Quotes & Sayings About Having Enough Of Life

The floor of ice cream parlor bothered me. It was black-and-white checkboard tile, bigger than supermarket checkboard. If I looked only at a white square, I would be all right, but it was hard to ignore the black squares that surrounded the white ones. The contrast got under my skin. The floor meant yes, no, this, that, up, down, day, night -all the indecisions and opposites that were bad enough in life without having them spelled out for you on the floor. — Susanna Kaysen

When you go home tonight, make a list of the people who are impediments, who don't believe in you, and call them up and tell them, 'Get the hell out of my life.' You don't need them. Writing is tough enough without having people around you who contribute to a writer's insecurity. — Ray Bradbury

Diets are based on the unspoken fear that you are a madwoman, a food terrorist, a lunatic ... The promise of a diet is not only that you will have a different body; it is that in having a different body, you will have a different life. If you hate yourself enough, you will love yourself. If you torture yourself enough, you will become a peaceful, relaxed human being. — Geneen Roth

Keep it simple' wasn't always the right response. Many things that boosted my happiness also added complexity to my life. Having children. Learning to post videos to my website. Going to an out-of-town wedding. Applied too broadly, my impulse to 'Keep it simple' would impoverish me. 'Life is barren enough surely with all her trappings,' warned Samuel Johnson, 'let us therefore by cautious how we strip her. — Gretchen Rubin

Most people look at cats and think what a life - all we do is lie around in the sun, never having to lift a finger. But cats' lives aren't that idyllic. Cats are powerless, weak little creatures that injure easily. We don't have shells like turtles, nor wings like birds. We can't burrow into the ground like moles or change colors like a chameleon. The world has no idea how many cats are injured every day, how many of us meet a miserable end. I happen to be lucky enough to live with the Tanabes in a warm and friendly family, the children treat me well, and I've got everything I need. But even my life isn't always easy. When it comes to strays, though, they have a very tough time of it. — Haruki Murakami

Here's a secret: Everyone, if they live long enough, will lose their way at some point. You will lose your way, you will wake up one morning and find yourself lost. This is a hard, simple truth. If it hasn't happened to you yet, consider yourself lucky. When it does, when one day you look around and nothing is recognizable, when you find yourself alone in a dark wood having lost the way, you may find it easier to blame it on someone else
an errant lover, a missing father, a bad childhood
or it may be easier to blame the map you were given
folded too many times, out-of-date, tiny print
but mostly, if you are honest, you will only be able to blame yourself.
One day I'll tell my daughter a story about a dark time, the dark days before she was born, and how her coming was a ray of light. We got lost for a while, the story will begin, but then we found our way. — Nick Flynn

Visions haunt the mind of unforeseen things of the future. Action is of no possibility, but meandering doubts of a stoic nature made real by the mind are persuasive enough to destroy hope.
It's the overly-broad confusion, but not knowing what to be confused about that is the most perplexing. Whether it is the future, the present or the past, all of the answers will never come. The uncertainty lies not in the answer, but not knowing what question to ask.
Life must have meaning, but God -if there is such a thing- is having too much fun not telling me what that is. — Brian Krans

It is a common enough mid-career urge: having taken care of life's immediate needs, some of us yearn to chase villains, right wrongs, fight on the side of the angels. — Tim Wu

Freedom is not an abstaction, nor is a little of it enough. A little more is not enough either. Having less, being less, empoverished in freedom and rights, women then invariably have less self-respect: less self-respect than any human being needs to live a brave and honest life. — Andrea Dworkin

It's still woman's work whether it's done in a great hall or in the kitchen," I said bitterly. "I know it well enough. It's earning no money for yourself and everything for your husband and master. It's obeying him as quickly and as well as if you were a groom of the servery. It's having to tolerate anything he chooses to do, and smile as he does it. I've served Queen Katherine in these last few years. I've seen how life has been for her. I wouldn't be a princess, not even for a princess's dowry. I wouldn't even be a queen. I have seen her shamed and humiliated and insulted, and all she could do was kneel on her prie dieu, pray for a little help, and get to her feet and smile at the woman who was triumphing over her. — Philippa Gregory

One of my young married students has suffered all her life because she was taught in her Church that she was born so sinful that the only way the wrath of God the Father could be appeased enough for him to forgive all her horrible sinfulness was for God the Son to die in agony on the cross. Without his suffering, the Father would remain angry forever with all his Creation.
Many of us have had a least part of that horror thrust on us at one time or other inour childhood. For many reasons I never went to Sunday School, so I was spared having a lot of peculiar teaching to unlearn. It's only lately that I've discovered that it was no less a person than St. Anselm who saw the atonement in terms of appeasement of an angry God, from which follows immediately the heresy that Jesus came to save us from God the Father. — Madeleine L'Engle

We look for the sense of being Home in a physical home, in a family, in a lover. But unless we can experience it in the still moments of our life, no house, family, lover, or anything else will ever satisfy our longing for Home. The feeling of being Home is never found by doing, going somewhere, having things, or thinking, but by simply stopping and just being long enough to let ourselves feel that we are Home. Our longing for Home can call it forth. Know Home, value it, and you will have it. The most precious attainment is right here in Stillness and in just being. — Gina Lake

