Living Awake Quotes & Sayings

When the rose is gone and the garden faded
you will no longer hear the nightingale's song.
The Beloved is all; the lover just a veil.
The Beloved is living; the lover a dead thing.
If love withholds its strengthening care,
the lover is left like a bird without care,
the lover is left like a bird without wings.
How will I be awake and aware
if the light of the Beloved is absent?
Love wills that this Word be brought forth. — Rumi

I am very lucky that I get to tell stories for a living. I love being able to grab people's attention, to keep them turning the pages, to make them stay awake all night. I want to stir the pulse, yes, but also to stir the heart. I hope 'The Woods' does that. — Harlan Coben

I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache an about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief. — C.S. Lewis

Surely, if my parents and older brother were awake now, that would mean that they would have remembered such an important date and, as soon as they saw me, congratulate me on living another year? Adele Rose, Awakening. — Adele Rose

Abaratians are very much about living in the moment; living life because that's what we've got, we've got today, we've got now, we've got being alive now and we have to be awake and alive in the moment and not asleep in our lives. And they would find the idea of sleeping through your life, of being bored - they would think that was very stupid - why would you be bored when there's so much to do and so much to see and so much to be? — Clive Barker

Welcome the small cracking of your hard-clodded shell,
Embrace the warm sting of tears,
Kiss the shadow which frightens you awake as you turn the corners of your day,
Love the whole of everything,
Smooth sunshine skies and
Jagged edges
Which all seek us out in
Constant whisper and touch
To say, 'hello, Beautiful. You're alive — Jacob Nordby

I know someone said it's over,
And shattered all your dreams.
Come here, oh tattered soul.
Broken dreams, you say.
Now that you're awake,
Let me show you something I learned the same hard way.
Get up and give yourself a shake.
Life is for living, so don't die for anyone's sake.
What I say heals her heart. — Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

Our hearts and imaginations need to dance and play if we are to live awake — Jaeda DeWalt

Men speak of dreaming as if it were a phenomenon of night and sleep. They should know better. All results achieved by us are self-promised, and all self-promises are made in dreams awake. Dreaming is the relief of labor,the wine that sustains us in act. We learn to love labor, not for itself, but for the opportunity it furnishes for dreaming, which is the great under-monotone of real life, unheard, unnoticed, because of its constancy. Living is dreaming. Only in the graves are there no dreams. — Lew Wallace

Awake my great soul. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint. — Edward Thomas

In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger. — Nhat Hanh

If you wake up one morning realising that you do not know anything, then you are awake. If you still think you know something, then you are still asleep. If you are still trying to know, you are still trying to control. If you are still trying to control then you still think something can 'go wrong'. If you still think something can go wrong then you are not in touch with the source. If you are not in touch with the source then you live in fear. You are living in the fear that you have created, and that you are trying to get away from. — Paul Lowe

If coffee were like dreams, then I would be wired in constant bliss, never needing sleep to live out my dreams. — Anthony Liccione

If youre not living awake to the fact the life can change in a dime, then youre living asleep ... — Kristine Carlson

The only way to ensure democracy functions correctly is to question its governance constantly. Fail to do so and you may awake to find yourself living in a police state. — Stewart Stafford

I think that every living person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group thinking, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. I hate this more than anything. This is the hardest principle within christian spirituality for me to deal with. The problem is not out there, the problem is the needy beast of a thing living in my chest. — Donald Miller

The living and the dead,
The awake and the sleeping,
The young and the old are all one and the same.
When the ones change, they become the others.
When those shift again, they become these again.
God is day and night.
God is winter and summer.
God is war and peace.
God is fertility and famine.
He transforms into many things.
Day and night are one.
Goodness and badness are one.
The beginning and the end of a circle are one. — Heraclitus

When a man does not realize his kinship with the world, he lives in a prison-house whose walls are alien to him. When he meets the eternal spirit in all objects, then is he emancipated, for then he discovers the fullest significance of the world into which he is born; then he finds himself in perfect truth, and his harmony with the all is established. In India men are enjoined to be fully awake to the fact that they are in the closest relation to things around them, body and soul, and that they are to hail the morning sun, the flowing water, the fruitful earth, as the manifestation of the same living truth which holds them in its embrace. — Rabindranath Tagore

