Life Counts Quotes & Sayings

The gross domestic product (GDP) was created in the 1930s to measure the value of the sum total of economic goods and services generated over a single year. The problem with the index is that it counts negative as well as positive economic activity. If a country invests large sums of money in armaments, builds prisons, expands police security, and has to clean up polluted environments and the like, it's included in the GDP. Simon Kuznets, an American who invented the GDP measurement tool, pointed out early on that "[t]he welfare of a nation can . . . scarcely be inferred from a measurement of national income."28 Later in life, Kuznets became even more emphatic about the drawbacks of relying on the GDP as a gauge of economic prosperity. He warned that "[d]istinctions must be kept in mind between quantity and quality of growth . . . . Goals for 'more' growth should specify more growth of what and for what."29 — Jeremy Rifkin

Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted. — Albert Einstein

There's no greatest moment in the arts. It's a life, it's a continuity thing. You can't have a great moment because it's spiritual. It's a belief, it's a calling. If you're an artist, doing your own thing on your own, it's while you're doing it that counts. It's a process. If you get too elated, you can get too depressed. — LeRoy Neiman

It's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. you'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating — Arnold Schwarzenegger

It's not what life does to you but what you do to life that counts. — Jim Stynes

I am delighted to have you play football. I believe in rough, manly sports. But I do not believe in them if they degenerate into the sole end of any one's existence. I don't want you to sacrifice standing well in your studies to any over-athleticism; and I need not tell you that character counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life. Athletic proficiency is a mighty good servant, and like so many other good servants, a mighty bad master. — Theodore Roosevelt

Living is not merely a matter of staying alive, is it? It is what you do with your life and the fact of your survival that counts. — Mary Balogh

Hat whole phrase, "daring greatly," is from the Theodore Roosevelt quote that goes back to your original question of, what about the critics? And when I read his quote it was life-changing. "It's not the critic who counts; it's not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done the better. — Brene Brown

My life was a wreck. I had nothing, no material possessions, unless debts counts. Fourteen pairs of shoes that were too small for me was all I had to show after a lifetime of profligate spending. I hadn't a job. I hadn't any qualifications. I'd achieved nothing with my life. I'd never been happy. I had no husband or boyfriend. — Marian Keyes

She lived her life believing in the power of simplicity. Whether it had to do with fashion, work or relationships, she used to say, "Boil it all down to what counts the most: What is the essence of what you are trying to do, what is the most important thing? Things only get complicated when you are trying to address too many issues. — Sean Hepburn Ferrer

Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are. — Joss Whedon

Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger. — Theodore Roosevelt

Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. If all the complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.

Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception. The act of perception in art is an end in itself and must be prolonged. In art, it is our experience of the process of construction that counts, not the finished product. — Victor Shklovsky

It might be true that it is "quality time" that counts, but after a certain point quantity has a bearing on quality. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Shit happens to the best of us, Cara," Damian says suddenly. "It's how you deal with it that counts. You've gotta fight for what you want, otherwise this life will chew you the fuck up and spit you right out. You're either a fighter or a nobody, — Michelle Horst

Some things in life are just out of our control. It's what we do about them that counts. — Nora Roberts

To ignore [the] great social facts
political facts, if you please
and over-emphasize the old moral responsibility of the 'domestic' mother is a hollow mockery and betrays a hopeless ignorance of industrial and urban conditions in the Twentieth Century ... Everything that counts in the common life is political. — Mary Ritter Beard

The good company counts in your life, make a right choice because bad company will eat you alive. — Euginia Herlihy

If we agree that the bottom line of life is happiness, not success, then it makes perfect sense to say that it is the journey that counts, not reaching the destination. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The key to life is resilience ... We will always be knocked down. It's the getting up that counts. — Dominique Browning

Everything that happens before Death is what counts. — Ray Bradbury

The fact is that, whether it is us or someone else going through a trial, Jesus does not necessarily save us from every difficult situation. But he does promise to pray us through to victory. He prays that our faith will be more than a match to stand our ground, when the enemy takes a shot at us. So, be patient, and let Jesus use whatever is at his disposal to get you through into his purpose and calling for your life. It's not what's happening now that's important, but what God has prepared for your future that counts. — Christopher Roberts

Life is full of Floppy Flips... You have to know when to Flip your Flop that counts! — Peggy Grigowski

