Private Lives Life Quotes & Sayings

The real power and test of our ministry (calling) is not in the pulpit or public arena, but in our private lives, our home. — Bernard Kelvin Clive

The evil I'm talking about lives in us all. It takes hold in an individual, in private lives, within a family, adn then it's children who suffer most. And then, when teh conditions are right, in different countries, at different times, a terrible cruelty, a viciousness against life erupts, and everyone is surprised by the depth of hatred within himself. Then it sinks back and waits. It's something in our hearts. — Ian McEwan

Even though we work in the same field, we have an intense private life away from our professional lives. — Adrian Edmondson

Boyfriends have to understand me and my needs. They have to know what I want out of my life and about my strict regime. I go to bed at 10pm and not later. I separate my professional and private lives. — Anna Kournikova

We have to wonder what this might suggest about the relationship between the public realm and private lives in our settlement.
Some have proposed that we need to do more in encouraging individual interests and pursuits, even if they don't appear terribly useful or practical, to bolster and deepen those inner reserves that "make" a person into who she is, and how, by extension, she identifies and values herself. Other, more conservative, voices balk at this, countering that we need, in fact, to strengthen the bonds of the commune, so that to end one's own life would be tantamount to a grievous assault on us all ... But if we calm ourselves and open our eyes and step back far enough, we have to admit that our society, if not fundamentally unwell, has been profoundly wounded. — Chang-rae Lee

I couldn't write a happy movie or romantic comedy to save my life. Yes, Noel Coward's an idol, but his plays are serious to me. 'Private Lives' and 'Design for Living' both have an edge. Without psychoanalyzing myself, I think I exorcise my demons in my work. — John Logan

We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. — Annie Dillard

Yeah. I'm actually a little surprised that the - what I guess is the - maybe the majority of the population, or at least the majority of younger people in the United States, who essentially live their lives online, are not completely up in arms about this, are not storming Washington about this, because what they've done is they've made it easier for online private, profit-making corporations to sell the most intimate details of your life. You'd think people would object to that. — Allan Nairn

Moreover, since (as chapters 3 and 5 will argue) tolerance requires that the tolerated refrain from demands or incursions on public or political life that issue from their "difference," the subject of tolerance is tolerated only so long as it does not make a political claim, that is, so long as it lives and practices its "difference" in a depoliticized or private fashion. In addition to being at odds with the epistemological and political stance to which many politicized identities aspire, this requirement also results in the discursive suppression of the social powers that constitute "difference" as well as in the strengthening of the hegemony of unmarked cultures, ethnicities, races, or sexualities; — Wendy Brown

All private plans, all private lives, have been in a sense repealed by an overriding public danger. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Let's get the government stay out of our private lives, once and for all, and stop arresting smokers. Let's take a stand for personal freedom. — Willie Nelson

A child is asleep. Her private life unwinds inside skin and skull; only as she sheds childhood, first one decade and then another, can she locate the actual, historical stream, see the setting of her dreaming private life - the nation, the city, the neighborhood, the house where the family lives - as an actual project under way, a project living people willed, and made well or failed, and are still making, herself among them. I breathed the air of history all unaware, and walked oblivious through its littered layers. — Annie Dillard

A passionate obsession with the outside world or the private lives of others is an attempt to compensate for a lack of meaning in one's own life — Eric Hoffer

People don't realize it, but no one lives that rock and roll life 24-7. They think it's hundreds of bottles of champagne flowing and private jets and money. But there's a lot of time when you're traveling - time to think, time to be lonely. Sometimes it gets to you. — Lenny Kravitz

Men and women of God through the centuries have lived out this abiding truth. There are no heroes of the faith who did not live out this extravagant lavishing of their time on Jesus. When we examine their private lives, we see that they needed to abide for strength and for wisdom. They were addicted to extravagant time in the presence of Jesus because it gave them life and joy and was the only thing that fulfilled them. — Missionaries Who Love The Arab World

The line between private and public lives is a fertile one for me. I've lived quite a public life, and it's the reason I have used well-known people in my work. I'm interested in what's going on beneath the facades they present to the world, taking them to a place which is uncomfortable. — Sam Taylor-Johnson

