Life Essentials Quotes & Sayings

When we come to understand architecture as the essential nature of all harmonious structure we will see that it is the architecture of music that inspired Bach and Beethoven, the architecture of painting that is inspiring Picasso as it inspired Velasquez, that it is the architecture of life itself that is the inspiration of the great poets and philosophers. — Frank Lloyd Wright

Children, if we can do archana of the 1000 Names of the Divine Mother daily with devotion, we will grow spiritually. There will never be lack of life's essentials, food and clothing, in a family that chants the 1000 Names with devotion. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Cristina Eisenberg weaves her observations as a scientist and her personal experiences afield into a resonant account about the web of life that links humans to the natural world. Grounded in best science, inspired by her intimate knowledge of the wolves she studies, she offers us a luminous portrait of the ecological relationships that are essential for our well-being in a rapidly changing world. The Wolf's Tooth calls for a conservation vision that involves rewilding the earth and honoring all our relations. — Brenda Peterson

The snow reminded me of the beauty and mystery of creation, of the essential joy that is life. — Orhan Pamuk

To love the plateau is to love what is most essential and enduring in your life. — George Leonard

What's more important that spiritual life? It seems to me it's the bedrock of everything essential about being human. — Dani Shapiro

Awareness of mortality exerts a unique power to focus the mind and heart on essentials. — Columba Stewart

The theater requires an essential gullibility that you can't get through life without having. If all you can feel is skepticism-well , you meet people like this. Run away from them. They're not good people. — Tony Kushner

No one really understood music unless he was a scientist, her father had declared, and not just a scientist, either, oh, no, only the real ones, the theoreticians, whose language was mathematics. She had not understood mathematics until he had explained to her that it was the symbolic language of relationships. "And relationships," he had told her, "contained the essential meaning of life." — Pearl S. Buck

The passion that transforms life, and art, did not seem to be mine. But in all essentials, my life was a good performance. — Josephine Hart

We crave, we deeply yearn for, release from the limitations of a dogma that declares separation, disunity, and judgment to be the essential condition of life. — Neale Donald Walsch

Health is not an objective condition which can be understood by the methods of natural science alone. It is rather a condition related to the mental attitude by which the individual has to value what is essential for his life. — Ivan Illich

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim. — John D. Rockefeller

You are not 'in the now;' you are the now. That is your essential identity-the only thing that never changes. Life is always now. Now is consciousness. And consciousness is who you are. That's the equation. — Eckhart Tolle

A Taoist is a man who does only that which is absolutely necessary. His life is almost like a telegram. — Osho

Kindness, laughter, and love are essentials for a good life. Everything else is negotiable. — Lisbeth Darsh

Life's essential length is only a few pages long, as succinct as a line of verse and as brief as the title of a poem. — Kiki Dimoula

Evolutionary theory holds that our ability to sense when we should be suspicious has been every bit as essential for human survival as our capacity for trust and cooperation. — Daniel Goleman

The ability to start out upon your own impulse is
fundamental to the gift of keeping going upon your own
terms ... Getting started, keeping going, getting started
again in art and in life, it seems to me this is the essential rhythm. — Seamus Heaney

We cannot protect our children from life. Therefore, it is essential that we prepare them for it. — Rudolf Dreikurs

Pope John XXIII's motto might be heard here: "In essentials unity, in nonessentials liberty, and in all things, charity." That is second-half-of-life, hardwon wisdom. — Richard Rohr

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials. — Lin Yutang

Moderation is essential in all things, madam, but never in my life have I failed to beat a teetotaller. — Harry Vardon

A talkative soul lacks both the essential virtues and intimacy with God. A deeper interior life, one of gentle peace and of that silence where the Lord dwells, is quite out of the question. A soul that has never tasted the sweetness of inner silence is a restless spirit which disturbs the silence of others. — Mary Faustina Kowalska

Learning to create is essential, necessary, vital & fundamental. It is the centrepiece in which you create the life that you really want — John Whitmore

It wasn't what I'd characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. — Haruki Murakami

Diversity of opinion in religious belief and its mode is not incompatible with equal possession of the essentials of pure faith, nor at variance with the divine purpose. If an analogy exists between the growth we observe in the vegetable kingdom and that of the intellectual, we should expect to find the same variety in the expression of human belief that we seek in the development of tree and flower. Every tree is not an oak, nor every flower a rose, but each tree and flower is the expression in form and colour of its own inner life. In the same manner the mind was intended to be free to develop according to its own light, and any attempt to coerce it into a defined groove is an interference with the natural order of things. To condemn those who in matters of religion do not conform to our standards is, therefore, as unreasonable as to find fault with an oak tree because it is not an elm. — John Daniel

