Life Justify Quotes & Sayings

Man's life seems to me like a long, weary night that would be intolerable if there were not occasionally flashes of light, the sudden brightness of which is so comforting and wonderful, that the moments of their appearance cancel out and justify the years of darkness. — Hermann Hesse

We can either passively continue on the road to utter domestication and destruction or turn in the direction of joyful upheaval, passionate and feral embrace of wildness and life that aims at dancing on the ruins of clocks, computers and that failure of imagination and will called work. Can we justify our lives by anything less than such a politics of rage and dreams? — John Zerzan

She took a life because someone
humiliated her, hurt her image of herself as the Valkyrie, the
stainless warrior. Exposed her weakness, which was only love. So she
avenged herself. So easy to justify, I wrote to her. It's because you
felt like a victim you did it. If you were really strong, you could
have tolerated the humiliation. — Janet Fitch

Pascal was even convinced that he could use his theories to justify a belief in God. He stated that 'the excitement that a gambler feels when making a bet is equal to the amount he might win multiplied by the probability of winning it'. He then argued that the possible prize of eternal happiness has an infinite value and that the probability of entering heaven by leading a virtuous life, no matter how small, is certainly finite. Therefore, according to Pascal's definition, religion was a game of infinite excitement and one worth playing, because multiplying an infinite prize by a finite probability results in infinity. — Simon Singh

Ten times a day I am compelled to reflect on my past life ... and I can never justify to myself the spending of four years on dramatic criticism. I have sworn an oath to endure no more of it. Never again will I cross the threshold of a theatre. The subject is exhausted; and so am I.
I am off duty forever, and am going to sleep. — George Bernard Shaw

I'm tired of my life, my clothes, the things I say. I'm hacking away at the surface, as at some kind of gray ice, trying to break through to what is underneath or I am dead. I can feel the surface trembling - it seems ready to give but it never does. I am uninterested in current events. How can I justify this? How can I explain it? I don't want to have the same vocabulary I've always had. I want something richer, broader, more penetrating and powerful. — James Salter

A bad life doesn't justify bad behavior. It's time to stop playing the blame game and take responsibility for your own actions. You have control of your life from here. — Blaque Diamond

The way of trust is a movement into obscurity, into the undefined, into ambiguity, not into some predetermined, clearly delineated plan for the future. The next step discloses itself only out of a discernment of God acting in the desert of the present moment. The reality of naked trust is the life of the pilgrim who leaves what is nailed down, obvious, and secure, and walks into the unknown without any rational explanation to justify the decision or guarantee the future. Why? Because God has signaled the movement and offered it his presence and his promise. — Brennan Manning

A half century ago Herbert Wechsler could justify the legal right of deadly force self-defense in terms of the "universal judgment that there is no social interest in preserving the lives of the aggressors at the cost of those of their victims." That is not a universal judgment today. — Don Kates

Everybody has a capacity for a happy life. All these talks about how difficult times we live in, that's just a clever way to justify fear and laziness. — Lev Landau

[Christ's] mission and work it is to help against sin and death, to justify and bring life. He has placed his help in baptism and the Sacrament [i.e., communion/Eucharist/Lord's supper], and incorporated it in the Word and preaching. To our eyes Baptism [capitalized in original] appears to be nothing more than ordinary water, and the Sacrament of Christ's body and blood simple bread and wine, like other bread and wine, and the sermon, hot air from a man's mouth. But we must not trust what our eyes see. — Martin Luther

A society which reverences the attainment of riches as the supreme felicity will naturally be disposed to regard the poor as damned ... if only to justify itself for making their life a hell. — R. H. Tawney

How seriously would we take person who said, "I have faith in Adolf Hitler, or in John Dilinger. I can't explain why they did the things they did, but I can't believe they would have done them without a good reason." Yet people try to justify the deaths and tragedies God inflicts on innocent victims with almost these same words.
Furthermore, my religious commitment to the supreme value of an individual life makes it hard for me to accept an answer that is not scandalized by an innocent person's pain, that condones human pain because it supposedly contributes to an overall work of esthetic value. If a human artist or employer made children suffer so that something immensely impressive or valuable could come to pass, we would put him in prison. Why then should we excuse God for causing such undeserved pain, no matter how wonderful the ultimate result may be? — Harold S. Kushner

