Chance Of Living Quotes & Sayings

To take that second chance, we need to notice where we are and be open to the possibility of growing. — Holly Elissa Bruno

So, by the working of a contradiction that was one only in appearance, it was at the very moment when I experienced an exceptional pleasure, when I sensed that my life could be one of fulfillment, and should therefore have seen it as having increased in value, that I felt liberated from the anxieties it had hitherto inspired in me, and was prepared to commit it without hesitation to the unsure hands of chance. — Marcel Proust

What happens when you give people a 2nd chance? They blame you for it. What happens when you give people a 3rd chance? They ridicule you. What happens when you give them a 4th chance? They make sure they will have a 5th. What happens when you give them a 5th? They blame you for everything and laugh at you. What happens when you give them a 6th? At this point, they try to kill you by accident before you even have another chance of living them. What happens when you give them a 7th chance? They punish you for all the chances you have given them before and betray you in the most horrible way they can, proving that they didn't deserve not even one chance at anything. Forgiveness is not for everyone, and those that deserve it never reach the point of even needing it. — Robin Sacredfire

Here then is a sure resting-place for the heart. Our lives are neither the product of blind fate nor the result of capricious chance, but every detail of them was ordained from all eternity, and is now ordered by the living and reigning God. Not a hair of our heads can be touched without His permission. — Arthur W. Pink

I know I'm being a pain in the neck, sir - not to mention an ache in the ass and a milky drip from the tip of a sore dick - but if it's all the same to you, my dear friend, I'd like to give my chance to the young fellow on his knees before you. Let him apologize, let him polish your boots with his clout until you are entirely satisfied, and let him go on living his life. — Stephen King

Your identity is in eternity, and your homeland is heaven. When you grasp this truth, you will stop worrying about "having it all" on earth. God is very blunt about the danger of living for the here and now and adopting the values, priorities, and lifestyles of the world around us. When we flirt with the temptations of this world, God calls it spiritual adultery. The Bible says, "You're cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way."6 Imagine — Rick Warren

It is often said that the progression from simple to complex runs counter to the normal statistics of chance that are formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Strictly speaking, we could avoid this criticism simply by insisting that the Second Law does not apply to living systems in the environment in which we find them. For the Second Law applies only when there is no overall flow of energy into or out of a system, whereas all living systems are sustained by a net inflow of energy. — Jacob Bronowski

I thought, I want to die. I want to die more than ever before. There's no chance now of a recovery. No matter what sort of thing I do, no matter what I do, it's sure to be a failure, just a final coating applied to my shame. That dream of going on bicycles to see a waterfall framed in summer leaves - it was not for the likes of me. All that can happen now is that one foul, humiliating sin will be piled on another, and my sufferings will become only the more acute. I want to die. I must die. Living itself is the source of sin. — Osamu Dazai

I know that every atom of life in all this universe is bound up together. I know that pebble cannot be thrown into the ocean without distrubing every drop of water in the sea. I know that every life is inextricably mixed and woven with every other life. I know that every influence, conscious and unconscious, acts and reacts on every living organism, and that no one can fix the blame.
I know that all life is a series of infinite chances, which sometimes result one way and sometimes another. I have not the infinite wisdom that can fathom it, neither has any other human brain. But I do know that in back of it is a power that made it, that power alone can tell, and if there is no power, then it is an infinite chance which man cannot solve. — Marianne Wiggins

Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision. — Bob Goff

All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. — Charlotte Eriksson

The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle. — Michael Denton

I want kids to have a chance to dream of becoming something like I did in my life, and when you're living in a home that's dysfunctional and unhealthy that way, you don't dream like that. — Picabo Street

