Living Life Not Just Existing Quotes & Sayings

It is above all the valorizing of the present that requires emphasizing. The simple fact of existing, of living in time, can comprise a religious dimension. This dimension is not always obvious, since sacrality is in a sense camouflaged in the immediate, in the "natural" and the everyday. The joy of life discovered by the Greeks is not a profane type of enjoyment: it reveals the bliss of existing, of sharing - even fugitively - in the spontaneity of life and the majesty of the world. Like so many others before and after them, the Greeks learned that the surest way to escape from time is to exploit the wealth, at first sight impossible to suspect, of the lived instant. — Mircea Eliade

Non-injury to all living beings is the only religion." (first truth of Jainism) "In happiness and suffering, in joy and grief, we should regard all creatures as we regard our own self, and should therefore refrain from inflicting upon others such injury as would appear undesirable to us if inflicted upon ourselves." "This is the quintessence of wisdom; not to kill anything. All breathing, existing, living sentient creatures should not be slain, nor treated with violence, nor abused, nor tormented, nor driven away. This is the pure unchangeable Law. Therefore, cease to injure living things." "All living things love their life, desire pleasure and do not like pain; they dislike any injury to themselves; everybody is desirous of life and to every being, his life is very dear."
Yogashastra (Jain Scripture) (c. 500 BCE) — Anonymous

A life without passion is not living, it's merely existing — Leo Buscaglia

Gavin has started calling you the queen of zombie hearts," Cole said. "And you know what, he's right. It fits. Before you, I wasn't really living. I was existing. Moving from girl to girl. Killing zombies. I was as good as dead, but you brought me back to life. And you are most definitely the queen of my heart. — Gena Showalter

The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will live while you're alive and die only when you're dead. — Arundhati Roy

Maurice Nicoll says all history is a living today. We are not enjoying one spark of life in a huge, dead waste. We are, instead, existing at one point in a vast process of the living who still think and feel but are invisible to us. — Richard Matheson

We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands ... searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living ... for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences ... Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.
-Commencement Speech, Wellesley 1969 — Hillary Rodham Clinton

You only know of existence, once you rebel. You only know of life, once you die. — Lionel Suggs

I want every day to be life for the living, not just traipsing through it existing. I'm just interested in life and the world and exploring. — Queen Latifah

Friends and family came and went, sometimes helping her with her tears, other times making her laugh. But even in her laughter there was something missing. She never seemed to be truly happy; she just seemed to be passing time while she waited for something else. She was tired of just existing; she wanted to live. But what was the point in living when there was no life in it? These questions went through her mind over and over until she reached the point of not wanting to wake up from her dreams
they were what felt real.
Deep down, she knew it was normal to feel like this, she didn't particularly think she was losing her mind. She knew that one day she would be happy again and that this feeling would just be a distant memory. It was getting to that day that was the hard part. — Cecelia Ahern

Because you can make decisions for yourself even if they're wrong. Mistakes can be corrected. Life is too short to have everyone else tell you how to live. Make a few mistakes, and learn from them. At least they'll be real, and you'll be living, not just existing. — Carolyn Brown

Life can be difficult at times and many questions have no answers. The determination it takes to go on and the resiliency required of the human spirit to find joy is an integral part of existing as human. Running is symbolic of this struggle. The joy and satisfaction come from meeting the challenge head on, and realizing that just when you think you cannot go on anymore, if you pull deep from within yourself,you will find strength beyond anything imaginable. — Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Life is all about chances. You might be safer not taking any. But playing it totally safe means you're only existing. Not living. I want to live. — Ellen Hopkins

It is very easy to conform to what your society or your parents and teachers tell you. That is a safe and easy way of existing; but that is not living ... To live is to find out for yourself what is true ... — Jiddu Krishnamurti

I won't lie to you. This changes things. It may even change you. I know it will change me."
"I guess it's a reminder of the uncertainty in life and the foolishness of merely existing when the world is pleading with you to live. If you take anything from this, please take that. We take life for granted. We have to stop that. We have to start living. — Samantha Young

