Our Second Life Quotes & Sayings

I go now to my long rest in the timeless halls beyond the seas and the Mountains of Aman. It will be long ere I am seen among the Noldor again; and it may be that we shall not meet a second time in death or life, for the fates of our kindreds are apart. Farewell! — J.R.R. Tolkien

Most women have learned a great deal about how to set goals for our First Adulthood and how to roll with the punches when we hit a rough passage. But we're less prepared for our Second Adulthood as we approach life after retirement, where there are no fixed entrances or exits, and lots of sand into which it is easy to bury our heads. — Gail Sheehy

Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotchpotch of impulses, our perpetual miracle - for the soul throws up wonders every second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is death; conformity is death; let us say what comes into our heads, repeat ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or thinks or says. For nothing matters except life. — Virginia Woolf

In the second half of life, our old compasses no longer work. The magnetic fields alter. The new compass that we need cannot be held in our hand, only in our heart. We read it not with our mind alone, but with our soul.

Now we yearn for wholeness. We yearn to remember the parts of ourselves that we have forgotten, to nourish those that we have starved, to express those we have silenced, and to bring into the light those we have cast into the shadows. On this quest for wholeness, we must let go of cliches of adult life, both positive and negative . . . Using the best information available , each of us must find his own way.

To varying degrees, all of us are trying to break out of . . . the "life structure" that we have built during the first part of our lives. — Mark Gerzon

I focus on a simple message: when you leave the two-thirds of Americans without college degrees out of your vision of the good life, they notice. And when elites commit to equality for many different groups but arrogantly dismiss "the dark rigidity of fundamentalist rural America,"6 this is a recipe for extreme alienation among working-class whites. Deriding "political correctness" becomes a way for less-privileged whites to express their fury at the snobbery of more-privileged whites. I don't like what this dynamic is doing to America. There are two reasons I think we have to try to replace it with a healthier one. The first is ethical: I am committed to social equality, not for some groups but for all groups. The second is strategic: the hidden injuries of class7 now have become visible in politics so polarized that our democracy is threatened. A few words — Joan C. Williams

Our world is nothing but a mistery. You never know what happens the next second... — Mykyta Isagulov

Life is what we make it to be; can be other people's life or it can be our special one. The difference is that the first we sit and watch and basically we know the ending but the second is defined by us and require lots of work and effort to define the way we want to live by. It is a journey with no end in sight, no distance measured behind, just going. It is a faith similar to the faith to your God but this one is just faith in yourself and your capability to define a path with a vision of the future that you really can not see but rather feel and sense. — Hisham Fawzi

Our first half is about how to make a living, and our second half has the promise of being about how to make a life. — Bob Buford

However brief our time in the sun, if we waste a second of it, or
complain that it is dull or barren or (like a child) boring, couldn't
this be seen as a callous insult to those unborn trillions who will
never even be offered life in the first place? — Richard Dawkins

Not only our eternal salvation depends upon our willingness and capacity to forgive wrongs committed against us. Our joy and satisfaction in this life, and our true freedom, depend upon our doing so. When Christ bade us turn the other cheek, walk the second mile, give our cloak to him who takes our coat, was it to be chiefly out of consideration for the bully, the brute, the thief? Or was it to relieve the one aggrieved of the destructive burden that resentment and anger lay upon us? — Marion D. Hanks

Our society gives its economy priority over health, love, truth, beauty, sex and salvation; over life itself. Whatsoever is given precedence over life will take precedence over life, and will end in eliminating life. Since economics, at its most abstract level, is the religion of our people, no noneconomic happening, not even one as potentially spectacular as the Second Coming, can radically alter the souls of our people. — Tom Robbins

The present: It is interesting that the "NOW" is called "the present." The present is the ultimate gift; it is the gift of truth and life. You are given the present every second, and you will receive it forever. The present is the only thing that exists, the only thing you are ever conscious of. Your life is a series of presents moving through time. The future does not exist until it becomes the present.

Life is one perpetual present.

Creation is happening now: Your body, mind, and the world around it are being created from microsecond to microsecond. Things may look the same, but they are not; everything is constantly changing and being recreated. Our life and our world is being created from moment to moment.