We hear a great deal of lamentation these days about writers having all taken themselves to the colleges and universities where they live decorously instead of going out and getting firsthand information about life. The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot. The writer's business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it. — Flannery O'Connor

There were moments in your life that brought you to your knees. Moments that punched the absolute fuck out of you.
I was having one of those moments.
I thought life had already handed me my heart on a platter. Bleeding and bruised. Turned out life wasn't done with me yet. Bleeding and bruised wasn't enough. — Nina Levine

He realized now that to be afraid of this death he was staring at with animal terror meant to be afraid of life. Fear of dying justified a limitless attachment to what is alive in man. And all those who had not made the gestures necessary to live their lives, all those who feared and exalted impotence - they were afraid of death because of the sanction it gave to a life in which they had not been involved. They had not lived enough, never having lived at all. And death was a kind of gesture, forever withholding water from the traveler vainly seeking to slake his thirst. But for the others, it was the fatal and tender gesture that erases and denies, smiling at gratitude as at rebellion. — Albert Camus

You know how we're thinking about food these days, less in terms of carbs and calories than in terms of color, vivacity, and life force? We can do the same with time. Then it's no longer about having enough of it but about infusing color and vivacity and life force into every moment. (279) — Victoria Moran

Ali, of course, hasn't whipped every obstacle in his life. Only enough of them that we remember him as having done so. — Davis Miller

Part of one's despair, of course, is that the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we can see dead punctuation. Whisper it in petrified little-boy tones: dead punctuation is invisible to everyone else
yet we see it all the time. No one understands us seventh-sense people. They regard us as freaks. When we point out illiterate mistakes we are often aggressively instructed to "get a life" by people who, interestingly, display no evidence of having lives themselves. Naturally we become timid about making our insights known, in such inhospitable conditions. Being burned as a witch is not safely enough off the agenda. — Lynne Truss

The key to having "more than enough time" is to relax. Time is change, therefore I have more time per clock-hour when i am flexible. Rigid control means less time because less change. I can lengthen my life by saying out of doctrines and ruts. — Hugh Prather

Chloe came up with the crazy idea that we should work SUPERhard in class and earn our black belts by the end of the month. Then we can start a secret crime-fighting team called the Dorky Defenders! She said that superheroes lead very romantic lives, when villains aren't trying to KILL them. After hearing THAT little detail, I wasn't exactly sold on the superhero lifestyle. Having to deal with MacKenzie is quite enough drama, thank you. I don't need any more villains sabotaging my life. — Rachel Renee Russell

Regard this body as a machine which, having been made by the hand of God, is incomparably better ordered than any machine that can be devised by man, and contains in itself movements more wonderful than those in any machine ... it is for all practical purposes impossible for a machine to have enough organs to make it act in all the contingencies of life in the way in which our reason makes us act. — Rene Descartes

For people like this life is just about stuff.
Having more than your neighbor and never enough.
For these types of folks it's all about fortune and fame.
What pays off is good, what does not is lame.
So they don't and they won't and they can't understand.
It's wisdom, not money that makes life grand. — Jacob M. Held

Running isn't a sport for pretty boys ... It's about the sweat in your hair and the blisters on your feet. Its the frozen spit on your chin and the nausea in your gut. It's about throbbing calves and cramps at midnight that are strong enough to wake the dead. It's about getting out the door and running when the rest of the world is only dreaming about having the passion that you need to live each and every day with. It's about being on a lonely road and running like a champion even when there's not a single soul in sight to cheer you on. Running is all about having the desire to train and persevere until every fiber in your legs, mind, and heart is turned to steel. And when you've finally forged hard enough, you will have become the best runner you can be. And that's all that you can ask for. — Paul Maurer

For many years now I have listened to the stories of people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses as their counselor. From them I have learned how to enjoy the minute particulars of life once again, the grace of a hot cup of coffee, the presence of a friend, the blessing of having a new cake of soap or an hour without pain. Such humble experience is the stuff that many of the very best stories are made of. If we think we have no stories it is because we have not paid enough attention to our lives. Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate. — Rachel Naomi Remen

People who work out are so gullible. They think they'll live longer. Well, good luck to them. It's a shame most of them aren't bright enough to realise that the extra time added to their life when they're eighty and too old to do anything productive with it is roughly equal to all the time wasted in the gym when they're young and capable of having fun. — Toni Jordan