The love we seek overrules human nature. It has a wildness in it and a glory that we want more than life itself. Love never counts the cost, to itself or others, and nothing is as cruel as love. There is no love that does not pierce the hands and feet. — Jeanette Winterson

I'm only just discovering that how someone behaves in everyday life gives no clue how they'll be when it counts. — Rosamund Lupton

A person cannot coast along in old destructive habits year after year and accept whatever comes along. A person must stand up on her own two legs and walk. Get off the bus and go get on another. Climb out of the ditch and cross the road. Find the road that s where you want to go ... The only sermon that counts is the one that is formed by our actions. She would quit drinking and thereby show Kyle life is what you make it. A person can grab hold of her life and change things for the better. This happens all the time. We are not chips of wood drifting down the stream of time. We have oars. — Garrison Keillor

More importantly, I didn't know then that one day I would genuinely be free. That freedom came out of a thousand small steps of obedience, most of which I took during the waiting or limbo time. The more I learned to lean into Him on a daily basis and simply live out my faith in the everyday elements, the more I was prepared for the bigger steps when they arrived. Not only that, I was given the gift of living my life fully in the present, rather than being fixated and frustrated over some distant time or hope. In the crossroads called limbo, you do arrive at mile markers. You become more mature. More healed. Less surprised by or resistant to or unprepared for the good things God is giving you in the ordinary. Your challenge is to begin to embrace the waiting times as part of the overall journey. Limbo is a key part of the healing process! As you are faithful daily, He is working in you powerfully, and it all counts. Every single moment! — Suzanne Eller

Our way was to share a fire until it burned down, ayi? To speak to each other until every person was satisfied. Younger men listened to older men. Now the Beelezi tell us the vote of a young, careless man counts the same as the vote of an elder.' In the hazy heat Tata Ndu paused to take off his hat, turn it carefully in his hands, then replace it above the high dome of his forehead. No one breathed. 'White men tell us: Vote, bantu! They tell us: You do not all have to agree, ce n'est pas necessaire! If two men vote yes and one says no, the matter is finished. A bu, even a child can see how that will end. It takes three stones in the fire to hold up the pot. Take one away, leave the other two, and what? The pot will spill into the fire. — Barbara Kingsolver

[I]f you set out to mention everything you would never be done, and that's what counts, to be done, to have done. Oh, I know, even when you mention only a few of the things there are you do not get done either, I know, I know. But it's a change of muck. And if all muck is the same muck that doesn't matter, it's good to have a change of muck, to move from one heap to another, from time to time, fluttering you might say, like a butterfly, as if you were ephemeral. — Samuel Beckett

What is the secret to great living? Entire separation to Christ and devotion to Him. Thus speaks every man and woman whose life has made more than a passing flicker in the spiritual realm. It is the life that has no time for trifling that counts. — Amy Carmichael

Sometimes life gives you a second chance, or even two! Not always, but sometimes. It's what you do with those second chances that counts. — Dave Wilson

It has since struck me as one of the most touching aspects of the part played in life by these idle, painstaking women that they devote all their generosity, all their talent, their transferable dreams of sentimental beauty (for, like all artists, they never seek to realise the value of those dreams, or to enclose them in the four-square frame of everyday life), and their gold, which counts for little, to the fashioning of a fine and precious setting for the rubbed and scratched and ill-polished lives of men. — Marcel Proust

On many counts, taking a boy like Rudy Steiner was robbery
so much life, so much to live for
yet somehow, I'm certain he would have loved to see the frightening rubble and the swelling of the sky on the night he passed away. He'd have cried and turned and smiled if only he could have seen the book thief on her hands and knees, next to his decimated body. He'd have been glad to witness her kissing his dusty, bomb-hit lips.
Yes, I know it.
In the darkness of my dark-beating heart, I know. He'd have loved it all right.
You see?
Even death has a heart. — Markus Zusak

It is not what you get out of life that counts. It's what you give and what is given from the heart. — Sargent Shriver

