Quotes & Sayings About How Life Is Too Short

Life is too short to waste time waiting for other people's approval on how you live it. — Steve Maraboli

You can't imagine fame. You can only ever see it from an outsider and comment on it with the rueful wisdom of a non participant. When it happens to you, it doesn't matter what age or how, it is a very steep learning curve. The imprtanot thing to realize in all of it is that life is short, to protect the ones you love, and not expose yourself to too much abuse or narcissistic reflection gazing and move on. If fame affords me the type of ability to do the kind of work I'm being offered, who am I to complain about the downsides. It's all relative. And this are obviously very high class problems. The way privacy becomes an every shrinking island is inevitable but also manageable and it doesn't necessary have to get that way ... — Benedict Cumberbatch

Life is too short to hold in a single tear, a single laugh, a single breath. Biology is how we exist. Emotions are how we live. — Jewel E. Ann

My life is fair game for anybody. I spent an unhappy, penniless childhood in Brooklyn. I had to slug my way up in a town called Hollywood where people love to trample you to death. I don't relax because I don't know how. I don't want to know how. Life is too short to relax. — Susan Hayward

Whether I will live a long time or a short time, I'm alive now, at this moment. What I want is to know that there are other things to hope for besides length of life. What I want to know is that it isn't necessary to turn away from thoughts of suffering or death but neither is it necessary to give these thoughts too much time and space. What I want is to be intimate with the knowledge that life is temporary. And then, in the light (or shadow) of that knowledge, to know how to live. How to live now. — Irvin D. Yalom

Read poetry every day of your life. Poetry is good because it flexes muscles you don't use often enough. Poetry expands the senses and keeps them in prime condition. It keeps you aware of your nose, your eye, your ear, your tongue, your hand.
And, above all, poetry is compacted metaphor or simile. Such metaphors, like Japanese paper flowers, may expand outward into gigantic shapes. Ideas lie everywhere through the poetry books, yet how rarely have I heard short story teachers recommending them for browsing.
What poetry? Any poetry that makes your hair stand up along your arms. Don't force yourself too hard. Take it easy. Over the years you may catch up to, move even with, and pass T. S. Eliot on your way to other pastures. You say you don't understand Dylan Thomas? Yes, but your ganglion does, and your secret wits, and all your unborn children. Read him, as you can read a horse with your eyes, set free and charging over an endless green meadow on a windy day. — Ray Bradbury

Life is hard. It is not too short, it is too long. But you have to learn how to live; you have to have a sense of humour. — Carolina Herrera

Sometimes things happen in our lives that wake us up to the truth, about how short life is. It's then we wonder why we spent so much wasted time looking too far into the future. — Ron Baratono

Life is too damn short and [screwed] up to go through it silently loving someone and never telling them how you feel. [Screw] the consequences, [screw] the implications of the actions, to hell with it all ... whatever happens as a result is better than the nothingness that is inevitable with silence. — Janis Joplin

If I'm wrong, and you find yourself in an organization where sucking up is in fact a good way to get ahead, look for a new job. It's not a quality organization after all, no matter how glittering its public reputation may be. Life is too short to work there. — Charles Murray

Because you can make decisions for yourself even if they're wrong. Mistakes can be corrected. Life is too short to have everyone else tell you how to live. Make a few mistakes, and learn from them. At least they'll be real, and you'll be living, not just existing. — Carolyn Brown

I recall those beautiful summer mornings with my parents by the sandy beach of Belek. My father used to teach me how to ride waves. I remember him constantly emphasizing the fact that no wave, no matter how big it is should stir enough fear inside me to keep me glued to the shore. He used to repeat those words while glancing at my mother with a smile that could set the whole sea on fire. My mother, sitting on the beach, too afraid of the deep blue sea, contented herself with building sand castles, ones my father would step on trying to drag her hopelessly into water.
Step on your sand castle and dive deep. Dive deep into the unknown. Life is damn too short for building sand castles. — Malak El Halabi

Life is too damn short to not tell someone how you feel. Don't let someone because you're afraid or you'll lose them forever. — Benjamin Bayani

WHEN RELIGION CANNOT KNEEL Aristotle said democracy would only work in a culture already committed to virtue. There is no communal myth left that teaches us the essentially tragic nature of human life; there is no vision that proclaims the primacy of the common good; there is no transcendent image that makes human virtue a divine reflection. There is No One to reflect and No One to love and serve. I do not want to belong to a religion that cannot kneel. I do not want to live in a world where there is No One to adore. It is a lonely and labored world if I am its only center. My life is too short to discover wisdom on my own, to identify and properly name my own self-importance, to learn how to love if I have to start at zero. — Richard Rohr

Life is too short to hold grudges, plan vengeance, and be angry for too long. And people say things like that all the time, but words like that only take on their meaning when you experience someone close to you passing away. There are truly not enough minutes, hours, days, months, years, to spend any amount of time on being and doing anything other than going into the direction of your happiness. Acceptance is better than correction and joy is better than revenge. Innocent laughter is better than anger. — C. JoyBell C.