Bombay, you will be told, is the only city India has, in the sense that the word city is understood in the West. Other Indian metropolises like Calcutta, Madras and Delhi are like oversized villages. It is true that Bombay has many more high-rise buildings than any other Indian city: when you approach it by the sea it looks like a miniature New York. It has other things to justify its city status: it is congested, it has traffic jams at all hours of the day, it is highly polluted and many parts of it stink. — Khushwant Singh

For an important intellectual product to be immediately weighty, a deep relationship or concordance has to exist between the life of its creator and the general lives of the people. These people are generally unaware why exactly they praise a certain work of art. Far from being truly knowledgeable, they perceive it to have a hundred different benefits to justify their adulation; but the real underlying reason for their behavior cannot be measured, is sympathy. — Thomas Mann

If we believe that Jesus of Nazareth is the only begotten Son of God and that He came into this world and went to the cross of Calvary and died for our sins and rose again in order to justify us and to give us life anew and prepare us for heaven-if you really believe that, there is only one inevitable deduction, namely that He is entitled to the whole of our lives, without any limit whatsoever. — D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Has anyone provided proof of God's inexistence? Not even close. Has quantum cosmology explained the emergence of the universe or why it is here? Not even close. Have our sciences explained why our universe seems to be fine-tuned to allow for the existence of life? Not even close. Are physicists and biologists willing to believe in anything so long as it is not religious thought? Close enough. Has rationalism and moral thought provided us with an understanding of what is good, what is right, and what is moral? Not close enough. Has secularism in the terrible 20th century been a force for good? Not even close, to being close. Is there a narrow and oppressive orthodoxy in the sciences? Close enough. Does anything in the sciences or their philosophy justify the claim that religious belief is irrational? Not even in the ball park. Is scientific atheism a frivolous exercise in intellectual contempt? Dead on. — David Berlinski

Science alone cannot justify the pro-life position, thought it can give us the facts we need to draw moral conclusions on a host of controversial issues, including abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and cloning. — Scott Klusendorf

I want it to be more universal than that - like a painter doesn't have to explain his life story away to justify his painting. — Beth Orton

Is it true that you don't love me anymore?"
"Yes."
"Why? Because I lied to you? Because I left you? Because I humiliated you?"
"No. Just when I felt deceived, abandoned, humiliated, I loved you very much, I wanted you more than in any other moment of our life together."
"And then?"
"I don't love you anymore because, to justify yourself, you said that you had fallen into a void, an absence of sense, and it wasn't true."
"It was."
"No. Now I know what an absence of sense is and what happens if you manage to get back to the surface from it. You, you don't know. At most you glanced down, you got frightened, and you plugged up the hole with Carla's body. — Elena Ferrante

And you, Edward? Is there something in this world for which you'd surrender your life and your soul, if need be? You need not answer - I saw in your face and in your heart, last night, as you bent over the bed. Good art, good art - both of you. I have found several sorts of good and original art in this world, enough to justify encouraging your Artist to try again. But there was so much that was bad, poorly drawn and amateurish, that I could not find it in me to approve the work as a whole until I encountered and savored this, the tragedy of human love." Cynthia looked at him wildly. "Tragedy? you say 'tragedy'?" He looked at her with eyes that were not pitying, but serenely appreciative. "What else could it be, my dear? — Robert A. Heinlein

It is so much easier to deal with the dead than with the living. The dead are out of the way, merely characters from stories about the past, never again unreadable, no misunderstandings possible, the pain coming from them stable and manageable. nor do you have to explain yourself to them, to justify the fact of your life. — Aleksandar Hemon

No matter how much I tried to justify the affair, the fact remained that I was a deceitful person. One moment I was making out with a man and an hour later I was in bed with another man. Who had I become? What had I lost in life that led me to do this? Did I not have a perfect life? Was I not happy? Of course, I was happy. I knew I was happy and content. Had I become greedy? I was in a maze and I could not find a way out. — Jagdish Joghee

