Fully Alive Quotes & Sayings

Contemplation is life itself, fully awake, fully active, and fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness, and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent, and infinitely abundant Source. — Thomas Merton

If you are fully alive to the prospect of dying, you really start reprioritising your life. — Mitch Albom

I'm not scared of death, just tired. So fucking tired of being alive yet never fully breathing. — Jessica Sorensen

To become fully human means learning to turn my gratitude for being alive into some concrete common good. It means growing gentler toward human weakness. It means practicing forgiveness of my and everyone else's hourly failures to live up to divine standards. It means learning to forget myself on a regular basis in order to attend to the other selves in my vicinity. It means living so that "I'm only human" does not become an excuse for anything. It means receiving the human condition as blessing and not curse, in all its achingly frail and redemptive reality. — Brene Brown

Spiritual process is not for the dead or the dying; it is for the living who want to become fully alive in all dimensions of life. — Jaggi Vasudev

Each precious moment of your life in which you are frozen with fear is a moment when you are not being all you can be. In the end, that hurts more than anything. Succeeding or failing does not determine if we are surviving or living. Rather it is in our ability to reach beyond our present self-imposed definition of who we are, and to risk becoming more, that we are able to feel fully alive. — Rhonda Britten

To think and to be fully alive are the same. — Hannah Arendt

As long as I am alive, I am fully committed to amity between Tibetans and Chinese. Otherwise there's no use. — Dalai Lama

Words written fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, can have as much of this power today as ever they had it then to come alive for us and in us and to make us more alive within ourselves. That, I suppose, is the final mystery as well as the final power of words: That not even across great distances of time and space do they ever lose their capacity for becoming incarnate. And when these words tell of virtue and nobility, when they move closer to that truth and gentleness of spirit by which we become fully human, the reading of them is sacramental; and a library is as holy a place as any temple is holy because through the words which are treasured in it the Word itself becomes flesh again and again and dwells among us and within us, full of grace and truth.
Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember, in an essay called The Speaking and Writing of Words. — Frederick Buechner

Wisdom comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace life without judgment and are willing to not know, sometimes for a long time. It requires us to be more fully and simply alive than we have been taught to be. It may require us to suffer. But ultimately we will be more than we were when we began. There is the seed of a greater wholeness in everyone. — Rachel Naomi Remen

To know your life is to know intimately what you are feeling. Or to put it another way: to be aware of what state of mind predominates in consciousness. The noting of mental states encourages a deeper recognition of what is happening while it is happening. It allows us to be more fully alive in the present rather than living our life as an afterthought. It enables us to watch with mercy, if not humor, the uninvited swirl of "mixed emotions" not as something in need of judgment but as a work in progress. — Stephen Levine

I rebel against death, yet I know that it is how I respond to death's inevitability that is going to make me less or more fully alive. — Madeleine L'Engle

Too many have fled this moment for yesterday or tomorrow, dreaming of a time and place they would rather be. To what result? Those who are alive but who are in a sense living in a different time from now are ghosts. They are never fully seen or sensed by their loved ones; the bounty of the universe cannot find them to gift them; they are dissipated, absent from the roll call of Now. — Brendon Burchard

Arguably the greatest technological triumph of the century has been the public-health system, which is sophisticated preventive and investigative medicine organized around mostly low- and medium-tech equipment; ... fully half of us are alive today because of the improvements. — Richard Rhodes

Mostly I live in this moment, right now, and I'm grateful for it. I know that most of this life lies behind me, but what I Live for is today, and for the tomorrows that remain. My eyes are bombarded by the sights of this beautiful world. Every breath has the rich fragrance of trees and flowers. I'm privileged to be alive to share these wonderful feelings with you. I toast our fallen comrades, all of whom live on in our hearts.

