Meaning Of Live Quotes & Sayings

What do you know of the Knights?" he asked.

Fin shrugged. "I thought knights were only in children's stories until a few days ago."

Jeannot smiled. "A man could do worse than to live in the stories of a child. There is, perhaps, no better remembrance."

"Until the child grows up and finds out the stories aren't true. You might be knights, but I don't see any shining armor," Fin said.

Jeannot stopped near the gate of the auberge and faced her. "Each time a story is told, the details and accuracies and facts are winnowed away until all that remains is the heart of the tale. If there is truth at the heart of it, a tale may live forever. As a knight, there is no dragon to slay, no maiden to rescue, and no miraculous grail to uncover. A knight seeks the truth beneath these things, seeks the heart. We call this the corso. The path set before us. The race we must run. — A.S. Peterson

I am so profoundly grateful for the gospel of Jesus Christ, for a testimony of the Atonement of the Savior. I believe in it with all my heart, and I live for it, and I bear witness of it this day. Of all of the events of human history, none other approaches the Atonement of the Savior in its meaning and in its results. God be thanked for the gift of His precious Son, to whom we all owe thanks for His sacrifice in our behalf. — Gordon B. Hinckley

Theology starts with a crisis, the very crisis of reality itself. The crisis is the fact that you live, that you have a life to live. ... The crisis is the very mystery of our existence and the yearning for there to be some kind of meaning to it. — Andrew Root

Catholicism fascinated him, the contortions it put itself through to make ends meet. Father Murray had kept returning to the word 'despair.' There'd been a little (bizarre, Luke thought) linguistic diversion into Latin. Desperare, formed by the 'de' prefex, signifying the removal of or from, and 'sperare,' meaning to hope. The removal of hope. That was despair. The reasoning being that you couldn't live without hope. What Murray hadn't said (but what, along with the story of the suicide ghost, Luke remembered from childhood) was that despair was classified as a sin against the Holy Spirit. That was the perverse beauty of the religion: that your daughter could be raped and murdered and yourself still condemned for giving up hope. — Glen Duncan

You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable-nay, letter by letter ... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly "illiterate," undeducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, - that is to say, with real accuracy- you are for evermore in some measure an educated person. — John Ruskin

And that is where I have failed you, Ari. You see, I would have crawled to your mother a million times. I would crawl to her because I need her in order to live. She is my strength. God help me, Ari, I have been a party to the creation of a breed of men and women so hard they refuse to know the meaning of tears and humility. — Leon Uris

I love you. As the same value, as the same expression, with the same pride and the same meaning as I love my work, my mills, my Metal, my hours at a desk, at a furnace, in a laboratory, in an ore mine, as I love my ability to work, as I love the act of sight and knowledge, as I love the action of my mind when it solves a chemical equation or grasps a sunrise, as I love the things I've made and the things I've felt, as *my* product, as *my* choice, as a shape of my world, as my best mirror, as the wife I've never had, as that which makes all the rest of it possible: as my power to live. — Ayn Rand

For instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire "intelligent" population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible outer branches. In — Douglas Adams

I think the whole question of meaning in music is difficult enough even if you hear me playing live right now in the same room! What I mean and what you take from it may be two quite different things anyway. — Evan Parker

We had a project on this trip back to the solar system, and that project was a labor of love. It absorbed all our operations entirely. It gave a meaning to our existence. And this is a very great gift; this, in the end, is what we think love gives, which is to say meaning. Because there is no very obvious meaning to be found in the universe, as far as we can tell. But a consciousness that cannot discern a meaning in existence is in trouble, very deep trouble, for at that point there is no organizing principle, no end to the halting problems, no reason to live, no love to be found. No: meaning is the hard problem. — Kim Stanley Robinson

People who choose to earn money first, people who put off their real plans until later, until they are rich, are not necessarily wrong. People who want only to live, and who reckon living is absolute freedom, the exclusive pursuit of happiness, the sole satisfaction of their desires and instincts, the immediate enjoyment of the boundless riches of the world [ ... ] such people will always be unhappy. It is true [ ... ] that there are people for whom this kind of dilemma does not arise, or hardly arises, either because they are too poor and have no requirements beyond a slightly better diet, slightly better housing, slightly less work, or because they are too rich, from the start, to understand the import or even the meaning of such a distinction. But nowadays and in our part of the world, more and more people are neither rich nor poor: they dream of wealth, and could become wealthy; and that is where their misfortunes begin."
-from "Things: A Story of the Sixties — Georges Perec

