Length Of Life Quotes & Sayings

We are not proponents of long life. We are proponents of joyful life, and when you find yourself in joy, the longevity usually follows. We do not count the success of a life by its length; we count it by its joy. - ABRAHAM — Christiane Northrup

Life everywhere is in vast and endless variety. So it is with life eternal, that gift of God, constituting, in its length and breadth and height and depth, the reward of the righteous. The penitent, dying thief is not going into heaven like the triumphant, dying Paul. — Herrick Johnson

One cannot build life from refrigerators, politics, credit statements and crossword puzzles. That is impossible. Nor can one exist for any length of time without poetry, without color, without love. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

The great age of the earth will appear greater to man when he understands the origin of living organisms and the reasons for the gradual development and improvement of their organization. This antiquity will appear even greater when he realizes the length of time and the particular conditions which were necessary to bring all the living species into existence. This is particularly true since man is the latest result and present climax of this development, the ultimate limit of which, if it is ever reached, cannot be known. — Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

The shadow of a cornstalk on the ground is lovely, but it is no denial of its loveliness to see as one looks on it that it is telling the time of day, the position of the earth and the sun, the size of our planet and its shape, and perhaps even the length of its life and ours among the stars. — Arthur Miller

Measurement of life should be proportioned rather to the intensity of the experience than to its actual length. — Thomas Hardy

And eventually in that house where everyone, even the fugitive hiding in the cellar from his faceless enemies, finds his tongue cleaving dryly to the roof of his mouth, where even the sons of the house have to go into the cornfield with the rickshaw boy to joke about whores and compare the length of their members and whisper furtively about dreams of being film directors (Hanif's dream, which horrifies his dream-invading mother, who believes the cinema to be an extension of the brothel business), where life has been transmuted into grotesquery by the irruption into it of history, eventually in the murkiness of the underworld he cannot help himself, he finds his eyes straying upwards, up along delicate sandals and baggy pajamas and past loose kurta and above the dupatta, the cloth of modesty, until eyes meet eyes, and then — Salman Rushdie

Your soul rages. You cannot control your spirits within your body, so you need this to force others to your will." The king stepped boldly toward Meklos, holding the dragonstaff in front of him, the Eye shining even in the dim light of the temple chamber. "You need this
this crutch to compel the great spirits, and they rebel against you, Meklos! They are fighting you and calling the gods' displeasure against you. Your life is diminished by the length of this rod! — Tracy Hickman

Loving oneself isn't hard, when you understand who and what 'yourself' is. It has nothing to do with the shape of your face, the size of your eyes, the length of your hair or the quality of your clothes. It's so beyond all of those things and it's what gives life to everything about you. Your own self is such a treasure. — Phylicia Rashad

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

The length of your education is less important than its breadth, and the length of your life is less important than its depth. — Marilyn Vos Savant

I'm very wary of fawning too much over heroes. There's an old adage that heroes are best kept at arm's length, and in a few instances in my life, that's been true. — W. Earl Brown

Already, I seemed to feel my intellect deteriorating, my heart petrifying, my soul contracting; and I
trembled lest my very moral perceptions should become deadened, my distinctions of right and wrong confounded, and all my better faculties be sunk, at last, beneath the baneful influence of such a mode of life. The gross vapors of earth were gathering around me, and closing in upon my inward heaven; and thus it was that Mr. Weston rose at length upon me, appearing like the morning star in my horizon, to save me from the fear of utter darkness; and I rejoiced that I now had a subject for contemplation that was above me, not beneath. — Anne Bronte

A willing soul will keenly go the length, breadth and depth to fulfill the dream. — Lailah Gifty Akita

For so long, she'd taken her memories of Patty - the memories they'd created together - and held them outside of herself, protecting herself from the pain of carrying them deep within. It was as if she carried all the memories in her jars. But if doing so, it was as if she'd also kept everyone else - those still in her life - at arm's length too. — Tricia Goyer