We do not always remember the things that do no credit to us. We justify them, cover them in bright lies or with the thick dust of forgetfulness. All of the things that Shadow had done in his life of which he was not proud, all the things he wished he had done otherwise or left undone, came at him then in a swirling storm of guilt and regret and shame, and he had nowhere to hide from them. He was as naked and as open as a corpse on a table, and dark Anubis the jackal god was his prosector and his prosecutor and his persecutor. — Neil Gaiman

The refs are so confused themselves because there's so many rules. It's like, 'Oh my gosh I've never seen this many rules in my life.' And everybody's trying to govern this and justify that. — Ray Lewis

There are so many moments in our life which we cannot describe with mere words. There are not enough adjectives to justify the emotions behind such moments. Those moments are your life- they define who you truly are — Viraj J. Mahajan

You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts. — Cheryl Strayed

During World War II, Joseph Stalin was once asked by an American writer, according to Professor Dean Russell, how he could justify conscripting all the property of all the people for use by the government to fight the war. Stalin answered by asking why they considered it more immoral and illogical to conscript lifeless property than to conscript life itself, as was being done in the United States and all other capitalistic countries. His American challenger had no answer, because there was no answer. — Ron Paul

Once a person has been poisoned by self-deception, he can't make decisions about himself as neatly as all that," Himiko said, elaborating her friend's terrific prophecy; " You won't get a divorce Bird. You'll justify yourself like crazy, and try to salvage your married life by confusing the real issues. A decision like divorce is beyond you now, Bird, the poison has gone to work. And you know how the story ends ? Not even your own wife will trust you absolutely, and one day you'll discover for yourself that your entire private life is in the shadow of deception and in the end you'll destroy yourself. Bird, the first signs of self-destruction have appeared already!"
" But that's a blind alley! Leave it to you to paint the most hopeless future you can think of. " Bird lunged at jocularity ... — Kenzaburo Oe

I don't like memoirs. I think they're self-serving, and people use them to settle scores, and I really tried not to do that. You have to have a really interesting life to justify memoir, and my life has been pretty ho-hum. — Sally Mann

I wrote my histories and observations. I captured my thoughts and ideas and memories in words on vellum and paper. So much I stored, and thought it was mine. I believed that by fixing it down in words, I could force sense from all that had happened, that effect would follow cause, and the reason for each event come clear to me. Perhaps I sought to justify myself, not just all I had done, but who I had become. For years, I wrote faithfully nearly every evening, carefully explaining my world and my life to myself. — Robin Hobb

Anger is a consuming thing, a burning takeover.
It sets up shop in your heart and head and murders anything else attempting to makes it way in. Life becomes obsessed with it, clouded with it, engrossed in it. You justify feeling with delusions that you're owed retribution. You condone thoughts and vengeful acts, feeding yourself with the idea that it's warranted.
But that nourishment comes at a price. It costs you pieces of your soul, your love, your worth. You disregard your beliefs, your conscience. You adopt apathy like it's salvation because you know in your heart of hearts that you would deteriorate into nothing without it. Because you don't want to let it go. It makes you feel powerful, that anger. It makes you feel important. So you will let it eat you alive, consume every part of you until all that's left is hollow revenge. — Fisher Amelie

What, then, is patriotism? "Patriotism, sir, is the last resort of scoundrels," said Dr. Johnson. Leo Tolstoy, the greatest anti-patriot of our times, defines patriotism as the principle that will justify the training of wholesale murderers; a trade that requires better equipment for the exercise of man-killing than the making of such necessities of life as shoes, clothing, and houses; a trade that guarantees better returns and greater glory than that of the average workingman. — Emma Goldman

In short, the man displayed a constant and insurmountable impulse to wrap himself in a covering, to make himself, so to speak, a case which would isolate him and protect him from external influences. Reality irritated him, frightened him, kept him in continual agitation, and, perhaps to justify his timidity, his aversion for the actual, he always praised the past and what had never existed; and even the classical languages which he taught were in reality for him goloshes and umbrellas in which he sheltered himself from real life. — Anton Chekhov