Christians were tempted to reject time altogether and replace it with mysticism and "spiritual" pursuits, to live as Christians out of time and thereby escape its frustrations; to insist that time has no real meaning from the point of view of the Kingdom which is "beyond time." And they finally succeeded. They left time meaningless indeed, although full of Christian "symbols." And today they themselves do not know what to do with these symbols. For it is impossible to "put Christ back into Christmas" if He has not redeemed - that is, made meaningful - time itself. — Alexander Schmemann

modern era of multivalent "secularity" and "exclusive humanism" in which we live, a shift from the premodern, socially embedded "porous self" to the meaning-constructing "buffered self" that lives within our "immanent frame" of disenchanted modern reality that (supposedly) lacks room for the sacred.24 — Brad S. Gregory

Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means "soldier," but don't let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn't going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live. — Lois McMaster Bujold

He [Wallace] sent a quick note to his friend [Franzen] explaining his behavior. "the bold fact is that I'm a little afraid of you right now,"[ ... ] "all I can tell you is that I may have been that [a worthy opponent] for you a couple/ three years ago, and maybe 16 months or tow or 5 or 10 years hence, but right now I am a pathetic and very confused man, a failed writer at 28, who is so jealous, so sickly searing envious of you and Vollmann and Mark Leyner and even David Fuckward Leavitt and any young man who is right now producing pages with which he can live and even approving them off some base-clause of conviction about the entrprise's meaning and end that I consider suicide a reasonable- if not at this point a desirable- option with respect to the whole wretched problem. — D.T. Max

I can hear the sizzle of newborn stars, and know anything of meaning, of the fierce magic emerging here. I am witness to flexible eternity, the evolving past, and I know we will live forever, as dust or breath in the face of stars, in the shifting pattern of winds. — Joy Harjo

I know our policies work best to lift young men and women up - regardless of their background - so that they can choose their own path and live lives of dignity, purpose, and meaning. — Carly Fiorina

God is not all that interested in your grammar. He is interested in the meaning of your grammar! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

We live not by things, but by the meaning of things. It is needful to transmit the passwords from generation to generation. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

That was one of the most fundamental and sacred duties good friends and families performed for one another! They tended the flame of memory, so no one's death meant an immediate vanishment from the world; in some sense the deceased would live on after their passing, at least as long as those who loved them lived. Such memories were an essential weapon against the chaos of life and death, a way to ensure some continuity from generation to generation, an order of endorsement and meaning. — Dean Koontz

Keep your right up or there'll be nothing left of you." - 100 Bullets

I love this quote because it has double meaning. — Brian Azzarello

The attempt made in recent decades by secularist thinkers to disengage the moral principles of western civilization from their scripturally based religious context, in the assurance that they could live a life of their own as "humanistic" ethics, has resulted in our "cut flower culture." Cut flowers retain their original beauty and fragrance, but only so long as they retain the vitality that they have drawn from their now-severed roots; after that is exhausted, they wither and die. So with freedom, brotherhood, justice, and personal dignity - the values that form the moral foundation of our civilization. Without the life-giving power of the faith out of which they have sprung, they possess neither meaning nor vitality. — Will Herberg

Science may explain how humans came into being, but it has no answer to the slippery question of how humans should live. Only literature makes it possible to pose such questions in the first place. And if there is no answer, only literature can point to the impossibility of ever finding one. — Minae Mizumura

The way to choose happiness is to follow what is right and real and the truth for you. You can never be happy living someone else's dream. Live your own. And you will for sure know the meaning of happiness. — Oprah Winfrey

There are those who say that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through the denial of oneself; you must deny yourself many things, go and live in a mountaintop, never mingle with other people, talk to the birds..but I say to you, why should you dismantle your home? Where is the meaning in removing the bricks from your walls one by one? What is the purpose in uprooting your floors? Is there any significance in only allowing yourself a tin roof and a muddy bed? Why deny your house its structure? A truly enlightened soul is strong enough, is bright enough to live and shine through, even in a beautiful house! There is no need to ransack the house in order to see an inner beauty etched against a distraught surrounding. A bright and beautiful soul can shine forth even from inside an equally beautiful surrounding. — C. JoyBell C.

