Living Too Long Quotes & Sayings

I have always smoked and drunk and loved too much. In fact I have lived not too long but too much. One day the Iron Crab will get me. Then I shall have died of living too much. — Ian Fleming

Living too long in New York does that to a girl, gives her the false sense that the world is full of interesting people. Or at least people who are crazy in an interesting way. At — Maria Semple

Entranced by promises of a material paradise of limitless luxury, humanity has too long ignored the mismatch between the imperatives of our existence as living beings on a finite planet and the imperatives of the institutions of money that chart our path to the future. Created to build colonial empires in service to kings, global corporations are ill suited to the task of building just, sustainable, and compassionate civil societies that nurture sufficiency, partnership, and respect for the whole of life. — David Korten

Looking at him she felt she knew what the people of antiquity had been like. Thirty centuries or more were effaced, and there he was, the alert and predatory sub-human, further from what she believed man should be like than the naked savage, because the savage was tractable, while this creature, wearing the armor of his own rigid barbaric culture, consciously defied progress. And that was what Stenham saw, too; to him the boy was a perfect symbol of human backwardness, and excited his praise precisely because he was "pure": there was no room in his personality for anything that mankind had not already fully developed long ago. To him he was a consolation, a living proof that today's triumph was not yet total; he personified Stenham's infantile hope that time might still be halted and man sent back to his origins. — Paul Bowles

Fame wouldn't exist if it weren't for education. It's only of concern to schoolteachers. Oh no, we are not talking about fame, but what I call eternity. Believers call it the kingdom of God. The way I see it, all of us more demanding people, those of us who long for something better and have that one dimension too many, would be incapable of living if, apart from this world's atmosphere, there weren't another air to breathe; if, apart from time, eternity didn't also exist, the kingdom of authentic life. Mozart's music is a part of it, as are the poems of your great writers. So too are the saints who performed miracles, died as martyrs and set a great example to people. But the image of every authentic act, the strength of every authentic emotion, are just as much a part of eternity, even if nobody knows about them, witnesses them, writes them down and preserves them for posterity. There is no such thing as posterity in eternity, only contemporaneity. — Hermann Hesse

We should call on the Creator to show more modesty. He created the world in a frenzy of excitement. Instead of revising his rough drafts, he had his work printed straightaway. What a lot of contradictions there are in it. What a log of typing errors, inconsistencies in the plot, passages that are too long and wordy, characters that are entirely superfluous. But it is painful and difficult to cut and trim the living cloth of a book written and published in too much of a hurry — Vasily Grossman

Death does not come when the body is too exausted to live.Death comes because the brilliance inside of us can only be contained for so long.We do not die.We pass on.Pass on the life burning through our throats.When you leave me, I will not cry for you.I will run into the strongest wind I can find and welcome you home. — Michael Lee

It's unknown to the common human being that most of the characters in fairy tales are real immortals living among us. Some of them know who they are and some of them don't. Living too long can make you forget who you really are and what you were meant to be.They lived before you were born, and will continue to live after you die. That is why they are carved in the inner skeletons of your soul like a birthmark. The fact that you have been introduced to them in books does not mean they didn't exist in your dreams since long ago. — Cameron Jace

This moment, this one position in time, was the happiest I will ever be as long as I am living. I have since felt it was too happy, that men are not meant to have access to this kind of satisfaction; certainly it has tempered every moment of happiness I have experienced since. — Patrick DeWitt

to look twenty-nine. The young look older and the old look younger, collapsing the adult lifespan into one long twentysomething ride. Even a new term - amortality - has been coined to describe living the same way, at the same pitch, from our teens until death. This is a contradictory and dangerous message. We are led to believe the twentysomething years don't matter, yet, with the glamorization of and near obsession with the twenties, there is little to remind us that anything else ever will. This causes too many men and women to squander the most transformative years of their adult lives, only to pay the price in decades to come. Our cultural attitude toward the twenties is something like good old American irrational exuberance. Twenty-first-century twentysomethings have grown up alongside the dot-com craze, the supersize years, the housing — Meg Jay

I'd sit at my kitchen table and start scanning help-wanted ads on my laptop, but then a browser tab would blink and I'd get distracted and follow a link to a long magazine article about genetically modified wine grapes. Too long, actually, so I'd add it to my reading list. Then I'd follow another link to a book review. I'd add the review to my reading list, too, then download the first chapter of the book - third in a series about vampire police. Then, help-wanted ads forgotten, I'd retreat to the living room, put my laptop on my belly, and read all day. I had a lot of free time. — Robin Sloan

She allowed me to understand I'd done everything I could for her, and that I, and everyone who loved her, had to step away and go on living.