Calm down. I'm a demon, Nick. Hematite doesn't like my genetics. It doesn't mean anything other than I have really bad parentage."
"Then why am I having flashes of you killing me?"
"What'd you eat this morning?"
Nick didn't care for that answer. Not one little bit. "I saw it happen. You were choking the life out of me."
Caleb rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah. That is definitely a figment of your overactive, over-Hollywood-stimulated imagination. I assure you. I don't kill people that way. Takes too long. I'm not into torture. I prefer a quick death so that I can move on to something more satisfying."
Strangely enough, that he believed. Patience wasn't a virtue Caleb practiced. "You sure?"
"Dude, look at me. You think I'd have let the demons pound all over me last night so that you could escape if I had any intention of killing you? Really? — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I began to ponder; this life we had for ourselves, Eric and I, it felt like the opposite of Potage Parmentier. It was easy enough to keep on with the soul-sucking jobs; at least it saved having to make a choice. But how much longer could I take such an easy life? Quicksand was easy. Hell, death was easy. Maybe that's why my synapses had started snapping at the sight of potatoes and leeks in the Korean deli. Maybe that was what was plucking deep down in my belly whenever I thought of Julia Child's book. Maybe I needed to make like a potato, winnow myself down, be a part of something that was not easy, just simple. — Julie Powell

Their eyes, warm not only with human bond but with the shared enjoyment of the art objects he sold, their mutual tastes and satisfactions, remained fixed on him; they were thanking him for having things like these for them to see, pick up and examine, handle perhaps without even buying. Yes, he thought, they know what sort of store they are in; this is not tourist trash, not redwood plaques reading Muir Woods, Marin County, PSA, or funny signs or girly rings or postcards or views of the Bridge. The girl's eyes especially, large, dark. How easily, Childan thought, I could fall in love with a girl like this. How tragic my life, then; as if it weren't bad enough already. The stylish black hair, lacquered nails, pierced ears for the long dangling brass handmade earrings. "Your — Philip K. Dick

Look in the mirror, do you see Lenina Crowne looking back at you, or do you see John the Savage? If you're a human being, you'll be seeing something of both, because we've always wanted things both ways. We wish to be as the careless gods, lying around on Olympus, eternally beautiful, having sex and being entertained by the anguish of others. And at the same time we want to be those anguished others, because we believe, with John, that life has meaning beyond the play of senses, and that immediate gratification will never be enough. — Margaret Atwood

It felt as if an only life should be better than good enough, but how many efforts for more have ended with having nothing? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Maybe "having enough" has a second meaning beyond the basic economic security a family needs. Maybe it means accepting that a rich full life with a job and family will be rewarding, but it certainly won't be perfect. As many of us who have combined kids and careers know all too well, some days it's really pretty messy. And that's OK. — Willow Bay

Those who know the normal life of the poor ... will realize well enough that without economic security, liberty is not worth having. — Harold Laski

All I can think about is how fucked up it would be for your life to end here, now. I mean I know that your life if fucked up no matter what now, forever. And I'm not dumb enough to think that I can undo that, that anyone can. But I can't wrap my mind around the notion of you not getting old, having kids, going to Juilliard, getting to play that cello in front of a huge audience, so that they can get the chills the way I do every time I see you pick up your bow, every time I see you smile at me. — Gayle Forman

I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't. — Stephen Chbosky

And so I miss the fertilization that might come from a contact. And for me
yes, I think I might as well admit it
fertilization does come a great deal from contacts. Why then do I avoid them
in a sort of false pride
shyness
timorous modesty? I used to be afraid of falling in love with people
or having them think I was
that I was chasing them (how ridiculous
I am actually always running away!) but now surely
I should be mature enough to be over that. I am no longer afraid of falling in love, and the other false modesties should vanish. I cannot bear to think "par delicatesse j'ai perdu ma vie." (Because of discretion I have lost my life). — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Don't you think it would be interesting if you could read the story of your life- written perfectly truthfully by an omniscient author? And suppose you could only read it on this condition: that you would never forget it, but would have to go through life knowing ahead of time exactly how everything you did would turn out, and forseeing to the exact hour the time you would die. How many people do you suppose you have the courage to read it then? Or how many could suppress their curiosity sufficiently to escape from reading it, even at the price of having to live without hope, without surprise? Life is monotonous enough at best; you have to eat and sleep about so often. But imagine how deadly monotonous it would be if nothing unexpected could happen between meals? — Jean Webster

Oh, I know it sounds crazy, she said. I suppose it is crazy. I don't know. I don't even care. But that girl needs somebody and I'm ready to take desperate measures. She needs a home for these months. And you - she smiled at them - you old solitary bastards need somebody too. Somebody or something besides an old red cow to care about and worry over. It's too lonesome out here. Well, look at you. You're going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway. This is your chance. — Kent Haruf

To join the company of women, to be adults, we go through a period of proudly boasting of having survived our own mother's indifference, anger, overpowering love, the burden of her pain, her tendency to drink or teetotal, her warmth or coldness, praise or criticism, sexual confusions or embarrassing clarity. It isn't enough that she sweat, labored, bore her daughters howling or under total anesthesia or both. No. She must be responsible for our psychic weaknesses the rest of her life. It is alright to feel kinship with your father, to forgive. We all know that. But your mother is held to a standard so exacting that it has no principles. She simply must be to blame. — Louise Erdrich

Once you have a child, that becomes your life, and while that's the way it should be, I sort of have a love affair with my work. Having said that, many of us work far too hard and we don't put enough value in the epicurean, sensual part of life. — Kim Cattrall

