Get Busy Living Quotes & Sayings

If you're not busy living, you're dying. — Vince Flynn

Of course, in a novel, people's hearts break, and they die, and that is the end of it; and in a story this is very convenient. But in real life we do not die when all that makes life bright dies to us. There is a most busy and important round of eating, drinking, dressing, walking, visiting, buying, selling, talking, reading, and all that makes up what is commonly called living, yet to be gone through ... — Harriet Beecher Stowe

He was too busy checking out and checking in, making and breaking plans, buying and losing cell phones, playing computer games and pool, looking at stock quotes, and living the chaotic life that effectively took up all his energy and time. — Dalma Heyn

It is possible to lead several lives at once. In fact, it is impossible not to. Sometimes these lives overlap and interact. It is busy work living them and it requires stamina that a singular life doesn't need. Sometimes these lives live peaceably in the house of the body. Sometimes they don't. Sometimes they grouse and bicker and storm upstairs and shout from windows and don't take out the trash. Some other times, these lives, these several lives, each indulge several lives of their own. And those lives, like rabbits or rodents, multiply, make children of themselves. And those child lives birth others. This is when a woman ceases leading her own life. This is when the lives start leading her. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

If I looked into a mirror, and did not see my face, I should have the sort of feeling which actually comes upon me, when I look into this living busy world, and see no reflexion of its Creator. — John Henry Newman

So much of life, it seems to me, is the framing and naming of things. I had been so busy creating a future of love that I never identified the life I was living as the life of love, because up until then I had never felt entitled enough or free enough or, honestly, brave enough to embrace my own narrative. Ironically, I had gone ahead and created the life I secretly must have wanted, but it had to be covert and off the record. Chemo was burning away the wrapper and suddenly I was in my version of life. Thus began the ecstasy - the joy, the pure joy of a spiritual pirate who finds the secret treasure. — Eve Ensler

Sometimes we are so busy living our fears that we forgot to live our dreams — Steven Aitchison

George Burns was more athletic than you think he was. And he was a very social man
he loved people, he enjoyed life. He worked at living. Old George was a social lion, he got around and did things. That's the key right there. It starts with your brain. Some people, when they get to 60 years old have no interests anymore, have no friends left. George Burns was busy all the time doing something. — Jack LaLanne

I don't envy "busy." Busy means having a schedule, not living life. What I really covet is leisure and peace of mind. Those who have both, have it all. — Donna Lynn Hope

My daughter recently reminded me not to get so busy making a living, I forget to make a life and I'm going to take that advice. — Angie Stone

It seems to be a universal generality that while the old want to reminisce, the young are too busy living to bother. — Doc Sanborn

I come across too much material on "how to make a man want you", "how to make a man commit", "how to make a man finally pop the question", "how to make a man take you seriously", "how to get into a man's emotions." And I laugh. My dear fellow women, enough! Do not busy yourselves with such things! Instead, fall in love with yourself! — C. JoyBell C.

It always comes down to just two choices. Get busy living, or get busy dying. — Stephen King

I was really into communal living and we were all /
such free spirits, crossing the country we were /
nomads and artists and no one ever stopped / to think about how the one working class housemate / was whoring to support a gang of upper middle class / deadheads with trust fund safety nets and connecticut / childhoods, everyone was too busy processing their isms / to deal with non-issues like class ... and it's just so cool / how none of them have hang-ups about / sex work they're all real / open-minded real / revolutionary you know / the legal definition of pimp is / one who lives off the earnings of / a prostitute, one or five or / eight and i'd love to stay and / eat some of the stir fry i've been cooking / for y'all but i've got to go fuck / this guy so we can all get stoned and / go for smoothies tomorrow, save me / some rice, ok? — Michelle Tea

My grandmother and my two aunts were an exhibition in resilience and resourcefulness and black womanhood. They rarely talked about the unfairness of the world with the words that I use now with my social justice friends, words like "intersectionality" and "equality", "oppression", and "discrimination". They didn't discuss those things because they were too busy living it, navigating it, surviving it. — Janet Mock

Greet everyone you meet with a warm smile. No matter how busy you are, don't rush encounters with coworkers, family, and friends. Speak softly. Listen attentively. Act as if every conversation you have is the most important thing on your mind today. Look your children and your partner in the eyes when they talk to you. Stroke the cat, caress the dog. Lavish love on every living being you meet. See how different you feel at the end of the day ... — Sarah Ban Breathnach

I think most Christians hear these urgent calls to do more (or feel them internally already) and learn to live with a low-level guilt that comes from not doing enough. We know we can always pray more and give more and evangelize more, so we get used to living in a state of mild disappointment with ourselves. — Kevin DeYoung