Now I know what she wanted from me on the day she told me she was afraid. It was exactly what I wanted when I had cancer and I thought I was going to die. I should have sat down next to her, put my arms around her, and told her that I loved her. That's all anyone wants. It took me a long time to figure this out. It's a complicated human puzzle. But it's never too late to know that love is all you need. — Alice Hoffman

Too many people surrender to a place of safety. That place where all they do is long to sleep so they can dream about living. — Kim Fay

But what we did yesterday isn't ever really the point or the question.The question is, are you open, by virtue of your relationship with this new Lover of yours, to being challenged in new ways, invited in new ways, to participate in what God is doing? The overwhelming testimony of the Bible is that too many finish growing long before they have finished living, and so they complete their days sitting on their assets. That's hardly the abundant life that Jesus came to give. — Richard Dahlstrom

we've been cut off for too long, and want to know we're not just an eddy of humanity, going down a drain without affecting anybody or anything. God doesn't call us to be eddies of living water, after all. — Kathryn Judson

A kind of second childhood falls on so many men. They trade their violence for the promise of a small increase of life span. In effect, the head of the house becomes the youngest child. And I have searched myself for this possibility with a kind of horror. For I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment. I did not want to surrender fierceness for a small gain in yardage. My wife married a man; I saw no reason why she should inherit a baby. — John Steinbeck

When I was a child and told my mother I didn't felt this was my planet, she thought I was schizophrenic or autistic. When later I finished a college degree and started working in different countries, she called me monster and started threatening me. Nearly 40 years later, when I was making a living from the books I wrote based on what I know, and making 6 times more money than she ever will, she apologized. I'm just not sure why or what she was apologizing for. I had already forgiven her ignorance when realizing nobody would ever believe the truth but myself. I had to go the whole way alone. Nobody was going to come with me on this very long, painful and challenging journey that humans call life but for me was much more than that, it was my mission, of changing their whole future far beyond the time when I'm gone. She was never my mother but merely the human body that gave me birth. In that sense, I am a monster, because I had no love. I had to find that too, on my own. — Robin Sacredfire

The same process is now occurring in the developing world, but much more quickly. The population density of metropolitan Beijing has collapsed since 1970, falling from 425 people per hectare to 65. Indian cities are following; Brazil's are ahead. And suburbanisation has a long way to run. Beijing is now about as crowded as metropolitan Chicago was at its most closely packed, in the 1920s. Since then Chicago's density has fallen by almost three-quarters. This is welcome. Romantic notions of sociable, high-density living - notions pushed, for the most part, by people who themselves occupy rather spacious residences - ignore the squalor and lack of privacy to be found in Kinshasa, Mumbai or the other crowded cities of the poor world. Many of them are far too dense for — Anonymous

The dead hand has too long hampered the freedom of the living. — James Robertson

Don't worry, I plan on living a long time."
"Why are you making a bucket list, then?"
"Because if you wait until you're really dying, it's too late. — Gayle Forman

Take the Long Way Home is a song that I wrote that's on two levels - on one level I'm talking about not wanting to go home to the wife, 'take the long way home' because she treats you like part of the furniture. But there's a deeper level to the song, too. I really believe we all want to find our true home, find that place in us where we feel at home, and to me, home is in the heart. When we're in touch with our heart and we're living our life from our heart, then we do feel like we found our home. — Roger Hodgson

Think of some things you've wanted to do for ages and have never given yourself time or permission to do them. The Voice knows what they are and has probably suggested them many times. You've always said inside, 'Oh, I couldn't. Costs too much. I've got too much work. I'm too tired. I can't be away from x that long. Should clean out the garage instead.' It's time to stop cleaning and start living. — Noelle Sterne

I too could go, oh, yes, at a moment's notice I could go and be as though I had not been, except that the long habit of living indisposeth me for dying, — John Banville

If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. Mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate. — Marshall Savage