School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts? — Ray Bradbury

But I've come to the point where I'm not sure anymore just what God counts as radical. And I suspect that for me, getting up and doing the dishes when I'm short on sleep and patience is far more costly and necessitates more of a revolution in my heart than some of the more outwardly risky ways I've lived in the past. And so this is what I need now: the courage to face an ordinary day - an afternoon with a colicky baby where I'm probably going to snap at my two-year old and get annoyed with my noisy neighbor - without despair, the bravery it takes to believe that a small life is still a meaningful life, and the grace to know that even when I've done nothing that is powerful or bold or even interesting that the Lord notices me and is fond of me and that that is enough. — Michael S. Horton

Don't despise your contributions to Humanity. Every little kind deed counts. — Lailah Gifty Akita

There's only one reason for my whole life, and that's art. Nothing else counts; nothing else gives me pleasure; nothing else gives me satisfaction. — Philip Johnson

Life is not a race, but a shot on target: what counts is not the saving of time, but the ability to find a centre — Susanna Tamaro

The life that counts blessings discovers its yielding more than it seems. — Ann Voskamp

Writers can take offense when someone asks what's real or autobiographical in our work because, to us, that's not what counts. The bits taken from life are tiny scales on the dragon's tail - what about that whole beautiful writhing, fire-breathing dragon? — Michelle Huneven

No amount of reading or memorizing will make you successful in life. It is the understanding and application of wise thought that counts. -Bob Proctor — Bob Proctor

Karma means 'action'. Like many, you misunderstand its nature. Past misdeeds can be corrected before your karma ripens: it is not some pre-determined fate. It is what you do now that counts. — John Dolan

Every second counts — Dorothy Koomson

In life it's not how you fall but how you get up that really counts! Don't let mistakes from your past haunt and hold you back ... always keep moving forward in your life — Timothy Pina

Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what was the point? I'm lucky that way. My path was already there. I had only to walk it. I often thought even if no one knew of the good I had done with my life, it didn't matter. That it was done is all that counts in the end. But then I died. And I hadn't gotten to do any of it yet. — Brian Clevinger

Will you destroy something in order to make it beautiful?
Will you avoid something in order to fall in love with it?
Will you sacrifice something just so that you get it?
Will you maintain distance from someone in order to get him close?
We often make these mistakes.
Life is short, every second counts, every moment is precious.
Live at, live for and live always in present, for thats what you have right now with you, who knows what will tomorrow bring. — Hanif Hassan Barbhuiya

Freud said that life is all about being able to love and to work. And I think it is about those things. But it's also about play. Play can bring back the past, but even if it doesn't, play is now; play is fun. More than ever, I have the feeling that all of what we do that counts is just love and work and play. — Alan Alda

You can say the Jesus Prayer from now till doomsday, but if you don't realize that the only thing that counts in the religious life is detachment, I don't see how you ever move an inch. Detachment, buddy, and only detachment. Desirelessness. 'Cessations from all hankerings.' It's this business of desiring, if you want to know the goddam truth, that makes an actor in the first place. Why're you making me tell you things you already know? Somewhere along the line - in one damn incarnation or another, if you like - you not only had a hankering to be an actor or an actress but to be a good one. You're stuck with it now. You can't just walk out on the results of your own hankerings. Cause and effect, buddy, cause and effect. The only thing you can do now, the only religious thing you can do, is act. Act for God, if you want to - be God's actress, if you want to. What could be prettier? — J.D. Salinger

It's inspiration that counts, not the drill. — Hugo Ball

Like everything in life, it is not what happens to you but how you respond to it that counts. — Steve Backley

Life isn't perfect, of course, but we all know it's how you react to things that counts. — Landon Donovan

Its the journey that counts, not the arrival. — Diane Keaton

Whether you are really right or not doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts. — Robertson Davies

In life, we all have a second chance but it's what we do with those chances that counts. — Abdulazeez Henry Musa

What really matters is that you do what you think is right, what you believe in, and you surround yourself with the people you care about in this world. That's what counts in this life. — Brian Dennehy

Believe me that in every big thing or achievement there are always obstacles-big or small- and the reaction one shows to such obstacles is what counts, not the obstacle itself. — Bruce Lee

When we focus on people and life instead of material possessions and mere wants, there's not much room for emotional hand-wringing. Instead, there's more space to weigh what we value in our lives and to acknowledge what really counts. Chapter 9 Simplicity Laura Ingalls in The Long Winter — Erin Blakemore

I probably use email the most. I dunno if that counts as an app. I try to stay off my electronics as much as possible. Real life is happening all around you; you're better off just being a part of it. — Nathan Parsons

