Pondered Life Quotes & Sayings

If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power, and beauty that nature can bestow - in some parts a very paradise on earth - I should point to India. If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most full developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant - I should point to India. And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human, a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life - again I should point to India. — Friedrich Max Muller

Watanabe would later admit that in the beginning of his life in exile, he had pondered the question of whether or not he had committed any crime. In the end, he laid the blame not on himself but on "sinful, absurd, insane war." He saw himself as a victim. — Laura Hillenbrand

Where did all the creativity go?' she wondered aloud as she pondered the newly rediscovered story of her youth. 'If I was true to myself, would I have ended up living this ordinary life? — Lily Koppel

I have pondered on the causes of a life's shipwreck. I think that our lives are worse than the mind's quality would warrant. There are many who know virtue. We know the good, we apprehend it clearly. But we can't bring it to achievement. — Euripides

I don't think it's a question of liking or disliking it," Tengo said ... "It was the one thing he was best at." "Hmm. I see," Kumi said. She pondered this. "But that might very well be the best way to live your life. — Haruki Murakami

Even Colin - the golden boy, the man with the easy smile and devilish humor - had raw spots of his own. He was haunted by unfulfilled dreams and secret insecurities. How unfair she had been when she'd pondered his life, not to allow him his weaknesses. — Julia Quinn

Saimun pondered. How come that when something is difficult to get or you don't have it, and you just get a chance to taste it for a moment, a small matter can become so big, doubling, trebling, growing ever larger? This morning one kretek cigarette dominated his whole soul. As if his life depended on one cigarette and if he could get that cigarette his life would be prolonged, as it were, for ever. One cigarette could fulfill his existence. — Mochtar Lubis

In my solitude I have pondered much on the incomprehensible subjects of space, eternity, life and death. — Alfred Russel Wallace

The song was the late Ishihara Yujiro's "Rusty Knife," and Sakaguchi's singing was so bad that it
gave the lyric a strange new pathos and poignancy. Listening to his version, Suzuki Midori was
reminded that no one ever said it would be easy to go on living in this world; Takeuchi Midori
pondered the noble truth that nobody's life consists exclusively of happy times; Henmi Midori
vowed to remember that it's best to keep an open heart and forgive even those who've
trespassed against us; and Tomiyama Midori had to keep telling herself that hitting rock bottom
is in fact the first step to a hopeful new future. — Ryu Murakami

I had a vision.
I lay half asleep in the dirt. The sunset
Behind the hills and burnt my skin.
And in the dream I saw a throne
my throne,
Built on the tower of my life.
When I woke all I could think of was my
Vision, etched so clearly on my mind.
I worked for three days and three nights
With no food or drink, until my vision
Had become a reality
perfect in every
Detail.
I pondered the significance of this
Edifice and shook off my trance ...
I felt tired,
I felt lonely,
I felt confused,
I felt so bloody confused,
I felt like a right prat! — Alan C. Martin

Historically, a successful life in comedy is a dream that's as equally pondered and unpursued as being an astronaut. — Artie Lange

The adam and I had pondered the death many times since the day he brought me here. But despite our musing about an end of life and our search for evidence of death among fallen and decomposing fruit and the compost of leaves and the refuse of our industry, which we gathered to enrich the soil, I understood the death less well than the explosion that had filled the universe at its incarnation. In fact, every evidence of degrading life seemed only to point back to the sustenance of the living so that I grasped the idea of the death less and less the more I meditated upon it. — Tosca Lee

He pondered his turmoil, wondering which he feared most - losing his father or being alone in the world. Both were inevitable. Neither could be stopped or slowed down. All he could do now was brace for impact. — Brent Jones

I pondered on this desert hospitality and, compared it with our own. I remembered other encampments where I had slept, small tents on which I had happened in the Syrian desert and where I had spent the night. Gaunt men in rags and hungry-looking children had greeted me, and bade me welcome with the sonorous phrases of the desert. Later they had set a great dish before me, rice heaped round a sheep which they had slaughtered, over which my host poured liquid golden butter until it flowed down on to the sand; and when I protested, saying 'Enough! Enough!', had answered that I was a hundred times welcome. Their lavish hospitality had always made me uncomfortable, for I had known that as a result of it they would go hungry for days. Yet when I left them they had almost convinced me that I had done them a kindness by staying with them — Wilfred Thesiger