Bucky's expression wasn't hostile, but it was serious. "Someday I'm going to fight and you won't be at my back."
"Nonsense. I'm your friend. Who I work for doesn't change that."
"If you leave it too long, you won't have a choice anymore. If the Steam Council turns on the people, each of us is going to have to decide where we belong."
"And you're going to play the rebel? You won't even carry a gun," Tobias snapped. "Your father may own an arms factory, but you make toys for a living."
"I don't carry a gun because I'm too good a shot," Bucky said quietly. "But when I fire, I don't miss. I never want to find you in my sights."
"It's not that simple," Tobias shot back, feeling a need for justification.
Bucky shrugged. "No, but the barons are running out of time, and that means we won't have many more chances to talk before everything falls apart. — Emma Jane Holloway

It is important to recognize when you have been detached from life for too long. The fact is you are still alive, and I can only imagine that your loved one would want you to go on living. I highly doubt they would have said to you, When or if I die before you, I want you to spend the rest of your life sitting on a couch staring at the wall. Please fulfill this important task for me. — Elizabeth Berrien

So long as you believe yourself to be 'only human' you have accepted life in a prison cell whose door remains locked only by your own mind.
By saying, 'well, I'm only human', you have blindly submitted to all the limitations, fears, pettiness, greed and hatreds which make the common person weak and fragile.
Most never become aware that another way is possible.
You are human, but much more, too.
The much-moreness is the vast, brilliant freedom and power which has confined itself in your humanity.
If you are willing (and not everyone is, which is also a perfectly valid choice), you can begin to explore your native powers and experience freedom within limitation. When you do this, you live fully while you are here and you are no longer afraid to die.
When you are not afraid of death but seek to live in a state of always-discovering, this is when life is transformed and you accept your birthright to choose and create in extraordinary fashion. — Jacob Nordby

I cut off your hand. I have been living with your grief and your rage and your pain ever since. I don't think-I don't think I had felt anything for a long time before that, but those emotions at least were familiar to me. Love I am not familiar with. I didn't recognize that feeling until I thought I had lost you in Ephrata. And when I thought I was losing you a second time, I realized I would give up anything to keep you-my lip service to other gods, but my pride, too, and my rage at all gods, everything for you. — Megan Whalen Turner

The winters are too long, and there's only one airline, so it's difficult to escape when you feel frustrated or claustrophobic. The audience for our films isn't very large, so it's difficult to support an industry. But, Iceland is beautiful. Sometimes it's hard to imagine living anywhere else. — Baltasar Kormakur

I tried to convince myself, too, but I was a much tougher sell because I knew the truth. I was so very not okay. I realized that I was going to feel shitty either way. I was probably going to feel shitty for the rest of my life, a life I should not even still be living. A life that should have let me go. So I got angry. Then I got very angry. Then I got angrier still. But you can only go so long being angry before you learn to hate. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and started hating instead. Whining was pathetic, but hate got things done. Hate strengthened my body and shaped my resolve and what I resolved to do was to get revenge. Hate seemed pretty damn healthy to me. - Nastya Kashnikov — Katja Millay

He knows different now. It's the living that chase the dead. The long bones and skulls are tumbled from their shrouds, and words like stones thrust into their rattling mouths: we edit their writings, we rewrite their lives. Thomas More had spread the rumor that Little Bilney, chained to the stake, had recanted as the fire was set. It wasn't enough for him to take Bilney's life away; he had to take his death too. — Hilary Mantel

They say all good things come to those who wait, and as I deplaned and began walking toward the exit, all I could think about was that I'd waited long enough. I'd been dying in a gray hell, longing for a taste of everything for as long as I could remember, and I would take a bite out of it all. I'd spent too many years of my life living vicariously through movies. — Kate Stewart

Michael Koryta is that rare author who is at once a compelling story teller and a fantastic writer. From the first sentence of THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD, you'll be under his spell. His characters are living, breathing people you'll care about; his setting is a place you'll visit and stay-long after you've decided to leave because you're scared. You can't leave; you're trapped. There are too many nerve-jangling, beautifully written, razor sharp moments and you won't want to miss a single one. This is an absolute sizzler. — Lisa Unger

Don't always consider all your options. Don't necessarily go for the outcome that seems best every time. Make a mess on occasion. Travel light. Let things wait. Trust your instincts and don't think too long. Relax. Toss a coin. Forgive, but don't forget. To thine own self be true. Living — Brian Christian

Sometimes, life gets overwhelming. You feel pestered, overworked and unappreciated. Your vision becomes blurred and your dreams suddenly feel too far from reach. You feel wasted, even though you know you've come a long way. At that point, ALL YOU NEED TO DO is calm down, close your eyes and remember why you started out in the first place. You really just need to look within yourself to find your purpose again. — King Samuel Benson