He knew he could never jingle change in his pocket or park his car like a confident adult, he was the Adrian he had always been, casting a guilty look over a furtive shoulder, living in eternal dread of a grown-up striding forward to clip his ear.
But there again, when he sipped at the whiskey his eyes failed to water and his throat forgot to burn. The body shamelessly welcomed what once it would have rejected. At breakfast he demanded not Ricicles and chocolate spread, but coffee and unbuttered toast. And if the coffee was sugared he leapt from it like a colt from an electric fence. He ate the crust and left the filling, guzzled the olives and spurned the cherries. Yet inside he remained the same Adrian who fought down the urge to stand and shout 'Bullocks' during church services, smelt his own farts and wasted hours skimming through National Geographic on the off-chance of seeing a few naked bodies. — Stephen Fry

I just don't think it's a good idea for you to visit right now. Maybe you can come back later? I'll bake you some cookies . . ." Okay, that was it. I hadn't had a chance to use the kitchen for anything more elaborate than coffee and fried eggs, and I'd be damned if some invading monster was going to beat me to it. I stepped into the living room, bat still held in front of me like a poor man's broadsword. "You are not using my kitchen. — Seanan McGuire

But was any future, anyone's future, unfraught by hazards of some sort? The only security was death. So long as one wanted to go on living on had to accept the risks. Well, she accepted them... — Winston Graham

How should a man caught in this net of routine not forget that he is a man, a unique individual, one who is given only this one chance of living, with hopes and disappointments, with sorrow and fear, with the longing for love and the dread of the nothing and of separateness? — Erich Fromm

Microwork gives marginalized people a chance to earn a living by playing a vital role in the business processes of big companies. In parallel, the organization assists local entrepreneurs in running microwork centers, helping to grow a new pool of business talent across the developing world. — Leila Janah

Even if that were so, how could I be happy as a vampire? There is no chance of me actually liking the idea of living forever. It's hopeless!'
Kasper faced straight ahead, glancing in his side mirror.He spoke softly, something like caring in his voice.'You don't know that, Girly! One day you might just find something worth living an eternity for. — Abigail Gibbs

Imitation both unconscious and conscious is par excellence the educational method of the family. It is plain that a considerable part of the adaptation of living beings to their environment, i.e., of beings that are born plastic, is passed on from generation to generation through imitation. Were this not so, much if not all of the road traversed by one generation would have to be travelled by the next generation from the very beginning and without short-cuts. Consequently there would be little chance for the novel adaptation, the propitious individual variation, that constitutes progress. — Elsie Clews Parsons

What do you do when you find yourself out in a lie - even a white one? Well, one thing for sure, you don't put on black, you don't mourn and beat out a staccato mea culpa on your breast. You go! Get the hell out! Take a chance! Forget you're an American, living in the suburbs of success, hoping to move into the big city ... You go! — Vincent Price

We've gotta become the Martians. I'm a Martian - I tell you to become Martians. And we've gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever. — Ray Bradbury

I think the gift of my mother's death, if anything so terrible can be said to have an upside to it, is that I was always keenly aware that life was fleeting, and that you'd better live while you have the chance. As I say in the book, since I was 19 years old I felt like I was living for two, and when I out-lived my mother, when I got into my forties, it felt like a miracle to me. — Anna Quindlen

There was quite a lot of competitiveness about it, with everybody wanting to beat not only cancer itself, but also the other people in the room. Like, I realize that this is irrational, but when they tell you that you have, say, a 20 percent chance of living five years, the math kicks in and you figure that's one in five ... so you look around and think, as any healthy person would: I gotta outlast four of these bastards. — John Green

What the fates have writ, men shall not erase . . . . How many times he [Lut] had uttered those words. But what exactly did they mean? That one's fate was inalterably fixed? A man's entire life? Was there no chance for redemption? Though he had never revealed this to anyone, especially not the elders, he'd long entertained the notion that perhaps not all of a man's life was preordained. For, if so, what was the point of living? Perhaps, just perhaps, he dared to imagine, impediments were placed in our paths by the gods, and a man was judged by how well he dealt with those obstacles . . . . Instead of a man being wholly defined by his fate, perhaps a man's very character was defined by his response to the fate that was spun for him. Couldn't it at least be possible? — James Jennewein