We have thousands of opportunities every day to be grateful: for having good weather, to have slept well last night, to be able to get up, to be healthy, to have enough to eat ... There's opportunity upon opportunity to be grateful; that's what life is. — David Steindl-Rast

Likewise and during every day of an unillustrious life, time carries us. But a moment always comes when we have to carry it. We live on the future: "tomorrow," "later on," "when you have made your way," "you will understand when you are old enough." Such irrelevancies are wonderful, for, after all, it's a matter of dying. Yet a day comes when a man notices or says that he is thirty. Thus he asserts his youth. But simultaneously he situates himself in relation to time. He takes his place in it. He admits that he stands at a certain point on a curve that he acknowledges having to travel to its end. He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd. — Albert Camus

I devoted myself to the house, to the children, to Pietro. Not once did I think of having Clelia back or of replacing her with someone else. Again, I took on everything, and certainly I did it to put myself in a stupor. But it happened without effort, without bitterness, as if I had suddenly discovered that this was the right way of spending one's life, and a part of me whispered: Enough of those silly notions in your head. — Elena Ferrante

Because left to its own devices life would never produce love, it would only lead you to attraction, from attraction to pleasure, then to attachment, to satisfaction, which finally leads to wearisomeness and boredom. Then comes a plateau. Then once again the weary cycle: attraction, pleasure, attachment, fulfillment, satisfaction, boredom. All of this mixed with the anxieties, the jealousies, the possessiveness, the sorrow, the pain, that make the cycle a roller coaster. When you have gone repeatedly around and around the cycle, a time finally comes when you have had enough and want to call a halt to the whole process. And if you are lucky enough not to run into something or someone else that catches your eye, you will have at least attained a fragile peace. That is the most that life can give you; and you can mistakenly equate this state with freedom and you die without ever having known what it means to be really free and to love. — Anthony De Mello

But a map is not enough as a guide for action; we also need a goal that tells us where to go. Animals have no such problems. Their instincts provide them with a map as well as with goals. But lacking instinctive determination and having a brain that permits us to think of many directions in which we can go, we need an object of total devotion, a focal point for all our strivings and the basis for all our effective - not only our proclaimed - values. We need such an object of devotion in order to integrate our energies in one direction, to transcend our isolated existence, with all its doubts and insecurities, and to answer our need for a meaning of life. — Erich Fromm

Until the age of twelve I thought I was gifted with the power to shape the future, but this power was a crushing burden, it manifested itself in the form of threats, I had to take just so many steps before I got to the end of the sidewalk or else my parents would die in a car accident, I had to close the door thinking of some favorable outcome, for example passing a test, or else I'd fail, I had to turn off the light not thinking about my mother getting raped, or that would happen, one day I couldn't stand having to close the door a hundred times before I could think of something good, or to spend fifteen minutes turning off the light the right way, I decided enough was enough, the world could fall apart, I didn't want to spend my life saving other people, that night I went to bed sure the next day would bring the apocalypse, nothing happened, I was relieved but a little bit disappointed to discover I had no power. — Edouard Leve

Note to self: being Kurt's son, being an ex-mental patient, getting into Harvard, having written a book, and being a doctor are all things that in and of themselves do not make a life. If you lean on them too hard, you'll find that there's not much there. But if you add up a lot of things that aren't in and of themselves enough, it almost starts to add up to something ... — Mark Vonnegut

I did love her, though, for a little while anyhow. That was the thing: I still believed, on some fundamental level, that love would cure me. That if only I were loved deeply enough by someone else, I would be content to stay a man. It wouldn't be my authentic life, but it would be all right. It was better, in any case, than coming out as transsexual, taking hormones, and having some gruesome operation and walking around like Herman Munster. An authentic life wasn't very appealing. And so I allowed myself to be lifted off the ground by the levitating properties of romantic love. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

I was just burnt out. I didn't like the music business and I didn't like me. There's an element of falseness about the whole thing. Even things like doing an interview. It's not as though we just met in the pub and are having a chat - it's part of a process. If you do it all day, every day for years, you end up thinking: 'Who the hell am I?' I was lucky enough to make some money, enough to let me kick back. It was a great experience and it was nice to have a couple of No.1s but the best thing about it was that the money I made allowed me to have freedom and choice in my life. — Rick Astley

All the time God ever spent on you was wasted, an' your mother's had the same luck. I s'pose God's used to having creatures 'at He's made go wrong, but I pity your mother. Goodness knows a woman suffers an' works enough over her children, an' then to fetch a boy to man's estate an' have him, of his own free will an' accord, be a liar! Young man, truth is the cornerstone o' the temple o' character. Nobody can put up a good buildin' without a solid foundation; an' you can't do solid character buildin' with a lie at the base. Man 'at's a liar ain't fit for anything! Can't trust him in no sphere or relation o' life; or in any way, shape, or manner. You passed out your word like a man, an' like a man I took it an' went off trustin' you, an' you failed me. — Gene Stratton-Porter