Life and everything in it is always new. — Michael Smith

We have two main objectives in this universe: First is to have fun; second is to try find a way to protect our existence so that we can continue to have fun! These two objectives must be pursued simultaneously! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

For at the beginning of the twentieth century, the nation had been struggling to find its way. Terror had raged, a second civil war had threatened to split the nation into new feuding armies, and the inequities of industrial life had brutalized too many lives. Three men who were caught up in those traumatic times, shaped by them, found with their talents, energy, and ideals a way out of it, both for themselves and for the nation. Darrow, Billy, D.W. were all flawed - egotists, temperamental, and too often morally complacent. But as their careers and lives intersected in Los Angeles at the tail end of the first decade of the twentieth century, each in his own way helped to move America into the modern world. They were individuals willing to fight for their beliefs; and the legacy of their battles, their cultural and political brawls, remains part of our national consciousness. — Howard Blum

Each heartbeat begins with a single, electrical impulse, or "spark." The distinctive sound we hear through a stethoscope, or when we place our head on a loved one's chest, is the sound of the heart valves opening and closing in perfect synchronicity with each other. It is a two-party rhythm - a delicate dance of systole and diastole, which propels the heart's electrically charged particles through its chambers roughly every second of the day, every day of our lives. — Jessi Kirby

Otis, on the other hand, didn't miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just "big-boned". Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way.
But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet. — Elizabeth Warren

There is nothing new about prophecies to the effect that the end of the world is near if we do not repent. What is new is that such a prophecy is now true, for two obvious reasons. First, nuclear weapons give us the means to wipe ourselves out quickly: no humans possessed this means before. Second, we already appropriate about forty per cent of the Earth's net productivity (that is, the net energy captured from sunlight). With the world's human population now doubling every forty-one years, we will soon have reached the biological limit to growth, at which point we will have to start fighting each other in deadly earnest for a slice of the world's fixed pie of resources. In addition, given the present rate at which we are exterminating species, most of the world's species will become extinct or endangered within the next century, but we depend on many species for our own life support. — Jared Diamond

We can change so many times in our lives. We're born into a family, and it's the only life we can imagine, but it changes. Buildings collapse. Fires burn. And the next second we're someplace else entirely, going through different motions and trying to keep up with this new person we've become. — Lauren DeStefano

Heartbreaks, disappointments and even our own weaknesses can serve as stepping-stones to the second half of life transformation. Failings are the foundation for growth. Those who have fallen, failed or 'gone down' are the only ones who understand 'up.' — Richard Rohr

We live through myriads of seconds, yet it is always one, just one, that casts our entire inner world into turmoil, the second when (as Stendhal has described it) the internal inflorescence, already steeped in every kind of fluid, condenses and crystallizes - a magical second, like the moment of generation, and like that moment concealed in the warm interior of the individual life, invisible, untouchable, beyond the reach of feeling, a secret experienced alone. No algebra of the mind can calculate it, no alchemy of premonition divine it, and it can seldom perceive itself. — Stefan Zweig

When our mother is seen only as the one-dimensional Mary of modern times, instead of the great dual force of life and death, She is relegated to the same second-class status of most women in the world. She is without desires of Her own, selfless and sexless except for Her womb. She is the cook, the mistress, bearer and caretaker of children and men. Men call upon Her and carry Her love and magic to form a formidable fortress, a team of cannons to protect them against their enemies. But for a long, long time the wars that women have been left to wage on behalf of men, on behalf of the human race, have started much sooner, in the home, in front of the hearth, in the womb. We do what we must to protect and provide for our young our families, our tribes — Ana Castillo

History is so comprehensive and detailed. I couldn't be a history student. I thought there was a time when I couldn't be a history maker, because of my limited understanding of what that meant. Today, thinking about the passing of Julian Bond and a wonderful conversation with a woman who has influenced so much, I think we all are history makers. All of our names will not be as known as Mr. Bond's or in books, but our names will be on someone's tongue and our memories will be in someone's heart, and we will all be a part of someone's personal story. We have a unique opportunity at this very second to change how we affect someone's life as living history and historians. Flaws and all. Yep. — Robin Caldwell

There are two ways in which we may attain control over our activity. The first is confidence in the power of our own will; to know that if we have failed today, tomorrow we will not do so. The second is to have our eyes wide open, and to watch keenly our activity in all aspects of life. It is in the dark that we fall, but in the light we can see where we are going. — Hazrat Inayat Khan