Wounds heal. Scars fade. Awful memories can be overwritten with better ones if given the chance. The little imperfections of our psyches become overshadowed by the people whose love we cherish because they cherish us despite our faults; physical, emotional, spiritual, or otherwise. This thing we call the human condition with all its bittersweet blind corners and senseless humor evolves from within ourselves and not because of some pre-ordained reverie we desire to cast in the constellations.
All in all it is what makes life worth living. — August Clearwing

Give people the chance to change their heart. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Yeah, I knew," he finally said, his voice soft. "I always knew I'd do whatever it took. Living in a trailer park, running in a pack of barefoot kids ... my whole life was already set out for me, and I sure as hell didn't like the looks of it. So I always knew I'd take my chance when I got it. And if it didn't come, I'd make something happen. — Lisa Kleypas

My rule of thumb is that if you spend 2 percent of your nest egg per year, adjusted upward for the cost of living, you are as secure as possible; at 3 percent, you are probably safe; at 4 percent, you are taking real risks; and at 5 percent, you had better like cat food and vacations very close to home. For example, if, in addition to Social Security and pensions, you spend $50,000 per year in living expenses, that means you will need $2.5 million to be perfectly safe, and $1.67 million to be fairly secure. If you have "only" $1.25 million, you are taking chances; if you are starting with $1 million, there is a good chance you will eventually run out of money. — William J. Bernstein

At night, every living thing competes for a chance to be heard. The crickets and frogs call out. Sometimes, there's the soft who-whoo of an owl lost amid the pines. Even the dogs won't rest until they've howled at the moon. But the crickets always win, long after the frogs stop croaking and the owl has found its way home. Long after the dogs have lain down losing the battle against sleep, the crickets keep going as though they know their song is our lullaby. — Jacqueline Woodson

I think the big thing is you really have one chance to do this ... to play hockey for a living, you have one chance at your career, and you have to take full advantage of it. — Patrick Kane

We had to be very careful on our best behaviour when we went to these other countries. And then I made a living, I had a chance to support my wife and my kids. It was a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful program from that point of view. — Gavin MacLeod

The world is too complicated in all parts and interconnections to be due to chance alone. I am convinced that the existence of life with all its order in each of its organisms is simply too well put together. Each part of a living thing depends on all its other parts to function. How does each part know? How is each part specified at conception? The more one learns of biochemistry the more unbelievable it becomes unless there is some type of organizing principle-an architect. — Allan Sandage

There were a lot of negatives, of course, but there were positives to living a life unfettered by possessions. It gave us the chance to focus on education, which was very important in the Soviet Union. — Jan Koum

I was largely drinking to forget where I was. When you're in a place like Vietnam, you get to a point where you don't care any more. You're in a place that's foreign to you, and you know for a fact that many people there hate you and will kill you if they get the chance. It really does something to your mind to know that many of the people living around you don't like you and want you to die. — Si Robertson

One clear moment, one of trance
One missed step, one perfect dance
One missed shot, one and only chance
Life is all...but one fleeting glance. — Sanober Khan

None of us can truly know what we mean to other people, and none of us can know what our future self will experience. History and philosophy ask us to remember these mysteries, to look around at friends, family, humanity, at the surprises life brings - the endless possibilities that living offers - and to persevere. There is love and insight to live for, bright moments to cherish, and even the possibility of happiness, and the chance of helping someone else through his or her own troubles. Know that people, through history and today, understand how much courage it takes to stay. Bear witness to the night side of being human and the bravery it entails, and wait for the sun. If we meditate on the record of human wisdom we may find there reason enough to persist and find our way back to happiness. The first step is to consider the arguments and evidence and choose to stay. After that, anything may happen. First, choose to stay. — Jennifer Michael Hecht

Naught but leaves brushed in the wind, stemming from the forest behind my house. Oh, and of course, the wildlife seized every chance to tell the stars who they were; they hooted, howled, and growled. And deep under the roots of trees in little holes lived rabbits, cuddling next to their young. All the while Mr. Ant and his colony were dragging a once boisterous Nocturnal Cicada to the nest; a feast for days! I suppose my daydreaming occasionally did extend into the night. I've spent countless hours I'll never regain, but for the off-chance I was right just once, it was worth every second. — Kevin Focke