Having been issued the false prospectus of happiness through unlimited sex, modern man concludes, when he is not happy with his life, that his sex has not been unlimited enough. If welfare does not eliminate squalor, we need more welfare; if sex does not bring happiness, we need more sex. — Anthony Daniels

The child-man, then, is the lost son of a host of economic and cultural changes: the demographic shift I call preadulthood, the Playboy philosophy, feminism, the wild west of our new media, and a shrugging iffiness on the subject of husbands and fathers. He has no life script, no special reason to grow up. Of course, you shouldn't feel too bad for him; he's having a good enough time. — Kay S. Hymowitz

But Eve - ow whoever comes after Eve - cant save him from eventually doing the hard work that comes after that. The work he has never wanted to do, that she spent the better part of her life trying to protect him from having to do. To jump beyond the impasses, the stuck places, to go deeper with someone. You can do the work to honor what you created, or you don't. But if you don't, you get to the same point with the next person, don't you? You get to the same point, the same questioning, until you push through it. Until you are brave enough to not expect anyone else to see in you what you can't see in yourself. — Laura Dave

I had thoroughly been a girl so long by then that I'd grown to like it, got used to it, got used to not having to lift things, and have folks make excuses for me on account of me not being strong enough, or fast enough, or powerful enough like a boy, on account of my size. But that's the thing. You can play one part in life, but you can't be that thing. You just playing it. You're not real. — James McBride

He'll be okay. We'll take care of him. Even when he's having a bad day, we'll do our best to make him feel safe."
"Thank you, Frankie. I knew you would. That's why I'm here."
For him.
And for me.
For you.
I'm here for you.
I want you in my life again.
Even if all you'll give me is your friendship.
Fuck that. That will never be enough for me.
Not with you.
There was so much I wanted to tell her but couldn't. — Penelope Ward

How do they manage to go on living? ... By loving life. And-in spite of everything-by loving God. By having enough faith to start over again and again; enough faith to risk having our hearts break all over again. That's the true meaning of faith. It's the deepest kind of heroism. — Naomi Ragen

You must be kidding." She says, "Having the power of life and death isn't enough. You
must wonder what other poems are in that book."
Hitting me as fast as a hiccup, me resting my weight on my good foot, just staring at her, I say no.
She says, "Maybe you can live forever."
And I say no.
And she says, "Maybe you can make anyone love you."
No.
And she says, "Maybe you can turn straw into gold."
And I say no and turn on my heel.
"Maybe you could bring about world peace," she says. — Chuck Palahniuk

A game master or teacher who was primarily concerned with being close enough to the "innermost meaning" would be a very bad teacher. To be candid, I myself, for example, have never in my life said a word to my pupils about the "meaning" of music; if there is one it does not need my explanations. On the other hand I have always made a great point of having my pupils count their eighths and sixteenths nicely. Whatever you become, teacher, scholar, or musician, have respect for the "meaning" but do not imagine that it can be taught. — Hermann Hesse

It changed my life in a lot of ways - before I got that role I was just going from job to job, not really having enough money to be able to do what I wanted to do. — Nicholas Lea

Falling into this elaborate daydream about me and Heather Craven forever after. Imagining us as married professionals with our six towheaded children running loose in our suburbanite home as surrounded by a lush yard and fenced. Walking toward the door yelling, "Honey, I'm home!" and having Heather answer my call. Imagining the family dog jumping me, slobbering over in greeting and my laughing heartily as I was knocked to the ground. At one point getting so steeped in the fantasy that I actually found myself troubleshooting marital problems in advance, arguing with the fantasy love of my life before the dog grew on me over whether we should even have a dog; wasn't six dependents enough? Losing the argument and then reluctantly accepting this new intrusion and competitor for Heather's affections. — Tommy Walker

You're going to die some day without ever having had enough trouble in your life. Not of the right kind anyway. — Kent Haruf

Life isn't about having, it's about being. You could surround yourself with all that money can buy, and you'd still be as miserable as a human can be. I know people with perfect bodies who don't have half the happiness I've found. On my journeys I've seen more joy in the slums of Mumbai and the orphanages of Africa than in wealthy gated communities and on sprawling estates worth millions. Why is that? You'll find contentment when your talents and passion are completely engaged, in full force. Recognise instant self-gratification for what it is. Resist the temptation to grab for material objects like the perfect house, the coolest clothes or the hottest car. The if I just had X, I would be happy syndrome is a mass delusion. When you look for happiness in mere objects, they are never enough. Look around. Look within. — Nick Vujicic

whole. I can't imagine anything more terrifying than losing Sophie. When you're pregnant, you can think of nothing but having your own body to yourself again; yet after giving birth you realize that the biggest part of you is now somehow external, subject to all sorts of dangers and disappearance, so you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to keep her close enough for comfort. That's the strange thing about being a mother: Until you have a baby, you don't even realize how much you were missing one. It doesn't — Jodi Picoult

The offer of certainty, the offer of complete security, the offer of an impermeable faith that can't give way, is an offer of something not worth having. I want to live my life taking the risk all the time that I don't know anything like enough yet; that I haven't understood enough; that I can't know enough; that I'm always hungrily operating on the margins of a potentially great harvest of future knowledge and wisdom. I wouldn't have it any other way. — Christopher Hitchens