People who are busy and happy don't write diaries; they are too busy living. — Robert A. Heinlein

When you are busy with living your life, age can never find you to make her mark. — Debasish Mridha

Remember that high school boy in Omaha who got 30 million for his cross-media-e-commerce-integration-thingamajig? It was plastered all over the news and on CNN. We could have come up with that, we all agreed, but we were too busy living our lives for such things. So now he's richer than Midas, and we're reading about his fortune in the Huffington Post and thinking he should spend some of it on zit cream. — Maya Sloan

How had it happened that when choosing the men and women who were to be torn from this subjugated plain, the hand of destiny had stayed so far inland, away from the busy coastlines, to alight on the people who were, of all, the most stubbornly rooted in the silt of the Ganga, in a soil that had to be sown with suffering to yield its crop of story and song? It was as if fate had thrust its fist through the living flesh of the land in order to tear away a piece of its stricken heart. — Amitav Ghosh

I was too busy doing my job and living my life to spend time keeping notes for some future volume of memoirs. — Pierre Trudeau

It simply comes down to this, Get Busy Living, or Get Busy Dying. — Tim Robbins

Conservation destroys the present. If we are only busy preserving the past, we are not living in the present and unable to look forward. I am against conservation. We should let young people move forward, whether we agree with them or not. We should let new things happen. — Peter Eisenman

People are often so busy living that they never stop to wonder why. — Terry Pratchett

Either get busy living your life or life will leave you behind. — Debasish Mridha

The fact is, what I hated in the Church was what I hated in society. Namely, authoritarians. Power freaks. Rigid dogmatists. Those greedy, underloved, undersexed twits who want to run everything. While the rest of us are busy living - busy tasting and testing and hugging and kissing and goofing and growing - they are busy taking over. — Tom Robbins

Cultivate your own garden and let go of your tendency to examine and judge how others cultivate theirs. Catch yourself in moments of gossip about how others ought to be living and rid yourself of thoughts about how they should be doing it this way, or how they have no right to live and think as they do. Stay busy and involved in your own projects and pursuits. — Wayne Dyer

When I get frustrated that there aren't enough hours in a day, that I can't do enough or be enough or experience everything I want to just exactly right now, my mom reminds me in her gentle way that this is not where she thought she'd be at sixty, and that the best is yet to come. She teaches me, through her words and her actions, that if you take the next right step, if you live a life of radical and honest prayer, if you allow yourself to be led by God's Spirit, no matter how far from home and familiarity it takes you, you won't have to worry about what you want to be when you grow up. You'll be too busy living a life of passion and daring. — Shauna Niequist

Manhattan in the morning is a living stream of Purpose; everyone's got a place to be and a problem on their mind. That doesn't mean it's and unfriendly place
just busy and preoccupied. Personally, I love it. I'm a social creature but there are times and places you just don't want to do more than grunt at your fellow human being. — Laura Anne Gilman

Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing- singing, laughing, learning. — Sylvia Plath

Remember that when you are busy living your life others are busy leaving it — Bangambiki Habyarimana

Get busy living, or get busy dying. That's goddam right. — Stephen King

She was far too busy living out a passionate romance with Jesus Christ to be pining after an earthly prince. — Leslie Ludy

I never enjoy anything. I'm always waiting for whatever's next. I think everyone's like that..living life in fast-forward. Never stopping to enjoy the moment. Too busy trying to rush through everything so we can get on with what we're really supposed to be doing with our lives. I get these flashes of clarity, brilliant clarity, where for a second I stop and I think "Wait, this is it. This is my life. I better slow down and enjoy it because one day we're all gonna end up in the ground and that'll be it. We'll be gone. — Josh Boone

I'm just too busy living every day to really spend a lot of time thinking 'am I old?' I'm this age. I am in this moment and in this life. — Emmylou Harris

You can get busy living, get busy dying, or get busy writing. — Anon

Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life. — Dolly Parton

Dinah could spend the rest of her life living by her word, giving everyone a fair shake, and all of that. Rufus would no doubt approve of all those things. But it was not the charge he had given her. He had told her, though not in so many words, to get busy building a future. — Neal Stephenson

I tend to compete every weekend with racing so I'm very busy training for both. The travelling is a lot but I have been living this lifestyle so long now that I am used to it. I am so busy the only proper rest I get is when I'm sitting on the plane. — Liz Halliday

Get busy living or get busy trying. Life will move forward with or without you. The question is; will you move forward in life without yourself? — Steven Cuoco

Sometimes we get so busy pursuing our dream that we forget to notice the degree to which we're living it already. — Victoria Moran