Whoa, whoa, whoa," Mark said. "It couldn't have been that long. It happened to us just a few days ago." "I don't like it ... when people doubt my words," Jed said, his tone changing drastically in the middle of his sentence. It suddenly turned threatening. "How can you sit there and accuse me of lying? Why would I lie about such a thing? I've tried to make peace with you, give you a second chance in this life, and this is how you repay me?" His voice had risen in volume with every passing word until he was shouting, his body trembling. "It ... it makes my head hurt." Mark could tell Alec was about to explode, so he quickly reached over and squeezed his arm. "Don't," he whispered. "Just don't." Then he returned his attention to Jed. "No, listen, please. It's not like that. We just want to understand. Our village had the ... — James Dashner

We obviously both have our pasts, but that's not important right now. I don't have to know every bad thing you ever did in your life to know that you're a good guy now. People change, grow up, get smarter, move on. In ten years I could be completely different, but I'll never be the person I was yesterday, or even this morning. I don't want to be. I want to try to be better with each second I'm alive." - SHEA — Michelle Warren

I wiped my face with my napkin. "What made you want to become an actor?"
I was sure he was going to tell me something pompous like he was born to play the role. Or that he wanted to get all the woman. So I waited.
"Me." He bit his lip, but his eyes didn't meet mine. "I got sick of failing and being told I would never amount to shit back home my entire life."
I rubbed the back of my neck. This wasn't what I expected to hear.
"I've fucked up royally and I have been fucked royally." There was a tightness in his eyes, the emotion crawled up his entire body. "And no I don't want your pity."
I fidgeted in my chair. I didn't know what to say. "I understand."
Our eyes met, and for a split second Carter looked as if he was considering believing me. He blew out a noisy breath of air. "The fuck you do. — Maven West

Cognitive tunneling and reactive thinking occur when our mental spotlights go from dim to bright in a split second. But if we are constantly telling ourselves stories and creating mental pictures, that beam never fully powers down. It's always jumping around inside our heads. And, as a result, when it has to flare to life in the real world, we're not blinded by its glare. — Charles Duhigg

Today I prayed for Boston, for America, my home away from home. Today, I realized how lucky we Sri Lankans are to have peace in our country. How I feel today, hearing of the bombs going off in the city brings back memories of how I used to feel four years ago in Sri Lanka when the LTTE was setting off bombs all around Colombo. That feeling I used to get when I hear about a bomb blast, the goosebumps, the school evacuation drills, the breaking news footage, and most of all, that fear we Sri Lankans used to feel, every second of everyday, it all came back to me today. Thank you God for bringing peace to my country, look after America the way you did Sri Lanka. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

Paradise is being able to say at that (second before our death) moment: I made some mistakes, but I wasn't a coward. I lived life and did what I had to do. — Paulo Coelho

The 10th Annual Webby Awards represent an extraordinary opportunity to celebrate the evolution of the web from an esoteric medium to the driving force shaping popular culture, business, and society today, .. As the web enters its second decade as an integral part of everyday life, our expanded categories recognize those who are pushing the web in exciting new directions. — Tiffany Shlain

Evolution, energy, and ethics are the core elements that will guide us along the challenging path toward the Life Era: the first - evolution - because a good understanding of our universal roots and of our place in the cosmic scheme of things will help us create a feasible future course; the second - energy - because our fate will bear strongly on the ways that humankind learns to use energy efficiently and safely; and the third - ethics - because global citizenship and a planetary society are crucial factors in the survival of our species. — Eric Chaisson

Immanuel Kant believed that we humans, because we are so emotionally complex, go through two puberties in life. The first puberty is when our bodies become mature enough for sex; the second puberty is when our minds becomes mature enough for sex. — Elizabeth Gilbert

No sinful word, nor deed of wrong, Nor thoughts that idly rove; But simple truth be on our tongue, And in our hearts be love. ST. AMBROSE. Let us all resolve,--First, to attain the grace of SILENCE; Second, to deem all FAULT-FINDING that does no good a SIN, and to resolve, when we are happy ourselves, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling on them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature of their daily life; Third, to practise the grace and virtue of PRAISE. HARRIET B. STOWE. — Mary W. Tileston

Both life and death manifest in every moment of existence. Our human body appears and disappears moment by moment, without cease, and this ceaseless arising and passing away is what we experience as time and being. They are not separate. They are one thing, and in even a fraction of a second, we have the opportunity to choose, and to turn the course of our action either toward the attainment of truth or away from it. Each instant is utterly critical to the whole world. — Ruth Ozeki