I am not in the position to sacrifice the essentials of life in the hope of acquiring the luxuries. -Pushkin — Alexander Pushkin

The nature of finite things is to have the seed of their passing-away as their essential being: the hour of their birth is the hour of their death. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

The music masters familiarize children's minds with rhythms and melodies, thus making them more civilized, more balanced, better adjusted in themselves, and more capable in whatever they say or do, for rhythm and harmony are essential to the whole of life. — Plato

Fellow-feeling ... is the most important factor in producing a healthy political and social life. Neither our national nor our local civic life can be what it should be unless it is marked by the fellow-feeling, the mutual kindness, the mutual respect, the sense of common duties and common interests, which arise when men take the trouble to understand one another, and to associate together for a common object. A very large share of the rancor of political and social strife arises either from sheer misunderstanding by one section, or by one class, of another, or else from the fact that the two sections, or two classes, are so cut off from each other that neither appreciates the other's passions, prejudices, and, indeed, point of view, while they are both entirely ignorant of their community of feeling as regards the essentials of manhood and humanity. — Theodore Roosevelt

A certain amount of danger is essential to the quality of life. — Charles Lindbergh

Real power is achieved when the ruling class controls the material essentials of life, granting and withholding them from the masses as if they were privileges. — George Orwell

It's not love for music, it's a passion, and it goes beyond liking, and beyond a hobby, it's about a way of living ... Music is essential for my life. — Armin Van Buuren

The Bible reveals the Father's overall plan for the world and provides general guidelines for life. But how can we know His specific plans for us? Listening to God is essential to walking with God. — Charles Stanley

In a world apart from God, the power of denial is absolutely essential if life is to proceed. The will or spirit cannot-psychologically cannot-sustain itself for any length of time in the face of what it clearly acknowledges to be the case. Therefore it must deny and evade and delude itself. — Dallas Willard

What is essential is not the answer but the questions; the answers indeed are the death of the life that is in the questions. — Reginald Horace Blyth

If you live in Boston, Samuel Adams draft beer (Summer Ale) and Dunkin' Donuts are essentials of life. But I discovered to my delight that even these indulgences can be offset by persistent exercise. — Haruki Murakami

I have been, all my life, what is known as a conservationist. It seems clear beyond possibility of argument that any given generation of men can have only a lease, not ownership, of the earth; and one essential term of the lease is that the earth be handed down on to the next generation with unimpaired potentialities. This is the conservationist's concern. — Roderick Haig-Brown

Money is, with propriety, considered as the vital principle of the body politic; as that which sustains its life and motion, and enables it to perform its most essential functions. — Alexander Hamilton

In the Middle East, bread is so essential to everyday life that word for it in Egyptian Arabic is aish, which means life. It's always been the staple grain. But the predicament is that the Fertile Crescent, where wheat cultivation began, has now become the part of the world most dependent on imported wheat. — Annia Ciezadlo

Sleep is an essential part of life-but more important, sleep is a gift. — William C. Dement

But everyone knows someone who has died, I said.
Why is it so hard to think about dying?
'Because,' Morrie continued, 'most of us walk around as if we're sleepwalking. We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do.'
And facing death changes all that?
'Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. When you realize you are going to die, you see everything much differently.'
He sighed. 'Learn how to die, and you learn how to live. — Mitch Albom

Dreams are unrealistic, impractical, demanding - and absolutely essential to living a rich and fulfilling life. — Ralph Marston

It is the work of the Canadian artist to paint or play or write in such a way that life will be enlarged for himself and his fellow man. The painter will look around him ... and finding everything good, will strive to communicate that feeling through a portrayal of the essentials of sunlight, or snow, or tree or tragic cloud, or human face, according to his power and individuality. — J. E. H. MacDonald

... the garden gleams with summer jewelry. We live vy simply - but with all the essentials of life well understood & well provided for - hot baths, cold champagne, new peas, & old brandy. — Winston S. Churchill

Food is Essential to life, therefore make it good. — S. Truett Cathy

Our life must be centred on what is essential, on Jesus Christ. Everything else is secondary. — Pope Francis

How do you calculate upon the unforeseen? It seems to be an art of recognizing the role of the unforeseen, of keeping your balance amid surprises, of collaborating with chance, of recognizing that there are some essential mysteries in the world and thereby a limit to calculation, to plan, to control. To calculate on the unforeseen is perhaps exactly the paradoxical operation that life most requires of us. — Rebecca Solnit

The Bible is ... as necessary to spiritual life as breath is to natural life. There is nothing more essential to our lives than the Word of God. — Jack W. Hayford

The visual and literary arts are of perennial interest to me, and these art forms have become more and more a part of my life; they have become companions of sorts. I cannot imagine my day to day experiences without the presence of these art forms. They're absolutely essential. — Michael Hersch