Some of the folks we see are in for defending themselves against their abusers, or drug charges that, because of the California state prison system, they have mandatory sentencing and life in prison for three counts of simple drug possession, or whatever. I find it not only helpful but, I think, necessary in maintaining my grounding and my perspective. Because music is such an unrealistic job to have. It's a really lucky job to have, but it's also very unrealistic. — Thao Nguyen

On the canvas of life,
Every sweep of the brush matters,
Counts for something ... — Scott Hastie

We cannot tell what may happen to us in the strange medley of life. But we can decide what happens in us - how we can take it, what we do with it - and that is what really counts in the end. — Joseph Fort Newton

Amelia shows that it's not what happens in life that counts, but rather how you frame it, how you talk about it. — Marissa Moss

Your life will always be the perfect classroom journey for you and every experience that shows up in your journey is here to serve you. There is meaning and purpose behind everything that happens. There are no accidents which means your suffering through difficulties is never for nothing. Your life matters and everything you experience matters. Your trials are there to help you become a better person and trusting this is truth will take some of the sting out of them. Suffering becomes more bearable if it at least counts for something. — Kimberly Giles

Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power ... Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art. — Abraham Joshua Heschel

In history as in life it is success that counts. Start a political upheaval and let yourself be caught, and you will hang as a traitor. But place yourself at the head of a rebellion and gain your point, and all future generations will worship you as the Father of their Country. — Hendrik Willem Van Loon

In life you are going to make mistakes, you're going to fall down, but it's the getting up that counts. Just like in baseball: you'll get a few hits, but most likely, you'll strike out more than you'll get on base. But don't quit. Find your focus, relax, take a deep breath and give it a good swing — Dave Pelzer

The only question that really counts, must be thins one: are things getting better or are they getting worse? — Erlend Loe

I can agree in principle that it's the thought that counts when giving or getting gifts, but I would also like to point out that "if there's no thought...it doesn't count." I don't wish to be reminded that you didn't want to take the time to get to know me, or perhaps you have even known me my whole life and simply don't care about me. All I ask is that you not rub my face in it. — Samantha Bee

A man can gasp out his life beside you-and you feel none of it. Pity, Sympathy, sure-but you don't feel the pain. Your belly is whole and that's what counts. A half-yard away someone's world is snuffled out in roaring agony-and you feel nothing. That's the misery of the world. — Erich Maria Remarque

Variety, as they say, is the spice of life. For me, that counts tenfold in the world of music! — Jason Graves

The goal in life is the same as in basketball: make the effort to do the best you are capable of doing
in marriage, at your job, in the community, for your country. Make the effort to contribute in whatever way you can. You may do it materially or with time, ideas, or work. Making the effort to contribute is what counts. The effort is what counts in everything. — John Wooden

It's who you is when folks knocks at the door of your heart what counts. Hide the past and it gives them what's jealous of you the power to bring you undone. — Bryce Courtenay

When I'm taking a picture of Aya Sofia, what counts is the person passing by who stands for life — Ara Guler

Learn to be difficult when it counts. In school as in life, having a reputation for being assertive will help you receive preferential treatment without having to beg or fight for it every time. — Timothy Ferriss

It is really not how much you can get out of life that matters; it is how much you can put into it that counts. What will you contribute to life today? — Bill Phillips

But eternal liveliness is what counts: what does "eternal life" matter, or life at all? — Friedrich Nietzsche

My songs will pass and be forgotten. What counts, however, is that I sang them. — Andrew Greeley

It's your outlook on life that counts. If you take yourself lightly and don't take yourself too seriously, pretty soon you can find the humor in our everyday lives. And sometimes it can be a lifesaver. — Betty White

Consummation Of Grief

I even hear the mountains
the way they laugh
up and down their blue sides
and down in the water
the fish cry
and the water
is their tears.
I listen to the water
on nights I drink away
and the sadness becomes so great
I hear it in my clock
it becomes knobs upon my dresser
it becomes paper on the floor
it becomes a shoehorn
a laundry ticket
it becomes
cigarette smoke
climbing a chapel of dark vines. . .
it matters little
very little love is not so bad
or very little life
what counts
is waiting on walls
I was born for this
I was born to hustle roses down the avenues of the dead. — Charles Bukowski