Living too long exacts a painful price. — Mason Cooley

Now I've gone for too long
Living like I'm not alive
So I'm going to start over tonight
Beginning with you and I — Hayley Williams

But rape was not what one did to women. Rape was what one felt when one's back was against the wall and one had to strike out, whether one wanted to or not, to keep the pack from killing one. He committed rape every time he looked into a white face. He was a long, taut piece of rubber which a thousand white hands had stretched to the snapping point, and when he snapped it was rape. But it was rape when he cried out in hate deep in his heart as he felt the strain of living day by day. That, too, was rape. — Richard Wright

I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the billion eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the living, the sum of the universe, the stories of history , a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone
fading away together, as if they really were one
something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine , sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake. — Mark Z. Danielewski

I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching. — Tom Lehrer

Samuel had raised his eyebrows and said, "Do you really want us to kill each other? Adam is the Alpha - and I'm a stronger dominant than he is. Now we've both lived long enough to control ourselves up to a point. But, if we're living together, sooner or later, we'd be at each other's throat."
"Adam's house is only a hundred yards from mine," I told him dryly. Samuel would have been right about any other wolf, but Samuel made his own rules. If he wanted to live in peace with Adam, he could manage it.
"Please." His tone was as far from pleading as it was possible to get.
"No," I told him.
There was another, longer pause.
"So how are you going to explain to your neighbors that there is a strange man sleeping on your front porch?"
He'd have done it, too - so I let him move in. — Patricia Briggs

Not long ago I saw a slice of watermelon on the table. And, there on the naked table, it looked like a madman's laugh (I don't know how else to put it). If I weren't resigned to living in a world that forces me to be sensible, how I would scream in fright at the happy prehistoric monstrosities of the earth. Only an infant isn't shocked: he too is a happy monstrosity repeated since the beginning of the history of man. Only afterwards does fear come, the pacification of fear, the denial of fear - in a word, civilization. Meanwhile, atop the naked table, the screaming slice of red watermelon. I am grateful to my eyes that are still so frightened. I shall yet see many things. To be honest, even without watermelon, a naked table is also a sight to see. — Clarice Lispector

As long as you're alive...
...you can't put life on hold like you can with a game-so that's why...
...those brief respites...
...when you can forget all the bitterness and pain...
they let you take a breath...
...and calm your heart.

If you don't give yourself that kind of time...
...living on just becomes, every so often-it gets to be too painful. — Hotaru Odagiri

The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he's too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You know full well that it was past time for you to come out in the open. And by admitting the truth, there are no more secrets, for either of us." She smiled. "That means we're able to discontinue playing the parts we've been playing for far too long and begin living our lives as they were meant to be lived - you as an author, and me as . . . well, I haven't figured that out exactly yet, but I have a few ideas in mind." Bram smiled. "I have to hope that I figure in somewhere with those few ideas, but . . ." He nodded to the shoreline. "We're almost to Ravenwood, so now is hardly the time to discuss such matters." Knowing he was right but finding herself unable to keep from smiling at the idea of having Bram Haverstein as part of her future plans - although what part he would play in her life it was certainly too soon to tell - Lucetta set her sights on the shore, anxious to see Ravenwood from the vantage point of the Hudson. "Do — Jen Turano

Homo sapiens, too, belongs to a family. This banal fact used to be one of history's most closely guarded secrets. Homo sapiens long preferred to view itself as set apart from animals, an orphan bereft of family, lacking siblings or cousins, and, most importantly, without parents. But that's just not the case. Like it or not, we are members of a large and particularly noisy family called the great apes. Our closest living relatives include chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans. The chimpanzees are the closest. — Yuval Noah Harari

Perhaps the old view of 'Me breadwinner, you hausfrau' worked for our grandparents, when people obligingly popped off before boring each other to death, but it won't work any longer because we are living too long and divorce is needed today to do what death acomplished more economically before. — Merle Shain

Taylor and Niall are watching their personal assistant prospects waiting to be interviewed.
"Leave them sitting there until one of them shows some initiative." Niall said.
Ten minutes ticked slowly by.
"I give in," Niall said. "They're all idiots."
Taylor laughed. "I'm intrigued now. How long are they going to sit there?"
"I suspect until they drop dead."
Five more minutes before Taylor heard Niall exhale in frustration, and then the door of the living room flew open and a chicken burst in.
"What the f**k?" Taylor gasped.
"Hi, everyone," the chicken said in a perky voice. "Thank goodness, I'm not too late. I had difficulty getting across the road." She laughed and then sighed when no one else joined in. They sat staring at her in mute shock. — Barbara Elsborg

Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying. — Regina Brett

Farewell, ungrateful traitor,
Farewell, my perjured swain;
Let never injured creature
Believe a man again.
The pleasure of possessing
Surpasses all expressing,
But 'tis too short a blessing,
And love too long a pain.

