Quotes & Sayings About Life And How Precious It Is

Everything Tolstoy wrote is precious, but I found this final statement of the truth about life as he had come to understand it particularly beautiful and moving. 'That is what I have wanted to say to you, my brothers. Before I died.' So he concludes, giving one a vivid sense of the old man, pen in hand and bent over the paper, his forehead wrinkled into a look of puzzlement very characteristic of him, as though he were perpetually wondering how others could fail to see what was to him so clear - that the law of love explained all mysteries and invalidated all other laws. — Malcolm Muggeridge

Anyway, that's the past, and what matters is the future. That's how life works, because it's short and precious and kind of doubtful. — Terry Brooks

I've got this tiny pang of regret when I think of how much I have probably missed out on in the last few years because I was too scared to take a risk, or too shy to speak up, or too worried to be bold. It is my one wild and precious life, after all. — Jessi Kirby

It is possible to experience an awakening in this life through realising just how precious each moment, each mental process, and each breath truly is. — Christy Turlington

It often takes suffering and lost in order to remind us of how precious life is. — Rob Bell

People quick to criticize others, but won't shine the light on themselves. You can't always judge a book by the outside appearance. You have to open it up and read in order to discover how precious it is. — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

If you want to be reborn,' it is written in the Tao Te Ching, 'let yourself die.' This is what I've been having trouble with, the fact that letting go can feel, at times, like a death. Someday, I know, I will lose everything. All the small deaths along the way are practice runs for the big ones, asking us to learn to be present, to grow in faith, to be grateful for what is. Life is finite and short. But this new task, figuring out how to let go of so much that has been precious
my children, my youth, my life as I know it
can feel like a bitter foretaste of other losses yet to come. — Katrina Kenison

I know how precious life is. You had no right to take Renaud's and you have no right to take your own now. Not over this. Too much death. It needs to stop. — Louise Penny

You didn't want to die. Most mortals don't, even if they find themselves in as desolate and soul-destroying a spot as you. Almost all of those who take their own lives wish at the last moment that they hadn't. They see at the end how much they've given up, how precious life is, even when it's treated them like dirt and crushed their dreams. Many think they've passed beyond hope, but they never really have, not until they pass beyond life itself. Alas, that knowledge comes too late for most would-be-suicides and they die with regret. Very few are offered the chance that you have been handed. — Darren Shan

Life is too precious to be unhappy.' Ursula wondered how many people across London were saying the same thing that night. Perhaps in less salubrious surroundings. And there would be others, of course, who would be saying the same words to cleave to what they already had, not to discard it on a whim. Suddenly — Kate Atkinson

Since death is an inevitablility and life an uncertainty, it all comes down to how we live the precious moments of our lives. When all is said and done, when you are ready to slip peacefully from this world into the next, how do you want to be remembered? — S. Cameron Roach

There is no need to put anything in front of us and run after it. We already have everything we are looking for, everything we want to become.

Be yourself. Life is precious as it is. All the elements for your happiness are already here. There is no need to run, strive, search, or struggle. Just be. Just being in the moment in this place is the deepest practice of meditation. Most people cannot believe that just walking as though you have nowhere to go is enough. They think that striving and competing are normal and necessary. Try practicing aimlessness for just five minutes,and you will see how happy you are during those five minutes. — Thich Nhat Hanh

It is difficult to look at any newborn baby and accept that he or she will necessarily encounter pain, challenges, disappointments, and hardships in life. Yet even the Savior needed to "go forth, suffering pains and afflictions ... of every kind" (Alma 7:11), the only difference being that Jesus, though tempted, did not sin (Hebrews 4:15; see also D&C 45:4). Even harder to comprehend, however, was how that precious Babe of Bethlehem, whose birth we celebrate each Christmas, would one day bear the weight not only of our sins but also all our infirmities. — Eric D. Huntsman

The one thing we can count on is that time will pass; day will become night, and the sunrise will bring with it a new tomorrow. What you are doing with these precious moments TODAY is creating your tomorrow. How you spend today is the greatest measure of who you are becoming, and the life you will be living. My question to you is: what will YOU do today to become the person you need to be to create the extraordinary life you deserve? — Hal Elrod

I was thinking about how fleeting and precious life is. Life is also arbitrary. For example, the choices that you make, the luck of being born into the right bed, to parents who support and help you and who love you. That doesn't always happen - and then, what happens when it doesn't? — Mary Ellen Mark

The more I grow, and the older I get, the more I am enjoying my life and know how precious it really is. — Yolanda Adams