I had given up magic, because it had reached a state of perfection. I felt that I was able to transform men into animals. I did not make use of this capability, because I believed I could not justify an intervention of this kind in the life of another person. — Wolfgang Hildesheimer

He wandered among the tanks for a long time, and often came back with her to the laboratory and the aquaria, submitting his physicist's arrogance to those small strange lives, to the existence of beings to whom present is eternal, beings that do not explain themselves and need not ever justify their ways to man. — Ursula K. Le Guin

I must make MAGICK the essential factor in the life of ALL. In presenting this book to the world, I must then explain and justify my position by formulating a definition of MAGICK and setting forth its main principles in such a way that ALL may understand instantly that their souls, their lives, in every relation with every other human being and every circumstance, depend upon MAGICK and the right comprehension and right application thereof. — Aleister Crowley

1. Live now. Be concerned with the present rather than with past or future.
2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent.
3. Stop imagining. Experience the real.
4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see.
5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge.
6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness.
7. Accept no should or ought other than your own. Adore no graven image.
8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts.
9. Surrender to being as you are. — Claudio Naranjo

Whatever I was, I owed to my family and to all those who struggled with me. But my biggest debt I owed to my wife. She was the one who gave my life meaning. All I could pledge to her, and to all those millions, was that I would do all I could to justify the faith that she, and they, had in me. I would try more than ever to make my life one of which she, and they, could be proud. I would do in private that which I knew my public responsibility demanded. — Martin Luther King Jr.

What do you want? You can't want to be happy, because that's too easy and too boring. You can't want only to love, because that's impossible. What do you want? You want to justify your life, to live it as intensely as possible. That is at once a trap and a source of ecstasy. Try to be alert to that danger and experience the joy and the adventure of being that woman who is beyond the image reflected in the mirror. — Paulo Coelho

To justify one's actions is easy. Acting responsibly and being accountable for actions is very difficult. — Shubha Vilas

You might want to do something about your neck."
I was totally lost. "My neck?"
She reached into her purse and handed me a compact mirror. I opened it and surveyed my neck, still trying to figure out what she could be talking about. Then I saw it. A small, brownish purple bruise on the side of my neck.
"What on earth is that?" I exclaimed.
Ms. Terwilliger snorted. "Although it's been a while for me, I believe the technical term is a hickey" She paused and arched an eyebrow. "You do know what that is, don't you?"
"Of course I know!" I lowered the mirror. "But there's no way - I mean, we barely - that is - "
She held up a hand to silence me. "You don't have to justify your private life to me. But you might want to consider how you can actually keep it private in the next fifteen minutes. — Richelle Mead

You must all know half a dozen people at least who are no use in this world, who are more trouble than they are worth. Just put them there and say Sir, or Madam, now will you be kind enough to justify your existence? If you can't justify your existence, if you're not pulling your weight in the social boat, if you're not producing as much as you consume or perhaps a little more, then, clearly, we cannot use the organizations of our society for the purpose of keeping you alive, because your life does not benefit us and it can't be of very much use to yourself. — George Bernard Shaw

The only advantage of knowledge is that it can justify suffering. — Sorin Cerin

Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and, fed from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction, some object which would never justify weariness, which would reconcile self-despair with the rapturous consciousness of life beyond self. — George Eliot

Life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished. — Alan W. Watts

You will say that it is vulgar and contemptible to drag all this into public after all the tears and transports which I have myself confessed. But why is it contemptible? Can you imagine that I am ashamed of it all, and that it was stupider than anything in your life, gentlemen? And I can assure you that some of these fancies were by no means badly composed . . . . It did not all happen on the shores of Lake Como. And yet you are right - it really is vulgar and contemptible. And most contemptible of all it is that now I am attempting to justify myself to you. And even more contemptible than that is my making this remark now. But that's enough, or there will be no end to it; each step will be more contemptible than the last . . . — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The point of working isn't to make money; you work to justify life. — David Baraka