There are fourteen keys to experiencing greater love and with each key, I offer what I believe to be the most effective tool out there. So this is a time when, if we're awake to it, we have an amazing opportunity to start living a different life. By that I mean the life that our souls came here to live. We're all being propelled forward and it's not always easy, but through supporting one another we can do it. — Marci Shimoff

When we are self-aware, we are able to reach beyond ourselves and objectively assess others ... allowing us to meet them where they are at, seeing into their needs and struggles, so we can understand the way they experience life, even if it is vastly different from the way we experience, our own. — Jaeda DeWalt

Live the dream awake. — Tia Walker

I fear me that the Christian church is far more likely to lose her integrity in these soft and silken days than in those rougher times. We must be awake now, for we traverse the enchanted ground, and are most likely to fall asleep to our own undoing, unless our faith in Jesus be a reality, and our love to Jesus a vehement flame. Many in these days of easy profession are likely to prove tares, and not wheat; hypocrites with fair masks on their faces, but not the true born children of the living God. — Charles Haddon Spurgeon

To reclaim our natural power and this birthright of real magic, we must get naked and face ourselves.

The truth of Who You Really Are is vast. It is genius. It crackles with electricity and sensuality and other forbidden, dangerous things. You have longed for it all your life. You catch glimpses of it from the corner of your eye. A riff of music reminds you, a surge of ecstasy during sex brings you home, a crisp Autumn wind carries some long forgotten scent which thrills you for inexplicable reasons. A thousand tiny hints show up to seduce you awake and lead you back into your true nature, but they flee when you try to grasp them and leave you wondering if you were just imagining things.
You weren't though.
This quality of richness and balance and home is Who You Really Are. That is the kingdom we seek and it waits for us to find it. It wants us to regain our rightful place. — Jacob Nordby

We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-acceptance is the hardest thing to do. If we can't accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don't know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room. — Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

The Secret Garden was what Mary called it when she was thinking of it. She liked the name, and she liked still more the feeling that when its beautiful old walls shut her in no one knew where she was. It seemed almost like being shut out of the world in some fairy place. The few books she had read and liked had been fairy-story books, and she had read of secret gardens in some of the stories. Sometimes people went to sleep in them for a hundred years, which she had thought must be rather stupid. She had no intention of going to sleep, and, in fact, she was becoming wider awake every day which passed at Misselthwaite. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

When is death not within ourselves? ... Living and dead are the same, and so are awake and alseep, young and old. — Heraclitus

If we being to ready the Bible daily; we will awake the divinity of our souls. — Lailah Gifty Akita

X-awake. X-elegant. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Here was the world wide-awake and yet only for me, all the fresh pure air only for me, all the fragrance breathed only by me, not a living soul hearing the nightingale but me, the sun in a few moments coming up to warm only me. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Do not just exist, be fully awake. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I'm almost convinced that I'm never awake. I'm not sure if I'm not in fact dreaming when I live, and living when I dream, or if dreaming and living are for me intersected, intermingled things that together form my conscious self. — Fernando Pessoa

This morning I woke up at four and lay awake for an hour or so in a bad state. It is raining again. I got up finally and went about the daily chores, waiting for the sense of doom to lift - and what did it was watering the house plants. Suddenly joy came back because I was fulfilling a simple need, a living one. Dusting never has this effect (and that may be why I am such a poor housekeeper!), but feeding the cats when they are hungry, giving Punch clean water, makes me suddenly feel calm and happy. Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way. — May Sarton

Awake all living souls and shine thy light. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I feel like I'm sleeping when I'm awake, and really living when I'm asleep. — Michael J. White

The Deepest Night*

As we lay
asleep within our suspended animation
chambers - living coffins
our thoughts chase each other as they
entwine together

With our bodies
separated by a transparent aluminum partition
our minds connected
telepathically hug and kiss as we continue to
love each other

At the end
of our thousand lightyear journey
when our bodies
awake - thaw out - become warm again
within each others arms

We'll find ourselves
our passions burning all the hotter
forever brighter
into a supernova our love shall blossom
within the deepest night

Copyright David M. Green 2014 — David M. Green

There are things around us and about, of which I can render no distinct account
Things material and spiritual; heaviness in the atmosphere; a sense of suffocation, anxiety, and above all, that terrible state of existence which the nervous experience when the senses are keenly living and awake and meanwhile the powers of thought lie dormant. — Edgar Allan Poe