What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves into the pattern of my own life and were making my destiny a part of theirs. To shake myself free of these accumulating experiences which were mine only by force of inertia required a violent effort. Now and then I lunged and tore at the net, but only to become more enmeshed. My liberation seemed to involve pain and suffering to those near and dear to me. Every move I made for my own private good brought about reproach and condemnation. I was a traitor a thousand times over. — Henry Miller

Liberalism is not anarchism, nor has it anything whatsoever to do with anarchism.
The liberal understands quite clearly that without resort to compulsion, the existence of society would be endangered and that behind the rules of conduct whose
observance is necessary to assure peaceful human cooperation must stand the threat of force if the whole edifice of society is not to be continually at the mercy of any one of its members. One must be in a position to compel the person who will not respect the lives, health, personal freedom, or private property of others to acquiesce in the rules of life in society. This is the function that the liberal doctrine assigns to the state: the protection of property, liberty, and peace. — Ludwig Von Mises

We teach our children one thing only, as we were taught: to wake up. We teach our children to look alive there, to join by words and activities the life of human culture on this planet's crust. As adults we are almost all adept at waking up. We have so mastered the transition we make a hundred times a day, as, like so many will-less dolphins, we plunge and surface, lapse and emerge. We live half our waking lives and all of our sleeping lives in some private, useless, and insensible waters we never mention or recall. Useless, I say. Valueless, I might add - until someone hauls their wealth up to the surface and into the wide-awake city, in a form that people can use. — Annie Dillard

What I like about The Sims is that I don't have a normal life at all, so I play this game where these people have these really boring, mundane lives. It's fun. My Sims family is called the Cholly family. I don't know why I picked that name; it's kind of random. The teenage daughter is my favourite, because I just had her go through this Goth phase. She's really kind of nerdy and she just became a concert violinist, which is pretty huge for the family. And she got into private school. But she started wearing black lipstick and she dyed her hair purple. It's pretty huge. — Gerard Way

Everyone lives three versions of themselves; a public life, a private life and a secret life. — Lauren Beukes

"Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife! To all the sensual world proclaim, One crowded hour of glorious life Is worth an age without a name". Do not then (concludes the Stoic) take good words in your mouth, and prate before applauding citizens of honour, duty, and so forth, while you make your private lives a mere selfish calculation of expediency. We were surely born for nobler ends than this, and none who is worthy the name of a man would subscribe to doctrines which destroy all honour and all chivalry. The heroes of old time won their immortality not by weighing pleasures and pains in the balance, but by being prodigal of their lives, doing and enduring all things for the sake of their fellow-men. — W. Lucas Collins

Aided and abetted by corrupt analysts, patients who have nothing better to do with their lives often use the psychoanalytic situation to transform insignificant childhood hurts into private shrines at which they worship unceasingly the enormity of the offenses committed against them. This solution is immensely flattering to the patients
as are all forms of unmerited self-aggrandizement; it is immensely profitable for the analysts
as are all forms pandering to people's vanity; and it is often immensely unpleasant for nearly everyone else in the patient's life. — Thomas Szasz

We parents are in the process of losing parts of ourselves, of waking up each morning to find ourselves changed by our children. We may fantasize that we are not really changed, that we can go back to poring over Wittgenstein, immersing ourselves in the latest movies, being beach bums- whatever it was that we were before the child or children came into our lives. But part of what we have lost is the part of our identity that is the person-without-children. The parent we are now has a life inextricably entwined not only without our past life and our private selves but also with the lives of our children. — Daniel Gottlieb

I certainly feel my career was a great career because it inspired so many many people, literally hundreds of people to follow a new kind of life and to realize that they could make out and advance their own professional and private and social lives. — Katherine Dunham

In a Society becoming steadily more privatized with private homes, cars, computers, offices and shopping centers, the public component of our lives is disappearing. It is more and more important to make the cities inviting, so we can meet our fellow citizens face to face and experience directly through our senses. Public life in good quality public spaces is an important part of a democratic life and a full life. — Jan Gehl