I'm not hungry!' A human voice, but with a sulky whine in it that suggested that its owner had been given too many sweets when he was young and not enough shoutings-at. It was the kind of voice that's used to having its life with the crusts cut off. — Terry Pratchett

Most of the books I have are indicators of my insecurity. I really wanted to be an intellectual. I really wanted to understand Sartre. I thought that was what made people smart. I have tried to read Being and Nothingness no fewer than twenty times in my life. I really thought that every answer had to be in that book. Maybe it is. The truth is, I can't read anything with any distance. Every book is a self-help book to me. Just having them makes me feel better. I underline profusely but I don't retain much. Reading is like a drug. When I am reading from these books it feels like I am thinking what is being read, and that gives me a rush. That is enough. I glean what I can. I finish some of the unfinished thoughts lingering around in my head by adding the thoughts of geniuses and I build from there. There are bookmarks in most of the denser tomes at around page 20 to 40 because that was where I said, "I get it." Then I put them back on the shelf. — Marc Maron

Softly and kindly remind yourself, 'I cannot own anything.' It is a valuable thought to keep in mind as you struggle to improve your financial picture, worry about investments, and plan how to acquire more and more. It is a universal principle which you are part of. You must release everything when you truly awaken. Are you letting your life go by in frustration and worry over not having enough? If so, relax and remember that you only get what you have for a short period of time. When you awaken you will see the folly of being attached to anything. — Wayne Dyer

And again, though we cannot prove, we feel, that we are deathless. We perceive that life is not like those dramas so beloved by the people - in which every villain is punished, and every act of virtue meets with its reward; we learn anew every day that the wisdom of the serpent fares better here than the gentleness of the dove, and that any thief can triumph if he steals enough. If mere worldly utility and expediency were the justification of virtue, it would not be wise to be too good. And yet, knowing all this, having it flung into our faces with brutal repetition, we still feel the command to righteousness, we know that we ought to do the inexpedient good. — Will Durant

I must talk to Kennit first. He will tell me when he is ready for us to have a baby."
"Never," Bolt said flatly.
"What?"
"Never wait for a male on any such decision. You are the queen. You decide. Males are not made for such decisions. I have seen it time and time again. They would have you wait for days of sunshine and wealth and plenty. Yet to a male, enough is never sufficient, and plenty never reached. A queen knows that when times are hardest and game most scarce, that is when one must care most about the continuance of the race. Some things are not for males to decide. — Robin Hobb

The poor man shuddered, overflowed with an angelic joy; he declared in his transport that this would last through life; he said to himself that he really had not suffered enough to deserve such radiant happiness, and he thanked God, in the depths of his soul, for having permitted that he, a miserable man, should be so loved by this innocent being. — Victor Hugo

If there's anything you want to do and you can't figure out why you're not doing it, there's a simple answer: you link more pain to doing it than not doing it. Hey, if you don't have enough money, for example I know that's an issue for a lot of people. It was for a good deal of my life. If you don't have money there's only one reason: you link more pain to having more money than to not having it. — Tony Robbins

Brooding is more something I do when I'm working. I know so much more about sitting around worrying about a work project than I do about worrying about kids. This could just be a fact of life for older moms. We've worked and worked and worked and if we are lucky enough to finally have a child or two, we find ourselves suddenly catapulted into a most alien kind of chaos.
Work is so much easier. Anyone will tell you that. To have a desk, where you have everything all lined up, and a schedule you more or less get to agree to. Work. I am a worker. This is so funny because I never really think of my work as work. I certainly never though of myself as having a career. Writing, work, this is just who I am. I am a person who sits at a desk and makes phone calls and taps at a computer keyboard and sips coffee and calls her mom at five. That I am anything better or smaller than that has come as sudden news to me.
Brand new.
News. — Jeanne Marie Laskas

And for the rest, I remember little enough. Except that we were happy, and healthy, and in love.
It didn't last. Nothing worth having ever does. But it was the happiest time of my young life. — Christian Cameron

For the first twenty years of my life, I rocked myself to sleep. It was a harmless enough hobby, but eventually, I had to give it up. Throughout the next twenty-two years I lay still and discovered that after a few minutes I could drop off with no problem. Follow seven beers with a couple of scotches and a thimble of good marijuana, and it's funny how sleep just sort of comes on its own. Often I never even made it to the bed. I'd squat down to pet the cat and wake up on the floor eight hours later, having lost a perfectly good excuse to change my clothes. I'm now told that this is not called "going to sleep" but rather "passing out," a phrase that carries a distinct hint of judgment. — David Sedaris

It had been a beautiful day for an outdoor ceremony, with the kind of lucid weather she hoped to have at her own funeral. She thought often of her own death, but without fear, loss having been her only belonging in this life. For years, acceptance had been her only means of survival. She knew that no matter how miserable or wretched life became, all she could do with her meek piece of time was sustain it. Decades of guilt, lost faith, the betrayal by those few people she'd let herself love - it was worth enduring these things, if only for the gift of a single, exalted moment. And such moments happened, even frequently, in the lives of people wise enough to see them. — Esi Edugyan