Are you walking asleep, or living awake? — Greg Glander

He feels, as he sometimes does, as most people must, a presence in the room, what he can only think of as his and Rebecca's living ghosts, the amalgamation of their dreams and their breathing, their smells. He does not believe in ghosts, but he believes in ... something. Something viable, something living, that's surprised when he wakes at this hour, that's neither glad nor sorry to see him awake but that recognizes the fact, because it has been interrupted in its nocturnal inchoate musings. — Michael Cunningham

Contemplating this suffering which is unbearable to us, and is unbearable to others, too, can produce awake mind, which arises from the compassion that wishes to free all living beings from suffering. — Dalai Lama XIV

Now, as the labor began, it was the storm she recalled. The thrash of wind and trees and the quiet terror that had kept her flat in her bed, wide awake, anticipating disaster but unable to rise to avert it - or to shake her husband, to call for help. There was only silence now, in the small living room. There — Alice McDermott

There are hard days to live. You awake to a day when you feel you've done it all before, and you're going to do it again, so why do it at all. — Carew Papritz

If you are living the dream, how do you know if you are asleep or awake? — Karl Pilkington

lol I can sleep, i've never had a problem with it. I just never got much. These days if i'm not awake doing something, i'll stay in bed from night til night and have no problems with hiding under the duvet. That's what worries me. It comes to the point sometimes that I don't know what i worry more about when going to sleep - my dreams? my dreams that are nightmares, or the real fact that it doesn't matter if my eyes are closed or open, i'm still living the same thing. Pretty fecking depressing if you ask me lol So I tend to stay awake the longest I can so that when I fall asleep i'm too tired to say or do much that I just sleep and don't think. — Ellie Williams

A dream isn't worth the sleep, unless you are wide awake when dreaming it. — Bidemi Mark-Mordi

Well, life is not just a business of standing on dry land and occasionally getting your feet wet. It is merely an illusion that some of us stand on one bank and some on the opposite. So long as we stand like that we are not living at all, but dreaming. So jump, jump in, and let the shock wake us up. Even if we drown, at least for a moment or two before we die we shall be awake and alive. — Paul Scott

When you make a commitment to live a life of bliss, everyday is an opportunity to live the dream awake. — Tia Walker

How slowly life moves when you're dead. Another day, another hour, another night in bed. I want to live awake. I've been sleeping. Sleepwalking. — Pearl Abraham

I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on. — Tim Allen

I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire ... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind ... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever! — Ray Bradbury

See, my aim is not to survive but to be thrown to the wolfs with adrenaline still pumping in my veins and hear the gods laughing saying "that was one hell of a youth" and everything I do I do in order to push my senses and levels of natural ecstasy. I want to be so awake that I pass out by exhaustion every night with a smile on my face and no thoughts of tomorrow because today was all I ever could make of it and I am sick and tired of boredom. Bored people slumbering boring words about bored habits and I want to get out. — Charlotte Eriksson

With each day, each hour and every moment of life, no matter how small, I realize that I have found a way of bringing me straight to the one person that I would give everything for ... to you. I am living in a dream, in a dream I don't want to awake from. — Sawm Rad

The majority of people are not awake; it is only here and there that we find one even partially awake. Practically all of us, as a result, are living lives that are unworthy almost the name of lives, compared to those we might be living, and that lie within our easy grasp. While it is true that each life is in and of Divine Being, hence always one with it, in order that this great fact bear fruit in individual lives, each one must be conscious of it; he or she must know it in thought, and then live continually in this consciousness. — Ralph Waldo Trine

I saw their living mouths moving in conversation and their dead mouths grinning the taut-drawn grins of corpses. Their living eyes I saw, and their dead eyes still-staring. Had it not been for the fear that I was going crazy, I would have found it an interesting experience, a trip such as no drug could possibly produce. Asleep and dreaming, I saw dead men living; awake, I saw living men dead. — Philip Caputo

Buddhism is more a philosophy for living rather than a religion or dogma - it's about being awake, free from illusions and fear, so that compassion and loving kindness permeates all of our relationships. — Charlotte Kasl

I think our lives are surely but the dreams
Of spirits, dwelling in the distant spheres,
Who as we die, do one by one awake. — Edgar Saltus