'Tis easy to deceive us
In pity of your pain;
But when we love you leave us
To rail at you in vain.
Before we have descried it
There is no bliss beside it,
But she that once has tried it
Will never love again.

The passion we pretended
Was only to obtain,
But when the charm is ended
The charmer you disdain.
Your love by ours we measure
Till we have lost our treasure,
But dying is a pleasure
When living is a pain. — John Dryden

Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar crime for too long. It is time the nation woke up and realized that it's not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it's the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most. They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives. — Harry Markopolos

Life is too short to hold grudges, plan vengeance, and be angry for too long. And people say things like that all the time, but words like that only take on their meaning when you experience someone close to you passing away. There are truly not enough minutes, hours, days, months, years, to spend any amount of time on being and doing anything other than going into the direction of your happiness. Acceptance is better than correction and joy is better than revenge. Innocent laughter is better than anger. — C. JoyBell C.

...What I have to say is very simple and very short: [Jean-Pierre Melville]'s the greatest director I've had the good fortune, pleasure and honor to work with up to this point. It'd take too long to explain. He's wonderful. He knows more about cinema than anyone. He's the greatest director I know, the greatest cameraman, the best at framing and lighting, the best at everything. He's a living encyclopedia of cinema. — Alain Delon

But time, as well as healing all wounds, taught me something strange too: that it's possible to love more than one person in a lifetime. I remarried. I'm very happy with my new wife, and I can't imagine living without her. This, however, doesn't mean that I have to renounce all my past experiences, as long as I'm careful not to compare my two lives. You can't measure love the way you can the length of a road or the height of a building. — Paulo Coelho

Sometimes, marriages fail because people are immature, or because expectations are unrealistic on both sides. Sometimes people die because they have incurable diseases, not because their families turned to the wrong doctor or waited too long to go to the hospital. Sometimes business fail because economic conditions or powerful competition doom them, not because one person in charge made a wrong decision in a crucial moment. If we want to be able to pick up the pieces of our lives and go on living, we have to get over the irrational feeling that every misfortune is our fault, the direct result of our mistakes or misbehaviour. We are really not that powerful. Not everything that happens in the world is our doing. — Harold S. Kushner

Our society has tried to make death invisible, thinking that if we ignore it long enough it will go away. Often we as family and loved ones are so afraid of death that even mentioning the word to terminal patients is taboo. We think the dying are oblivious to what is happening to them. Sadly, a dying person frequently feels afraid to bring it up him or herself. When I enter a hospital room I often hear a sigh of relief. At last, someone is here to help the family come to terms with what is playing out before them. Death has too long been the elephant in the living room, while everyone awkwardly discusses the weather. — Megory Anderson

You'll be great," Cole said, patting her shoulder. He took one last look at Sam's face. Whatever he saw there made him smile. "But maybe you should go a little easy on him; he's had it tough."
She looked at Sam's face, too. "Rough as in dating gorgeous blondes named Selena who yell at you in the alley, or rough as in getting to go boating all day long for a living?"
Cole tossed back his head and laughed. "You get a raise for that. I'll tell our accountant." He turned to Sam again. "Give her a raise. — Jill Shalvis

Take care of yourself: When you don't sleep, eat crap, don't exercise, and are living off adrenaline for too long, your performance suffers. Your decisions suffer. Your company suffers. Love those close to you: Failure of your company is not failure in life. Failure in your relationship is. — Evan Williams

Society, because it is composed of living humans, is organic and if healthy, supple. It is like a rubber band. As long as the groups that compose society are flexible and social and emotionally supporting, it serves its constituency well. It bends, weaves, twists, turns, and envelops everyone in diverse manners. If opposing forces become too locked into their polarized viewpoints, though, other things happen.