So far, so good. Do I sound like I think I'm going to live forever? you bet your fucking ass. I know better, at least in my mind. But this heart still beats a little faster for all the beauty in the world. I can honestly say that I've lived my time here fully. Perhaps the life story I have recounted in these pages will help you to avoid some of the pitfalls that tripped me up along the way.I hope so. And I hope that you'll live the rest of your time to the fullest. I don't see any other good way to go. — Tony Curtis

The miracle is not to walk on water or in thin air, but to walk on Earth. Walk in such a way that you become fully alive and joy and happiness are possible. That is the miracle that everyone can perform ... If you have mindfulness, concentration, and insight then every step you make on this Earth is performing a miracle. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Suddenly energized, she jumped to her feet and bounced up and down on the couch. Clean clothes went flying off the pile. Maybe she should feel bad because she'd just seen what a huge flaw she'd uncovered in herself. But she didn't.

She felt free and alive. Up to now, she hadn't really been living. Not fully and completely. That had to change. Immediately.

"What are you doing? I'm hearing weird sounds."

"I'm pulling a Tom Cruise. And I;m also waving a bra around. HUnter, this is amazing? YOu've changed everything. We should have talked like this long ago."

"You're freaking me out, sis. Do I need to call someone? — Jennifer Bernard

The worst possible thing you can do when you're down in the dumps, tweaking, vaporous with victimized self-righteousness, or bored, is to take a walk with dying friends. They will ruin everything for you. First of all, friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctors' reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive. They are living and doing as much as they can, as well as they can, for as long as they can. They ruin your multitasking high, the bath of agitation, rumination, and judgment you wallow in, without the decency to come out and just say anything. They bust you by being grateful for the day, while you are obsessed with how thin your lashes have become and how wide your bottom. — Anne Lamott

Being deeply aware of fragility and ecstasy seems to me an essential part of being alive and living fully - and there's no way for me to separate this from my poems. — Alex Lemon

Christians are not perfect, by any means, but they can be people made fully alive. — Philip Yancey

To be fully alive, you need time with God to recharge. — Craig Groeschel

She didn't give George any too easy a time when she was alive. She was one of those semi-invalids. I believe she had really something wrong with her. But whatever it was she played it for all it was worth. She was capricious, exacting and unreasonable. She complained from morning to night. George was expected to wait on her, hand and foot and everything he did was always wrong and he got cursed for it. Most men, I'm fully convinced, would have hit her with a hatchet long ago. — Agatha Christie

Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and tot ake the risk of expressing what you are. Expressing what you are is taking action. — Miguel Ruiz

Even while terminally ill, Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for days that were full of purpose and meaning. — Paul Kalanithi

To explore what it would mean to live fully, sensually alive and passionately on purpose, I have to drop my preconceived ideas of who and what I am. — Dawna Markova

"Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve one's sadness," don Juan said. "Warriors are always joyful because their love is unalterable and their beloved, the earth, embraces them and bestows upon them inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings." Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness. "This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom." — Carlos Castaneda

When Jesus gives us new life, He strips away all that binds us ... all that holds us captive ... and frees us so we can be fully alive to enter into a new life with Him. Do you live in this freedom, or do you live bound up in grave clothes, held captive by bitterness, unforgiveness, anger, fear, doubt, sickness, or something else? Friend, Jesus wants you to live and walk in the freedom of the cross. — Wendy Blight

To be fully alive, fully human
and completely awake is
to be continually thrown
out of the nest. — Pema Chodron

In twenty years' time I'll be eighty-three, just an old man with a stick moving like a sloth bear. While I'm alive, I am fully committed to autonomy, and I am the person who can persuade the Tibetan people to accept it. — Dalai Lama

We are only fully alive when we're helping others — Rick Warren

Whatever those things are that make you feel fully alive and like the universe is ultimately a good place and you are not alone, I need a faith that doesn't deny these moments but embraces them. — Rob Bell

She will speculate that she didn't fully know her husband - this will give her leverage to seek him, to come to know him. It will keep her husband "alive" in her memory - elusive, teasing. — Joyce Carol Oates

The great mission of our day is not conquering the sea or space, disease or tyranny. The grand quest which calls to the hero in every one of us is to become fully alive--to stand up and claim our birthright, which is inner freedom, love and radiant purpose. By fulfilling this, we transform the world. — Jacob Nordby

Spiritual security means you are fully alive and comfortable in your life as it is, without expecting anything. — Dainin Katagiri