The brute necessity of believing something so long as life lasts does not justify any belief in particular. — George Santayana

The decision to attack the entire nation [of Yugoslavia] has been counterproductive, and our destruction of civilian life has now become senseless and excessively brutal ... The United States' insistence on the use of cluster bombs, designed to kill or maim humans, is condemned almost universally and brings discredit on our nation (as does our refusal to support a ban on land mines). Even for the world's only superpower, the ends don't always justify the means. — Jimmy Carter

One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves. — Cortney S. Warren

The evidence which we have of the great facts of the Bible history belongs to this class, that is, it is moral evidence; sufficient to satisfy any rational mind, by carrying it to the highest degree of moral certainty. If such evidence well justify the taking away of human life or liberty, in the one case, surely it ought to be deemed sufficient to determine our faith in the other. — Simon Greenleaf

We have to understand - not justify - what gives rise to this tragedy. It's not because they're looking for beautiful virgins in heaven, as Orientalists portray it. Palestinian people are in love with life. If we give them hope - a political solution - they'll stop killing themselves. — Mahmoud Darwish

The intellectual summits of my life had been completing my dissertation and publishing my book, and that was already more than ten years ago. Intellectual summits? Summits, full stop. In those days, at least, I'd felt justified. Since then I hadn't produced anything except a few short articles for the Journal of Nineteenth-Century Studies, plus a couple for The Literary Review, when some new book touched on my field of expertise. My articles were clear, incisive and brilliant. They were generally well received, especially since I never missed a deadline. But was that enough to justify a life? — Michel Houellebecq

You can't say there shouldn't be poisonous serpents - that's the way life is. But in the field of action, if you see a poisonous serpent about to bite somebody, you kill it. That's not saying no to the serpent. That's saying no to that situation. So let's accept what must be accepted, without letting our acceptance justify inaction. — Eric Greitens

If you can justify your life's journey, you are a success. — Debasish Mridha

One mistake cannot justify another. — Raheel Farooq

Once you are aware that you can live a happy, fully satisfied life without causing harm to animals, being a carnivore is a tough thing to justify. — Adam Sobel

Islam expect every Muslim to do this duty, and if we realise our responsibility time will come soon when we shall justify ourselves worthy of a glorious past. — Muhammad Ali Jinnah

Thus do the gods justify the life of man: they themselves live it
the only satisfactory theodicy! — Friedrich Nietzsche

The door to heaven is open to us at any time we are willing to accept that we are of absolutely no importance. The bars of our own hell - the "mind-forged manacles" as Blake put it - are our attempts to justify ourselves or prove our self-worth. Accept that none of this matters and we can see that heaven is all around us. It is there in a child's smile, in the rain that waters the earth, even in the maggots that rise in new life from dead meat. All around us is evidence that life and love are eternal and unbroken by strife and suffering. — Aussiescribbler

Do you think it happens in real life? Pheromones and all that crap. Is it a bullshit theory some horndog dreamed up so he could justify why he's attracted to his mother or some shit? — Elle Kennedy

The only absolute truth is change, and death is the only way to stop change. Life is a series of judgments on changing situations, and no ideal, no belief fits every solution. Yet humans need to believe in something beyond themselves. Perhaps all intelligences do. If we do not act on higher motivations, then we can justify any action, no matter how horrible, as necessary for our survival. We are endlessly caught between the need for high moral absolutes - which will fail enough that any absolute can be demonstrated as false - and our tendency for individual judgments to degenerate into self-gratifying and unethical narcissism. Trying to force absolutes on others results in death and destruction, yet failing to act beyond one's self also leads to death and destruction, generally a lot sooner. — L.E. Modesitt Jr.