How sad, however, if we're given
Our youth as something to betray,
And what if youth in turn is driven
To cheat on us, each hour, each day,
If our most precious aspirations,
Our freshest dreams, imaginations
In fast succession have decayed,
As leaves, in putrid autumn, fade.
It is too much to see before one
Nothing but dinners in a row,
Behind the seemly crowd to go,
Regarding life as mere decorum,
Having no common views to share,
Nor passions that one might declare. — Alexander Pushkin

Most of us live as if we have an infinite amount of time to do all the things we know we must do to live a full and rewarding life. And so we procrastinate and put the achievement of our dreams on hold while we tend to those daily emergencies that fill up our days. This is a certain recipe for a life of regret. Commit yourself to managing your time more effectively. Develop a keen sense of awareness about how important your time really is. Don't let people waste this most precious of commodities, and invest it only in those activities that truly count. — Robin S. Sharma

It is impossible to say how far the present value of money depends on its monetary employment and how far on its industrial employment. When the institution of money was first established, the industrial basis of the value of the precious metals may have preponderated; but with progress in the monetary organization of economic life the monetary employment has become more and more important. It is certain that nowadays the value of gold is largely supported by its monetary employment, and that its demonetization would affect its price in an overwhelming fashion. — Ludwig Von Mises

I am moving the rudder, shifting the course of my life. I have not thought of it this way before, but that is what I am doing. Taking my fate into my own hands, turning dreams into reality. And there is nothing more sacred or precious than that. To choose a direction: but how often do we miss the signposts? — Carol Drinkwater

First, I hope you see them. This is harder than it sounds; you have to learn to see hurt people, because they figure out how to act invisible. Kindness needs recipients. The whole world is filled with lonely and left-out and humiliated and sad kids, and seeing them is the first step. Because they are just as precious as you. If you can learn this during the Family Years, it will change your life, because you'll develop eyes for pain, which is exactly how Jesus walked around on this earth. If your mercy radar is strong now, God can do anything with you later. — Jen Hatmaker

Life is busy. There are daily concerns and obligations that have to be met, and to take time to think about how precious and special a human life is that you only get one, and that every wasted minute is lost. You can't get it back. — Rush Limbaugh

There are many diamonds in the world and if you lose your favorite, you can work hard, earn a lot of money and get another one to replace it. But the moments of your life aren't like that. Once they're gone, they'll never return. Each and every one is the most precious thing in existence. You can never meaningfully compare one moment with any other. You can never meaningfully compare your life with anyone else's. No matter how rich someone else may be, no matter how happy they look, no matter how enlightened they seem, they can never be you. Never, ever, ever. Only you can live your life. — Brad Warner

Our main problem is deciding how to spend this one and only precious life that we have been gifted...
Shall we spend it trying to look good - trying to create the illusion of being better, stronger or smarter than others, or of having power and control over people and life's circumstances?
Or shall we let go and humble ourselves - so we can truly taste life, enjoy it, share it, own it and fully appreciate it?
Its a very personal choice. Let's choose wisely! — Jose N. Harris

But I did not bring the Wild Boy to England simply so he could learn from us. I also brought him here so we could learn from him; so we can remember what it means to be young- to be innocent. You are still young now, but there will come a time when you will be grown-up, and it is easy, so easy, to forget how precious, how dear, life is. Then you forget to smile, to laugh, to cry, to dream. I hope knowing Peter will help you to hold on fiercely to your own innocence, to live joyfully, even in the midst of difficult times. — Christopher Daniel Mechling

Climbing Jacob's Ladder is a gutsy, glowing account of one man's encounter with a potent spiritual practice and how it transformed his life. This is a precious book - that rare combination of solid wisdom and good literature. — Larry Dossey

I whisper every word she needs to hear and I need to say. I tell her how beautiful she is. I tell her she amazes me. I make sure she knows she is the most precious person in the world to me. I make sure she understands what losing her means to me and how impossible it is to imagine my life without her. — Elizabeth Finn

The ethics of reverence for life makes no distinction between higher and lower, more precious and less precious lives. It has good reasons for this omission. For what are we doing, when we establish hard and fast gradations in value between living organisms, but judging them in relation to ourselves, by whether they seem to stand closer to us or farther from us. This is a wholly subjective standard. How can we know what importance other living organisms have in themselves and in terms of the universe? — Albert Schweitzer

People like it when you tell them things, in suitable portions, in a modest, intimate tone, and they think they know you, but they do not, they know _about_ you, for what they are let in on are facts, not feelings, not what your opinion is about anything at all, not how what has happened to you and how all the decisions you have made have turned you into who you are. What they do is they fill in with their own feelings and opinions and assumptions, and they compose a new life which has precious little to do with yours, and that lets you off the hook. No-one can touch you unless you yourself want them to. — Per Petterson