We all have a right to our private lives; it's living a secret life that gets us in trouble. — Ellen Crosby

It is the utterly unknown people who can grow in all directions like an exuberant tree. It is in our interior lives that we find that people are too much themselves. It is in our private life that we find them swelling into the enormous contours, and taking on the colours of caricature. Many of us live publicly with featureless public puppets, images of the small public abstractions. It is when we pass our own private gate, and open our own secret door, that we step into the land of the giants. — G.K. Chesterton

My mom will never march in a gay pride parade with a big sign. She is very private. She lives in Chattanooga. She tries so hard to understand me and my life. But she said to me once, "Leslie, if I live to be 105 I'll never understand this need you have to air your dirty laundry. Why can't you just whisper it to a therapist?!" She doesn't understand. — Leslie Jordan

I've never been a person to share my private life, but I can help save lives. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Once more, one who lives in the spirit of prayer will spend much time in retired and intimate communion with God. It is by such a deliberate engagement of prayer that the fresh springs of devotion which flow through the day are fed. For, although communion with God is the life-energy of the renewed nature, our souls "cleave to the dust" and devotion tends to grow formal- it becomes emptied of its spiritual content, and exhausts itself in outward acts. The Master reminds us of this grave peril, and informs us that the true defense against insincerity in our approach to God lies in the diligent exercise of private prayer. — David Macintyre

No wonder all the great comedians had such destructive private lives ... After you get the audience into that kind of frenzy, and you are being worshiped like the false idol you are, how do you leave the stage and transition back into real life? ... What is there left to do but set yourself on fire? — Margaret Cho

You might think that, by way of us all being people, we might see something of ourselves in the lives of our clients. Some family-based practice, for example, that called to mind our own. We did not. We saw precious little to remind us of humanity in the private lives of our clients. There are no such links in prostitution. The closest a prostitute will get to understanding anything of her client's family life is by noticing a baby seat in the back of his car or feeling the cold metal of his wedding ring pressed against the inner walls of her vagina. — Rachel Moran

There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public. — Philip K. Dick

People have three lives: the public life, the private life and the secret life ... — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Sing of disappointments more repeated than the batter of the sea, of lives embittered by resentments so ubiquitous the ocean's salt seems thinly shaken, of letdowns local as the sofa where I copped my freshman's feel, of failures as frequent as first love, first nights, last stands; do not warble of arms or adventurous deeds or shepherds playing on their private fifes, or of civil war or monarchies at swords; consider rather the slightly squinkered clerk, the soul which has become as shabby and soiled in its seat as worn-out underwear, a life lit like a lonely room and run like a laddered stocking. — William H Gass

More and more, for the stupid little kid, that was the idea . . .
That if enough people looked at you, you'd never need anybody's attention ever again.
That if someday you were caught, exposed, and revealed enough, then you'd never be able to hide again. There'd be no difference between your public and your private lives.
That if you could acquire enough, accomplish enough, you'd never want to own or do another thing.
That if you could eat or sleep enough, you'd never need more.
That if enough people loved you, you'd stop needing love.
That you could ever be smart enough.
That you could someday get enough sex.
These all became the little boy's new goals. The illusions he'd have for the rest of his life. These were all the promises he saw in the fat man's smile — Chuck Palahniuk

All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Philosophy is a necessary activity because we, all of us, take a great number of things for granted, and many of these assumptions are of a philosophical character; we act on them in private life, in politics, in our work, and in every other sphere of our lives
but while some of these assumptions are no doubt true, it is likely, that more are false and some are harmful. So the critical examination of our presuppositions
which is a philosophical activity
is morally as well as intellectually important. — Karl Popper

It's a very performative thing, grief. As with so much in modern life, I think there's a whole performative layer to what we do because we feel like there's a private TV show viewing our lives. — Darin Strauss

Both my husband and I give a lot of ourselves in what we do because that is our public lives; but in my private life, I have an intrinsic right to be left alone. — Ashley Judd