The intensity of her religious disposition, the coercion it exercised over her life, was but one aspect of a nature altogether ardent, theoretic, and intellectually consequent: and with such a nature struggling in the bands of a narrow teaching, hemmed in by a social life which seemed nothing but a labyrinth of petty courses, a walled-in maze of small paths that led no whither, the outcome was sure to strike others as at once exaggeration and inconsistency. The thing which seemed to her best, she wanted to justify by the completest knowledge; and not to live in a pretended admission of rules which were never acted on. Into this soul-hunger as yet all her youthful passion was poured; the union which attracted her was one that would deliver her from her girlish subjection to her own ignorance, and give her the freedom of voluntary submission to a guide who would take her along the grandest path. — George Eliot

I thought about life, about my life, the embarrassments, the little coincidences, the shadows of alarm clocks on bedside tables. I thought about my small victories and everything I'd seen destroyed, I'd swum through mink coats on my parents' bed while they hosted downstairs, I'd lost the only person I could have spent my only life with, I'd left behind a thousand tons of marble, I could have released sculptures, I could have released myself from the marble of myself. I'd experienced joy, but not nearly enough, could there be enough? The end of suffering does not justify the suffering, and so there is no end to suffering, what a mess I am, I thought, what a fool, how foolish and narrow, how worthless, how pinched and pathetic, how helpless. None of my pets know their own names, what kind of person am I? — Jonathan Safran Foer

Time of course has showed the question up in all its young illogic. We can justify any apologia simply by calling life a successive rejection of personalities. No apologia I s any more than a romance - half a fiction - in which all the successive identities are taken on and rejected by the writer as a function of linear time are treated as separate characters. The writing itself even constitutes another rejection, another "character" added to the past. So we do sell our souls: paying them away to history in little installments. It isn't so much to pay for eyes clear enough to see past the fiction of continuity, the fiction of cause and effect, the fiction of a humanized history endowed with "reason. — Thomas Pynchon

Unlike most of life, what you do really matters. Your actions have real consequences. You have to pay attention and focus, and that's very satisfying. It forces you to pay great attention and you lose yourself in the task at hand. Without the risk, that wouldn't happen, so the risk is an essential part of climbing, and that's hard for some people to grasp. You can't justify the risk when things go wrong and people die. The greater the risk, the greater the reward in most aspects of life, and in climbing that's certainly true, too. It's very physical, you use your mind and your body. — Jon Krakauer

No. You can't work your way into heaven. Anytime you try and justify yourself with works, you disqualify yourself with works. What I do here, every day, for the rest of my life, is only my way of saying, 'Lord, regardless of what eternity holds for me, let me give something back to you. I know it doesn't even no scorecard. But let me make something of my life before I go.. and then, Lord, I'm at your mercy. — Mitch Albom

She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Mistakes and slips are a necessary evil part of our daily living. We learn through them all the time. Life is too broad for us to do everything so perfectly, but we must not justify our mistakes and slips when we know that we are far better than our mistakes! The best regret is to take a robust action in the right direction to prove how far better we are than our mistakes and slips. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

In trying to justify the humanities, as in trying to live a life, what may turn out to matter most is holding one's nerve. — Stefan Collini

Because I'm a performer I can justify and sometimes sell the things about me that offend and shock the conventional world. I need to live life in the fast lane. I need to do things to excess. I need to go over the edge. I have an obligation to experience the things most people can't experience. The taboos. The things you're not supposed to know or do. That's part of my job. That's why I do it. I would probably do it anyway. — Elizabeth Ashley

I came from a family who believed in, in quotes, the Rights of Man, who believed that in order to justify the sort of luxurious life that the majority of us have, related to the whole world, that you had to do something. — Richard Attenborough

A guy I once knew tried to justify his life choices to me by comparing himself to Genghis Khan." "I take it you didn't find his argument compelling?" Murtry asked with a smirk. "No," Holden said. "And then a friend of mine shot him in the face." "An ironic rebuttal to an argument about necessary violence." "I thought so too, at the time. — James S.A. Corey