Let's get busy. Get up! Stop living an average life. Stop living in a rut. Get ready for a new way to walk and talk. Taller, louder, prouder and thoroughly convinced that you have enough hope in your life to give some away. — J. Loren Norris

You better get busy living, because dying's a pain in the ass. — Frank Sinatra

What keeps all living things busy and in motion is the striving to exist. But when existence is secured, they do not know what to do: that is why the second thing that sets them in motion is a striving to get rid of the burden of existence, not to feel it any longer, 'to kill time', i.e. to escape boredom. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying. — Regina Brett

We're living in a time when parenting is not at all mirroring the way I was parented. For me, I just followed my parents around on their errands; when they were busy on the phone, I was quiet. It's a different kettle of fish these days: They run the house, and you listen to their music, and you go to their appointments. — Edie Falco

He's too busy living to talk about dying. -Cara — Jodi Picoult

Six month of sitting home, six month of doing absolutely nothing but watching TV, going out, sleeping, getting drunk and sleeping again. Oh no, wait, I was busy with something, I was doing some renovations in my new apartment. Which legally became mine only a month ago. Yep, that's what all my life has been about, spontaneous decisions and living in the moment. Because right now technically I'm a 25-year-old illegal immigrant from Russia, four years in New York, no papers, no work authorization, no work itself. Only a crazy life filled with restaurants, shops, beauty salons, clubs and restaurants again. How is it all possible? Very simple. I used to be a stripper. — Ellie Midwood

It is an inherent nature of life: Whenever success is in your reach, it tosses either an unexpected obstacle or an alluring offer, straight on your path. That unexpected manifestation, obstacle or offer, would either prompt you to press the panic button or distract your focus from your target. As you become busy dealing with the fresh situation, time, with its own flair, flies miles away from your reach, with the reward in offer. Those who endure, without getting disturbed by the obstacle or decoyed by the illusive offer, will reap the fruit. Others will flop, falling as victims to life's conspiracy. — Hari Parameshwar

I always enjoyed studying languages and I learned from my Master that He wanted humans to be called Human Beings to continually remind them that they are really verbs and that their soul purpose is to BE. I think they tend to forget about this, they are so busy being nouns doing things that won't matter tomorrow. — Kate McGahan

I try to clutch onto those last moments in the place that I was born to, but I was so busy *living* them! How was I to know I'd have to capture everything I ever wanted to remember of Eire for the rest of my life? — Kate McCafferty

But these conversations require time and space, and we say we're too busy. Distracted at our dinner tables and living rooms, at our business meetings, and on our streets, we find traces of a new "silent spring" - a term Rachel Carson coined when we were ready to see that with technological change had come an assault on our environment. Now, we have arrived at another moment of recognition. This time, technology is implicated in an assault on empathy. We have learned that even a silent phone inhibits conversations that matter. — Sherry Turkle

Speaking of Twitter, I don't even know if I composed a blog entry in 2009, as I was too busy parceling my every thought into cute 140-character sound bites. I used to only worry about being pithy for a living; now some of my best lines are wasted on a free app! — Diablo Cody

Get busy living or get busy dying. — Stephen King

When the most important times are occurring, we don't even recognize them or notice. We are just busy living our lives. Only looking back do we know what was a great moment in our lives. — Federico Fellini

Her head against his chest and whispered: We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on. — Fredrik Backman

Emotions buzz through our beings like busy bees, giving us the gift of living vividly. — Amy Leigh Mercree

There was nothing now but this empty treadmill of what Clifford called the integrated life, the long living together of two people, who are in the habit of being in the same house with one another.
Nothingness! To accept the great nothingness of life seemed to be the one end of living. All the many busy and important little things that make up the grand sum-total of nothingness! — D.H. Lawrence

The arts and humanities are not mere entertainment, to be turned to for relaxation after a busy day spent solving differential equations; they are our templates for living, for governing ourselves and our societies. Nor can science offer any help with the knottier problems besetting the human race. It can remedy bad smells, bad pains, and bad roads, but not bad behavior, bad government, or bad ideas. — John Derbyshire

She was not busy dying, and there is no detritus of care, she was simply busy living, and then she was gone. She — Max Porter

Here they found themselves year after year- a group of busy, youngish women who had eased their cars impatiently through the archaic streets of Rosedale, who had complained for a week previously about the time lost, the fuss over the children's dresses, and, above all, the boredom, but who were drawn together by a rather implausible allegiance- not so much to Miss Marsalles as to the ceremonies of their childhood, to a more exacting pattern of life which had been breaking apart even then but which survived, and unaccountably still survived, in Miss Marsalles's living room. — Alice Munro