Come back down to basics. The basic things of life, the basic things for me are the things that turn me on more than anything. I'm actually trying to go back from where I was running from ... the more essential things that I was ignoring. — Richard Ashcroft

Art is the suitcase of history, carrying the essentials. Art is the life buoy of history. Art is seed, art is memory, art is vaccine. — Yann Martel

Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. — Mahatma Gandhi

Passion is essential for a meaningful existence. Life is about what you feel. — Jonathan Cainer

And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible. — Richard Avedon

If I were to let my life be taken over by what is urgent, I might very well never get around to what is essential. — Henri Nouwen

We've got to simplify, pull back all these layers of supposed complexity , and get down to the essentials. If we want people to engage with government, we should use the same tools that are getting them engages with companies and institutions in private life. If we want people to care about political issues, we should give them a way to understand and get involved in them. — Gavin Newsom

Formal learning can teach you a great deal, but many of the essential skills in life are the ones you have to develop on your own. — Lee Iacocca

We really don't experience the world fully, because we're half-asleep, doing things we automatically think we have to do."
And facing death changes that?
"Oh, yes. You strip away all that stuff and you focus on the essentials. — Mitch Albom

You dance because you have to. Dance is an essential part of life that has always been with me. — Katherine Dunham

The real essentials of life - compassion, kindness, good will, forgiveness - are what is fundamental to living as a true human being. — Eknath Easwaran

The essential tendency of life is toward happiness ... Optimism is the only true condition for a reasonable man. — Phillips Brooks

In the final analysis, we count for something only because of the essential that we embody. If we do not embody that, life is wasted. — Carl Jung

When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living. — Aldo Leopold

Simplicity of life is an essential for greatness of life. — Janet Erskine Stuart

Goals are as essential to success as air is to life. — David J. Schwartz

Vanaboding pares down and eliminates hundreds of expenses and many tasks and pursuits that steal your time; your life . Simplification is essential. The fact is you only need these five things in order to have a great life: excellent food, great sleep, good personal hygiene, healthy sex, and protection from the elements. I call these the Essentials of a Great Life. The pursuit of anything else will cost you dearly and will rarely adequately reward you. — Jason Odom

A Dionysian life task needs the hardness of the hammer and one of its first essentials is without doubt the joy to be found even in destruction. — Friedrich Nietzsche

An essential part of a happy, healthy life is being of service to others. — Sue Thoele

The home is the basis of a righteous life and no other instrumentality can take its place nor fulfill its essential functions. — David O. McKay

The cultivation of one set of faculties tends to the disuse of others. The loss of one faculty sharpens others; the blind are sensitive in touch. Has not the extreme cultivation of the commercial faculty permitted others as essential to national life, to be blighted by disease? — Judith Ellen Foster

The proclamation of the Gospel is destined primarily to the poor, to those who often lack the essentials for a decent life. The good news is first announced to them, that God loves them before all others and comes to visit them through the acts of charity that the disciples of Christ carry out in his name. — Pope Francis

Minutes pass, and between the minutes, June is slashing out the possibilities. She is narrowing her sister's life down to its essentials. The first to go is the vet's office where May might have worked, which is a loss, but the next to go is the mansion that May has been inside of in her dreams, a terrible, vast, cold place where the pictures are old and of other families. And so it is a relief to see it go, slashed out, burned to the ground with the hot friction of June's pencil. Then there is the loss of all possible sons, which is a tremendous relief, and then the crossing out of husbands, one by one, save one. — Emily Ruskovich

In the desert we rediscover the value of what is essential for living; thus in today's world there are innumerable signs, often expressed implicitly or negatively, of the thirst for God, for the ultimate meaning of life. And in the desert people of faith are needed who, by the example of their own lives, point out the way to the Promised Land and keep hope alive. — Pope Benedict XVI

Sex is the main way we exist on the planet. It's an essential part of life. — Gilberto Hernandez Guerrero

Whenever I heard that languid, beautiful melody, those days came back to me. It wasn't what I'd characterize as a happy part of my life, living as I was, a balled-up mass of unfulfilled desires. I was much younger, much hungrier, much more alone. But I was myself, pared down to the essentials. I could feel each single note of music, each line I read, seep down deep inside me. My nerves were sharp as a blade, my eyes shining with a piercing light. And every time I heard that music, I recalled my eyes then, glaring back at me from a mirror. — Haruki Murakami