He that was healed wist not who it was. John 5:13 Years are short to the happy and healthy; but thirty-eight years of disease must have dragged a very weary length along the life of the poor impotent man. When Jesus, therefore, healed him by a word, while he lay at the pool of Bethesda, he was delightfully sensible of a change. Even so the sinner who has for weeks and months been paralysed with despair, and has wearily sighed for salvation, is very conscious of the change when the Lord Jesus speaks the word of power, and gives joy and peace in believing. The evil removed is too great to be removed without our discerning it; the life imparted is too remarkable to be possessed and remain inoperative; and the change wrought is too marvellous not to be perceived. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression. The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment. The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment. — Herbert Hoover

I acknowledge that such a debt [of service to my fellow-citizens] exists, that a tour of duty in whatever line he can be most useful to his country, is due from every individual. It is not easy perhaps to say of what length exactly that tour should be, but we may safely say of what length it should not be. Not of our whole life, for instance, for that would be to be born a slave-not even of a very large portion of it. — Thomas Jefferson

While advances in scientific research have led to some new and exciting treatments that have enlarged and enhanced the quality and length of human life, we must not lose sight as to what we are trying to accomplish. — Nathan Deal

By this point Viviane Lavender had loved Jack Griffith for twelve years, which was far more than half of her life. If she thought of her love as a commodity and were to, say, eat it, it would fill 4,745 cherry pies. If she were to preserve it, she would need 23,725 glass jars and labels and a basement spanning the length of Pinnacle Lane.
If she were to drink it, she'd drown. — Leslye Walton

There are many ways to tell if someone is a bit thick. You can sit them in a room and ask them to push various bits of plastic into a wooden box. Or you can ask them to describe a cloud. Or you can carefully measure the distance between their eyes, the height of their forehead or the length of their arm. — Jeremy Clarkson

Life has its pains and evils-its bitter disappointments; but like a good novel and in healthful length of days, there is infinite joy in seeing the World, the most interesting of continued stories, unfold ... — W.E.B. Du Bois

I have sat before the dense coal fire and watched it all aglow, full of its tormented flaming life; and I have seen it wane at last, down, down, to dumbest dust. Old man of oceans! of all this fiery life of thine, what will at length remain but one little heap of ashes! — Herman Melville

And David and Goliath I have done before, but this time there is a difference. David holds the head at arm's length and looks disgusted. And onto Goliath's severed head, I put my own features. The head hangs in darkness so that the black hair and beard framing the face blend off into the shadows, and there are four thin ropes of dark blood trailing down into space from the neck. And in one eye of the freshly severed head, there is still the faint glimmer of life.
That's me and that's the last painting I ever did.
Spectator, viewer, audience, however you care to call yourself; I address you here, with this, my final picture.
Cast a cold eye on it all, and on my work. I am still alive. — Christopher Peachment

School divides life into two segments, which are increasingly of comparable length. As much as anything else, schooling implies custodial care for persons who are declared undesirable elsewhere by the simple fact that a school has been built to serve them. — Ivan Illich

This fundamental subject of Natural Selection will be treated at some length in the fourth chapter; and we shall then see how Natural Selection almost inevitably causes much Extinction of the less improved forms of life and induces what I have called Divergence of Character. In the next chapter I shall discuss the complex and little known laws of variation and of correlation of growth. In the four succeeding chapters, the most apparent and gravest difficulties on the theory will be given: namely, first, the difficulties of transitions, or in understanding how a simple being or a simple organ can be changed and perfected into a highly developed being or elaborately constructed organ; secondly the subject of Instinct, or the mental powers of animals, thirdly, Hybridism, or the infertility of species and the fertility of varieties when intercrossed; and fourthly, the imperfection of the Geological Record. In — Charles Darwin

In the scale of life there is a gradual decline in physical variability, as the organism has gathered into itself resources for meeting the exigencies of changing external conditions; and that while in the mindless and motionless plant these resources are at a minimum, their maximum is reached in the mind of man, which, at length, rises to a level with the total order and powers of nature, and in its scientific comprehension of nature is a summary, an epitome of the world. — Chauncey Wright

I worry for you. If you love everyone, you'll end up having hurt feelings most of the time. I suppose, relative to the length of your life, you feel as if you've known me a rather long time. Your perspective of time is really very warped, Maya. But I am old and soon, you'll forget you even knew me. — Gabrielle Zevin

It's not the length of man's life that establishes his importance and influence, in fact, the length of a man's life has very little to do with it's impact. — John F. MacArthur Jr.