I'm afraid too many of us Christians don't know what we really believe. Like a cork in the ocean, driven and tossed by the waves, we bounce from opinion to opinion ... We've become activity junkies, seldom stopping long enough to decide what really matters to us, too busy to determine what's really worth living for, let alone worth dying for. — Dennis Rainey

Joy comes to us in moments - ordinary moments. We risk missing out on joy when we get too busy chasing down the extraordinary. Scarcity culture may keep us afraid of living small, ordinary lives, but when you talk to people who have survived great losses, it is clear that joy is not a constant. — Brene Brown

We're so distracted, we're missing out own lives. The parent who records his kid's dance recital or first steps or graduation is so busy trying to capture the moment--to create a thing that proves that they were there--they miss out on actually living and enjoying the moment.
I've done this before with my camera. I have jockeyed for position, bumping elbows with other parents so I could get into the best spot to look through the viewfinder of my SLR to capture the moment of my daughter's dance recital. Five-year-old Phoebe was so cute in her little sailor outfit, tapping away. And I got some great pictures. It's just that while I remember getting the pictures, I do not recall the moment. So much of the time we don't trust ourselves to experience our world without stuff. Things so often don't enhance our lives, but are barriers to fully living our lives. — Dave Bruno

Another funny thing about living in this city is how easy it can be to lose track of people. We're all so busy, always rushing around, so wrapped up in our own stuff. It stops occurring to us to check in with friends. I mean REALLY check in with them. — Ryan Kelly

If you are too busy to pray, you are busier than God wants you to be. — Wanda E. Brunstetter

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

Want me to come?" Tod ran his hand up my back, over my shirt. "If you keep her busy, I could convert the filing system from 'alphabetical' to 'most deserving of psychiatric help.'" He leaned closer, and I knew no one else would hear whatever came out of his mouth next. "I've been meaning to make some special notations in Nash's file anyway. Imagine the level of help he could receive if they knew the root of his recent academic decline was a deep-seated fear of the letter Q." I laughed. I couldn't help it. And though everyone else at the table looked curious, no one asked what Tod had said. They were finally starting to learn. "Thanks, but it's hard enough to take grief counseling seriously without you singing 'Living Dead Girl' at the top of your lungs behind the counselor's back. — Rachel Vincent

Don't be so busy making a living that you forget to enjoy your Life. Today, make a commitment to Enjoy Life.-RVM — R.v.m.

We'd be recording and I'd go down to Greenpoint where Rostam was living and track stuff ... It was a busy time. I felt like in general, I was just super psyched with the prospect of getting to be a musician, that it became a thing that I would think about more than I would think about my studies and stuff like that. I still did fine, but it was an interesting time in my life. — Chris Baio

I think this is the greatest and best country in all the world, with its great sunlit spaces and its long long roads, and best of all the roads that are not made yet, and the stories that no one has told because they are too busy living them. — Nellie L. McClung

Most of the time we are so busy letting our actions speak for us that nobody can hear our words. — Steve C. Roberts

Get busy living the life of your dreams instead of looking for the man or woman of your dreams. — Regina Brett

You should appreciate those things while you have them, but you never do. Not all the way. Too busy living. Now and again, you should try to stop to appreciate the little things. They'll build up if you do. — Nora Roberts

For the Christian one dislocating, self-impoverishing hour spent with a child living in a broken-down dump is worth more than all the burial mounds of rhetoric, all the enfeebled good intentions, all the mumbling and fumbling and tardiness of those Christians who are so busy cultivating their own holiness that they cannot hear the anguished cry of the child in the slum. — Brennan Manning

For three centuries the life of the Hebrews was like the life of a man who insists upon living in the middle of a busy thoroughfare, and is consequently being run over constantly by omnibuses and motor-lorries. Pul — H.G.Wells

Get busy living or get busy dying ... there ain't nothing inbetween — Stephen King

Who are we? That is the first question. It is a question almost impossible to answer. But we all agree that the busy self occupied in our daily activities is not quite the real self. We are quite sure we have lost something in the mere pursuit of living. — Lin Yutang

That night, like every other night since I'd met her, I curled Grace into my arms, listening to her parents' muffled movements in the living room. They were like busy little brainless birds, fluttering in and out of their nest at all hours of the day or night, so involved in the pleasure of nest building that they hadn't noticed that it had been empty for years. — Maggie Stiefvater

There is nothing the busy man is less busied with than living; there is nothing harder to learn. — Seneca The Younger

Are you busy proving your worth or living it? A critical distinction — Renae A. Sauter