At times, the confident lose confidence, the patient lose their cool, the generous act selfish, and the knowledgeable second guess what they know. And guess what? We're all human. We all make mistakes, we lose our tempers, and we get caught off guard. We stumble, we slip, and we spin out of control sometimes. But that's usually the worst of it. We all have our moments. Most of the time, we're remarkable. So stand beside the people you love through their trying times of imperfection, and offer yourself the same courtesy. For more tips on how to live a productive life, read "The Angel Affect" and join the mission. — Anonymous

Every man has two lives: The first one is the one we are living now and the second one is our memories! Memories are our invisible lives. But you must know that it is your first life that creates your second life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

As told in Friendship with God, if we simply decided to believe and act as if first, we're all one, and second, life is eternal, it would render virtually everything we've done all our lives pointless. — Neale Donald Walsch

So my pleasure in addressing you will keep pace with the joy in my heart at the glad news of the complete conversion of your people. 'I have sent some small presents, which will not appear small to you, since you will receive them with the blessing of the blessed Apostle Peter. May Almighty God continue to perfect you in His grace, prolong your life for many years, and after this life receive you among the citizens of your heavenly home. May the grace of heaven preserve Your Majesty in safety. 'Dated the twenty-second day of June, in the nineteenth year of our most pious lord and Emperor Maurice Tiberius Augustus, and the eighteenth after his Consulship: the fourth indiction. — Bede

Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment , for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions. — Stephen Jay Gould

We all experience highs and lows in life. If you are feeling down right now, each second that passes is another moment to turn it all around. Feelings, good and bad, always come and go. The trick is to be grateful when your mood is high and graceful when it is low. When you stop expecting people and situations to be perfect, you can start appreciating them for who and what they are. Imperfections are important, and so are mistakes. We get to be good by learning from our mistakes and we get to be real by being imperfect. — John Geiger

Have you ever noticed how many men in the Bible failed in the second half of life? Our enemy is so cunning that he will wait forty or even fifty years to set a trap. — Joseph C. Aldrich

Second-century Christian thinker Athenagoras wrote, Our life does not consist in making up beautiful phrases but in performing beautiful deeds. — Shane Claiborne

If you're feeling good, then you're creating a future that's on track with your desires. If you're feeling bad, you're creating a future that's off track with your desires. As you go about your day, the law of attraction is working in every second. Everything we think and feel is creating our future. If you're worried or in fear, then you're bringing more of that into your life throughout the day. — Rhonda Byrne

In my approaching old age, I am now supposed to share with you what life has taught me, and in the end to encapsulate for you what is the meaning of life. From where I am now, I find that these conundrums are easily answered. First, life teaches us that, whether we perceive it as predestined or as random, it is beyond any person's control. Second, there is no template for the meaning of life. Instead, the meaning of life is what you choose to make it mean. In making your choice, when you reach my age, your journey becomes an affirmation of the warning that life is a consequence of our moral choices. — Miriam Defensor Santiago

Most people who bother to think about plants at all tend to regard them as the mute, immobile furniture of our world - useful enough, and generally attractive, but obviously second-class citizens in the republic of life on Earth. — Stefano Mancuso

As we practice these disciplines, it's of paramount importance that we keep two truths in mind. First, the disciplines themselves are not the source of spiritual power. Only the Holy Spirit is. The disciplines are his instruments to transmit his power. Second, the practice of the disciplines doesn't earn us favor with God or secure his blessings. Christ has already done that through his sinless life and sin-bearing death for us. That's why the grace we need to live the Christian life is "in Christ Jesus." It bears repeating: we must be on our guard to avoid seeing the practice of the disciplines as either the source of power we need or the meritorious cause of receiving the power. — Anonymous

I now want to examine a second major feature of Western civilization that derives from Christianity. This is what philosopher Charles Taylor calls the 'affirmation of ordinary life.' It is the simple idea that ordinary people are fallible, and yet these fallible people matter. In this view, society should organize itself in order to meet their everyday concerns, which are elevated into a kind of spiritual framework. The nuclear family, the idea of limited government, the Western concept of the rule of law, and our culture's high emphasis on the relief of suffering all derive from this basic Christian understanding of the dignity of fallible human beings. — Dinesh D'Souza