What time do we start?" I resisted the urge to grin. "Show up at the New Living Hope Revival Church at ten tomorrow morning." His eyes flew open. "Ten? That early?" "Half the world's awake by ten, and the other half is sleeping in China. — Denise Grover Swank

Time perfects all living beings as well as kills them; it alone is awake when all others are asleep. Time is insurmountable. — Chanakya

How can you even think about being awake in the world, let alone caring about someone?"
"Because they may be gone, but I'm not. I honor their memories by living, not by becoming the walking dead. — Anne Calhoun

I am an absurd idealist. But I believe that all that must come true. For, unless it comes true, the world will be laid desolate. And I believe that it can come true. I believe that, by the grace of God, men will awake presently and be men again, and colour and laughter and splendid living will return to a grey civilisation. But that will only come true because a few men will believe in it, and fight for it, and fight in its name against everything that sneers and snarls at that ideal. — Leslie Charteris

Lena scowled at the empty space in her living room. "Oh sure, thanks, I had fun too." She'd stayed awake, spilled a cup of perfectly good tea, and for what? A spirit with the noncorporeal equivalent of erectile dysfunction. Mostly she was fine being permanently on-call in the Veil. On nights like this, however, it sucked. — Laura Oliva

She did not understand the beauty he found in her, through touch upon her living secret body, almost the ecstasy of beauty. For passion alone is awake to it. And when passion is dead, or absent, then the magnificent throb of beauty is incomprehensible and even a little despicable; warm, live beauty of contact, so much deeper than the beauty of vision. — D.H. Lawrence

Asleep was the way Harry liked the Dursleys best; it wasn't as though they were ever any help to him awake. Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, and Dudley were Harry's only living relatives. They were Muggles who hated and despised magic in any form, which meant that Harry was about as welcome in their house as dry rot. They had explained away Harry's long absences at Hogwarts over the last three years by telling everyone that he went to St. Brutus's Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys. They knew perfectly well that, as an underage wizard, Harry wasn't allowed to use magic outside Hogwarts, but they were still apt to blame him for anything that went wrong about the house. Harry had never been able to confide in them or tell them anything about his life in the Wizarding world. The very idea of going to them when they awoke, and telling them about his scar hurting him, and about his worries about Voldemort, was laughable. — J.K. Rowling

People who talk of the spread of music in England and the increasing love of it, rarely seem to know where the growth of the art is really strong and properly fostered: some day the press will awake to the fact, already known abroad and to some few of us in England, that the living centre of music in Great Britain is not London, but somewhere further North. — Edward Elgar

inevitably someone will ask me about the word mindfulness with a tone of caution, suggesting that this is a Buddhist concept. It is true that Buddhists have long been faithful to the practice of mindfulness, but striving to live mindfully is a universal quest and belongs to us all. Living mindfully is the art of living awake and ready to embrace the gift of the present moment. — Macrina Wiederkehr

I'll awake you from this living sleep- Matador, Faith No More — Karina Halle

They don't understand what it is to be awake, / To be living on several planes at once / Though one cannot speak with several voices at once. — T. S. Eliot

We don't just live in books awake and dreams asleep. We are living stories, you and I, with dreams inside us undeniable, with love to give and people to walk beside. — Jamie Tworkowski

The next time you lose heart and you can't bear to experience what you're feeling, you might recall this instruction: change the way you see it and lean in. Instead of blaming our discomfort on outer circumstances or on our own weakness, we can choose to stay present and awake to our experience, not rejecting it, not grasping it, not buying the stories that we relentlessly tell ourselves. This is priceless advice that addresses the true cause of suffering - yours, mine, and that of all living beings. — Pema Chodron

The woman in the film drinks in a bar. She's in hair curlers, a chiffon headscarf tied over them like a tarp over a log pile. The hollows of the curlers, spaces for hope: something good might happen.

There was no sign of Sandro. I watched the film to keep myself awake while I waited.