There is a whole community out there who loves love, who loves romance, and I'm one of them. It's a world I love living in, where there are happily ever afters, the odd girl gets the good looking guy, and where chivalry isn't lost. I know it can't all be true, that life isn't as grand as some novels make it out to be, but I still love every single story because it's an escape from reality, a moment in time where you can daydream of the impossible, where there is a chance of watching true love unfold right in front of you. — Meghan Quinn

He who knows to be afraid has a higher chance of living! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The healthy attitude, the only reasonable one towards a fault made or a sin committed is surely a vigorous shake of one's moral shoulders, vigorous enough to shake it off and out of remembrance. The sin itself was a sad waste of time and happiness, and absolutely no more should be wasted in lugubriously reflecting on it. Shall we, poor human beings at such a disadvantage from the first in the fight with Fate through the many weaknesses and ailments of our bodies, load our souls as well with an ever-growing burden of regret and penitence? Shall we let a weight of vivid memories break our hearts? How are we to get on with our living if we are continually dropping into sloughs of bitter and often unjust self-reproach? Every morning comes the light, and a fresh chance of doing better. Is it not the sheerest folly and ingratitude to let yesterday spoil the God-given to-day? There — Elizabeth Von Arnim

The most remarkable aspect of the transition we are living through is not so much the passage from want to affluence as the passage from labor to leisure. Leisure contains the future, it is the new horizon. The prospect then is one of unremitting labor to bequeath to future generations a chance of founding a society of leisure that will overcome the demands and compulsions of productive labor so that time may be devoted to creative activities or simply to pleasure and happiness. — Henri Lefebvre

Killing your rival doesn't guarantee happiness. Sometimes it ruins any chance you have of it instead. Memories of dead men hold far more power than the annoyances of living ones. — Jeaniene Frost

I CHOOSE to live by choice not by chance, to be motivated not manipulated, to be useful not used, to make change not excuses, to excel not compete. I CHOOSE self-esteem not self pity. I choose to listen to my inner voice, NOT TO LISTEN TO THE RANDOM OPINIONS OF OTHERS. — Auliq Ice

I am of course getting angry if biologists try to use the general concept 'chance' in order to explain phenomena which are so typical for living organisms as, for instance, those appearing in the biological evolution. — Wolfgang Paul

We all know that China is industrializing at a growth rate of 8 to 10 percent per year. China is on track to pass the U.S. as the largest economy in the world in 20 to 25 years, and China is determined to give its people a chance at this high standard of living that we enjoy. — John Olver

A lifetime isn't forever, so take the first chance, don't wait for the second one! Because sometimes, there aren't second chances! And if it turns out to be a mistake? So what! This is life! A whole bunch of mistakes! But if you never get a second chance at something you didn't take a first chance at? That's true failure. — C. JoyBell C.

I have not always chosen the safest path. I've made my mistakes, plenty of them. I sometimes jump too soon and fail to appreciate the consequences. But I've learned something important along the way: I've learned to heed the call of my heart. I've learned that the safest path is not always the best path and I've learned that the voice of fear is not always to be trusted. — Steve Goodier

Life, for the living, is a gift of opportunity; an exercise of the will to choose. — T.F. Hodge

The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of the night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I Have it all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment or this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opportunity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving. — James Frey

Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful. If we could only be miserable all the time, if there could be no such things as love or beauty or faith or hope, if I could be absolutely certain that my love would never be returned: how much more simple life would be. One could plod through the Siberian salt mines of existence without being bothered about happiness. Unfortunately the happiness is there. There is always the chance (about eight hundred and fifty to one) that another heart will come to mine. I can't help hoping, and keeping faith, and loving beauty. Quite frequently I am not so miserable as it would be wise to be. — T.H. White