You are only as invincible as your smallest weakness, and those are tiny indeed - the length of a sleeping baby's eyelash, the span of a child's hand. Life turns on a dime, and - it turns out - so does one's conscience. — Jodi Picoult

Had I been too selfish? I had never known my mother, but I knew my life as it had been without her: the ship, the sea, the myths, the maps . . . and, yes, Kashmir. The pain I felt at the thought of losing him - the same pain that kept me at arm's length - gave me a hint of my father's own struggle. — Heidi Heilig

Length of years is no proper test of length of life. A man's life is to be measured by what he does in it and what he feels in it. — Samuel Smiles

It is to be prayed that the mind be sound in a sound body.
Ask for a brave soul that lacks the fear of death,
which places the length of life last among nature's blessings,
which is able to bear whatever kind of sufferings,
does not know anger, lusts for nothing and believes
the hardships and savage labors of Hercules better than
the satisfactions, feasts, and feather bed of an Eastern king.
I will reveal what you are able to give yourself;
For certain, the one footpath of a tranquil life lies through virtue. — Juvenal

The name of the Lord (says the Scripture) is a strong tower; thither the righteous flee and are safe (Proverbs 18:10). Let us secure His favor and He will lead us through the journey of this life and at length receive us to a better. — Samuel Adams

You can't control the length of your life. You can control the depth — Billy Graham

I've done things that I wouldn't ordinarily seem capable of doing. And I've proven myself in situations where there's life and death at stake. And so, I can live with myself knowing that it's not a matter of guts or anything like that. It's a matter of willingness to go the length, to transcend yourself. — Jack Kirby

If you watch animals objectively for any length of time, you're driven to the conclusion that their main aim in life is to pass on their genes to the next generation. — David Attenborough

If you want to write something of length, however modern and radical, you must live the life of an elderly gentleman of the 1950s. — Arthur Smith

He drew the dagger and laid it on the table between them; a length of dragonbone and Valyrian steel, as sharp as the difference between right and wrong, between true and false, between life and death. — George R R Martin

[...] we all die, and the length of our life has been set before the earth was formed. Sometimes God takes the little ones to keep the eyes of the rest of the family on Heaven. They will never forget where this road leads if one of their own has already come to the end of it. — Susan Claire Potts

I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors," Ringil recited for him, hollowly. "I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave. — Richard K. Morgan

I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine! — Helen Keller

The quality of a life is defined not by its length, but by its depth, its actions and achievements. It is defined by our ability to love. — Ann Patchett

It is not the length of life, but the depth. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom
I who have decided to love mankind
instead of men,

to love life's contradictions,
impossibilities.

I who have grown into a fine old
philosopher, when suddenly

the telephone rings, his voice
prickling the length of my neck.

Or he teases me, calls me
sweet little goose
and my heart careens.

What we love in another
is the life in that person;
that is why we must never
seek to possess him.

sweet little goose — Janice Kulyk Keefer

No one could control the length of their life, but they could control how they lived it. — Lindy Zart

The advantage of living is not measured by length, but by use; some men have lived long, and lived little; attend to it while you are in it. It lies in your will, not in the number of years, for you to have lived enough. — Michel De Montaigne

Meditation Take the world, but give me Jesus, Sweetest comfort of my soul; With my Savior watching o'er me, I can sing though billows roll. Take the world, but give me Jesus, Let me view his constant smile; Then throughout my pilgrim journey Light will cheer me all the while. Take the world, but give me Jesus, All its joys are but a name; But his love abideth ever, Through eternal years the same. Take the world, but give me Jesus. In his cross my trust shall be, Till, with clearer, brighter vision, Face to face my Lord I see. Refrain Oh, the height and depth of mercy! Oh, the length and breadth of love! Oh, the fullness of redemption, Pledge of endless life above! "TAKE THE WORLD, BUT GIVE ME JESUS," FANNY CROSBY (1879) — John Dunlop

