Long Life Lesson Quotes & Sayings

Those are big collisions, Hally. They make for a lot of bruises. People get hurt in all that bumping, and we're sick and tired of it now. It's been going on for too long. Are we never going to get it right? ... Learn to dance life like champions instead of always being just a bunch of beginners at it? — Athol Fugard

I learned long ago that loss is not only probable but inevitable. I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another. And now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again. — Christina Baker Kline

Short cuts make long delays. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Life on Earth indeed can seem but one hard-earned lesson after another, with moments of grace and beauty in between to keep people sane, and hopeful. While some die peacefully at the natural end of a long, well-lived life, even they still haven't completed everything they meant to, or lived without regret.

And some of us thought we'd have more time to things right. I tell myself that at least we planted some seeds- ideas of love, and faith, and loyalty- that are starting to show signs of growth. Time will tell. — Lorna Jane Cook

If you want to feel the life and the body of great men who are long gone, go to their tombs or monuments; if you want to understand the real life and the wisdom of great men who are long gone, go to their libraries! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

If You Can Stand It, Play the Long Game ...
What I mean here is that you have to remain committed to the ultimate goal, which isn't to win the immediate approval of the online world, or dazzle a workshop, but to improve your storytelling day by day.
Finding the right balance of feedback - encouragement versus vigorous criticism - will help immeasurably.
But your own commitment has to be to the process of improvement, not to the anticipated reward.
If it's any consolation, I'm still working on this final lesson. — Steve Almond

You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To — Samuel Beckett

Your heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry. When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in humility. — James M. Barrie

So many people are afraid of the ending of their life on earth. Then there are others who are afraid of not being able to leave after their bodies have long failed them. There's nothing at all to be afraid of. Death is the last lesson in the school of life. It is the final stage of growth. Death is the one event that is designed to remove all of your remaining fears. Someday you will find that the things you were most afraid of, like death, were only illusions. — Kate McGahan

We can learn a lesson from the butterfly beginning it's life crawling along the ground, then spinning a cocoon, patiently waiting until the day it will fly. — Heather Wolf

And even my sense of identity was wrapped in a namelessness often hard to penetrate, as we have just seen I think ... Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names. I say that now, but after all what do I know now about then, now when the icy words hail down upon me, the icy meanings, and the world dies too, foully named. All I know is what the words know, and the dead things, and that makes a handsome little sum, with a beginning, a middle and an end as in the well-built phrase and the long sonata of the dead. And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. To hell with it anyway. — Samuel Beckett

Not without design does God write the music of our lives. Be it ours to learn the tune, and not be dismayed at the 'rests.' They are not to be slurred over, not to be omitted, not to destroy the melody, not to change the keynote. If we look up, God Himself will beat the time for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear. If we sadly say to ourselves, "There is no music in a 'rest,'" let us not forget '"there is the making of music in it." The making of music is often a slow and painful process in this life. How patiently God works to teach us! How long He waits for us to learn the lesson! - Ruskin — Leslie Ludy

When those you love die, the best you can do is honor their spirit for as long as you live. You make a commitment that you're going to take whatever lesson that person or animal was trying to teach you, and you make it true in your own life ... it's a positive way to keep their spirit alive in the world, by keeping it alive in yourself. — Patrick Swayze

Let us do our best whilst we live for another tomorrow is coming when whilst we are long gone, another group of people shall come to either suffer from our worst or enjoy and build upon our best. Let us run whole heatedly today with all alacrity for another generation shall come for the baton from our hands to either blame us or congratulate us on how we lived the dream and journeyed in life through the good and the bad times; another generation shall come to ponder over our footprints as a good or a bad lesson for them! Let us run with all necessary zeal such that when we hand over the baton, our next generation will have no reason but to soldier on with courage, enthusiasm and absolute commitment to get to the finishing line with a great accomplishment and a noble story worth pondering over and over! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

This has been the great lesson of my long life: To love is to destroy. — Jessica Khoury

It wasn't so much that Lola Plum believed she'd learned her lesson in love. Lola Plum was just realistic about life. — Shannon Noelle Long