It's not life that counts but the fortitude you bring into it. — John Galsworthy

For what prevents us from saying that the happy life is to have a mind that is free, lofty, fearless and steadfast - a mind that is placed beyond the reach of fear, beyond the reach of desire, that counts virtue the only good, baseness the only evil, and all else but a worthless mass of things, which come and go without increasing or diminishing the highest good, and neither subtract any part from the happy life nor add any part to it?
A man thus grounded must, whether he wills or not, necessarily be attended by constant cheerfulness and a joy that is deep and issues from deep within, since he finds delight in his own resources, and desires no joys greater than his inner joys. — Seneca.

What really counts in life is the quiet meeting of every difficulty with the determination to get out of it all the good there is. — Helen Keller

Much though he recites the sacred texts, but acts not accordingly, that heedless man is like a cowherd who only counts the cows of others - he does not partake of the blessings of the holy life. — Gautama Buddha

The emotion I'd held back for years assaulted me with staggering intensity. Everything. All of it. I cried for Clay, for the lost years with Courtney, but most of all for myself and the cowardly person I'd become. They were right. I was a shell of who I used to be and lived a lonely little life. I'd been certain that protecting my heart had been the right way to go. That Courtney and I didn't mix in the long term. That love was not for me. I'd been wrong on all counts. — Melissa Brayden

The point of life is not to be married or single - it is to be. We are human beings, or humans being. It does not matter so much what lifestyle we choose - it's what we make of the opportunities to grow, that counts. — Alan Cohen

Words are never frail. They have all the powers to change the personality and features of a man. The way he relates and depicts the things are based on the words he discovers. At one point where words portray happiness for someone, it also counts for the tears to some. The day we comprehend the strength of words, we would choose them more closely and patiently. Where we would prefer silence more over words. If words are our strength, they are our weakness too. — Nishikant

Your life counts. That's the only fact you need to remember. — Marty Rubin

I record the events of my life, filling up one notebook after another. Maybe I'm not getting the details exactly right, but it doesn't matter. The strict facts hold no currency here. What counts is the saliva I just spat on this very sheet of paper. The thick gob slowly dissolves a small circle in the text and turns the words translucent. The ink starts to bleed. The fibers loosen. If you run your fingers along this paragraph, you'll find the site where I stabbed my thumb straight through the page. There is an entire world in that hole. — Jeff Jackson

There comes a moment when we all must realize that life is short, and in the end the only thing that really counts is not how others see us, but how God sees us. — Billy Graham

We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation. — Gustav Mahler

What does one save for, anyhow? For a few tired hours at the end of life when one sits and counts dollars? Or do we save so that those last years will not be mentally barren or esthetically shabby? I try to save a few things to furnish my mind decently, on the theory that no auctioneer can get in there to sell off all the furniture. — Margaret Culkin Banning

Showing up is not all of life - but it counts for a lot. — Hillary Clinton

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

May the words come easy, the doubt be weak, and the coffee strong enough to eat through steel. (I don't drink coffee...but I understand most authors do, and they like it with a bit of fight in it.) Now, let us boot up, sit down, and accrue those daily page counts! — G. Allen Cook

Who is it?" asks Zain, his eyes wide with disbelief at Shayda's unusual outburst. "No-one," she replies. It's a day of simple words, loaded with meaning. The no-one she said yes to a few hours ago. The no-one she agreed to spend the rest of her life with. The no-one whose rosary is dangling from her wrist. I will always be no-one. Because everyone who counts in Shayda's world is on the other side of the door. I will always be on the perimeter of her life, always the outsider, looking in. — Leylah Attar

Every person passing through this life will unknowingly leave something and take something away. Most of this "something" cannot be seen or heard or numbered or scientifically detected or counted. It's what we leave in the minds of other people and what they leave in ours. Memory. The census doesn't count it. Nothing counts without it. — Robert Fulghum

Facing death means facing the ultimate question of the meaning of life. If we really want to live we must have the courage to recognize that life is ultimately very short, and that everything we do counts. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

A person's life consists of a collection of events, the last of which could also change the meaning of the whole, not because it counts more than the previous ones but because once they are included in a life, events are arranged in an order that is not chronological but, rather, corresponds to an inner architecture. — Italo Calvino