that I really was horribly, ritualistically abused in a satanic setting, over and over again and as a result my mind fragmented. The implications of that are completely overwhelming. It was me, my body, that they did those things to. No, I would rather believe I am an evil and deceitful person. At least the I can change, and say sorry, and live a better life from now on. — Carolyn Bramhall

Sometimes different cities follow one another on the same site and under the same name, born and dying without knowing one another, without communication among themselves. At times even the names of the inhabitants remain the same, and their voices' accent, and also the features of the faces; but the gods who live beneath names and above places have gone off without a word and outsiders have settled in their place. It is pointless to ask whether the new ones are better or worse than the old, since there is no connection between them, just as the old postcards do not depict Maurilia as it was, but a different city which, by chance, was called Maurilia, like this one. — Italo Calvino

we as individual human entities would give less attention to what we want, to how we want to grow, to what we want to achieve, and more attention to how can we express the resident creative force that is inside of us, the world might be a far better place to live. — Cecil A. Poole

L.A.'s a better place to live than it is to visit. — Simon Baker

We must use our lives to make the world a better place to live, not just to acquire things. That is what we are put on the earth for. — Dolores Huerta

The important things in life always happened by accident. At fifteen she didn't know much, in fact, with each passing year she was a lot less clear about most things. But this much she did know. You could worry yourself sick trying to be a better person, spend a thousand sleepless nights figuring out how to live clean and decent and honest, you could make a plan and bolt it in place, kneel by your bed every night and swear to God you'd stick to it, hell, you could go to church and promise properly. You could cross your heart seven times with your eyes tight shut, cut your thumb and squeeze it and pen solemn vows on a rock with your own blood then throw it in the river at the stroke of midnight. And then, out of the black beyond, like a hawk on a rat, some nameless catastrophe would swoop into your life and turn everything upside down and inside out forever. — Nicholas Evans

What lasting impact will I make on the world and those around me? What will I live my life for? How will I be remembered? I want to leave the world a better place than it was when I got here. I want to experience as much as I can in this very short life that we have. — Theo Rossi

The rulers of your minds indulge in proverbs, but they've forgotten the main one, that love cannot be forced, and they have a deeply rooted habit of liberating people and making them happy, especially those who haven't asked for it. You probably fancy that there's no better place in the world for me than your camp and your company. I probably should even bless you and thank you for my captivity, for your having liberated me from my family, my son, my home, my work, from everything that's dear to me and that I live by. — Boris Pasternak

I would like to somehow make the community I live in a better place to live. — Kevin Johnson

Are you comfortable? That's good. But there is somewhere at least someone is uncomfortable! And this should somehow make you uncomfortable too! The world can be a better place only through this way, through thinking others! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

Looking back, if I had to live my life over, there are things I would do differently, but the one thing I would not change is my charitable giving. I'm particularly thankful for my father's advice to set goals so high that they can't possibly be achieved during a lifetime and to give help where help is needed most. That inspiration keeps me energized and eager to keep working hard every day on giving back and making the world a better place for generations to come. — Ted Turner

The Dalai Lama. He is a very wise man of great inner peace who believes that happiness is the purpose of our lives. Through his teachings and leadership, he continues to make this world a better place in which to live. — Sidney Sheldon

I was raised in the Marine Corps and I was taught as a boy that you feed your own men before you feed yourself. It was my belief then, and it remains so today, that my platoon who loves and respect me will slaughter your platoon that hates you. But here is the great lesson I took from the plebe system - it let me know exactly the kind of man I wanted to become. It made me ache to be a contributing citizen in whatever society I found myself in, to live out a life I could be proud of, and always to measure up to what I took to be the highest ideal of a Citadel man - or, now, a Citadel woman. The standards were clear to me and they were high, and I took my marching orders from my college to take my hard-won education and go out to try to make the whole world a better place. — Pat Conroy

Two ideas militate against our consciously contributing to a better world. The idea that we can do everything or the conclusion that we can do nothing to make this globe a better place to live are both temptations of the most insidious form. One leads to arrogance; the other to despair. — Joan D. Chittister

Everyone carries an atmosphere about him. It may be healthful and invigorating, or it may be unwholesome and depressing. It may make a little spot of the world a sweeter, better, safer place to live in; or it may make it harder for those to live worthily and beautifully who dwell within its circle. — J.R. Miller

The more you put your arm around those that you might naturally look down on, the more you will love yourself. And the more you love yourself, the less need you'll ever have to find fault or be better than others. And the less we all find fault or have a need to be better than others, the quicker this world becomes a far better place to live. — Dan Pearce

Here's what I see all across this great city - people working together to make Boston a better place to live and to raise children, to grow and pursue dreams. — Thomas Menino

On the revelation that there are no gods or afterlife:-

"I do not 'like' the truth any more than you Avil, or anyone. I wrestled with it for a long time, for a while I was distraught, desperate to find that my research had been wrong - the more I searched, the deeper I delved the more clear it became that the truth was what it is. After much reflection, I came to the conclusion that though accepting the truth is hard, moving on from that, it becomes clear that the important thing is to make the world we live in a better place. We get one life, it's our duty to make the most of it."