Life by its mere appalling length is a feat of endurance for which you haven't the strength. — Annie Dillard

I will go," he said. "I will go to Troy."
The rosy gleam of his lip, the fevered green of his eyes. There was not a line anywhere on his face, nothing creased or graying; all crisp. He was spring, golden and bright. Envious death would drink his blood, and grow young again.
He was watching me, his eyes as deep as earth.
"Will you come with me?" he asked.
The never-ending ache of love and sorrow. Perhaps in some other life I could have refused, could have torn my hair and screamed, and made him face his choice alone. But not in this one. He would sail to Troy and I would follow, even into death. "Yes," I whipsered. "Yes."
Relief broke in his face, and he reached for me. I let him hold me, let him press us length to length so close that nothing might fit between us.
Tears came, and fell. Above us, the constellations spun and the moon paced her weary course. We lay stricken and sleepless as the hours passed. — Madeline Miller

Country music was a part of my life. Now it isn't. We had a good relationship, really, but we wanted each other at arm's length. The people in Nashville didn't want to be responsible for my looks or my actions. But they sure did like the listeners I brought. — K.d. Lang

Somehow, irresistibly, the prime thing was: nothing mattered. Life in the end seemed a prank of such size you could only stand off at this end of the corridor to note its meaningless length and it's quite unnecessary height, a mountain built to such ridiculous immensities you were dwarfed in its shadow and mocking of its pomp. — Ray Bradbury

Those things of real worth in life are worth going to any length in love and respect to safeguard. — Julia Hill

It may be for 20 or 30 years no one has yet been able to decide the length of the life of the black bass. — Jay Cooke

You can think of your body in two ways: 1. As mechanical, like an automobile worth only so many miles or 2. As a living breathing energetic vessel manifested from spirit. Either way will greatly effect the length and quality of your life. Choose wisely. — Gary Hopkins

Declared that he had been directed to make a pilgrimage. His father scoffed - "Gregory has turned pilgrim out of laziness," said Efim - but Gregory set out and walked two thousand miles to the monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. At the end of two years, when Gregory returned, he carried an aura of mystery and holiness. He began to pray at length, to bless other peasants, to kneel at their beds in supplication when they were sick. He gave up his drinking and curbed his public lunges at women. It began to be said that Gregory Rasputin, the profligate, was a man who was close to God. The village priest, alarmed at this sudden blossoming of a vigorous young Holy Man within his sphere, suggested heresy and threatened an investigation. Unwilling to argue and bored by life in Pokrovskoe, Rasputin left the village and began once again to wander. — Robert K. Massie

You sure changed your tune mighty fast." Kane's hands were busily tugging his dress shirt from his slacks. His knuckles accidently brushed against Avery's throbbing hard-on causing him to screw his eyes shut as an all-consuming need coursed through his veins. He couldn't help but let out a groan as those same knuckles skated up and down his length again; this time, no doubt, with deliberate intent. Kane knew exactly how to push his buttons and bring his body to life. In a matter of seconds, his husband managed to get him out of his shirt, undo his pants, had his slacks pushed partway down his thighs, and had a hand down the front of his silk boxers. — Kindle Alexander

The builder has ginger curly hair on top of his head, and a thick moustache. He has the look of a McDonald's manager from 1970 who spends his evenings sitting in the smoky back row of theatres in Soho. He's tall and muscular with hands the size of shopping baskets and, on the one occasion I did briefly meet him, I stared into his eyes and was shocked by their darkness. His nose is broken in three places and is the size and shape of a chicken nugget. A deep scar runs the length of his cheek hinting at a violent past.
Old tattoos fade on his arms.
The builder may have killed another human being at some point in his life. — Craig Stone

Tell me the size of a mammal and I can tell you, to about 85 per cent level, pretty much everything about its physiology and life history, such as how long it is going to live, how many offspring it will have, the length of its aorta, how long it will take to mature, what is the pulse rate in the ninth branch of its circuitry. — Geoffrey West