You are the most incredible being I have ever met. And its not just because of the things my grandfather did to you. You're strong all on your own. You care about all of them, even if you don't really know what love even means.
Eden is a wonderful place but it wouldn't be anywhere near the same without you. I know I don't fit in there, that people still don't fully trust me. But you're there so its all okay. When I'm with you, I feel something I didn't think it was still possible to feel in this world. I feel alive like there is still hope in this world. Like maybe things will still be okay someday. — Keary Taylor

I often wonder how we can make the more fortunate in this country fully aware of the fact that the problem of the unemployed is not a mechanical one. It is a problem alive and throbbing with human pain. — Eleanor Roosevelt

Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they'd go to and what they'd major in and how much they'd earn and what car they'd buy. They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Live life, you deserve to be fully alive. — Lailah Gifty Akita

God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, "Thank you, God," is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now. — Miguel Ruiz

Failure to shed tears is a failure to live life fully. And the one thing that life requires of us all is to live it. Never be embarrassed by your ability to be alive. — Amy Neftzger

Mphhh ... What did you say Tyler?' Anna-Louise mumbles on the bed above me.
I stand up, and a tame blue bird lands on my shoulder and tries to nibble my earlobe. I gently shake Anna-Louise fully awake. 'Anna-Louise, wake-up,' I say. 'Wake up
the world is alive. — Douglas Coupland

I believe the technical term is "space cadet." But she is the kind of space cadet many people aspire to be. My sister is fully alive to each moment and each observation. — Susan Juby

Are you a stingy breather? Well, don't be. Be extravagant with you breathing and come fully alive. — Ron Fletcher

To be fully alive is to have an aesthetic perception of life because a major part of the world's goodness lies in its often unspeakable beauty. — Yukitaka Yamamoto

When we begin to fully understand worship and come to the realization that we are standing in the presence of God, our worship experience will come alive and be much more powerful. — Leland Watson

There is a juiciness to creativity, a succulence that comes up from within, a sensuality which both produces and is soothed by the act and product of creativity. Creativity is pleasing to us on a deep level. Be it the feel of clay in our hands, the colors that make us feel alive as we knit or sew, the meaning that we find in the words that we write, the energizing feel of movement as we dance and the music moves through our bodies. Taking part in creativity helps us to be more fully alive on every level, it asks that we engage with life in a visceral, and interactive way. — Lucy H. Pearce

Ours is a shockingly dead view of creation. We ourselves are the only things in the universe to which we grant an authentic vitality, and because of this we are not fully alive. — Frederick Turner

The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear. — Bernhard Schlink

The single most important key to sex that I've yet discovered is conscious rhythmic breathing; the more you breathe the more you feel and the more you come alive. Many of us breathe only enough to survive but not to live fully. Deep breathing is a door to waking up to healing and to more personal freedom. — Annie Sprinkle

Home is ultimately not about a place to live but about the people with whom you are most fully alive. Home is about love, relationship, community, and belonging, and we are all searching for home. — Erwin Raphael McManus

We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain we, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. (43) — Stephen Levine

During this kind of highly structured, self-motivated hard work, Csikszentmihalyi wrote, we regularly achieve the greatest form of happiness available to human beings: intense, optimistic engagement with the world around us. We feel fully alive, full of potential and purpose
in other words, we are completely activated as human beings. — Jane McGonigal

When it comes right down to it, the challenge of mindfulness is to realize that "this is it" Right now is my life. The question is, What is my relationship to it going to be? Does my life just automatically "happen" to me? Am I a total prisoner of my circumstances or my obligations, of my body or my illness, or of my history? Do I become hostile or defensive or depressed if certain buttons get pushed, happy if other buttons are pushed, and frightened if something else happens? What are my choices? Do I have any options? We will be looking into these questions more deeply when we take up the subject of our reactions to stress and how our emotions affect our health. For now the important point is to grasp the value of bringing the practice of mindfulness into the conduct of our daily lives. Is there any waking moment of your life that would not be richer and more alive for you if you were more fully awake while it was happening? — Jon Kabat-Zinn

Good questions work on us, we don't work on them. They are not a project to be completed but a doorway opening onto greater depth of understanding, actions that will take us into being more fully alive. — Peter Block

No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does. Even after all these years, he is still the most interesting, energizing and fully alive person I have ever met. — Hillary Clinton