To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life. — Paulo Coelho

Martin in particular concluded that man was born to live either in the convulsions of misery, or in the lethargy of boredom. — Voltaire

The problem, however, eventually became evident: to make science the arbiter of metaphysics is to banish not only God from the world but also love, hate, meaning - to consider a world that is self-evidently not the world we live in. That's not to say that if you believe in meaning, you must also believe in God. It is to say, though, that if you believe that science provides no basis for God, then you are almost obligated to conclude that science provides no basis for meaning and, therefore, life itself doesn't have any. In other words, existential claims have no weight; all knowledge is scientific knowledge. Yet — Paul Kalanithi

Do stories, apart from happening, being, have something to say? For all my skepticism, some trace of irrational superstition did survive in me, the strange conviction, for example, that everything in life that happens to me also has a sense, that it means something, that life speaks to us about itself through its story, that it gradually reveals a secret, that it takes the form of a rebus whose message must be deciphered, that the stories we live compromise the mythology of our lives and in that mythology lies the key to truth and mystery. Is it an illusion? Possibly, even probably, but I can't rid myself of the need continually to decipher my own life. — Milan Kundera

Facing death means facing the ultimate question of the meaning of life. If we really want to live we must have the courage to recognize that life is ultimately very short, and that everything we do counts. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

It's hurtful somehow to admit this thing and anyway that doesn't mean i'm losing my faith in this beautiful world. But these days now is the time where people have become so much more-excuse me-shallow. When all of the fancy things and outer beauty are demanded, and those who are lost enough to chase and manage to get those things, they will happen to get very nice response from social and able to expand their images and get famous and be seen as someone who has value. Meanwhile those who could see deeper and their souls are insecure of this mad world, they will have smaller space in width but they will dig deeper and deeper into their self, making space in height, finding the true meaning of their souls, the true essential unshakable truth that's beyond the fragile material worldly things. — Reza Rusandi

We have been created as recipients. I look at the stars, at the grass, at my fat-faced children, at my fingernails, and I am oppressed by gratitude
I have been given a belly so that I might hunger. I have been given hunger so that I might be fed.
I look in the atheist's mirror. I look at his faith in the nonexistence of meaning. I look at his preaching and painting. I see nothing but a shit-storm.
Why would I walk through that door? Why would I live in your novel? — N.D. Wilson

Words are words. People add meaning to words.
Information is information. With words people add value to information.
Words breathe life into information. Words move mountains of information.
Words are action. Momentum for living evolves from pursuit of deeper, wider and higher significance, utility and value of words.
Words we sow, nourish and harvest feed hungry minds and hearts. Gathered words strengthen, ignite and release us.
Words identify, signify and proclaim our individuality. Words pronounce a purposeful life's choices.
With wisdom, courage and patience we must choose high-performing words for long-term relationships. Chosen words become soul mates. — John R. Dallas Jr.

There is a very real danger present when we suppress our feelings to act on inspiration in exchange for the "safety" of the status quo. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to live a more fulfilling and purpose driven life. We risk sacrificing the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. We risk sacrificing the beautiful blessing of finding a greater sense of meaning in our own lives.
In short, we run the very real risk living a life of regret. — Richie Norton

The doorway to health, higher intelligence and inexhaustible creativity lies in your willingness to live from Source. Risk being who you are meant to be; you are more compassionate, colorful, imaginative, visionary, more sensitive than you think. — Lynne Gordon-Mundel

Torah is not just a book, not just a bunch of laws, and not just a history, but so much more. The Torah is a way ofd life to learn and live, and when studied, a spiritual way to understand life as well as providing instructions on getting closer to Adonai (God). When we treat others kindly, fairly, and lovingly, both in our home, social, and business lives, we are living Torah. The "truth" is the Torah is many things simultaneously. — Laura Weakley

The significance of a revolution will be known after the days have gone past us. When the children of the coming years wake up and like the albatross glide across the azure sky.The freedom to live a life of meaning and joy. — Avijeet Das

Do as little harm to others as you can; make any sacrifice for your true friends; be responsible for yourself and ask nothing of others; and grab all the fun you can. Don't give much thought to yesterday, don't worry about tomorrow, live in the moment, and trust that your existence has meaning even when the world seems to be all blind chance and chaos. When life lands a hammer blow in your face, do your best to respond to the hammer as if it had been a cream pie. — Dean Koontz