My chest clenched as I looked down at the oil-stained asphalt. Here but not. Existing but not living. I knew that feeling. Lived it for several years. Some days it felt like I was still wearing that feeling like a heavy jacket buttoned up too tightly. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Stop existing and start living! — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

When I was in the desert, I woke each day and carried on with my life, but it wasn't living; it was merely existing. I want to live. You are where I live. — Renee Ahdieh

When you stop existing and you start truly living, each moment of the day comes alive with the wonder and synchronicity. — Steve Maraboli

We have to go along a road covered with blood. We have no other alternative. For us it is a matter of life or death, a matter of living or existing. We have to be ready to face the challenges that await us. — Gamal Abdel Nasser

Living is not existing but to live with joy. — Debasish Mridha

The cologne, the ritual with the shirt: they are two pieces of the scaffolding, rickety and fragile as it is, that he has learned to erect in order to keep moving forward, to keep living his life. Although often he feels he isn't so much living as he is merely existing, being moved through his days rather than moving through them himself. But he doesn't punish himself too much for this; merely existing is difficult enough. — Hanya Yanagihara

When we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we are, in a measure, shutting tomorrow out of our prayer. We do not live in tomorrow but in today. We do not seek tomorrow's grace or tomorrow's bread. They thrive best, and get most out of life, who live in the living present. They pray best who pray for today's needs, not for tomorrow's, which may render our prayers unnecessary and redundant by not existing at all! — E. M. Bounds

If safety is my goal, living life is not. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Living is more often than not, existing.
I want to be alive, with love, joy, and be exciting. — Debasish Mridha

A happening was looming. It was out there somewhere beyond the regular enclosed life that I had been living. It was out there, not waiting, but existing. Being. Perhaps it was only slightly wondering if I would come to it. — Markus Zusak

My heart goes out to the playing and singing folk, the folk who are forever on the roads. Life is change; and to be seeing new wonders every day - the thrown sea, the silver rush of the meadow, the lights in distant towns - is to be living, and not merely existing. I pity the man who is content to stay always in the place where his mother dropped him; that is, unless his thoughts wander. For one might sit on a midden and dream stars! — Joseph Campbell

In proportion to the love existing among men, so will be the community of property and power. Among true and real friends, all is common; and, were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friends. The only perfect and genuine republic is that which comprehends every living being. Those distinctions which have been artificially set up, of nations, societies, families, and religions, are only general names, expressing the abhorrence and contempt with which men blindly consider their fellowmen. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Productivity is not what will bring purpose to your life, but what will enable you to excel in living out your existing purpose. — Tim Challies

It's the simple things in life that comprise the difference between existing and living.
(from blog post on October 26, 2013, original content) — Cora Carmack

Anything I've done up till May 27th 1999 was kind of an illusion, existing without living. My daughter, the birth of my daughter, gave me life. — Johnny Depp

To lose one's life is no great matter; when the time comes I'll have the courage to lose mine. But what's intolerable is to see one's life being drained of meaning, to be told there's no reason for existing. A man can't live without some reason for living. — Albert Camus

Your life will contribute to a grand and wonderful story no matter what you do. You have been spoken. You are here, existing, choosing, living, shaping the future and carving the past. Your physical matter and your soul exist, not out of necessity, not voluntarily, and not under their own strength. There is absolutely nothing that you or I can do to guarantee that we will continue to exist. You aren't doing anything that makes you be. We aren't the Author. You and I are spoken. We have been called into this art as characters, born into this thread of occurrence tumbling downstream in the long Niagara of loss set in motion by the trouble that faced our first father and first mother. We will contribute to this narrative. But how? — N.D. Wilson

Existing is going through the motions of life with no zeal and feeling you have no control; living means embracing all that this large world has to offer and not being afraid to take chances. The beauty of living is knowing you can always start over and there's always a chance for something better. — J'son M. Lee

She wanted to live, and live fully, and to give life, she who loved life! What was the good of existing, if you couldn't give yourself? — Emile Zola

One day I decided that existing simply did not work for me, and that was when I began to live. — Sai Marie Johnson