Like two grumpy siblings, they hold their views with anger or self-righteousness and utter vulgar and crass words, but it amounts to the same thing. The two groups pull on the rubber band and rigidly hold to their position without empathy.

The rubber band (society) grows taut and then eventually it snaps and collateral damage ensues and the proverbial baby is thrown out with the bath water. — Leviak B. Kelly

THE WHISTLER
All of a sudden she began to whistle. By all of a sudden
I mean that for more than thirty years she had not
whistled. It was thrilling. At first I wondered, who was
in the house, what stranger? I was upstairs reading, and
she was downstairs. As from the throat of a wild and
cheerful bird, not caught but visiting, the sounds war-
bled and slid and doubled back and larked and soared.
Finally I said, Is that you? Is that you whistling? Yes, she
said. I used to whistle, a long time ago. Now I see I can
still whistle. And cadence after cadence she strolled
through the house, whistling.
I know her so well, I think. I thought. Elbow and an-
kle. Mood and desire. Anguish and frolic. Anger too.
And the devotions. And for all that, do we even begin
to know each other? Who is this I've been living with
for thirty years?
This clear, dark, lovely whistler? — Mary Oliver

For too long, the Democratic majority in Washington has failed to see the value in the sound model of working hard and living within your means. — Susan Brooks

Perhaps there is some element of good even in the simple act of living, so long as the evils of existence do not preponderate too heavily. — Aristotle.

I think this is the greatest and best country in all the world, with its great sunlit spaces and its long long roads, and best of all the roads that are not made yet, and the stories that no one has told because they are too busy living them. — Nellie L. McClung

My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry - and often find it, too - whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart. — Anne Bronte

I've been living for too long abroad and aboard,
Methinking the concept of being grounded or floored. — Ana Claudia Antunes

Knowing what you need doesn't always mean you know how to get it, though. I'd spent a long time hiding in my cave. No matter how much I might want to come out into the light, I knew it would hurt my eyes. I was a fool. A fool, but nevertheless too smart not to know I was the architect of my own demise, that it was time to put my past behind me. It was time to stop allowing the white elephants to stand unspoken of in my living room. — Megan Hart

I want to get past this. I need to. It's been too long. My life is living me. — H.M. Ward

A giant octopus living way down deep at the bottom of the ocean. It has this tremendously powerful life force, a bunch of long, undulating legs, and it's heading somewhere, moving through the darkness of the ocean ... It takes on all kinds of different shapes - sometimes it's 'the nation,' and sometimes it's 'the law,' and sometimes it takes on shapes that are more difficult and dangerous than that. You can try cutting off its legs, but they just keep growing back. Nobody can kill it. It's too strong, and it lives too far down in the ocean. Nobody knows where its heart is. What I felt then was a deep terror. And a kind of hopelessness, a feeling that I could never run away from this thing, no matter how far I went. And this creature, this thing doesn't give a damn that I'm me or you're you. In its presence, all human beings lose their names and their faces. We all turn into signs, into numbers. — Haruki Murakami

We show hospitality to strangers not merely because they need it, but because we need it, too. The stranger at the door is the living symbol and memory that we are all strangers here. This is not our house, our table, our food, our lodging; this is God's house and table and food and lodging. We were pilgrims and wanderers, aliens and strangers, even enemies of God, but we, too, were welcomed into this place. To show hospitality to the stranger is, as Gordon Lathrop has observed, to say, We are beggars here together. Grace will surprise us both. — Thomas G. Long

Long distance hiking is not a vacation, it's too long for that. It's not recreation, too much toil and pain involved. It is, we decide, a way of life, a very simplified Spartan way of living ... life on the move ... heavy packs, sweating brow; they make you appreciate warm sunshine, companionship, cool water. The best way to appreciate these things that are precious and important in life it is take them away. — Cindy Ross

I loved living with my parents - that's probably why I did it for so long. But it was almost too easy to live there. I had to force myself to get out, had to challenge myself. I had to start a new chapter. — King Tuff

Georgia took once a creative-writing course, and what the instructor told her was: Too many things. Too many things going on at the same time; also too many people. Think, he told her. What is the important thing? What do you want us to pay attention to? Think.
Eventually she wrote a story that was about her grandfather killing chickens, and the instructor seemed to be pleased with it. Georgia herself thought that it was a fake. She made a long list of all the things that had been left out and handed it in as an appendix to the story. The instructor said that she expected too much, of herself and of the process, and that she was wearing him out.
The course was not a total loss, because Georgia and the instructor ended up living together. — Alice Munro