Beyond work and love, I would add two other ingredients that give meaning to life. First, to fulfill whatever talents we are born with. However blessed we are by fate with different abilities and strengths, we should try to develop them to the fullest, rather than allow them to atrophy and decay. We all know individuals who did not fulfill the promise they showed in childhood. Many of them became haunted by the image of what they might have become. Instead of blaming fate, I think we should accept ourselves as we are and try to fulfill whatever dreams are within our capability.
Second, we should try to leave the world a better place than when we entered it. As individuals, we can make a difference, whether it is to probe the secrets of Nature, to clean up the environment and work for peace and social justice, or to nurture the inquisitive, vibrant spirit of the young by being a mentor and a guide. — Michio Kaku

We're given second chances every day of our life. We don't usually take them, but they're there for the taking. — Andrew Greeley

We all have to learn, in one way or another, that neither men nor boys get second chances in this world. We all get new chances to the end of our lives, but not second chances in the same set of circumstances; and the great difference between one person and another is how he takes hold and uses his first chance, and how he takes his fall if it is scored against him. — Thomas Hughes

When I encountered these haunting words from Franz Kafka, I realized exactly why this light sermon about the search for God had struck such a nerve: Everyday life is the greatest detective story ever written. Every second, without noticing, we pass by thousands of corpses and crimes. That's the routine of our lives. — Stephen Kendrick

A part of our nature rebels against this truth and against that other part which would accept it. A second truth of equal weight contradicts the first, proclaiming through art, religion, philosophy, science and even war that human life, in some way not easily definable, is significant and unique and supreme beyond all the limits of reason and nature. And this second truth we can deny only at the cost of denying our humanity. — Edward Abbey

Here's the problem: when every sin is seen as the same, we are less likely to fight any sins at all. Why should I stop sleeping with my girlfriend when there will still be lust in my heart? Why pursue holiness when even one sin in my life means I'm Osama bin Hitler in God's eyes? Again, it seems humble to act as if no sin is worse than another, but we lose the impetus for striving and the ability to hold each other accountable when we tumble down the slip-n-slide of moral equivalence. All of a sudden the elder who battles the temptation to take a second look at the racy section of the Lands End catalog shouldn't dare exercise church discipline ont he young man fornicating with reckless abandon. When we can no longer see the different gradations among sins and sinners and sinful nations, we have not succeeded in respecting our own badness; we've cheapened God's goodness. — Kevin DeYoung

The second sort was waking up alone. That was characterised by an awareness that he was alone in bed, alone in life, alone in the world, and it could sometimes fill him with a sweet sensation of freedom, and at other times with a melancholy that could perhaps be called loneliness, but which was perhaps just a glimpse of what anyone's life really is: a journey from the attachment of the umbilical cord to a death where we are finally separated from everything and everyone. A brief glimpse at the moment of awakening before all our defence mechanisms and comforting illusions slot into place again and we can face life in all its unreal glory. Then — Jo Nesbo

Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone. But sometimes
always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate
there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; or possibly, it may come to crown some other grand festival in life, if any other such there be. This bemoaning of one's self ... over the first, careless, shallow gayety of youth departed, and this profound happiness at youth regained,
so much deeper and richer than that we lost,
are essential to the soul's development. In some cases, the two states come almost simultaneously, and mingle the sadness and the rapture in one mysterious emotion. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are two main strategies we can try to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Every second vibrates within our Present moment, our now. In one split second of awareness, we can create a Life full of Light, Joy, and Love. — Jacqueline Ripstein

That's how, on the second-to-last day of the job, the convict crew that tarred the plate-factory roof in 1950 ending up sitting in a row at ten o'clock on a spring morning, drinking Black Label beer supplied by the hardest screw that ever walked a turn at Shawshank Prison. That beer was piss-warm, but it was still the best I ever had in my life. We sat and drank it and felt the sun on our shoulders, and not even the expression of half-amusement, half-contempt on Hadley's face - as if he was watching apes drink beer instead of men - could spoil it. It lasted twenty minutes, that beer-break, and for those twenty minutes we felt like free men. We could have been drinking beer and tarring the roof of one of our own houses. — Stephen King

Steel identifies what he calls two faulty believes: first, that life should be easy, and second, that our self-worth is dependent on our success. — Daniel J. Levitin

It's all in the view. That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. — Sarah Dessen

This is a massive world, I think, and in each centimeter of it, a different drama unfolds every second of the day. But we live on as if the next moment in our lives will be no different than the last. How foolish we all are. — Mahbod Seraji

Second letter: Embrace your fear

What holds us back in life is the invisible architecture of fear. It keeps us in our comfort zones, which are, in truth, the least safe place in which to live. Indeed the greatest risk in life is taking no risk. But every time we do that which we fear , we take back the power that fear has stolen from us - for on the other side of fear lives our strength. Every time we step into the discomfort of growth and progress, we become more free. The more fears we walk through, the more power we reclaim. In this way, we grow both fearless and powerful, and thus are able to live the lives of our dreams. — Robin S. Sharma

What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it.

Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. — Ernst F. Schumacher

Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy. — Fredrik Backman

Sometimes the strongest thing you will ever do will be to let go of someone. It will be painful, you will suffer guilt, and you will second-guess yourself, but for your own sanity and quality of life, there will come a time where you hand them to God, with your love, and trust Him to be who and what He is. May our Lord comfort you. — Lee Goff

That's what I mean about forever, too. For any one of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. You can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count.
What you have to decide, is how you want your life to be. If your forever was ending tomorrow, would this be how you'd want to have spent it ?
Listen, the truth is, nothing is guaranteed. You know that more than anybody.
So don't be afraid. Be alive. — Sarah Dessen

The Bible is the story of two gardens: Eden and Gethsemane. In the first, Adam took a fall. In the second, Jesus took a stand. In the first, God sought Adam. In the second, Jesus sought God. In Eden, Adam hid from God. In Gethsemane, Jesus emerged from the tomb. In Eden, Satan led Adam to a tree that led to his death. From Gethsemane, Jesus went to a tree that led to our life. — Max Lucado

Our dreams are a second life. — Gerard De Nerval

You all, healthy people, can't imagine the happiness which we
epileptics feel during the second before our fit ... I don't know if this
felicity lasts for seconds, hours or months, but believe me, I would not
exchange it for all the joys that life may bring. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

As slaves we were this country's first windfall, the down payment on its freedom. After the ruin and liberation of the Civil War came Redemption for the unrepentant South and Reunion, and our bodies became this country's second mortgage. In the New Deal we were their guestroom, their finished basement. And today, with a sprawling prison system, which has turned the warehousing of black bodies into a jobs program for Dreamers and a lucrative investment for Dreamers; today, when 8 percent of the world's prisoners are black men, our bodies have refinanced the Dream of being white. Black life is cheap, but in America black bodies are a natural resource of incomparable value. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

It should, as Chekhov said, prepare us for tenderness. And in this regard it starts, I think, with intention ... Our intention is to crack life open for just a second. — George Saunders

In our hunger for guidance, we were ordinary. The American Freshman Survey, which has followed students since 1966, proves the point. One prompt in the questionnaire asks entering freshmen about "objectives considered to be essential or very important." In 1967, 86 percent of respondents checked "developing a meaningful philosophy of life," more than double the number who said "being very well off financially." Naturally, students looked to professors for moral and worldly understanding. Since then, though, finding meaning and making money have traded places. The first has plummeted to 45 percent; the second has soared to 82 percent. — Anonymous

They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence, and out of that moment, heaven or hell is born. — Paulo Coelho

On a second note, though, I have something to say about pain. There are lots of kinds of pain. Pain of smashing your fingers in a car door, pains of loosing a baby, pain of failing a test. But in their own little ways, these pains are all agonizing. Which is sad, and yet, happy, if you really think about it. If we never lost our car keys, or stepped in gum, or had a bad hair day, what kind of people would we be? In a word? Boring. We wouldn't be passionate; we wouldn't know it was exciting to get pregnant, or score an A on a final. So that's why, today at least, I am grateful for pain. Because it's part of what makes me the whacky, goofy, jaded, person that I am. Peace. — Alysha Speer

Bayleigh got up from the table and walked slowly toward Cade, the shirt she'd stolen from him barely buttoned and enticing him with every step. His pupils dilated with desire and she watched his cock swell beneath his jeans. She moved as if she were going to straddle his lap, but at the last second, she moved her knee so it was pressed directly against his balls. His indrawn breath was enough to know that she was using the right amount of pressure.
"Don't you ever threaten me with my brothers", she whispered in his ears. "I get enough of that from them and I won't take it from you too, no matter how much control you think our sleeping together gives you. I'm old enough to make my own decisions and take the consequences of my actions. I control my life. No one else."
She nipped at his ear and felt satisfaction at his indrawn breath. — Liliana Hart