We can only hope to live a meaningful life by serving as earnest witnesses to life's tragic beauty. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Your life is not meant to be lived in a way to satisfy someone's expectation out of you! Live your life in your own way. — Avijeet Das

Mindfulness as a practice provides endless opportunities to cultivate greater intimacy with your own mind and to tap into and develop your deep interior resources for learning, growing, healing, and potentially for transforming your understanding of who you are and how you might live more wisely and with greater well-being, meaning, and happiness in this world. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

We are all cursed. We live in the era of the curse. A world that cannot be fixed. The best thing would be an alien ship. Another planet. One with three moons. But you, I saw you in my dreams. I saw you coming. You came to heal my broken heart. That's why I named you Ahlam. — Hannah Lillith Assadi

And I knew the point of love right then.
The point of love was to help you survive.
The point was also to forget meaning. To stop looking and start living. The meaning was to hold the hand of someone you cared about and to live inside the present. Past and future were myths. The past was just the present that had died and the future would never exist anyway, because by the time we got to it the future would have turned into the present. The present was all there was. — Matt Haig

I normally don't initiate conversations with guys unless they want to talk about certain things - when I'm at the facility, I'm there to play football. If you want to talk about the meaning of life, games, whatever, I'm more than happy to, but when I'm in that building, I'm being paid to play football. Conversely, when I'm not at the facility, that's my life to live. — Chris Kluwe

Autonomy means women defining themselves and the values by which they will live, and beginning to think of institutional arrangements which will order their environment in line with their needs ... Autonomy means moving out from a world in which one is born to marginality, to a past without meaning, and a future determined by others
into a world in which one acts and chooses, aware of a meaningful past and free to shape one's future. — Gerda Lerner

There are lots of obstacles to peace... Before, people used to live in simple lifestyles. Simple food, simple clothes. Now it's more jealousy, more competition. Wealthy countries and children suffer because there is no meaning. — Sushma Joshi

As the theologian Alan Jones has said:

One of our problems is that very few of us have developed any distinctive personal life. Everything about us seems secondhand, even our emotions. In many cases we have to rely on secondhand information in order to function. I accept the word of a physician, a scientist, a farmer, on trust. I do not like to do this. I have to because they possess vital knowledge of living of which I am ignorant. Secondhand information concerning the state of my kidneys, the effects of cholesterol, and the raising of chickens, I can live with. But when it comes to questions of meaning, purpose, and death, secondhand information will not do. I cannot survive on a secondhand faith in a secondhand God. There has to be a personal word, a unique confrontation, if I am to come alive. — M. Scott Peck

The process of writing fiction is totally unconscious. It comes from what you are learning, as you live, from within. For me, all writing is a process of discovery. We are looking for the meaning of life. No matter where you are, there are conflicts and dramas everywhere. It is the process of what it means to be a human being; how you react and are reacted upon, these inward and outer pressures. If you are writing with a direct cause in mind, you are writing propaganda. It's fatal for a fiction writer. — Nadine Gordimer

Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to satisfy his hunger with food that tasted good; he had learnt the sound of laughter that was free from cruelty; he had learnt the meaning of beauty — Anne Holm

Universal meaninglessness gives way to ecstatic inebriation, an orgy of irrationality. Since the world has no meaning, let us live! Without definite aims or accessible ideals, let us throw ourselves into the roaring whirlwind of infinity, follow its tortuous path in space, burn in its flames, love its cosmic madness and total anarchy! To live infinity, as well as to meditate a long time upon it, is the most terrifying lesson in anarchy and revolt one can ever learn. Infinity shakes you to the roots of your being, disorganizes you, but it also makes you forget the petty, the contingent, and the insignificant. — Emil Cioran

If he wants meaning-the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life-a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. — Jed Rubenfeld

When you step further into the story you came to live, not only does the mythic territory open, but the deep self moves and the world of imagination and meaning comes towards you. — Michael Meade

The live without understanding the meaning of the world is more like a stroll in the great library of books without touching — Dan Brown