How soon will we accept this opportunity to be fully alive before we die? (88) — Stephen Levine

Contemplation does not arrive at reality after a process of deduction, but by an intuitive awakening in which our free and personal reality becomes fully alive to its own existential depths, which open out into the mystery of God. For — Thomas Merton

Daring to dream what is deepest in our collective longings is what makes us most human and fully alive. — Wendy Wright

Cheryl Strayed reminds us, in her lyrical and courageous memoir Wild, of what it means to be fully alive, even in the face of catastrophe, physical and psychic hardship, and loss. — Mira Bartok

Each of us has experienced moments in our lives when we are fully alive - when we have no wish for it to be different, better, or more. We have no disappointment, no comparison with ideals, no sense that it is not what we worked for. We feel no protective or defensive urge - have no desire to hold on, to store up, to save. Such moments are perfect in themselves. — Laurel Scheaf

People say they miss the deceased. I missed my father and my mother when they were still fully alive. They travelled through my childhood in the same way they moved around the hotel: my mother industrious, hurried, hidden; my father drunk, flamboyant, alone. — Sylvia Kristel

The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive. — Ernest Becker

Allow yourself to experience fully every step of the journey, both the joy and the pain. You're alive. Greet the moment at hand with a grateful heart. — Eleanor Brown

The ordinary you, the you that has to go to work every morning, the you that has to run a household, pay bills, do all of those things
that you is somehow changed into an exciting, artistic, fully alive you. That's what Paris does. — Alexander McCall Smith

When you learn to love your physical body, every activity can become a ritual of gratitude where you fully express the joy to be alive! — Miguel Angel Ruiz

A society without the authentic and vibrant influence of women is a society that is not fully alive. A culture lacking the vital creativity of women is disadvantaged. Without the bearing of women on world affairs, humanity's already tenuous grip on peace is made even less sure. When women are barred, whether by law, cultural prejudice, or political ideology, from developing their full potential and offering their unique gifts, it is an injustice to women themselves and to humanity as a whole. — Stephen Catanzarite

We must be learning if we are to feel fully alive, and when life, or love, becomes too predictable and it seems like there is little left to learn, we become restless - a protest, perhaps, of the plastic brain when it can no longer perform its essential task. — Norman Doidge

We must purposefully create a life of gratitude if we want to be fully alive. — Chris Guillebeau

You can't expect people to dwell on the fact that they'll ultimately lose everything they have and love."
"Why not? It might make them think about what really matters."
"What does really matter?" I asked.
"Having someone to love. Being compassionate. Being fully alive everyday so that you really see and hear and smell and feel things."... — Jonathan Hull

What does the universe want from us? It wants us to be alive. It wants us to fully partake in life. The universe thrives on the music we create. — Ruben Papian

She is embarrassed to be alive and no one on earth can fully console her. — William Trevor

Memory is corrupted and ruined by a crowd of memories. If I am going to have a true memory, there are a thousand things that must first be forgotten. Memory is not fully itself when it reaches only into the past. A memory that is not alive to the present does not remember the here and now, does not remember its true identity, is not memory at all. He who remembers nothing but facts and past events, and is never brought back into the present, is a victim of amnesia. — Thomas Merton

This keeping oneself alive, out of a blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. — Henry Miller

The future belongs to the one most fully alive in the present. — Paul Palnik

I'm committed to the idea that one of the few things human beings have to offer is the richness of unconscious and conscious emotional responses to being alive ... The kind of esteem that's given to brightness/smartness obliterates average people or slow learners from participating fully in human life, particularly technical and intellectual life. But you cannot exclude any human being from emotional participation. — Ntozake Shange

Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake. — Jonathan Franzen

Rather than worrying about work, schedules, and deadlines, I felt at peace with God. He was in control. The world at large would not crumble because I turned off my iPhone. This is how it's supposed to be. For the first time in who knows how long, I felt like myself. Fully alive. Fully present. And fully aware of God's goodness. — Craig Groeschel