This is how you treat your mother?" she cried. And if I could of I would have broken the entire length of my life across her face, but instead I screamed back, "And this is how you treat your daughter? — Junot Diaz

Amedeo loved thick tomes, and in tackling them he felt the physical pleasure of undertaking a great task. Weighing them in his hand, thick, closely printed, squat, he would consider with some apprehension the number of pages, the length of the chapters, then venture into them, a bit reluctant at the beginning, without any desire to perform the initial chore of remembering the names, catching the drift of the story; then he would entrust himself to it, running along the lines, crossing the grid of the uniform page, and beyond the leaden print the flame and fire of battle appeared, the cannonball that, whistling through the sky, fell at the feet of Prince Andrei, and the shop filled with engravings and statues where Frederic Moreau, his heart in his mouth, was to meet the Arnoux family. Beyond the surface of the page you entered a world where life was more alive than here on this side ... — Italo Calvino

For while directly we say that it [the length of human life] is ages long, we are reminded that it is briefer than the fall of a rose leaf to the ground. — Virginia Woolf

That perhaps is your task
to find the relation between things that seem incompatible yet have a mysterious affinity, to absorb every experience that comes your way fearlessly and saturate it completely so that your poem is a whole, not a fragment; to re-think human life into poetry and so give us tragedy again and comedy by means of characters not spun out at length in the novelist's way, but condensed and synthesized in the poet's way
that is what we look to you to do now. — Virginia Woolf

The bed was warm and ordinary and perfect, and it had been such a long, long day. Probably the longest day of my life. I felt like I had proof that not all days are the same length, not all time has the same weight. Proof that there are worlds and worlds and worlds on top of worlds, — Carol Rifka Brunt

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

As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women of Prince Bolkonsky's household felt that their life had not been real till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing, immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness full of significance. — Leo Tolstoy

Thousands and thousands of books are thrown on the market every year
presenting some new variant of the personal romance, some tale of the vacillations
of the melancholic or the career of the ambitious. The heroine of Proust requires
several finely-wrought pages in order to feel that she does not feel anything. It
would seem that one might, at least with equal justice, demand attention to a
series of collective historic dramas which lifted hundreds of millions of human
beings out of nonexistence, transforming the character of nations and intruding
forever into the life of all mankind. — Leon Trotsky

He sat there among them, listened to the buzz of their conversation. He was captivated by them. In that racket every voice touched a key in his soul. He didn't understand life. He had no conception of why he had been born into the world. As he saw it, anyone to whose lot fell this adventure, the purpose of which was unknown but the end of which was annihilation, that person was absolved from all responsibility and had the right to do as he pleased - for example, to lie full length in the street and begin to moan without any reason - without deserving the slightest censure. But precisely because he considered his life as a whole an incomprehensible thing, he understood its little details individually - every person without exception, every elevated and lowly point of view, every concept - and those he assimilated at once. — Dezso Kosztolanyi

The short span of life forbids us to spin out hope to any length. Soon will night be upon you, and the fabled Shades, and the shadowy Plutonian home. — Horace

And think what worrying does: has anyone ever added a single hour to the length of his life by worrying about it? — Philip Pullman

An apostle does not just set up an 'empire of churches' over which he reigns and from which he receives glory and honor. Instead, the charge of all the local churches that God gives him becomes a gut-wrenching, intensely emotional, heartfelt, passionate ministry of life to precious souls! It is an awesome responsibility. It is not an arms-length transaction. The apostle must feel the very heart-beat, the pulse of the church, and be in touch with the lives of its people. — David Cannistraci

But I had no mind for these smooth things; instead, fear worked like yeast in my thoughts, and the fermentation brought to the surface, in great gobs of scum, the images of disaster; a loaded gun held carelessly at a stile, a horse rearing and rolling over, a shaded pool with a submerged stake, an elm bough falling suddenly on a still morning, a car at a blind corner; all the catalogue of threats to civilized life rose and haunted me; I even pictured a homicidal maniac mouthing in the shadows, swinging a length of lead pipe. — Evelyn Waugh

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I'd make all the same mistakes - only sooner. — Tallulah Bankhead

But the whole vital process of the earth takes place so gradually and in periods of time which are so immense compared with the length of our life, that these changes are not observed, and before their course can be recorded from beginning to end whole nations perish and are destroyed. — Aristotle.