On land I have too much time, I'm overwhelmed by a boredom that eventually paralyzes me. But this isn't really the main reason for my suicide. Even if I had another chance to go to sea, I know that for a long time I've been storing up something I can only define as a weariness with being alive, with having to choose between one thing and another, with listening to people around me talk about things that basically don't interest them, that they really know nothing about. The foolishness of our fellow humans knows no bounds, my dear Gaviero. If it didn't sound absurd, I'd say I'm leaving because I can't stand the noise the living make. — Alvaro Mutis

The Mad Affliction's arm shot out of the cage, grasping for me. I jumped back. His long, ragged talons swiped the air in front of me.

"Free me!" the Mad Affliction cried. He grasped for Bethany, but she backed away, too. "Free me and know the living nightmare that is unending madness!"

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I told him. — Nicholas Kaufmann

If that was true he must have felt that he had lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamiliar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about ... like that ashen, fantastic figure gliding toward him through the amorphous trees. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The secret to success: Don't stop to admire yourself too often. I only stopped to admire my work after I wrote eight books, before that, I never once admired myself for accomplishing anything in my profession. Don't stop to admire yourself too much, instead, admire people who have achieved more than you have, because that gives you something to keep on looking forward to. But when the time comes that you should take a look at the greatness you have done, make sure you take a really long and hard good look at it! Make sure you know your own greatness. — C. JoyBell C.

Nothing could be slow enough, nothing lasts too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Barton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; seen it between peoples shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window. — Virginia Woolf

For the fact was drugs were not necessary to most of us, because the music, youth, sweaty bodies were enough. And if it was too hot, too humid to sleep the next day, and we awoke bathed in sweat, it did not matter: We remained in a state of animated suspension the whole hot day. We lived for music, we lived for Beauty, and we were poor. But we didn't care where we were living, or what we had to do during the day to make it possible; eventually, if you waited long enough, you were finally standing before the mirror in that cheap room, looking at your face one last time, like an actor going onstage, before rushing out to walk in the door of that discotheque and see someone like Malone. — Andrew Holleran

I'm afraid too many of us Christians don't know what we really believe. Like a cork in the ocean, driven and tossed by the waves, we bounce from opinion to opinion ... We've become activity junkies, seldom stopping long enough to decide what really matters to us, too busy to determine what's really worth living for, let alone worth dying for. — Dennis Rainey

Some writers might tell you that writing is like a piece of magic - a process of creating something out of nothing, and I guess I used to think about it that way too a long long time ago. But as I've lived my life and loved and lost friends and family, and seen dreams smashed and resurrected, and marveled at the pettiness, drear ambition and ignorance of the herd of which I am a part, I can no longer say that a poem or a story or a script comes from nothing. If it's any good, if it has any power, any potent emotional body, then it's something that a writer has paid for, not only in time, but in all the anxiety that accompanies living and those small fret-filled acts of becoming present that make it possible for us to see beyond our little patch of immediacy. It's not just a reaching out, but a reaching in, into the depths of our being from whence we've sprung. — Billy Marshall Stoneking

Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips. — Jack Kerouac

When we get impatient because something is taking too long, we should remember that Life waits on us a thousand times more than we wait on Life. — Laura Teresa Marquez

The U.S. has been living in a situation of excesses for too long. Consumers were out spending more than their income and the country was spending more than its income, running up large current-account deficits. Now we have to tighten our belts and save more. — Nouriel Roubini

We must remember our duty to Nature before it is too late. That duty is constant. It is never completed. It lives on as we breathe. It endures as we eat and sleep, work and rest, as we are born and as we pass away. The duty to Nature will remain long after our own endeavors have brought peace to the Middle East. It will weigh on our shoulders for as long as we wish to dwell on a living and thriving planet, and hand it on to our children and theirs. — Margaret Thatcher

If one stays too long with friends They will soon tire of him; Living in such closeness leads to dislike and hate. It is but human to expect and demand too much When one dwells too long in companionship. — Milarepa

We are blessed when our loved ones know what they have long before they lose us. It's the same with people. If they are taken for granted long enough, they can be oppressed to the point that they never experience the joys of life. Life on earth becomes a disappointment for them and Heaven becomes their goal. On the other hand, if they are loved and encouraged and appreciated, they will find all kinds of reasons to keep on living! It is never too late to help someone to see that they are valuable and wanted upon the earth. — Kate McGahan