It has been said that sometimes the greatest hope in our lives is just a second chance to do what we should have done right in the first place. — Richard Paul Evans

I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, 'The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.' My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste,' and I didn't want to waste mine. — Rob Sheffield

Every adult life could be said to be defined by two great love stories. The first - the story of our quest for sexual love - is well known and well charted, its vagaries form the staple of music and literature, it is socially accepted and celebrated. The second - the story of our quest for love from the world - is a more secret and shameful tale. If mentioned, it tends to be in caustic, mocking terms, as something of interest chiefly to envious or deficient souls, or else the drive for status is interpreted in an economic sense alone. And yet this second love story is no less intense than the first, it is no less complicated, important or universal, and its setbacks are no less painful. There is heartbreak here too. — Alain De Botton

At very best there are two problems with ideology. The first is that it does not represent or conform to or even address reality. It is a straight-edge ruler of a fractal universe. And the second is that it inspires in its believers the notion that the fault here lies with miscreant fact, which should therefore be conformed to the requirements of theory by all means necessary. To the ideologue this would amount to putting the world right, ridding it of ambiguity and of those tedious and endless moral and ethical questions that dog us through life, and that those around us so rarely answer to our satisfaction. — Marilynne Robinson

Love others as you love yourself.'"1 Learning to love unselfishly is not an easy task. It runs counter to our self-centered nature. That's why we're given a lifetime to learn it. Of course, God wants us to love everyone, but he is particularly concerned that we learn to love others in his family. As we have already seen, this is the second purpose for your life. Peter tells us, "Show special love for God's people."2 Paul echoes this sentiment: "When we have the opportunity to help anyone, we should do it. But we should give special attention to those who are in the family of believers."3 — Rick Warren

Life is like Mother Nature - unpredictable. Friends /relatives who promise to help, will avoid you when you need them. Then, you struggle to get through and suddenly, some stranger walks in offering you the help you needed.
The hope, the betrayal and the miracle...all are just part of our life... — Sandhya Jane

Everything we do - our whole life, Greenie - revolves around the Maze. Every lovin' second of every lovin' day we spend in honor of the Maze, tryin' to solve somethin' that's not shown us it has a bloody solution, — James Dashner

Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you'd want to have spent it? — Sarah Dessen

There is a balance, a kind of standoff between the time continuum and the human entity, our frail bundle of soma and psyche. We eventually succumb to time, it's true, but time depends on us. We carry it in our muscles and genes, pass it on to the next set of time-factoring creatures, our brown-eyed daughters and jug-eared sons, or how would the world keep going. Never mind the time theorists, the cesium devices that measure the life and death of the smallest silvery trillionth of a second ... We were the only crucial clocks, our minds and bodies, way stations for the distribution of time. — Don DeLillo

I could never understand my purpose in this world. I have had nothing but pain and loss my hole life. But now I know why god saved me the first time. It was so I could find you. Then he saved me the second time so I could love you forever. This house is perfect; you are perfect and no one will ever take that away from us. Our love is infinite and I'm going to spend the rest of my life showing you. — Sandi Lynn

A new life begins for us with every second. Let us go forward joyously to meet it. We must press on, whether we will or not, and we shall walk better with our eyes before us than with them ever cast behind. — Jerome K. Jerome

Of course our school life was not free from pranks. The property of the townspeople was moved to strange places in the night. One morning as the janitor was starting the furnace he heard a loud bray from one of the class rooms. His investigation disclosed the presence there of a domestic animal noted for his long ears and discordant voice. In some way during the night he had been stabled on the second floor. About as far as I deem it prudent to discuss my own connection with these escapades is to record that I was never convicted of any of them and so must be presumed innocent. — Calvin Coolidge

Our first job in life is to recognize the gifts we've already got, take the donuts that show up while we cultivate and use those gifts, and then turn around and share those gifts - sometimes in the form of money, sometimes time, sometimes love - back into the puzzle of the world. Our second job is to accept where we are in the puzzle at each moment. — Amanda Palmer

Our dreams are a second life. I have never been able to penetrate without a shudder those ivory or horned gates which separate us from the invisible world. — Gerard De Nerval

With our collective shock, what we saw seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation. Indelibly etched into our memories in terror, forever! My life was in slow motion, it was as if I was no longer in my body and this was a rather bad dream! It is almost impossible to describe with words what I saw, but I will try. This very experience is the one that has continued to shake me awake during the dense night of my lifetime. — Alfred Nestor