What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God? — J.I. Packer

She, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child. — Paulo Coelho

That is what happens when you put your soul in charge of your life. You dare to claim the sky. That sky is different for everyone. For one person, maybe the sky is having a baby, being a parent, growing a family. But for another it's never having kids; it's traveling the globe; it's saving the world... You know your sky. And if you don't, it's because you haven't listened closely enough. — Elizabeth Lesser

If one's life is simple, contentment has to come. Simplicity is extremely important for happiness. Having few desires, feeling satisfied with what you have, is very vital: satisfaction with just enough food, clothing, and shelter to protect yourself from the elements. And finally, there is an intense delight in abandoning faulty states of mind and in cultivating helpful ones in meditation. — Dalai Lama XIV

Do you sleep in your suits, too?"
He dragged his gaze from the sweater she held up to her and completed a slow perusal starting at her totally reasonable three-and-a-half-inch metallic silver heels, up her bare calves, across the fitted pear-green pencil skirt, over her winter-white cashmere sweater and stopping briefly on her lips before reaching her eyes. She'd been stark naked, pressed up against a sixteenth-floor window, having one of the best orgasms of her life from a lover-s tongue and hadn't been as turned on as she was at that moment. Fire licked its way across her skin, flicking at all of her sensitive spots until her entire body vibrated.
"Do I sleep in my suits? Do you really want to know?" he asked, his voice low with just enough dominating arrogance in it to make her shiver. — Avery Flynn

Never stop having doubts. If you ever do, it will be because you've stopped moving forward, and at that point, God will step in and pull the rug out from under your feet, because that is His way of controlling His chosen ones, by making sure they always follow their appointed path to the end. If, for any reason, we stop, whether out of complacency, laziness, or out of a mistaken belief that we know enough, He forces us on. — Paulo Coelho

For to start life with just as much as will make one independent, that is, allow one to live comfortably without having to work - even if one has only just enough for oneself, not to speak of a family - is an advantage which cannot be over-estimated; for it means exemption and immunity from that chronic disease of penury, which fastens on the life of man like a plague; it is emancipation from that forced labor which is the natural lot of every mortal. Only under a favorable fate like this can a man be said to be born free, to be, in the proper sense of the word, sui juris, master of his own time and powers, and able to say every morning, This day is my own. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Despite a legacy consisting of enough violence and death for twenty men, Jackson admitted to having two regrets on his deathbed: "I didn't shoot Henry Clay and I didn't murder John C. Calhoun." In a life rich with murdering people for little-to-no reason, Jackson's only regret was that he didn't kill quite enough people. People like Calhoun, who, it should be noted, was Jackson's vice president. No one is safe from Jackson's wrath. — Daniel O'Brien

I'm afraid of time ... I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I'm afraid of the quick judgements or mistakes everybody makes. You can't fix them without time. I'm afraid of seeing snapshots, not movies. — Ann Brashares

I have been very lucky because I have had the opportunity to see what it's like to have little or no money and what it's like to have a lot of it. I'm lucky because people make such a big deal of it and, if I didn't experience both, I wouldn't be able to know how important it really is for me. I can't comment on what having a lot of money means to others, but I do know that for me, having a lot more money isn't a lot better than having enough to cover the basics. — Ray Dalio

It is after these rare calls that I experience the only moments of depression from which I ever suffer, and then I am angry at myself, a well-nourished person, for allowing even a single precious hour of life to be spoil: by anything so indifferent. That is the worst of being fed enough, and clothed enough, and warmed enough, and of having everything you can reasonably desire - on the least provocation you are made uncomfortable and unhappy by such abstract discomforts as being shut out from a nearer approach to your neighbour's soul; which is on the face of it foolish, the probability being that he hasn't got one. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Cesar is not a philosophical man. His life has been one long flight from reflection. At least he is clever enough not to expose the poverty of his general ideas; he never permits the conversation to move toward philosophical principles. Men of his type so dread all deliberation that they glory in the practice of the instantaneous decision. They think they are saving themselves from irresolution; in reality they are sparing themselves the contemplation of all the consequences of their acts. Moreover, in this way they can rejoice in the illusion of never having made a mistake; for act follows so swiftly on act that it is impossible to reconstruct the past and say that an alternative decision would have been better. They can pretend that every act was forced on them under emergency and that every decision was mothered by necessity — Thornton Wilder

Suffering is one of the greatest spiritual teachers of humanity. Even though none of us really ever welcomes it ... having had enough of it in your life, will cause you to surrender and control your thoughts. It will usually lead you through the doors of spiritual journey in your life. Once you go through these doors of enlightenment ... you will never be the same. — Timothy Pina