The problem is that contemporary people think life is all about finding happiness. We decide what conditions will make us happy and then we work to bring those conditions about. To live for happiness means that you are trying to get something out of life. But when suffering comes along, it takes the conditions for happiness away, and so suffering destroys all your reason to keep living. But to "live for meaning" means not that you try to get something out of life but rather that life expects something from us. In other words, you have meaning only when there is something in life more important than your own personal freedom and happiness, something for which you are glad to sacrifice your happiness.129 — Timothy Keller

It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. — Viktor E. Frankl

I think animals help us live; they've helped me live. It was only when I began to devote myself to protecting animals that I blossomed completely. Taking care of them, looking out for them, has given my life true meaning, a meaning I hope future generations can experience. — Brigitte Bardot

People who achieve a sense of meaning in their lives are happier than those who live from one pleasure to another. — Richard Layard, Baron Layard

The practice of altruism is the authentic way to live as a human being, and it is not just for religious people. As human beings, our purpose is to live meaningful lives, to develop a warm heart. There is meaning in being everyone's friend. The real source of peace amongst our families, friends and neighbours is love and compassion. — Dalai Lama

Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself, there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly. — Leo Tolstoy

In whatever country you live, however young or inadequate you feel, or however aged or limited you see yourself as being, I testify you are individually loved of God, you are central to the meaning of His work, and you are cherished and prayed for by the presiding officers of His Church. The personal value, the sacred splendor of every one of you, is the very reason there is a plan for salvation and exaltation. — Jeffrey R. Holland

The most fragile, unhappy people destine themselves to live lives of constantly reminding themselves to be happy. — Criss Jami

She, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child. — Paulo Coelho

The longer we live, the more we are obliged to confront the deeper meaning of what it is we do. — David Toop

No one has learned the meaning of living until he has surrendered his ego to the service of his fellow man. Service to others is akin to duty, the fulfillment of which brings true joy. We do not live alone - in our city, our nation, or our world. There is no dividing line between our prosperity and our neighbor's wretchedness. 'Love they neighbor' is more than a divine truth. It is a pattern for perfection. — Thomas S. Monson

... And that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something - or tries to. People need things like that to go on living - mental landscapes that have meaning for then, even if they can't explain them in words. Part of why we live is to come up with explanations for these things. That what I think. — Haruki Murakami

If we were all looking for something 'easy come and easy go', then all of our lives would be easy. The problem is that we look for something real, don't we? And it is this longing for what is real, that makes finding the right person to be the most difficult task in the world. You can marry someone and promise the rest of your life to the person, only to find out later that this person makes you feel lonely. If we had no innate longing for true love and for true partnership, then none of us would have any problems! Therefore, the most frightening question to ponder upon, is, 'what if true love does not exist; what if the real stuff isn't real at all?' In such a case, life would be meaningless. I suppose I would rather believe in love relentlessly, than live in this world meaninglessly. — C. JoyBell C.

The longer i live, the more urgent it seems to me to endure and transcribe the whole dictation of existence up to its end, for it might just be the case that only the very last sentence contains that small and possibly inconspicuous word through which everything we had struggled to learn and everything we had failed to understand will be transformed into magnificent sense. — Rainer Maria Rilke

I don't know whether the universe, with its countless galaxies, stars and planets, has a deeper meaning or not, but at the very least, it is clear that we humans who live on this earth face the task of making a happy life for ourselves. Therefore, it is important to discover what will bring about the greatest degree of happiness. — Dalai Lama XIV

The meanings of life aren't inherited. What is inherited is the mandate to make meanings of life by how we live. The endings of life give life's meanings a chance to show. The beginning of the end of our order, our way, is now in view. This isn't punishment, any more than dying is a punishment for being born. — Stephen Jenkinson

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

We come to enjoy ourselves in it, come what may. And in doing so we add meaning of our own, proving ourselves to be life's creative participants. We discern and live, thereby enhance life. We change life by making life coherent, and we are in the meantime changed by living the coherence we continually create. — Kuang-Ming Wu

My belief assumed a form that it commonly assumes among the educated people of our time. This belief was expressed by the word "progress." At the time it seemed to me that this word had meaning. Like any living individual, I was tormented by questions of how to live better. I still had not understood that in answering that one must live according to progress, I was talking just like a person being carried along in a boat by the waves and the wind; without really answering, such a person replies to the only important question-"Where are we to steer?"-by saying, "We are being carried somewhere. — Leo Tolstoy