I was afraid to fall asleep, but staying awake also brought back painful memories. Memories I sometimes wish I could wash away, even though I am aware that they are an important part of what my life is; who I am now. I stayed up all night, anxiously waiting for daylight, so that I could fully return to my new life, to rediscover happiness I had known as a child, the joy that had stayed alive inside me even through times when being alive itself became a burden. These days I live in three worlds: my dreams, and the experiences of my new life, which trigger memories from the past. — Ishmael Beah

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

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

Certain travellers give the impression that they keep moving because only then do they feel fully alive. — Ella Maillart

And then I though about us ... these children who fell down life's cartoon holes ... dreamless children, alive but not living
we emerged on the other side of the cartoon holes fully awake and discovered we were whole. — Douglas Coupland

Nature is impulsive. To be impulsive is to be fully alive. — Marty Rubin

People sometimes sneer at those who run every day, claiming they'll go to any length to live longer. But don't think that's the reason most people run. Most runners run not because they want to live longer, but because they want to live life to the fullest. If you're going to while away the years, it's far better to live them with clear goals and fully alive then in a fog, and I believe running helps you to do that. Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life - and for me, for writing as whole. I believe many runners would agree — Haruki Murakami

We do not have to die to enter the kingdom of Heaven, In fact we have to be fully alive. When we are truly alive we see that the tree is part of Heaven and we are also part of Heaven. The whole universe is conspiring to reveal this to us. Peace is available and when we touch it everything becomes real. We become ourselves, fully alive in the present moment. — Nhat Hanh

For it is indeed consciousness that makes the body fully alive, and the body that gives consciousness a place to live. — Anodea Judith

The ovarian world is the product of a life rhythm. The moment a child is born it becomes part of a world in which there is not only the life rhythm but the death rhythm. The frantic desire to live, to live at any cost, is not a result of the life rhythm in us, but of the death rhythm. There is not only no need to keep alive at any price, but, if life is undesirable, it is absolutely wrong. This keeping oneself alive, out of a blind urge to defeat death, is in itself a means of sowing death. Every one who has not fully accepted life, who is not incrementing life, is helping to fill the world with death. To make the simplest gesture with the hand can convey the utmost sense of life; a word spoken with the whole being can give life. Activity in itself means nothing: it is often a sign of death. — Henry Miller

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

Being fully present isn't something that happens once and then you have achieved it; it's being awake to the ebb and flow and movement and creation of life, being alive to the process of life itself. — Pema Chodron

Sin is when you turn away from God - or, in the other language, alienation occurs when the ego, that erratic, unreliable driver of the personality, temporarily turns aside from the great quest for integration with the inner self, the self that's authentic, the self that contains the potential to be fully human, fully fulfilled and fully alive. — Susan Howatch

To be fully alive is to feel that everything is possible. — Eric Hoffer

It was simply that she was only fully alive when she devoted herself to her singular ability to draw, and when she drew she was naturally always alone. — Tove Jansson

If something hurts me, the hurts I suffered back then come back to me, and when I feel guilty, the feelings of guilt return; if I yearn for something today, or feel homesick, I feel the yearnings and homesickness from back then. The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. — Bernhard Schlink

It's very helpful to realize that being here, sitting in meditation, doing simple everyday things like working, walking outside, talking with people, bathing, using the toilet, and eating, is actually all that we need to be fully awake, fully alive, fully human. — Pema Chodron

To be creative is only to have health: to keep oneself fully alive in the Creation, to keep the Creation fully alive in oneself, to see the Creation anew, to welcome one's part in it anew. — Wendell Berry

To the being of fully alive, the future is not ominous but a promise; it surrounds the present like a halo. — John Dewey

now. They were spirits in their purest forms. Some called them orbs, and sometimes they showed up on photographs. Many non-believers assumed such orbs were dust on the lens. But the camera could never fully capture what I could see. To my eyes, the balls of light were alive with energy, endlessly forming and reforming, gathering smaller particles of energy around them like mini-black holes in outer space. — J.R. Rain

People who are fully alive look out of their minds to those who simply exist. — Erwin McManus

We are never more fully alive, more completely ourselves, or more deeply engrossed in anything, than when we are at play. — Charles E. Schaefer

You just have to determine to settle for nothing less than being FULLY ALIVE, to show up, be who you are, and share your gifts. — Gabrielle Roth