That pain you feel," Master Blint said almost gently, "is the pain of abandoning a delusion. The delusion is meaning, Kylar. There is no higher purpose. There are no gods. No arbiters of right and wrong. I don't ask you to like reality. I only ask you to be strong enough to face it. There is nothing beyond this. There is only the perfection we attain by becoming weapons, as strong and merciless as a sword. There is no essential good in living. Life is nothing in itself. It's a place marker that proves who's winning, and we are the winners. We are always the winners. There is nothing by the winning. Even winning means nothing. We win because it's an insult to lose. The ends don't justify the means. The means don't justify the ends. There is no one to justify to. There is no justification. — Brent Weeks

Few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems. Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin - which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. And yet, ironically, one of the fears attending our progress in science is that a more complete understanding of ourselves will dehumanize us. Viewing — Sam Harris

In the passing of an instant everything stopped and there he stood at the bottom of the ocean in perfect stillness. He gazed into a strange and eerie light that seemed to draw closer as the fear in his heart faded. An amazing tunnel was extending towards him, smooth shiny walls in the night. Reaching his hand out to touch it he wondered; if he were to die in that moment, where would the life inside him go? His heart, bursting with unspent love and the breathtaking happiness in his soul, just disappearing into the ocean. Two more handfuls of salt dissolving in a world barely able to justify its own existence.

He heard a rushing sound as the sea inhaled again just before it struck him in the chest. A wall of sand and stones that blew him off his feet and sent him back out, his last thought escaping him in a long trail of bubbles.

'Stop fighting now Thomas - it's over. — Kevin Keely

She had always suffered from a curious fear of what was going to happen round the next corner. Even when life went smoothly and nothing occurred to justify her vague apprehensions, they did not altogether disperse. She had tried to face these fears and conquer them, but she could never do so entirely, she could only strain forward into the darkness of the future, expecting and fearing the unknown. She was brave in the face of dangers she could see, but she could not arm herself against shadows. These fears were her weakness. — D.E. Stevenson

Yet simplicity has been difficult to implement in modern life because it is against the spirit of a certain brand of people who seek sophistication so they can justify their profession. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Within a religious framework, a belief in free will supports the notion of sin - which seems to justify not only harsh punishment in this life but eternal punishment in the next. — Sam Harris

Here was a place where men and life and death had reached the lowest form of degradation. How could any reward in national progress even faintly justify the establishment and operation of
such a place? — Charles Lindbergh

I strongly oppose cloning, as do most Americans. We recoil at the idea of growing human beings for spare body parts or creating life for our convenience. And while we must devote enormous energy to conquering disease, it is equally important that we pay attention to the moral concerns raised by the new frontier of human embryo stem cell research. Even the most noble ends do not justify any means. — George W. Bush

You don't need to justify what I do. I do what I have to do to survive because that's all I know. I don't make excuses, I own it. This is me, this is who I am, this is my life. It shames me but not enough to stop. At one point, this was all about revenge; it was about getting the men who got my father and my mother. But somewhere along the way, I forgot about the beast. Vengeance is a beast, you know. It can be tamed. I just stopped feeding it. — Karina Halle

Every time I complete a major project I reward myself with two full days of just reading and coffee! I do justify that it is my work! — Delia J. Colvin

To justify an unorthodox life by writing about it is to re-inscribe the original violation, to re-violate masculine turf. — Nancy K. Miller

For me, no ideological or political conviction would justify the sacrifice of a human life. For me, the value of life is absolute, with no concessions. It's not negotiable. — Edgar Ramirez

It is my sincere opinion that our precious time on earth should not be spent attempting to justify unbelievable acts of cruelty, death, and disease as a part of 'God's Plan' or the greater good - and clinging to ancient texts that preach ill-concealed bigotry and sexism. Instead, we should find ways to make this life happy and satisfying, without regard to the unknowable nature of an afterlife. — David G. McAfee

Dying for the world is not noble in anyway but a disgrace for the rest of the world itself, for those that don't do absolutely anything to support, help or even bleed. It's like going to war alone, while our friends cheer and applaud from the distance. It's not fun and doesn't make me proud in any way. Most so-called spiritual people in this world, are not spiritual, they think they are but they're braindead, they are living their own fantasies, their own Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings Stories, but not truly bleeding for life. And so, it's quite interesting when my friends do all they can to stop me from leaving them, from changing country, while at the same time, they give me no reason to justify being attached to them. — Robin Sacredfire