We realize, though, because we must, that remembrance is finite. It crosses only so many generations before it fades to indistinction. One man remembers his father and perhaps his grandfather and the details of the lives that were lived. But it's harder to see further back in time. I know the name of my great-grandfather, but our living time did not intersect. We did not walk the earth at the same time. Thus, to me he's a photograph; a story I heard my grandfather tell. He's not a life I remember. And my children may not know him at all, unless by chance they can find him in a book. In time, he will be forgotten entirely, just as we all will with enough revolutions of the earth around the slowly expiring sun. Each fragile heart now beating will one day stop ... We are little more than one tree's growth of leaves in hillside forest. We will enjoy our brief moment in the sun, only to fall away with all the other to make way for the next bright young generation. — Phillip Lewis

You always believed we could survive in the outside world. I'm doing everything I can to give at least some of us a chance of not only surviving but truly living. — Anne Bishop

A few conclusions become clear when we understand this: that our most cruel failure in how we treat the sick and the aged is the failure to recognize that they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives. — Atul Gawande

I think that having a job in journalism, despite all of the changes, is still a fantastic way to be - make a living observing your society and having a chance to use your voice. — Ellen Goodman

The first undeniable reality is that every living thing dies, and the second undeniable reality is that we suffer throughout our lives because we don't understand death. The truth derived from these two points is the importance of clarifying the matter of birth and death. The third undeniable reality is that all of the thoughts and feelings that arise in my head simply arise haphazardly, by chance. And the conclusion we can derive from that is not to hold on to all that comes up in our head. That is what we are doing when we sit zazen. — Kosho Uchiyama

The African Challenge - We must end conflict in Africa. We must lead to allow the Africans to enjoy the benefits from their natural resources. We must end poverty in Africa. Every African must be educated, have access to health care and a fair chance to fulfil their dream. Preventable sickness and disease must not reduce life expectancy or rob pregnant women of a chance to continue living. Africa must develop. Africa must not depend on foreign aid. Africa must be united and governed more effectively. Africa must customize her leadership culture and philosophy in a way that gives her global relevance and respect but still remain true and authentic to herself. Will you accept the challenge? Will you be that Africa? — Archibald Marwizi

Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very beginning that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and in the country around it. Rub it in. — Aldous Huxley

You are not mine to command. But the choice to kill always means closing the mind to the chance of a living alternative. — Janny Wurts

When one ponders on the tremendous journey of evolution over the past three billion years or so, the prodigious wealth of structures it has engendered, and the extraordinarily effective teleonomic performances of living beings from bacteria to man, one may well find oneself beginning to doubt again whether all this could conceivably be the product of an enormous lottery presided over by natural selection, blindly picking the rare winners from among numbers drawn at random. [Nevertheless,] a detailed review of the accumulated modern evidence [shows] that this conception alone is compatible with the facts. — Jacques Monod

Although our intellect always feels itself urged towards clearness and certainty, still our mind often feels itself attracted by uncertainty. Instead of threading its way with the understanding along the narrow path of philosophical investigations and logical conclusions, in order, almost unconscious of itself, to arrive in spaces where it feels itself a stranger, and where it seems to part from all well-known objects, it prefers to remain with the imagination in the realms of chance and luck. Instead of living yonder on poor necessity, it revels here in the wealth of possibilities; animated thereby, courage then takes wings to itself, and daring and danger make the element into which it launches itself as a fearless swimmer plunges into the stream. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Will the time ever come when I am not so completely dependent on thoughts I first had in childhood to furnish the feedstock for my comparisons and analogies and sense of the parallel rhythms of microhistory? Will I reach a point where there will be a good chance, I mean a more than fifty-fifty chance, that any random idea popping back into the foreground of my consciousness will be an idea that first came to me when I was an adult, rather than one I had repeatedly as a child? — Nicholson Baker