I wrote home to say how lovely everything was, and I used flourishing words and phrases, as if I were living life in a greeting card - the kind that has a satin ribbon on it, and quilted hearts and roses, and is expected to be so precious to the person receiving it that the manufacturer has placed a leaf of plastic on the front to protect it. — Jamaica Kincaid

If you could possibly understand how precious and powerful your experience of this one lifetime as yourself is, you wouldn't be trying to go anywhere else.
If you could know the perfection of time and space,
You would slow each moment down
To drain every possible nuance of juice and flavor from it.
When you leave this place, your body and mind and the earth which holds you, you will look back and only wish you had known the immense richness that you hurried through trying to find other better states of being.
But this is the best bite.
Heaven is here.
Nirvana is now.
As soon as you know that for sure
Your life will never be the same again.
In fact, in every way it seeks to get your attention. begs you to awaken to the magic right before your eyes. — Jacob Nordby

Life is a great gift and if we know how, we can make it great. But sometimes life takes us by surprise. We don't know for how long we're going to be here or the ones around us. So make time for the ones you love, those who are precious to you, those ones that you live for and those ones that make living worth while. OKAY? — John Green

Imagine in vibrant, wonderful detail your heart's desire - a reality only you can envision, an adventure only you can direct.
Then cradle your creation. Caress it. Mold it. Coddle it until it comes to life.
And when your precious treasure grows so grand as to steal your breath away, set it free for all the world to experience. For that is how you live your dreams. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The poet Mary Oliver did this in one of her poems, brazenly asking, "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" If you're afraid you've come to this question too late, you are wrong. Ask your Stargazer self. It will tell you what my fallen-noble friend Marianna told me in one of my darker hours: that the world is re-created in every instant of time, and this moment is always your life's beginning. No matter how many years have been stolen from you by your own ignorance, by cruel fate, or by the acts of others, you have a clean, broad slate before you. In this instant - this one now - you can begin steering by starlight, and if you do, the rest of creation will conspire to guide, teach, and help you. — Martha N. Beck

I think I'm very conscientious of how precious life is and how quickly life can be taken away from you, especially at times when it can be least expected. — Jeff Garcia

I thought back to that precious moment ... when he'd first pulled me into his arms. How strong I'd felt. That same feeling of strength had washed over me afresh when Twila and the other Splendora sisters prayed with me. And now, as I watched my parents embrace, I realized the truth: there really is strength in numbers. No matter what I faced in this life, I could handle it with the people I loved surrounding me. — Janice Thompson

It is sad to see how the most of men neglect their precious souls, turning their backs upon the glorious gospel, and little minding a crucified Jesus, when, in the meanwhile, their bodies are well provided for, their estates much regarded, and the things of this present life are highly prized, as if the darling was of less value than a clod of earth; an immortal soul, than a perishing body; a precious Saviour, than unsatisfying creatures. — John Bunyan

How precious is the family as the privileged place for transmitting the faith! Speaking about family life, I would like to say one thing: today, as Brazil and the Church around the world celebrate this feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, Grandparents Day is also being celebrated. How important grandparents are for family life, for passing on the human and religious heritage which is so essential for each and every society! How important it is to have intergenerational exchanges and dialogues, especially within the context of the family. — Pope Francis

The Hopi Indians have a saying, "To watch us dance is to hear our hearts speak." I know how much courage it takes to let people hear our hearts speak, but life is way too precious to spend it pretending like we're super-cool and totally in control when we could be laughing, singing, and dancing. — Brene Brown

The thing is that this life is so precious and mysterious, I don't know what to say about it most of the time. Words are like birds, passing through the trackless sky. The dog barking, the sound of the purling stream, the wind among the weeping willow trees: how are these not right off the tongue of the Buddha?
Lama Surya Das — Lama Surya Das

Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don't wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future.
Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it's at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored — Earl Nightingale

Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are. — Anne Lamott

A fresh dream-fresh happiness! A fresh rush of delicate, voluptuous poison! What is real life to him ! To his corrupted eyes we live, you and I, Nastenka, so torpidly, slowly, insipidly; in his eyes we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so exhausted by our life! And, truly, see how at first sight everything is cold, morose, as though ill-humoured among us ... Poor things! thinks our dreamer. And it is no wonder that he thinks it! Look at these magic phantasms, which so enchantingly, so whimsically, so carelessly and freely group before him in such a magic, animated picture, in which the most prominent figure in the foreground is of course himself, our dreamer, in his precious person. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Finally, after a lot of searching and digging, it was simply the love of family that gave me a road into the character. Once I got into that, and we delved into what it would be like to survive cancer and the ability to see how precious life is, it became easier to play her. — Jeanne Tripplehorn