In the life cycle of an intense emotion, if it isn't acted upon, it eventually peaks and then decreases. But as Dr. Linehan explains, people with BPD have a different physiological experience with this process because of three key biological vulnerabilities (1993a): First, we're highly sensitive to emotional stimuli (meaning we experience social dynamics, the environment, and our own inner states with an acuteness similar to having exposed nerve endings). Second, we respond more intensely and much more quickly, than other people. And third, we don't 'come down' from our emotions for a long time. One the nerves have been touched, the sensations keep peaking. Shock waves of emotion that might pass through others in minutes keep cresting in us for hours, sometimes days. — Kiera Van Gelder

Do you ever think about it? About nothingness. I do, I think about it all the time. Because of course it's nothingness that awaits us. Of course it is. If it weren't why would our hearts keep pumping any longer than they had to? Why wouldn't we all emerge into the world pure and innocent, and then before we had a chance to get in any trouble, before we had a chance to take our first oily shit, just immediately shut down our systems and head straight to the hereafter? If there were a better life after death, why bother getting fitter for survival's sake? Why would evolution even be a thing? Why fight for something second best? If death was really awesome, in a life or death situation, our bodies wouldn't muscle up with epinephrine and cortisol. Our brains would hit us up instead with sloppy, sleepy happy love. Hannibal Lecter would be our Mickey Mouse. No, there's fuckall to look forward to. Our bodies understand this. The real problem is, it's unbearable to know this. So we cope. — Elizabeth Little

One of the most widely held beliefs in our culture today is that romantic love is all important in order to have a full life but that it almost never lasts. A second, related belief is that marriage should be based on romantic love. Taken together, these convictions lead to the conclusion that marriage and romance are essentially incompatible, that it is cruel to commit people to lifelong connection after the inevitable fading of romantic joy. The Biblical understanding of love does not preclude deep emotion. As we will see, a marriage devoid of passion and emotional desire for one another doesn't fulfill the Biblical vision. But neither does the Bible pit romantic love against the essence of love, which is sacrificial commitment to the good of the other. If we think of love primarily as emotional desire and not as active, committed service, we end up pitting duty and desire against each other in a way that is unrealistic and destructive. — Timothy Keller

We will pursue every factor, every element, every second of the timeline, of the final hours of Maurice's life. We will pursue that relentlessly. That will be our quest from now on. — Robin Gibb

Our second danger is to associate tradition with the immovable; to think of it as something hostile to all change; to aim to return to some previous condition which we imagine as having been capable of preservation in perpetuity, instead of aiming to stimulate the life which produced that condition in its time ... a tradition without intelligence is not worth having ... — T. S. Eliot

If the estimated age of the cosmos were shortened to seventy-two years, a human life would take about ten seconds. But look at time the other way. Each day is a minor eternity of over 86,000 seconds. During each second, the number of distinct molecular functions going on within the human body is comparable to the number of seconds in the estimated age of the cosmos. A few seconds are long enough for a revolutionary idea, a startling communication, a baby's conception, a wounding insult, a sudden death. Depending on how we think of them, our lives can be infinitely long or infinitely short. — Robert Grudin

We as humans are the patterns of life. We are the roads we travel. Our lives make up the insignificance of a moment of the importance of a second. The choices we make are everything. I realize that, now that everything has changed and I'm a different person. — Megan Duke

There are a million things in this world that can end you, that can in one second obliterate the life you work so hard to keep alive. Our lives are structured around not dying. Eating, sleeping, looking both ways before you cross the street. It's all, all of it, to keep us safe from the thing that we know is going to get us anyway. It doesn't even make sense, if you think about it. It's the world's biggest joke. Our entire lives are set up around not dying, knowing all the while that it's the one thing we can't avoid. — Rebecca Serle

In the second training, we develop energy, concentration, and mindfulness. These are the meditative and life tools that enable us to awaken. Without them we simply act out the patterns of our conditioning. — Joseph Goldstein

God is big, but he moves into the small. God cares about eternity, yet he cares about every second of every human's life. That is who we serve. When God is only big and only about eternal heavenly things in our minds, we miss out. We miss Jesus. We miss that Jesus loved each individual deeply and met their unique needs. We miss how creatively he pursued each of us until we believed. We miss his vision for his church: one body, many unique parts coming together to make a difference with their small moments. — Jennie Allen