The chief lesson I have learned in a long life is that the only way you can make a man trustworthy is to trust him; and the surest way to make him untrustworthy is to distrust him. — Henry L. Stimson

She said the secret to long life is to never stop moving. The moment you stop, you're dying." He poked me in the arm and sat back. "That's your lesson today. Expect a test tomorrow." I giggled a little. "Always teaching?" "I don't have to today," he said. "That was just a bonus." He polished off the last of the apple pie, licking the spoon like a lollipop. "Ready?" "For what?" "You'll see. — C.L.Stone

Man doesn't realize his real purpose on earth so long as he rolls in comforts. It is absolutely true that adversity teaches a man a bitter lesson, toughens his fiber and moulds his character. In other words, an altogether new man is born out of adversity which helpfully destroys one's ego and makes one humble and selfless. Prolonged suffering opens the eyes to hate the things for which one craved before unduly, leading eventually even to a state of resignation. It then dawns on us that continued yearnings brings us intense agony. But the stoic mind is least perturbed by the vicissitudes of life. It is well within our efforts to conquer grief. It's simple. Develop an attitude of detachment even while remaining in the thick of terrestrial pleasures. — V.S. Naipaul

For a modern ruler the laws of conservation and transformation of energy, when the vivifing stream takes its source, the ways it wends its course in nature, and how, under wisdom and knowledge, it may be intertwined with human destiny, instead of careering headlong to the ocean, are a study at least as pregnant with consequences to life as any lesson taught by the long unscientific history of man. — Frederick Soddy

I am not resigned: I am not sure life is long enough to learn that lesson. — George Eliot

If you do something long enough, you uncover life lessons along the way, — Paul Baloche

Runnin's not a bad thing, sir, so long as you're runnin' towards somethin' good. — Jonathan Auxier

Here's the life lesson I've learned, Fifi: Some people are born to play the hero, and some are born to play the bad guy. Fighting your destiny only makes life harder than it needs to be. Besides, people remember the villain long after they've forgotten the hero. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Life is a long lesson in humility. — J.M. Barrie

Negotiation exposes something at once simple and intricate about intimacy: that it is far better to actually know your partner's body by becoming one with their interior selves, and you can only do this by talking to them. Far from being the stereotypical "mood killer," sexual knowing requires discussion, requires asking questions, a lesson that I and so many others have had to learn quite painfully; the worst sexual experiences of my own life occurred, as I often say, because I did not know how to ask and did not know how to tell. For too long I thought sex had to occur in a kind of monastic, knowing silence. To do anything else would be to risk giving offence, putting myself in harm's way, or simply ruining the atmosphere; how wrong I was. — Katherine Cross

Little Life Lesson 40: If you are lucky enough to vist the Fantasyland Diner, try to stay as long as possible because their desserts are no calorie, and also: the realy world sucks. — Michele Jaffe

Nobody can define what exactly true love is. Some believe in it and many others don't. If somebody tries to define it, there will be many agreements and disagreements. Especially since nowadays marriages don't even last long anymore which encourages many to stay single. Faith and understanding in relationships is what many lack because it seems we've forgotten nothing and no one is perfect. — Jonathan Anthony Burkett

And much like a catapult, my dear, the lower you begin in life, the higher you can eventually fly. All it requires is the right person to, shall we say, effect the launch.
-Miss Endicott. — Julie Anne Long

Truth is, life is going shake you, it will rip you right out of your comfort zone;just when you feel settled, it will shock you with some trauma and make you face adversity in the most undesirable of ways ... And here is the question of it all? What's it all for ... Not many search long enough to know but the wise ask you.. Are you going to be a slave to your journey or the pioneer to your dream, if God handed you a lesson ;he knew before your time, your strength could endure i. so next time you doubt another thought or feed your heart with negative emotions think about it ... You are here, alive, breathing and if that's not enough than you should think about what is. — Nikki Rowe

You held out your hand for an egg, and fate put into it a scorpion. Show no consternation: close your fingers firmly upon the gift; let it sting through your palm. Never mind: in time after your hand and arm have swelled and quivered long with torture, the squeezed scorpion will die, and you will have learned the great lesson how to endure without a sob. For the whole remnant of your life, if you survive the test - some it is said, die under it - you will be stronger, wiser, less sensitive. — Charlotte Bronte