True success is not the end of the journey; true success is a journey without an end. So many people relax after achieving something and they forget the undone. They neglect their untapped destiny and they halt their journey of life not reaching their real and true destination. Whilst we have life, we must live life. Whilst we have life, we must give a true meaning to life. Whilst we have life, we must dare to do the undone; though the road is weary; though we may be having a sense of fulfillment, and though we might have done something! Let us awake and pursue with all zeal and tenacity until we get to the real end of our true purpose and destiny, such that long after we are gone, the voice of our footprints will speak to inspire, build and raise a generation of champions ! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

At the age of fifteen he had bought off a twopenny stall in the market a duo-decimo book of recipes, gossip, and homilies, printed in 1605. His stepmother, able to read figures, had screamed at the sight of it when he had proudly brought it home. 1605 was 'the olden days', meaning Henry VIII, the executioner's axe, and the Great Plague. She thrust the book into the kitchen fire with the tongs, yelling that it must be seething with lethal germs. A limited, though live, sense of history. And history was the reason why she would never go to London. She saw it as dominated by the Bloody Tower, Fleet Street full of demon barbers, as well as dangerous escalators everywhere. — Anthony Burgess

Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end. — Saul D. Alinsky

If shame still has any meaning in this hell we're expected to live ... it is thanks to that person who had the courage to go and kill, ... Agreed, but shame won't fill our plates, ... You're right in what you say, there have always been those who have filled their bellies because they had no sense of shame. — Jose Saramago

The alternative to pain may be worse. When you live with an open heart, you will inevitably get hurt. The alternative of living a life closed off from experience, however, is barren. Ironically, it also still involves suffering. In fearing pain, we already feel the pain from our fear. — Ann Brasco

I have come here not to find answers, but to find a way to live in a world without any. — Sue Monk Kidd

I'm not going to live my life unhappy and why should he and we talk about it and I think what's great about the film is that it shows is the meaning of family doesn't have to be as traditional as it once was, like you can make a family. — Nia Long

Don't sign your name
between worlds,
surmount
the manifold of meanings,
trust the tearstain,
learn to live. — Paul Celan

Between the natural way and the path of grace there is a deep abyss. It is in that gap that we live our lives as a giant struggle between good and evil, Satan and God, despair and love. Whenever despair wins, it is the natural way. Whenever love wins, it is a moment of grace. When love is victorious and defeats despair completely, you've reached the path of grace. — Haim Shapira

Real success is found in radical sacrifice. Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God. The purpose of our lives transcends the country and culture in which we live. Meaning is found in community, not individualism; joy is found in generosity, not materialism; and truth is found in Christ, not universalism. Ultimately, Jesus is a reward worth risking everything to know, experience, and enjoy. — David Platt

I want to see Christianity enhance our humanity instead of rescue us from some fall. I don't want us to be depending on this supernatural God up in the sky; I want us to recognize that God is part of who we are and that we have to live out the meaning of God with other people. That means we must live in mutual respect and interdependence; it means we have to limit our own desires in order for the body politic to survive. — John Shelby Spong

I live completely without regret. Sure there are plenty of things that someone could second guess, but I see the path of life like driving down the road without a map. The thing is, some dark alleys open up in majestic places, and some bright and shiny highways to the top end in cliffs to the bottom. You never know until you get there. What I know for sure is that if many years ago I actually had a map to the path of life, the destination that I would have chosen is right here, with this family, in this place, and with these smiles. That makes anything that could have been regretful, the best decision in the world. — Michael A. Wood Jr.

Life is meaningless only if we allow it to be. Each of us has the power to give life meaning, to make our time and our bodies and our words into instruments of love and hope. — Thomas Head Raddall

Now I can broach the notion of suicide. It has already been felt what solution might be given. At this point the problem is reversed. It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have a meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear, on the contrary, that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully. Now, no one will live this fate, knowing it to be absurd, unless he does everything to keep before him that absurd brought to light by consciousness. — Albert Camus

Life without meaning
cannot be borne.
We find a mission
to which we're sworn
or answer the call
of Death's dark horn.
Without a gleaning
of purpose in life,
we have no vision,
we live in strife,
or let blood fall
on a suicide knife. — Dean Koontz