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions, I should point to India. — Max Muller

What is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Philosophers have pondered that question for centuries. I'm afraid the answer is disappointingly simple: Mating. That's it. — Oliver Markus

She pondered on how she had come to be as that particular place, at that particular moment, at that specific time in her life. Why, at fifty-three years old, was she lying on the hard ground, about to have a shootout with a murderer? — Andrew Joyce

Why do you bear Merripen such ill will? Is it his charming disposition, or the fact that he's a Roma? Or is it because he was taken in by your parents and raised as one of you?"
"None of that. I despise Merripen because he refused the only thing I ever asked of him."
"Which was?"
"To let me die."
Cam pondered that. "You must mean when he nursed you through the scarlet fever."
"Yes."
"You blame him for saving your life?"
"Yes."
"If it makes you feel any better," Cam said dryly, settling back in his seat, "I'm sure he's had second thoughts about it. — Lisa Kleypas

Edith stared at the ceiling, contemplating the oddness of life. Here she was with this man, whom she hardly knew when she really thought about it, asleep, naked, beside her. She pondered that central truth, which must have struck many brides from Marie Antoinette to Wallis Simpson, that whatever the political, social or financial advantages of a great marriage, there comes a moment when everyone leaves the room and you are left alone with a stranger who has the legal right to copulate with you. She was not at all sure that she had fully negotiated this simple fact until then. — Julian Fellowes

I could understand how such stories of horror can spread, like a wild fire. Such was the nature of rumor. People seemed to love to be frightened especially when, in their heart of hearts, they knew that they were safe. How many truly believed in vampires, I pondered? How many truly believed that they were risking their life by sitting up in the gods to watch a stage performance? — Raymond Buckland

On the occasions when I have pondered over men's various activities, the dangers and worries they are exposed to at court or at war, from which so many quarrels, passions, risky, often ill-conceived actions and so on are born, I have often said that man's unhappiness springs from one thing alone, his incapacity to stay quietly in one room. A man wealthy enough for life's needs would never leave home to go to sea or beseige some fortress if he knew how to stay at home and enjoy it ... — Blaise Pascal

When Vanity kissed Vanity, a hundred happy Junes ago, he pondered o'er her breathlessly, and, that all men might ever know, he rhymed her eyes with life and death:
"Thru Time I'll save my love!" he said ... yet Beauty vanished with his breath, and, with her lovers, she was dead ...
-Ever his wit and not her eyes, ever his art and not her hair:
"Who'd learn a trick in rhyme, be wise and pause before his sonnet there" ... So all my words, however true, might sing you to a thousandth June, and no one ever know that you were Beauty for an afternoon. — F Scott Fitzgerald

So far you've spent your life striving to please others," she heard him say. "With a rather poor rate of success. Why don't you try pleasing yourself for a change? Why not live by your own rules? What has obeying the conventions ever gotten you?" Evie pondered the questions, and her breath hissed in pleasure as he found a particularly sore spot. "I like the conventions," she said after a moment. "There is nothing wrong with being an ordinary person, is there?" "No. But you're not ordinary - or you never would have come to me instead of marrying cousin Eustace." "I was desperate." "That wasn't the entire reason." His low voice sounded like a purr. "You also had a taste for the devil. — Lisa Kleypas

After his failed political career, Lincoln often pondered the question of the purpose of the meaning of life. In 1850 [ten years before he was elected President], Lincoln told Herdon [his law partner] How hard, oh how hard it is to die and leave one's country no better than if one had never lived. — Ronald C. White Jr.