You get one chance.
You get to do this thing one time and you don't even know when it goes from swirling forward and around and around in circles to just a plain cold stop and nothing more. Can you believe it? All this time I've spent weighing this and weighing that, worrying about this and worrying about that, living back then and living forward, caring about what so-and-so thinks and about so-and-so, too, but never living here, here, this moment here. Never even acknowledging that this moment even exists, and it hits me, like a live volt through the chest.
This moment here.
This is all you get.
Before you are part of the sky — Andrea Portes

Children born today have a fifty-fifty chance of living to 100. — William Greider

Who was I kidding? I'm a farmer, and farmers are natural segregationists. We separate the wheat from the chaff. I'm not Rudolf Hess, P. W. Botha, Capitol Records, or present-day U.S. of A. Those motherfuckers segregate because they want to hold on to power. I'm a farmer: we segregate in an effort to give every tree, every plant, every poor Mexican, every poor nigger, a chance for equal access to sunlight and water; we make sure every living organism has room to breathe. — Paul Beatty

People live their lives now in fear of the afterlife, and in the process, they forget that they are still alive! And for as long as you are alive, my friend, you have the chance to break free from any bondages whatsoever, that your fellow man has put you in. Your passion should not come from any one religion; your passion should come and should be fueled by, the fact that you are human and that you have been given this life to leave your stamp of beauty and of progress upon mankind! — C. JoyBell C.

Both Christian and Adrian had worried there would be some piece of Strigoi left in him, but their fears had been about violence and bloodshed. No one would have guessed this: that living as a Strigoi had hardened his heart, killing any chance of him loving anyone.
Killing any chance of him loving me.
And I was pretty sure that if that was the case, then part of me would die too. — Richelle Mead

When I was 7, I went to school in Switzerland because everyone on my mom's side of the family lives there. Then we were back in Australia, in Queensland. That's where we had the chance to have lots of different animals. I spent a lot of time living in nature and building cubby houses in big old trees by the ocean. — Isabel Lucas

! discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens - and photography immediately started to invade my life. — Sebastiao Salgado

Growing up means learning what life is. When you're little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks, and you think that you have to sit around and wait for them to happen to you and then life will work. But life isn't like that, for anybody; you can't fall in love with a standard, you have to fall in love with a person. You can't live in a criteria, you have to live your life. You can't wait for your plans to materialize, because they may never materialize the way you think they will. You can't wait to watch your ideals and standards walk up to you, because you can't know what's yours until you have it. I always say, always take the first chance in case you never get a second one, but growing up takes that even one step further, growing up means that you have to hold on to what you have, when you have it, because what you have- that's yours- and all the ideals and criteria you have set in your head, those aren't yours, because those haven't happened to you. — C. JoyBell C.

Learning to navigate the unpredictable terrain of life is an essential skill to develop. We can't live a happy life if we are unwilling to pave the path that will lead to our personal fulfillment and destiny. Learning to sit comfortably in the seat of uncertainty is challenging, but equally rewarding, because discovery is what waits just underneath the surface of that uncertainty and that gives us the chance to become fearless explorers, of our own lives. — Jaeda DeWalt

Living is something most of us postpone, isn't it? We sell the present for a chance at a future where we may do our living when we're old and we've lost the talent for it. — Brian Garfield

So word by word, and line by line,
The dead man touch'd me from the past,
And all at once it seem'd at last
The living soul was flash'd on mine,


And mine in his was wound, and whirl'd
About empyreal heights of thought,
And came on that which is, and caught
The deep pulsations of the world,


Aeonian music measuring out
The steps of Time - the shocks of Chance--
The blows of Death. At length my trance
Was cancell'd, stricken thro' with doubt. — Alfred Tennyson

My father lived to be 97 and played bridge every day up to the end, so I've got a 50 percent chance of living a long life like him. — Henry Louis Gates

On land I have too much time, I'm overwhelmed by a boredom that eventually paralyzes me. But this isn't really the main reason for my suicide. Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that for a long time I've been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don't interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn't sound absurd, I'd say I'm leaving because I can't stand the noise the living make. — Alvaro Mutis