He made what apology he could and hurried home, overjoyed that the satisfaction of his curiosity had preserved their love intact, and that, having feigned for so long, when in Odette's company, a sort of indifference, he had not now, by a demonstration of jealousy, given her that proof of the excess of his own passion which, in a pair of lovers, fully and finally dispenses the recipient from the obligation to love the other enough. He never spoke to her of this misadventure, he cased even to think of it himself. But now and then his thoughts in their wandering course would come upon this memory where it lay unobserved, would startle it into life, thrust it more deeply down into his consciousness, and leave him aching with a sharp, far-rooted pain. — Marcel Proust

You know who does a lot of good deeds and doesn't have kids and totally understands what's important in life? George Clooney. Unlike me, he doesn't give a fuck what you think about the fact that he's not "selfless" enough to father a kid. He's not writing a book defending his position. He's having sex with a cocktail waitress and then saving Darfur. Both are noble positions. — Jen Kirkman

I'm an Atheist. I don't believe in God, Gods, Godlets or any sort of higher power beyond the universe itself, which seems quite high and powerful enough to me. I don't believe in life after death, channeled chat rooms with the dead, reincarnation, telekinesis or any miracles but the miracle of life and consciousness, which again strike me as miracles in nearly obscene abundance. I believe that the universe abides by the laws of physics, some of which are known, others of which will surely be discovered, but even if they aren't, that will simply be a result, as my colleague George Johnson put it, of our brains having evolved for life on this one little planet and thus being inevitably limited. I'm convinced that the world as we see it was shaped by the again genuinely miraculous, let's even say transcendent, hand of evolution through natural selection. — Natalie Angier

Margin is having the pace and space in your day to allow real life to happen. Too many of us run at a pace that is not only unhealthy physically but damaging relationally. We go-go-go, telling ourselves there are just not enough hours in the day, when we really need to be slowing down and enjoying the journey just as much as we anticipate enjoying the destination when we arrive. — Jill Savage

I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don't pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing? It's not like the sacrifice will result in improved circumstances; the thing holding me back isn't that I blow five bucks at Wendy's. It's that now that I have proven that I am a Poor Person that is all that I am or ever will be. It is not worth it to me to live a bleak life devoid of small pleasures so that one day I can make a single large purchase. I will never have large pleasures to hold on to. There's a certain pull to live what bits of life you can while there's money in your pocket, because no matter how responsible you are you will be broke in three days anyway. When you never have enough money it ceases to have meaning. I imagine having a lot of it is the same thing. — Linda Tirado

A flash of resentment. It's hard enough being alive, trying to survive in the world and find your place in it, to do the things you need to do to get by, without wondering if the thing you just did, whatever it was, was worth someone having ... if not died, then having given up her life. It wasn't fair. "Life's not fair," said Ginnie, as if I had spoken aloud. — Neil Gaiman

This isn't about validation, this is about having someone's hand to hold when I'm walking through the creepy forest. I really thought of that tonight. Life is sometimes one great big creepy forest, and as much as I love you, we are both getting to the age where each other just isn't enough. — Davee Jones

Really, life is complicated enough without having a bunch of Senators deciding what we should do in the privacy of our own homes. — Barbara Boxer

Sionnach smiled in the way of the falsely modest and added, "Forgive me for not standing, but I can't find the energy just yet."
the answering heat flare was enough to raise the temperature in the cave, enough to explain the fine sheen of sweat on Sionnach's body. It wasn't comfortable, but it was useful at hiding the truth. He waited as Keenan's gaze took in the candles, the glasses beside the bed, and the fact that Sionnach was seemingly naked. There were moments in every faery's life that were too perfect to have been planned, and Sionnach was having just such a moment as he reclined in Rika's bed grinning while the faery who had caused such upheaval in Rika's life - and in their desert - very obviously misinterpreted the clues. — Melissa Marr

I, too, had set out to be remembered. I had wanted to create something permanent in my life- some proof that everything in its way mattered, that working hard mattered, that feeling things mattered, that even sadness and loss mattered, because it was all part of something that would live on. But I had also come to recognize that not everything needs to be durable. the lesson we have yet to learn from dogs, that could sustain us, is that having no apprehension of the past or future is not limiting but liberating. Rin Tin Tin did not need to be remembered in order to be happy; for him, it was always enough to have that instant when the sun was soft, when the ball was tossed and caught, when the beloved rubber doll was squeaked. Such a moment was complete in itself, pure and sufficient. — Susan Orlean

It's great hearing stories of my mum growing up in Brooklyn, then moving to Florida, having me and growing up with this eccentric, fun family. Although I don't eat a lot of Italian things, because I'm vegan. I was raised on meat and cheese, so I've had enough for anyone's normal life span. — Ariana Grande

In fact no one recognizes the happiest moment of their lives as they are living it. It may well be that, in a moment of joy, one might sincerely believe that they are living that golden instant "now," even having lived such a moment before, but whatever they say, in one part of their hearts they still believe in the certainty of a happier moment to come. Because how could anyone, and particularly anyone who is still young, carry on with the belief that everything could only get worse: If a person is happy enough to think he has reached the happiest moment of his life, he will be hopeful enough to believe his future will be just as beautiful, more so. — Orhan Pamuk