A man bought the woman a beer. She took dainty sips in her hair curlers, in preparation for no specific occasion. Curler time seemed almost religious, a waiting that was more important than what the waiting was for. Curler time was about living the now with a belief that a future, an occasion for set hair, existed. — Rachel Kushner

My reverence for all life has become my guiding principle. It informs every aspect of my existence, including my choices about work, entertainment, home decor, healthcare, fashion, and, of course, diet. I have found my core belief surprisingly simple to adhere to. They are not sacrifices. If compassion is my religion, these are the actions I use to celebrate it. These are my rituals. For me, living fully awake means embracing all species with the same level of respect and kindness. Being a joyful vegan doesn't take willpower - just a willingness to try new things and choose mercy over misery. — Mark Hawthorne

The truth is there isn't anything to me at all. All I know is that I can't sleep well, I can't dream well and I'm quite in love with you. That's all there is to me. My greatest feature is my admiration for you. I know it's not healthy. Like my insomnia. Like my dreamless nights. You make living alright. My nightmares come when I think of a night without Valeria. That's when I realise you're dead. That's when I remember you've been gone for years. That's when I remember I'm awake. And I wait for this dream called Life to leave me to my peace once and for all and forever. — F.K. Preston

My beauty and independence were new for me. They brought me pride and satisfaction; they changed my sense of possibility. I felt awake in my body. Living in the woods, building my little shelter each night, a silent shadow, drifting in and out of mountain towns, a ghost, I was entirely self-reliant. On the trail I had persisted despite fear, and walking the Pacific Crest had led me deeply into happiness. I felt amazing now. In this body that brought me twelve hundred miles, I felt I could do anything. — Aspen Matis

To the one in the skies, this city must look like a scintillating pattern of speckled glows in all directions, like a firecracker going off amid thick darkness. Right now the urban pattern glowing here is in hues of orange, ginger, and ochre. It is a configuration of sparkles, each dot a light lit by someone awake at this hour. From where the Celestial Gaze is situated, from that high above, all these sporadically lit bulbs must seem in perfect harmony, constantly flickering, as if coding a cryptic message to God. — Elif Shafak

Some people think life is all about suffering, and suffering means living life. So many people live their lives accepting suffering as a way of life and they end up living their lives in perpetual self-inflicted pain without seeing a need to awake to take steps to their latent joy! If you are not feeling happy, wake up! There is a reason to be happy and there is a reason for action. There is something solemn, noble and distinctive that can make you happy! Awake! It is never the wish of God that His creation lives in indentured servitude! Pray! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I came on earth for something, I must do something, and I must live and leave not just anything, but something! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Life is a dream. I awake it is a reality. — Lailah Gifty Akita

What if you could just invent your family, your home, your life?
You could. You could call Sunday Wednesday. Be awake and living at 3 a.m. Use T-shirts instead of sheets. Eat lettuce like an apple. Blow your nose on socks.
Take four unrelated people and make a family. — Sarah Ellis

I can't be the only insomniac who has looked out his living room window and thought, "Why don't we all get together? We're awake. We could swap sleep recipes, console each other, plot terrible crimes." But it won't happen, any gathering of the near-dead, because the only thing more abhorrent to a restless mind in the ugly hours than the actual harshness of the ugly hours is the thought of having to listen to somebody else. Somebody else in distress, also angry at the comfortable world. — RM Vaughan

To awaken to the living dream within one's life and
remain awake in a world trying to lull everyone to sleep involves repeated struggle, yet also presents something truly worth fighting for. — Michael Meade

We need to increasingly live from the fullness of our whole hearts in order to become who we are meant to be and play the significant role that is ours to play. We want to be awake and alert. We want to be women who live their lives on purpose. — Stasi Eldredge

As a novelist, I'm incredibly lucky to make a living, but that doesn't mean that I don't lie awake at four o'clock in the morning, worrying. — David Nicholls

I would know that in any city, at an hour like this, there are people sleeping. That most people are sleeping. But that in any city, in any cluster of people, there are a few people who are awake at this hour, who are both awake and dancing, and it's here that we need to be. That if we are living as we were this week, that we had to be awake with the people who were still dancing. — Dave Eggers

I used to cry when I thought of living the rest of this life alone. Tears would fill my eyes while my heart would yearn. But now I feel empowerment in that acceptance. Power in knowing it is up to me to be happy ever after. I will not wait for him. After all, this awakening has just begun, it is going to take a man at the same point on the path I am. If I am going to fall allowing my spirit to completely melt into his manly grace, it is necessary he be awake. — Juls Amor

And then I though about us ... these children who fell down life's cartoon holes ... dreamless children, alive but not living
we emerged on the other side of the cartoon holes fully awake and discovered we were whole. — Douglas Coupland