The mystery of life
its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly ... has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why. — Theodore Dreiser

There is more to be pondered in the grain and texture of life than traditional fiction allows. The work of essayists is vital precisely because it permits and encourages self-knowledge in a way that is less indirect than fiction, more open and speculative. — Charles J. Shields

The painter pondered the mournful puzzle of life demanding to be born and, once born, demanding to be fruitful ... to multiply and to live as long as possible - to do all that on a very small planet that would have to last forever. — Kurt Vonnegut

You know, Eric?" Marky's eyes glazed over, revealing he was unwrapping a new idea. "Won't it be weird when we get married? I mean, life will completely change!"
We both pondered the wonder of wedded bliss for a few moments and then Marky added, "I guess you're gonna have to stop doing that disgusting throat clearing thing in the morning!"
"Well, you're gonna have to stop snoring!" I jabbed back
"My wife will be soothed by my snore!" Marky defended.
"Yeah, right! And my wife will be soothed by my disgusting throat clearing thing!
— Eric Ludy

If anyone in your publishing life were to argue against a particular book or a career aspiration for reasons you had not already pondered and rejected after careful analysis, if they dazzled you with brilliant new considerations, then you'd have to back off and revisit your decisions. But what I was told never dazzled me. For example, I was often advised, by different people, that my work would never gain a big audience because my vocabulary was too large. — Dean Koontz

Theology is the study of God. The study of God is simply to be enjoyed for its own incomparable subject, the One most beautiful, most worthy to be praised. Life with God delights in its very acts of thinking, reading, praying and communing with that One most worthy to behold, pondered and studied, not for its written artifacts or social consequences but for the joy in its object. — Thomas C. Oden

I have pondered how much is provided for us by God's goodness. So many sources of enjoyment, and how thankful we should be. And even if afflictions come ... we should know that they are of the hand of God.' She sighed, the semblance of a smile gracing the edges of her mouth. 'We should not expect to have all the blessings of life and none of its trials. it would make this world too delightful a dwelling place, and I fear we would never care to leave it.' Her eyes slipped closed. 'As it is ... I have come to believe that it's only by taking some of those objects from us to which our hearts so closely cling that He endeavors ... in His kindness, to draw us from this world to one of greater happiness. — Tamera Alexander

I pondered the idea that I would spend my entire life meeting people, loving people and losing people. — Shirley Johnson

Have you honestly pondered your individual worth? Consider every lower life form in the world - the animals, plants, fouls and fishes. Consider the land forms and numerous earthly wonders. Consider the countless worlds beyond this planet as well as their stars and galaxies. And then consider yourself. Of all God's creations, you were formed in His image, resembling the likeness of a God. That's something to think about. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Life is an accumulation of what your Heart and mind has pondered most, a conclusion of all you wishes, dreams and desires. — Steven Redhead

What seemed strangest to me when I found this diary was that I have no recollection of the day-to-day life it describes. If I do not recall them, where have those days gone? Where had they vanished to? I pondered the things that human beings lose to the past"

-from "Diary of My Sixteenth Year — Yasunari Kawabata

Rahab pondered the thought. "I don't suppose a pomegranate or a fig as an offering would have the same effect on our hearts. To see an innocent life taken in our place is much more humbling than offering Adonai fruit. — Jill Eileen Smith

He went to his own dark house and lighted the lamps and set fire in the stove. The clock wound by Elizabeth still ticked, storing in its spring the pressure of her hand, and the wool socks she had hung to dry over the stove screen were still damp. These were vital parts of Elizabeth that were not dead yet. Joseph pondered slowly over it. Life cannot be cut off quickly. One cannot be dead until the things he changed are dead. His effect is the only evidence of his life. — John Steinbeck

Maturity meant thinking about risk long before you pondered the reward, and that success and happiness in life were as much about avoiding mistakes as making your mark into the world. — Nicholas Sparks

Matheus pondered which deity he'd annoyed in a previous life. Maybe if he figured out which sacrifices he'd skipped, he could make amends. Did they sell goats at the farmer's market? Matheus wrinkled his nose. He didn't want to leave the city, not to mention the issue of travelling with a goat. People frowned on sticking farm animals in the trunk. What if he got a rack of lamp and chanted over that? Sheep were kind of like goats. — Amy Fecteau

When he mentioned family, I could only think of my father, my real father, the Long Island janitor with the impenetrable accent and true-to-life smells. My mind returned away from what Joshie was saying and I pondered my father's humiliation. The humiliation of growing up a Jew in the Soviet Union, of cleaning piss-stained bathrooms in the States, of worshipping a country that would collapse as simply and inelegantly as the one he had abandoned. — Gary Shteyngart