Life is as precious to us as it is for an animal. An animal is as loving, caring, and kind to her children as we are. She might not be able to tell us but she can express it through her eyes and expressions. She feels joy and happiness. She is helpless in our cruel hands and vulnerable to our vicious greed. Let us be kind to animals. Let us learn to feel their pain. Can we kill a helpless baby to feed our greed? Then how can we kill helpless animal friends that can't talk? Often we kill just for fun. How funny would it be if an animal killed a human just for fun? Let us be kind to animals as much as possible. I know we can. It is easier to love an animal than a human being. If you love an animal, it will rarely hurt you. Let us practice kindness and compassion to animals so that we may create a peaceful world. — Debasish Mridha

If you can think of times in your life that you've treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it's probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we're here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.
David Foster Wallace — David Lipsky

Life is precious, and when someone dies it's an opportunity to realise how precious it is. My brother drowned when I was 17. He was 15. I think I grew from that. My father didn't. It really crushed him. — Val Kilmer

But we also believe that part of our mission in life is to find our bliss and follow it. Life is a precious and delicate gift. How much of that gift do we squander out of fear? — Dianne Sylvan

Death has an opposite, but the opposite is not mere living. It is not courage or faith or human will. The opposite of death is love. How had I missed that? How does anyone miss that? Love is our only weapon. Only love can turn mere life into a miracle, and draw precious meaning from suffering and fear — Nando Parrado

It's stupidly self-obsessed to try and explain the important moments of your life as something that happened to make you aware of how precious life is, or that someone came into your world to show you how to feel, and I know for certain that Livia Stowe's life whole life was not about making sure I had one perfect summer. Like everyone who has been in love, we just got lucky, but or luck ran out. — Kate Le Vann

I think that becoming a parent absolutely changes your entire life and certainly changes your work, and it has changed mine. It just allows you to have access to your emotions, even more than you already did. You're watching this little person grow in front of you, and you realize that you're seeing how precious life is and how quickly it goes. You get to things faster, even emotionally. I'm not as timid about reaching into some areas in myself and bringing that to my work. — Sasha Alexander

Make the most of every moment. Get excited about every little thing. Why not? Why not have your wonderful moment of excited anticipation? Why not be happy NOW? This is my greatest challenge, but something I'm pouring my heart into: learning how to enjoy what I have, right here, right now. Every moment is precious and although sometimes I struggle to see it, I see it more and more every day. — Bethenny Frankel

I don't waste any time at all. I have no time at all for people who are being very negative or people who are very whiny or people who feel sorry for themselves. I tend to go to them and just say, you don't understand how incredible life is and how precious it is. — Jane Seymour

Today the danger of the pro-life position, which I vigorously support, is that it can be frighteningly selective. The rights of the unborn and the dignity of the age-worn are pieces of the same pro-life fabric. We weep at the unjustified destruction of the unborn. Did we also weep when the evening news reported from Arkansas that a black family had been shotgunned out of a white neighborhood.
When we laud life and blast abortionists, our credibility as Christians is questionable. On one hand we proclaim the love and anguish, the pain and joy that goes into fashioning a single child. We proclaim how precious each life is to God and should be to us. On the other hand, when it is the enemy that shrieks to heaven with his flesh in flames, we do not weep, we are not shamed; we call for more — Brennan Manning

I was honored to have served in the Army for my country. I was at Anzio during WWII, and it makes you realize how very precious life is. — James Arness

But remember, for all your adult life you'll be a woman. And how you live your life as a woman, all by yourself before God, is what makes the real you. Nothing on the exterior can touch or change that precious inner sanctuary
your heart, His dwelling place
unless you let it. And God, who loves you very much, has tailor made all your outer life
your circumstances, your relationships
to pressure you into becoming that beautiful woman He's planned for you to be. — Anne Ortlund

How do you thank someone like Woody Allen or Milan Kundera - when they have shared ideas with you that are no less than life-saving, when they have given you some of your happiest moments, sharing what they have learned like a parent or a friend? Do you hunt them down and shake their hand? Do you ask for their autograph? Would that even the balance? And how do you thank Orson Welles or Oscar Wilde - people who are no longer with us? There is only one way to show your gratitude, and that is to give their precious gift back, return it the way you received it: write. — Anthony Marais

It dawns on you one day ... how precious your life is and how not okay it is for anyone, ever, to cause you any amount of suffering, ever. Then the next time you step out the door you look at everyone and you're thinking, My life is precious and you're not allowed to hurt me. — C. JoyBell C.

As I travel through my country, people often ask me how it feels to have been imprisoned in my home -first for six years, then for 19 months. How could I stand the separation from family and friends? It is ironic, I say, that in an authoritarian state it is only the prisoner of conscience who is genuinely free. Yes, we have given up our right to a normal life. But we have stayed true to that most precious part of our humanity-our conscience. — Aung San Suu Kyi