~Brael Truthseeker of House Krazic
Deathsworn Arc 2 : The Verkreath Horror — Martyn Stanley

You are here to evolve and make your consciousness high.You are here to dance, sing and celebrate life. You are here to help others to make their life happy. We are here not to compete, but to learn, evolve and excel. We are not here to make divisions in the name of prophets and religions. We are here to encompass the world with love and light. — Amit Ray

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it. — Joan Didion

That's why your lot in life isn't fate. I don't have any say in much of my life, but I make whatever choices I can make in my own rational best interest. It's my choice to fix those stairs and make the place I live a little better instead of whining and waiting and hoping for someone else to do something for me. I have pride that I know how to do that for myself. — Terry Goodkind

You may feel the human realm is a difficult place, but there is surely no better world to live in. You will find another only by going to the nonhuman; and the nonhuman realm would surely be a far more difficult place to inhabit than the human.

So if this best of worlds proves a hard one for you, you must simply do your best to settle in and relax as you can, and make this short life of ours, if only briefly, an easier place in which to make your home. Herein lies the poet's true calling, the artist's vocation. We owe our humble gratitude to all practitioners of the arts, for they mellow the harshness of our human world and enrich the human heart.

Yes, a poem, a painting, can draw the sting of troubles from a troubled world and lay in its place a blessed realm before our grateful eyes. — Soseki Natsume

The best places to live, work, and visit are those places that are willing to uphold their standards in the face of pressure to allow lowest common denominator development ... Successful communities understand that when they say no to development that is contrary to the long-term health of their community, they will almost always get better development in its place. — Ed McMahon

We all have things inside ourselves we can't kill,' I say, not sure which part of me would be better off dead: this monster self, or the normal one who wants nothing more than a little place on a little planet with his friends, the one who will have to live with being a killer. — Holly Black

If I'm forced to be honest, here's an account of how I left the world last week: worse, worse, better, worse, same, worse, same. Not an inventory to make one swell with pride. I don't necessarily need to make the world a better place, mind you. Today, I will live by the Hippocratic oath: first do no harm. How — Maria Semple

Sex and love represent one of the numerous absurdities and hopeless incongruences demarking human nature. A person whom only seeks out sex and eschews love will live a barren existence. Sex without love is a brute display of physical reproductive capacity. Sex is not a worthless or stupid activity when it forms a cog in a loving and affectionate relationship. Sex and love might not make the world go round, but when joined they make it a better place to live in. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Most effective altruists are not saints but ordinary people like you and me, so very few effective altruists claim to live a fully ethical life. Most of them are somewhere on the continuum between a minimally acceptable ethical life and a fully ethical life. That doesn't mean that they are constantly feeling guilty about not being morally perfect. Effective altruists don't see a lot of point in feeling guilty. They prefer to focus on the good they are doing. Some of them are content to know they are doing something significant to make the world a better place. Many of them like to challenge themselves, to do a little better this year than last year. — Peter Singer

If you live with a single parent, you don't see compromise. You witness a grown person living in a world where they do what they want to do. When you are raised by two parents, you are constantly watching compromise take place. Just by observing that, it made me a better person. — Chris Rock

There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in. — George Bernard Shaw

Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live in. — Edward Bernays

Adversity doesn't exist to make us stronger. Adversity exists because this world is a damn hard place to live. Prove that you're better than the things it throws at you. Live. — Seanan McGuire

My greatest responsibility is to acknowledge the mistakes and the shortcomings of the country in which I live, to acknowledge my privileges, and to try to make it a better place. — Junot Diaz

Maybe we'll live to see sharks recover. Right now, that seems as improbable as seeing all these falcons. Hope is the ability to see how things could be better. The world of human affairs has long been a shadowy place, but always backlit by the light of hope. Each person can add hope to the world. A resigned person subtracts hope. The more people strive, the more change becomes likely. — Carl Safina

We will strive to make Taiwan a better place and enable our people to live better lives. — Chen Shui-bian

Whatever my doubts, however heavy the burden, I feel that I must accept the task of helping to make this nation and this world a better place to live in - for all men, black and white alike. — Martin Luther King Jr.