What is it that you ever wanted in life?
Who cares about you?
Who laughs with you?
Who shared your hopes and dreams?
To top it all, maybe just maybe,
When you are near your death,
All that you ever wanted is to ask forgiveness to whom you have sinned,
to tell them that they should take care of themselves, wish them to be safe, and to ask mercy from God to let you enter His Kingdom.
And barely wouldn't even care what will happen with your facebook account.
Well maybe we can start with start living simple
And could stop living like a pro,
Because nothing in this world is worth of value to the One up above.
Don't you know that none of us is born perfect,
And no one else will be? — The Eldest

Life is for the living. I was a little scared before surgery 'cause of the release you sign that says there's always a very small percent chance that you'll die during the operation. — Billy West

And I couldn't take my eyes off Pete. He ate dinner like he always did, in three or four huge, whoofing bites, before heading back out front to his cone of warmth, his coffee, his cigarettes, and ghostly tunes piping from his little transistor radio. And most important, to whatever thoughts drowned out the voices of his own family saying "hello" and "happy holidays."
I watched him because I couldn't believe that could be anyone's comfortable horizon. A tiny porch on a dark corner near a highway. We lucked out living on a planet made thrilling by billions of years of chance, catastrophe, miracles, and disaster, and he'd rejected it. You're offered the world every morning when you open your eyes. I was beginning to see Pete as a representative of all the people who shut that out, through cynicism, religion, fear, greed, or ritual. — Patton Oswalt

There is a time to mourn and a time to celebrate. We should throw ourselves wholly into each when the time comes. 'Tis a part of living. If we don't enjoy life when given the chance, then the chance may never come again. — Vonda Sinclair

I know, it looks pure and beautiful to you now, at your great old age of twenty-two. But do you know what it means? Thirty years of a lost cause, that sounds beautiful, doesn't it? But do you know how many days there are in thirty years? Do you know what happens in those days? ... I want you to know what's in store for you. There will be days when you'll look at your hands and you'll want to take something and smash every bone in them, because they'll be taunting you with what they could do, if you found a chance for them to do it, and you can't find that chance, and you can't bear your living body because it has failed those hands somewhere. — Ayn Rand

I too get goosebumps when someone talks of national pride and integrity but my brain knows better. What is there to be so proud of pieces of land? People die for them. They kill each other for them. They behave as if being born on this piece makes them superior to the people living on other pieces. Just because people who speak the same language and eat the same food surround you makes you a proud owner of the land you share, completely ignoring the fact that given a chance, the same people can slit your throat at the slightest provocation? — Amit Sharma

As long as they could still be moved by a minor chord, or brought to a crisis of tears by scenes of lovers reunited; as long as there was room in their cautious hearts for games of chance, and laughter in the face of God, that must surely be enough to save them, at the last. If not, there was no hope for any living thing. — Clive Barker

There's a point to all the mistakes, the comebacks, the rethinking, the living
the living for all you're worth. There's a point to finding our own path. Please, give the people of Vision a chance to find theirs. — Miyuki Miyabe

To my mind, the theory of [evolution] does not stand up at all. If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation [i.e., time, chance, and chemistry], how has it come into being? I think, however, that we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. — Henry Lipson

Living in Sydney, I've taken the chance to start surfing again. One of my best memories of growing up is catching my first proper wave and surfing across it and my brother cheering at me from the shore. — Markus Zusak

So, before we go too much further, now is a good chance to acknowledge that maybe, just maybe, we are all a little guilty of sometimes living someone else's aspirations for us instead of our own. And this is a great time to say 'No more!' to living out of fear and other people's expectations. — Bear Grylls

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquility of the evening or at the feast, at midnight, when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut him off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful. — James Joyce