If you love somebody then tell them how you feel dont be scared of their reaction or rejection life is too short. you should take a chance and if things dont work out as you plan dont worry cuz life moves on and true love will be waiting for you again. — Atul Purohit

If you study Japanese art you see a man who is undoubtedly wise, philosophic and intelligent, who spends his time how? In studying the distance between the earth and the moon? No. In studying the policy of Bismarck? No. He studies a single blade of grass. But this blade of grass leads him to draw every plant and then the seasons, the wide aspects of the countryside, then animals, then the human figure. So he passes his life, and life is too short to do the whole. — Vincent Van Gogh

Too many people believe that everything must be pleasurable in life, which makes them constantly search for distractions and short-circuits the learning process. The pain is a kind of challenge your mind presents - will you learn how to focus and move past the boredom, or like a child will you succumb to the need for immediate pleasure and distraction? Much as with physical exercise, you can even get a kind of perverse pleasure out of this pain, knowing the benefits it will bring you. In any event, you must meet any boredom head-on and not try to avoid or repress it. Throughout your life you will encounter tedious situations, and you must cultivate the ability to handle them with discipline. — Robert Greene

In short, you can't have the truths without the Truth. Either Jesus is telling the truth about Himself, or He is lying about everything else too. None of this business about Jesus being merely an enlightened Buddha of sorts, offering wiser-than-average insights into how to live a healthy, balanced life. None of this quoting Jesus in order to make your own point about justice or fairness or peace on earth when you don't really believe what Jesus said about Himself. — Sarah Arthur

Life is entirely too short for fear to be a factor in how we live it. — Ann Christy

You speak of sacrifice, but it is not my sacrifice I offer. It is yours I ask of you," he went on. "I can offer you my life, but it is a short life; I can offer you my heart, though I have no idea how many more beats it shall sustain. But I love you enough to hope that you wil not care that I am being selfish in trying to make the rest of my life - whatever length - happy, by spending it with you. I want to be married to you, Tessa. I want it more than I have ever wanted anything else in my life." He looked up at her through the veil of silvery hair that fell over his eyes. "That is," he said shyly, "if you love me, too. — Cassandra Clare

It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art? — Ignacy Jan Paderewski

Nothing - not prestige, power or pride - is worth sacrificing the things that you truly want, the things that you truly love. Don't be afraid to take time and smell the roses. Don't hesitate in seeking out those things you hold dear. Seeking them out and holding on to them. And don't ever cease standing up for what you believe in, and fighting for those things that you want. Life is too short. Do what makes you happy, regardless of how others might feel. — Brenda Jackson

Oh, captive, bound, and double-chained!" cried the phantom, "who does not understand the toll of a lifetime of incessant labor by man, an immortal creature! For this flesh must pass into eternity before the good of which it is capable can be understood. How tragic not to know that a Christian spirit working kindly in its little realm of influence, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for the vast opportunities it has to be useful. Not to know that no regret can ever make amends for one missed life's opportunity! Yet such was I! Oh, such was I! — Charles Dickens

Don't let your problems push you. Let your dreams lead you! The lens you choose to view the world determines how you feel about yourself and everything around you. Optimism attracts goodness into our lives and gives us strength to overcome obstacles. You can't live a positive life with a negative attitude. Heaven on earth is not a place we must find, it is a choice we must make. Let every day be a love you can feel. Let every day be a dream you can touch. Let every day be a reason to live. Life is too short to be anything but positive! — Anonymous

I think life is too short not to say how you feel. You don't have to say it back, but I wanted you to know tonight, right now, how I feel about you. I love you, Cheyenne Jensen. I love you with all of my heart. — Nikki Lynn Barrett

Life is too short to plan it, and worse than all, no idea of how short — M.F. Moonzajer

Life is too short not to say how you feel to the people you love. — Kristina McMorris

Life is too short to listen to a MAN to tell me how to live it. — Sarah Strohmeyer

I have to learn how to say no a lot. Life is too short for anything else. — Solange Knowles

We don't get to choose how we're born, Miranda, and very rarely how we die; but we get to choose how we live. Life is too short to spend in dread and guilt. — Dianne Sylvan

I'm pretty goofy and I make a lot of dumb jokes - life is too short to be serious, so I guess that's how I flirt. To be honest, I think I'm too shy and reserved to be a proper old fashioned flirt. — Cory Monteith

There are a lot of public figures who, before they take a stand on a issue, they talk about it with their publicist and they figure out how it's going to affect record sales. Life is really too short to worry about that sort of thing. — Moby

Too bad!' the feisty poet responded.
'Yes, too bad!' the stranger agreed, his eye flashing, and went on: 'But here is a question that is troubling me: if there is no God, then, one may ask, who governs human life and, in general, the whole order on earth?'
'Man governs it himself' Homeless angrily hastened to reply to this admittedly none-too-clear question.
'Pardon me,' the stranger responded gently, 'but in order to govern, one needs, after all, to have a precise plan for a certain, at least somewhat decent, length of time. Allow me to ask you, then, how can man govern, if he is not only deprived of the opportunity of making a plan for at least some ridiculously short period -well, say, a thousand years- but cannot even vouch for his own tomorrow? — Mikhail Bulgakov