Let not the rash marble risk
garrulous breaches of oblivion's omnipotence,
in many words recalling
name, renown, events, birthplace.
All those glass jewels are best left in the dark.
Let not the marble say what men do not.
The essentials of the dead man's life
the trembling hope,
the implacable miracle of pain, the wonder of sensual delight
will abide forever.
Blindly the uncertain soul asks to continue
when it is the lives of others that will make that happen,
as you yourself are the mirror and image
of those who did not live as long as you
and others will be (and are) your immortality on earth. — Jorge Luis Borges

There is never a day in any mans life when repentance is not essential to his well being in eternal progress. — Spencer W. Kimball

The only purpose of education is to teach a student how to live his life-by developing his mind and equipping him to deal with reality. The training he needs is theoretical, i.e., conceptual. He has to be taught to think, to understand, to integrate, to prove. He has to be taught the essentials of the knowledge discovered in the past-and he has to be equipped to acquire further knowledge by his own effort. — Ayn Rand

Beauty draws us in. We can't stop looking or listening or touching. It takes us outside ourselves and it motivates us. It's essential to life and to happiness. — Nancy Etcoff

Music, I suppose, will be the thing that sustains me in the time of my life when I am too old for sex and not quite ready to meet God. It has always been an essential part of me. — Dolly Parton

Reduction is the least observed of the three R's of environmentalism ('reduce, reuse, recycle') but it's probably the most important. Reuse and recycling are sensible measures in an over-productive society, but why not neutralise the problem of overproduction at the source? Instead of choosing to act efficiently at the end of a product's life cycle by reusing or recycling it, we should stop said product from being made in the first place by eliminating consumer demand for it. If the rainforests must be burned and the oceans poisoned to cater for the essentials of human life, then so be it and we'll call it an inevitable pity; but for that to happen in the name of games consoles, cell phones and chocolate fountains is a wanton and avoidable shame. — Robert Wringham

Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life — Jonas Mekas

Has there ever been a more important subject, in all the world, than children and families? These are, after all, the foundation and ultimate purpose of any society. Moreover, the overall purpose of this experience is not merely survival or just the day after day (after day) exercise of going through the motions of meeting basic needs. Rather, it was meant to be a long, deep immersion of a work in progress, a life-long celebration of sorts, steeped in love, beauty, and joy. Anything less is a travesty and is tragically off the mark of true success for the parent and the child, and amiss of the essentials for a fullness of life for both. — Connie Kerbs

I am a hunter. Not merely 'a person who hunts', but someone to whom this ancient, natural and honorable activity is an essential and deeply meaningful part of life. — David Petersen

Nos are just as valuable as yeses in the game of life. In fact, they're essential. — Madonna Ciccone

Getting doctrine right is a matter of life and death, but holding that doctrine in the right spirit is essential too. A great deal of damage is done by those who hold the truth of Christ with the spirit of Satan. — J.D. Greear

Bargaining is essential to the life of the world; but nobody has ever claimed that it is an ennobling process. — Agnes Repplier

I think people try so hard to learn everything that they miss all the wonderful essentials. There is so much mystery in life that you should leave a mystery. — Iris Apfel

What type of new economical system can organize this system? There is another sector in our life, that we rely on every single day, that are absolutely essential: the social commons, the social economy. It is all the activity we engage in to create social capital. It doesn't create capital market. Social commons is growing faster than the market place. It is growing faster than the market place. The social commons include any activity that is deeply social and collaborative. — Jeremy Rifkin

Simplicity means taking charge of a life that is too busy, too stressed, and too fragmented. An uncluttered simplicity means cutting back on trivial distractions, both material and non-material, and focusing on the essentials - whatever those may be for each of our unique lives. — Duane Elgin

It is possible to speak with our heart directly. Most ancient cultures know this. We can actually converse with our heart as if it were a good friend. In modern life we have become so busy with our daily affairs and thoughts that we have lost this essential art of taking time to converse with our heart. — Jack Kornfield

That is my essential reason for writing, not for fame, not to be celebrated after death, but to heighten and create life all around me. I also write because when I am writing I reach the high moment of fusion sought by the mystics, the poets, the lovers, a sense of communion with the universe. — Anais Nin

What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life. And, most importantly, cookies. — Rudy Giuliani

To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy. — Matthieu Ricard

Hope is an essential constituent of human life. — Benjamin Franklin

In Spain we have a saying about the essentials of life: good food, good wine, good sex, good sleep. — Antonio Banderas

I surely know that there is no role in life more essential and more eternal than that of motherhood. — M. Russell Ballard

I think as you get older you become more of who you always were. You become a more concentrated version of yourself. You really learn who you are, why you're unique, who you've always been [ ... ] There's a winnowing away of nonessentials, sometimes essentials, it's true, but what remains is your core, your essence, the real 'you,' and you realize you're still you without what you've lost as long as you still have all your marbles
or most of them anyway. — Stacey McGlynn