When the present feels as endless as an impossibly long hallway between airport terminals, white and sterile and numb, we're particularly receptive to signs. — Kate Bolick

Learn to love better.
This should be our goal in the world: learn to love.
Life offers us thousands of opportunities for learning. Every man and every woman, in every day of our lives, always has a good opportunity to surrender to Love. Life is not a long vacation, but a constant learning process.
And the most important lesson is learning to love.
Loving better and better ...
But one thing will be forever marked on the soul of the universe: my Love. All in spite of my mistakes, my decisions that caused others to suffer, and the moments when I thought it didn't exist. — Paulo Coelho

And truly it little matters what I say, this or that or any other thing. Saying is inventing. Wrong, very rightly wrong. You invent nothing, you think you are inventing, you think you are escaping, and all you do is stammer out your lesson, the remnants of a pensum one day got by heart and long forgotten, life without tears, as it is wept. — Samuel Beckett

Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Christie was one of that large class of women who, moderately endowed with talents, earnest and true-hearted, are driven by necessity, temperament, or principle out into the world to find support, happiness, and homes for themselves. Many turn back discouraged; more accept shadow for substance, and discover their mistake too late; the weakest lose their purpose and themselves; but the strongest struggle on, and, after danger and defeat, earn at last the best success this world can give us, the possession of a brave and cheerful spirit, rich in self-knowledge, self-control, self-help. This was the real desire of Christie's heart; this was to be her lesson and reward, and to this happy end she was slowly yet surely brought by the long discipline of life and labor. — Louisa May Alcott

I hadn't been out to the hives before, so to start off she gave me a lesson in what she called 'bee yard etiquette'. She reminded me that the world was really one bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places. Don't be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don't be an idiot; wear long sleeves and pants. Don't swat. Don't even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates while whistling melts a bee's temper. Act like you know what you're doing, even if you don't. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved. — Sue Monk Kidd

And what have I invested in interpreting disfocus for chaos? This threat: the only lesson is to wait. I crouch in the smoggy terminus. The streets lose edges, the rims of thought flake. What have I set myself to fix in this dirty notebook that is not mine? Does the revelation that, though it cannot be done with words, it might be accomplished in some lingual gap, give me the right, in injury, walking with a woman and her dog in pain? Rather the long doubts: that this labor tears up the mind's moorings; that, though life may be important in the scheme, awareness is an imperfect tool with which to face it. To reflect is to fight away the sheets of silver, the carbonated distractions, the feeling that, somehow, a thumb is pressed on the right eye. This exhaustion melts what binds, releases what flows. — Samuel R. Delany

Continual improvement involves an appreciation that there is always a better way to do things irrespective of how much you have achieved or how comfortable you might be with where you currently are in life. As a young international rugby player I learnt a valuable lesson about sacrifice. The bottom line was the phrase 'long after the price is forgotten the quality remains'. Undertaking JOLT Challenge involves sacrifice but it is well worth it as you explore creative and innovative ways of challenging yourself for constant improvement in many areas of life. — Nick Farr-Jones

Love is the law of God. You live that you may learn to love. You love
that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man.You are
the tree of Life. Beware of fractionating yourselves. Set not a fruit against a fruit, a leaf against a leaf, a bough against a bough; nor
set the stem against the roots; nor set the tree against the mother-
soil. That is precisely what you do when you love one part more than
the rest, or to the exclusion of the rest. No love is possible except
by the love of self. No self is real save the All-embracing Self.
Therefore is God all Love, because he loves himself. So long as you
are pained by Love, you have not found your real self, nor have you
found the golden key of Love. Because you love an ephemeral self, your
love is ephemeral. — Mikhail Naimy

There is tragedy all around us, we pick up pieces, we find our feet and before long another turn of events stare us in the eyes; like we're some kind of magician- the fight seems endless, so I look to the world for inspiration. I observe and I watch how others face adversity, some hide from it, some master each lesson and some create a life with it ... Our lessons don't define us, our integrity to keep rising after every fall is. — Nikki Rowe