We live in a vengeful time. You didn't get the orange chicken you ordered or the sticky rice? And now you're already home? Meaning you'd have to drive all the way back to get the orange chicken and sticky rice you ordered? Injustice! And thus avenge. Avenge the proprietor's crimes! This [is] our contemporary version of balance, of speaking truth to power. Avenge the proprietor on thy customer-review site! Right the imbalance! — Dave Eggers

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. — Nelson Henderson

We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. — Carl Sagan

It seemed to her the window was a great eye looking out over the city and the harbour and a strip of the gulf under ice. The new silence and emptiness was not entirely a loss; it was something of a relief. Aunt Gerda felt like a balloon, untied, soaring off its own way. But, she thought, it's a balloon that's bouncing against the ceiling and can't get free.
She understood that this was no way to live; human beings are not built to float. She needed an earthly anchor of meaning and care so she didn't get lost in the confusion. — Tove Jansson

Projection is necessary and desirable for self-fulfillment. Otherwise man is overwhelmed by his loneliness and separation and negated by the very burden of his own life. As Rank so wisely saw, projection is a necessary unburdening of the individual; man cannot live closed upon himself and for himself. he must project the meaning of his life outward, the reason for it, even the blame for it. We did not create ourselves, but we are stuck with ourselves. Technically we say that transference is a distortion of reality. But now we see that this distortion has two dimensions: distortion due to to the fear of life and death and distortion due to the heroic attempt to assure self-expansion and the intimate connection of one's inner self to surrounding nature. In other words, transference reflects the whole of the human condition and raises the largest philosophical question about that condition. — Ernest Becker

Throughout the entire history of philosophy, philosophers have sought to discover what man is - or what human nature is. But Sartre believed that man has no such eternal nature to fall back on. It is therefore useless to search for the meaning of life in general. We are condemned to improvise. We are like actors dragged onto the stage without having learned our lines, with no script and no prompter to whisper stage directions to us. We must decide for ourselves how to live. — Jostein Gaarder

How many of those who are insecure seek power over others as a compensation for inadequacy and wind up bringing consequences down upon their heads and those around them? How many hide out in their lives, resist the summons to show up, or live fugitive lives, jealous, projecting onto others, and then wonder why nothing ever really feels quite right. How many proffer compliance with the other, buying peace at the price of soul, and wind up with neither? — James Hollis

We live in a time when the values of courage and honesty, particularly for women writers, equate to confessing only the darkest, most painful parts of our lives. "How brave you are," my students say to each other over workshop tables, "to expose that." Meaning, to uncover this family secret or that heinous act or to openly confront the demons of alcoholism, promiscuity, substance abuse, incest, infidelity, illness, betrayal ... I have also wrestled many dark angels, and continue to do so, so I acknowledge the price such writing exacts. But more and more I have come to respect the honesty and courage required to recognize the bright angels when they appear in our memory, and to allow them equal space in our narratives. — Rebecca McClanahan

Am I sure that there is no mind behind our existence and no mystery anywhere in the universe? I think I am. What joy, what relief there would be, if we could declare so with complete conviction. If that were so I could wish to live for ever. How terrifying and glorious the role of man if, indeed, without guidance and without consolation he must create from his own rituals the meaning for his existence and write the rules whereby he lives. — Thornton Wilder

NOTHING MAKES SENSE. Do not look for any sense in things. It is not there. It is you who ascribe it to what you live or get to know. A defeat or a victory is neither a message from the gods nor a trick of fate. Neither means anything - and, if they seem to, it is but an interpretation you yourself make of them - , inasmuch as things in themselves are only indifference and silence. So, do not waste your precious time in looking for signs everywhere around you. Try and interpret happenings, those which bleed and those which make you smile, as maturing experiences. Oh, yes, what is most important: live! — Camilo Gomes Jr.

We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live fully in its total meaning of loving, caring, creating and adventuring. Consequently, the actualizing of our potential can become the most exciting adventure of our lifetime. — Herbert Otto Gille

If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival. That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence - in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you. Heaven is just a name for that state of mind. Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself. — Osho

Centuries of fighting, and for what? I say. Today it ends. I can't live in fear any longer. I've cursed this power. I've both enjoyed and misused it. And I've hidden it away. Now I must try to wield it correctly, to marry it to a purpose and hope that is enough. — Libba Bray