This was puzzling, as the standard textbook of psychiatry at the time stated that incest was extremely rare in the United States, occurring about once in every million women.8 Given that there were then only about one hundred million women living in the United States, I wondered how forty seven, almost half of them, had found their way to my office in the basement of the hospital. Furthermore, the textbook said, "There is little agreement about the role of father-daughter incest as a source of serious subsequent psychopathology." My patients with incest histories were hardly free of "subsequent psychopathology" - they were profoundly depressed, confused, and often engaged in bizarrely self-harmful behaviors, such as cutting themselves with razor blades. The textbook went on to practically endorse incest, explaining that "such incestuous activity diminishes the subject's chance of psychosis and allows for a better adjustment to the external world."9 — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

I could scream down 90 mountains
to less than dust
if only one living human had eyes in the head
and heart in the body,
but there is no chance,
my god,
no chance.
rat with rat dog with dog hog with hog,
play the piano drunk
listen to the drunk piano,
realize the myth of mercy
stand still
as even a child's voice snarls
and we have not been fooled,
it was only that we wanted to believe. — Charles Bukowski

The thing that's hard about it - the thing that makes it so hard when the person you love has been taken from you, not by something evil you could have seen coming but by random, pure chance - is that you find yourself suddenly living through a history other than the one you expected to live, through no fault of your own. I feel . . . it's hard to describe, but I feel weirdly outside of time. Ever since the accident I've had these moments when I felt like a visiting guest in this world, not a permanent resident. Like sometimes I look in a mirror and I feel like I can almost see through the version of me on the other side of the glass. And sometimes I feel like I can see the history I used to be in more clearly than the history I'm in now - the real history is one where Philip and Sean and I are all together, being a family and doing whatever family things people do, and this one's like . . . like a fake version of events that I've been yanked into, where everything's gone wrong. — Dexter Palmer

Death forces a grace period on all of us. The dying offer the living a final chance to be the best that they can be. We must take our cues from them, value the moments that lead up to and follow their departure, and work toward acceptance after they are gone. This is a vow as sacred as any we will make over the course of our lifetimes. — Nancy Cobb

The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being. — Madeleine L'Engle

Existing is going through the motions of life with no zeal and feeling you have no control; living means embracing all that this large world has to offer and not being afraid to take chances. The beauty of living is knowing you can always start over and there's always a chance for something better. — J'son M. Lee

(living within a mile of a happy friend has a 25% chance of making you happier). — Anonymous

As frightened as I was about taking a chance on uncertainty, a risk on love, shit, moving to another fucking country for a guy, I knew this was the best solution to the life I was living. If I told Mateo no, I would break my own heart and I would break his. I would be miserable for a very long time and I would spend the rest of my life wondering if I made a mistake. — Karina Halle

You said that you would've taken back that day if you were given a chance. But I ask you why? All things happen for a reason, right? We don't understand the details of our lives because we're so busy living day to day. We need to take a few steps back and take the whole picture in. — Amy Astorga

they have priorities beyond merely being safe and living longer; that the chance to shape one's story is essential to sustaining meaning in life; that we have the opportunity to refashion our institutions, our culture, and our conversations in ways that transform the possibilities for the last chapters of everyone's lives. Inevitably, — Atul Gawande

You were my last chance' she's said but don't all women say that? - But can it be by 'last chance' she doesn't mean mere marriage but some profoundly sad realization of something in me she really needs to go on living, at least that impression coming across anyway on the force of all the gloom we've shared - — Jack Kerouac

My big rattler was old, and had led too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probably lived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever he felt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and he had forgot that the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of his size, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So in reality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, as it probably was for many a dragon-slayer. — Willa Cather

First commandment: there ain't no such thing as "one true way" and the way you find is only good for you, not anybody else, because your interpretation of what you see and feel and understand as the truth is never going to be the same as anyone else's.
Second commandment: the only answers worth having are the ones you find for yourself.
Third commandment: leave the world better than you found it.
Fourth commandment: if it isn't true, going to do some good, or spread a little love around, don't say it, do it, or think it.
Fifth commandment: there are only three things worth living for; love in all it's manifestations, freedom, and the chance to keep humanity going a little while longer. They're the same things worth dying for. And if you aren't willing to die for the things worth living for, you might as well turn in your membership in the human race. — Mercedes Lackey