Everything wants to be remembered, chronicled, documented: everything - all of this and all the rest, because your life is neither a finite length that can be measured out to a certain point and served, nor is it only your own. — Alex Jeffers

Afterward, he would leave her, and he would go to sleep in his own home. "It's hard to understand," he would tell Lila whenever she would press his gently on the subject, "but with us Arabs, a man can come and go, and his wife will not say a word. She'll notice the length of his absences, but she won't press him or ask for explanations. For his part, so long as he acts modestly and doesn't show off his lover in plain view, then he will not bring shame on his family. — Anat Talshir

Why do you hunger for length of days? The point of life is to follow reason and the divine spirit and to accept whatever nature sends you. To live in this way is not to fear death, but to hold it in contempt. Death is only a thing of terror for those unable to live in the present. Pass on your way, then, with a smiling face, under the smile of him who bids you go — Marcus Aurelius

That that life which any the longest liver, or the shortest liver parts with, is for length and duration the very same, for that only which is present, is that, which either of them can lose, as being that only which they have; for that which he hath not, no man can truly be said to lose. — Marcus Aurelius

Furi felt Syn tensing up. He stopped pressing forward and Syn grabbed at his leg, urging him to continue. Furi grabbed Syn's hand off his leg and intertwined their fingers. "Relax. I refuse to hurt you. Breathe, slow and even." Furi rocked the length he already had in Syn's body slowly back and forth. "So fuckin' tight." Furi could feel the rise and fall of Syn's chest as he tried to breathe through the intrusion. "Mmmm. Burns," Syn hissed. "Trust me baby. It's gonna get real good." "I trust you," Syn whispered. Furi's heart soared at those words. Damn he wanted this man to be his, more than anything in the world. Syn was exactly what he was missing in his life. Although he never imagined falling for a cop, he wouldn't change one thing about his newly gay, over-protective Sergeant. "Good, — A.E. Via

I have learned something in the length of time that I have been here. This is temporary. Everything changes, whether you will it to or not. What you feel now will eventually fade and you will cease to remember it, until you need the information that you learned from it to survive, then it will be there for you. — Amy A. Bartol

What was a zero anyway? A zero signified nothing, all it did was tell you nothing about nothing. Still, wasn't zero also something meaningful, a number in and of itself? In jianpu notation, zero indicated a caesura, a pause or rest of indeterminate length. Did time that went uncounted, unrecorded, still qualify as time? If zero was both everything and nothing, did an empty life have exactly the same weight as a full life? Was zero like the desert, both finite and infinite? — Madeleine Thien

Of Belief Human mathematics, so to speak, like the length of life, are subject to the doctrine of chances. — William Godwin

My take on the indigent is that some are there because of temporary setbacks, some by default, and some for lack of an alternative. Some are needy, some are off their meds, some have opted out, some have been ousted from facilities where they might be better served. Many are there for life and not always by personal choice. Alcoholic, addicted, aimless, illiterate, unmotivated, unskilled, or otherwise unable to prosper, they sink to the bottom, and if they're down for any length of time, they lose the capacity to climb back out of the hole into which they've fallen. If there's a remedy, I don't know what it is. From what I've seen of the problem, most solutions perpetuate the status quo. — Sue Grafton

The length of life takes the leading place among inquiries about events following birth. — Ptolemy

The terms of copyright last far too long: either the life of the author plus 70 years after death for a personal work or 95 years for a corporate work. That length doesn't encourage more authorship - it merely limits the speakers who could share powerful speeches, books, and films. — Marvin Ammori

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

What kind of life a dog ... acquires. I have sometimes tried to imagine by kneeling or lying full length on the ground and looking up. The world then becomes strangely incomplete; one sees little but legs. — E. V. Lucas

[It] is hardly possible to maintain seriously that the evil done by science is not altogether outweighed by the good. For example, if ten million lives were lost in every war, the net effect of science would still have been to increase the average length of life. — G.H. Hardy

Width of life is more important than length of life. — Avicenna

No man (sic) has learned to live until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Length without breadth is like a self-contained tributary having no outward flow to the ocean. Stagnant, still and stale, it lacks both life and freshness. In order to live creatively and meaningfully, our self-concern must be wedded to other concerns. — Martin Luther King Jr.