But I was not quite with him in my thoughts, and I wonder whether that is how we got to be after living alone for a long time, that in the middle of a train of thought we start talking outloud, that the difference between talking and not talking is slowly wiped out, that the unending, inner conversations we carry on with ourselves merges with the one we have with the few people we still see, and when you live alone for too long the line which divides the one form the other becomes vague, and you do not notice when you cross that line. Is this how my future looks? — Per Petterson

To live fully we would need to let go of our fear of dying. That fear can only be addressed by the love of living. We have a long history in this nation of believing that to be too celebratory is dangerous, that being optimistic is foolhardy, hence our difficulty in celebrating life, in teaching our children and ourselves how to love life. — Bell Hooks

I drink out of desperation. Life is too dreary to endure. The misery, loneliness, crampedness - they're heartbreaking.[ ... ] What feelings do you suppose a man has when he realizes that he will never know happiness or glory as long as he lives? Hard work. All that amounts to is food for the wild beasts of hunger. — Osamu Dazai

Come on," he said to Valentine one day. "Let's fly away and live forever."
"We can't," she said. "There are miracles even relativity can't pull off, Ender."
"We have to go. I'm almost happy here."
"So, stay."
"I've lived too long with pain. I won't know who I am without it."
So they boarded a starship and went from world to world. Wherever they stopped, he was always Andrew Wiggin, itinerant speaker for the dead, and she was always Valentine, historian errant, writing down the stories of the living while Ender spoke the stories of the dead. And always Ender carried with him a dry white cocoon, looking for the world where the hive-queen could awaken and thrive in peace. He looked a long time. — Orson Scott Card

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks, there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations. — Jarvis Cocker

All of this is not just a battle plan, it's a vacation too. For instance: you don't like the life you are living? Escape into another world by taking a lover. Men can't do this. When they take on a woman she becomes part of their life, but a woman gets to change lives with every man she sleeps with. In fact men are like magic flying carpets; you can visit different lands, become rich or poor without working, become religious by marrying a priest, become a cowboy by having an affair in Texas, join the political game by blowing the President, and tomorrow get high with a pop star. Society is a wonderful thing if you're a woman, you really can go anywhere so long as a man's first priority is to get laid, and that will never change. — Mary Woronov

I was right when I said a very long time ago that our age would leave few living documents behind it: it was rare for anyone to keep a diary, letters were short and businesslike--"I'm alive and well"--and few memoirs were written. There are many reasons for this. Let me mention just one, not perhaps recognized by everybody: we were too often at loggerheads with our own past to give it proper thought. Within the half-century, our ideas on people and events have changed many times; conversations were broken off in mid-sentence; thoughts and feelings could not but be affected by circumstances. — Ilya Ehrenburg

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two loves, but this, too, was great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and jobs and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel
before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him; it was as if he had always been. Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slightly noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away. — Zadie Smith

Within each of us there is an Owl, a Rabbit, an Eeyore, and a Pooh. For too long, we have chosen the way of Owl and Rabbit. Now, like Eeyore, we complain about the results. But that accomplishes nothing. If we are smart, we will choose the way of Pooh. As if from far away, it calls to us with the voice of a child's mind. It may be hard to hear at times, but it is important just the same, because without it, we will never find our way through the forest. — Benjamin Hoff

Living appears good, long, and tiresome, but it is way too short than a single stroke of lightning. — Aniruddha Sastikar

Living too long takes more than time — Charles Bukowski

The trials of living and the pangs of disease make even the short span of life too long. — Herodotus

I never knew him. We both knew this place,
apparently, this literal small backwater,
looked at it long enough to memorize it,
our years apart. How strange. And it's still loved,
or its memory is (it must have changed a lot).
Our visions coincided--'visions' is
too serious a word--our looks, two looks:
art 'copying from life' and life itself,
life and the memory of it so compressed
they've turned into each other. Which is which?
Life and the memory of it cramped,
dim, on a piece of Bristol board,
dim, but how live, how touching in detail
--the little that we get for free,
the little of our earthly trust. Not much.
About the size of our abidance
along with theirs: the munching cows,
the iris, crisp and shivering, the water
still standing from spring freshets,
the yet-to-be-dismantled elms, the geese. — Elizabeth Bishop

For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world. — Santideva