If God gives you gifts you must use them to justify your life. It is what the Greeks called divine discontent that drives you. — Mary Fairfax

Because Jesus came to secure for us what we could never secure for ourselves, life doesn't have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, validate ourselves. — Tullian Tchividjian

It's easy to point out someone else's mistake, harder to recognize your own. Especially because most people - except the lucky few like ourselves - are forced to live with their mistakes. So they learn to justify their mistakes, build on them, until they can look back and convince themselves that their mistake was inevitable all along, a good choice, in fact. An unwed teenage mother can look back at her unexpected pregnancy fondly six years down the road once the child's out of her hair and in school all day. She wouldn't dare go back and fix that mistake because it's become part of her life. — Andrea Lochen

The disobedience of the first Adam was the judicial ground of our condemnation; the obedience of the last Adam is the legal ground on which God alone can justify the sinner. The substitution of Christ in the place of His people, the imputation of their sins to Him and of His righteousness to them, is the cardinal fact of the Gospel. But the principle of being saved by what another has done is only possible on the ground that we are lost through what another did. The two stand or fall together. If there had been no covenant of works there could have been no death in Adam, there could have been no life in Christ.
Arthur Walkington Pink, The Divine Covenants (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1973), 33 — Arthur W. Pink

The extra time and trouble required to follow Dr. Bob's alternative schedule are hard to justify unless the dangers of contracting infectious diseases early in life are minimized and the dangers of vaccinating early in life are exaggerated. Much of The Vaccine Book is devoted to this minimization and exaggeration. Tetanus is not a disease that affects infants, according to Dr. Bob, Hib disease is rare, and measles is not that bad. He does not mention that tetanus kills hundreds of thousands of babies in the developing world every year, that most children will encounter the bacteria that causes Hib disease within the first two years of their lives, and that measles has killed more children than any other disease in history. — Eula Biss

I'm 20 years old. I like to party as much as anyone my age. Going clubbing is my way of relaxing or releasing a lot of stress. I don't feel that I should have to justify that part of my life. I don't know that I'm necessarily an addict. — Lindsay Lohan

Take whatever is thrown at you and build upon it. "Yes ... and" rather than "No ... but." "The idiot is bound by his pride," he says. "It always has to be his way. This is also true of the person who is deceptive or doing things wrong: he always tries to justify himself. A person who is bright in regard to his spiritual life is humble. He accepts what others tell him - criticism, ideas - and he works with them. — Michael Lewis

Because Jesus came to set the captives free, life does not have to be a tireless effort to establish ourselves, justify ourselves, and validate ourselves. — Preston Sprinkle

You think I like this?" I say defensively. "Trust me, I don't need this headache in my life." I swallow a mouthful of beer. "Hey. You know Twilight?" He blinks. "Excuse me?" "Twilight. The vampire book." His wary eyes study my face. "What about it?" "Okay, so you know how Bella's blood is extra special? Like how it gives Edward a raging boner every time he's around her?" "Are you fucking with me right now?" I ignore that. "Do you think it happens in real life? Pheromones and all that crap. Is it a bullshit theory some horndog dreamed up so he could justify why he's attracted to his mother or some shit? Or is there actually a biological reason why we're drawn to certain people? Like goddamn Twilight. Edward wants her on a biological level, right?" "Are you seriously dissecting Twilight right now?" God, I am. This is what Allie has reduced me to. A sad, pathetic loser who goes to a bar and forces his friend to participate in a Twilight book club. — Elle Kennedy

The worst denial of all is being in denial that we're in denial in the first place. And I would wonder if that's not exactly where most of us live out most of our lives. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is. — Sherman Alexie

It couldn't be an all-bad world, could it, not with birds who warble and call? Maybe that was the secret - to find the few things that made life just a fraction better, and to focus on those. Bird warbles. Peach fuzz. Puppies barking as if they're full grown dogs. Nothing great, certainly nothing to justify the rest of it, but enough to keep you going. — Shalom Auslander