VI. If you were coming in the fall, I'd brush the summer by With half a smile and half a spurn, As housewives do a fly. If I could see you in a year, I'd wind the months in balls, And put them each in separate drawers, Until their time befalls. If only centuries delayed, I'd count them on my hand, Subtracting till my fingers dropped Into Van Diemen's land. If certain, when this life was out, That yours and mine should be, I'd toss it yonder like a rind, And taste eternity. But now, all ignorant of the length Of time's uncertain wing, It goads me, like the goblin bee, That will not state its sting. — Emily Dickinson

But finally, when they stopped to sleep, not bothering with a tent, just bedding down in a hollow they'd trampled in the tall grass with their boots, Arin spoke. He slid a hand under her tunic to touch her bare back, then stopped. "Is this all right?"
She wanted to explain that she hadn't thought she'd ever bear anyone's touch on her scarred back, that it should revolt him and revolt her. Yet his touch made her feel soft and new. "Yes."
He pushed the shirt up, seeking the lash marks, tracing their length. She let herself feel it, and shivered, and thought of nothing. But a tension grew. He was still, but for his hand.
Kestrel said, "What's wrong?"
"Your life would have been easier if you had married the Valorian prince."
She drew herself up so that she could face him. The scent of black powder clung to them both. His skin smelled like a blown-out candle. "But not better," she said. — Marie Rutkoski

There are films that are difficult. There are films that would actually affect your personal life because of the length of the production, how long [you're away] from the family. — Janusz Kaminski

First, the avid student must be aware that when the world was young it knew only seven things: water, life and death, salt, night, birds and the length of an hour. — Catherynne M Valente

Don't just live the length of your life - live the width of it as well. — Diane Ackerman

A man's life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle; and this, I say, is considerable, and not a little matter, whether we regard its pleasures or its pains. To draw a peevish conclusion to the contrary from our own superannuated desires or forgetful indifference is about as reasonable as to say, a man never was young because he has grown old, or never lived because he is now dead. The length or agreeableness of a journey does not depend on the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a building to be judged of from the last stone that is added to it. It is neither the first nor last hour of our existence, but the space that parts these two - not our exit nor our entrance upon the stage, but what we do, feel, and think while there - that we are to attend to in pronouncing sentence upon it. — William Hazlitt

Your prayer must be for a healthy mind in a sound body. Ask for a brave soul that has no fear of death, deems length of life the least of nature's gifts and is able to bear any kind of sufferings, knows neither wrath nor desire and believes the woes and hard labors of Hercules better than the loves and feasts and downy cushions of Sardanapalus. Reveal what you are able to give yourself; the only path to a life of tranquility lies through virtue. — Juvenal

Silence is a mirror. So faithful, and yet so unexpected, is the relection it can throw back at men that they will go to almost any length to avoid seeing themselves in it, and if ever its duplicating surface is temporarily wiped clean of modern life's ubiquitous hubbub, they will hasten to fog it over with such desperate personal noise devices as polite conversation, hummin, whistling, imaginary dialogue, schizophrenic babble, or, should it come to that, the clandestine cannonry of their own farting. Only in sleep is silence tolerated, and even there, most dreams have soundtracks. Since meditation is a deliberate descent into deep internal hush, a mute stare into the ultimate looking glass, it is regarded with suspicion by the nattering masses; with hostility by buisness interests (people sitting in silent serenity are seldom consuming goods); and with spite by a clergy whose windy authority it is seen to undermine and whose bombastic livelihood it is perceived to threaten. — Tom Robbins

Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life. — Thorstein Veblen

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. — J.D. Vance