This isn't a spotless life. There is much ahead, my immaculate little peach. And there is no way to say it other than to say it: marriage is indeed this horribly complex thing for which you appear to be ill prepared and about which you seem to be utterly naive. That's okay. A lot of people are. You can learn along the way. A good way to start would be to let fall your notions about "perfect couples." It's really such an impossible thing to either perceive honestly in others or live up to when others believe it about us. It does nothing but box some people in and shut other people out, and it ultimately makes just about everyone feel like shit. A perfect couple is a wholly private thing. No one but the two people in the perfect relationship know for certain whether they're in one. Its only defining quality is that it's composed of two people who feel perfectly right about sharing their lives with each other, even during the hard times. — Cheryl Strayed

None of us lives to himself . . . ." Romans 14:7 Has it ever dawned on you that you are responsible spiritually to God for other people? For instance, if I allow any turning away from God in my private life, everyone around me suffers. We "sit together in the heavenly places . . ." (Ephesians 2:6). "If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it . . ." (1 Corinthians 12:26). If you allow physical selfishness, mental carelessness, moral insensitivity, or spiritual weakness, everyone in contact with you will suffer. — Oswald Chambers

In the end, it is because the media are driven by the power and wealth of private individuals that they turn private lives into public spectacles. If every private life is now potentially public property, it is because private property has undermined public responsibility. — Terry Eagleton

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives. — Alexander McCall Smith

It was funny, she thought, that before she had ever had a job she had always thought of an office as a place where people came to work, but now it seemed as if it was a place where they also brought their private lives for everyone else to look at, paw over, comment on and enjoy — Rona Jaffe

What I've always tried to find in my books are points at which the private lives of the characters, and also my own, intersect with the public life of the culture. — Salman Rushdie

I think both of my parents are unique in the way they don't live their lives as celebrities. They're both artists, first and foremost. My mom lives a very private life. So does my father. You don't really see them in the tabloids or anything like that. I think that's definitely a decision you can make. — Zoe Kravitz

I have a confession to make.
I hate voir dire.
I despise prying into other people's lives because I wouldn't want them prying into mine. — Paul Levine

For decades, the journalistic norm had been that the private lives of public officials remained private unless that life impinged on public performance. — Roger Mudd

In Milly Barranger, Margaret Webster has found the perfect biographer. In Margaret Webster, Milly Barranger has found her perfect subject. She brings to vivid life a fascinating and important theater figure whose public and private lives were of equal interest. In this carefully researched book, Webster's colleagues, lovers, and friends shine as brightly as she did. I wish she were here to read it. — Marian Seldes

I try to protect my loved ones, the people I share my life with, because they don't have a public life like me. I want to keep their lives private out of respect for them. — Georges St-Pierre

Private lives are more important than public reputations. — G.K. Chesterton

For the first time he considers the full emotional dimensions of the day. His life is changing but his parent's lives are changing too. Like a habitat, abruptly deprived of a major species, the household will be wrenched into realignment by his departure. Like all young people, he has no idea who his parents really are. For 18 years he has experienced their existence only in so far as it is related to his own needs. Suddenly his mind is full of questions. What do they talk about when he's not around? What secrets do they hold from each other? What aspirations have been left to languish? What private grievances held in check by the shared project of child rearing will now in his absence, lurch into the light? — Justin Cronin

Man is always inclined to regard the small circle in which he lives as the center of the world and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe and to make his particular, private life the standard of the universe. But he must give up this vain pretense, this petty provincial way of thinking and judging. — Ernst Cassirer

Maybe the private life wasn't forever. Maybe everyone got it for a little while and then spent the rest of their lives remembering. — Ann Patchett

Many of my readers are women and some of them email me their thoughts about the stories I've written. Almost all of them find a delicious pleasure in being totally frightened by the strange and dark side of life. Perhaps it's because horror books are an escape from our sometimes-mundane lives? Or could it be that many of us actually do have a private darker side that we like to explore secretly through books, movies and music? — Sara Brooke

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf. — Erri De Luca

Most people live their entire lives with their clothes on, and even if they wanted to, couldn't take them off. Then there are those who cannot put them on. They are the ones who live their lives not just as people but as examples of people. They are destined to expose every part of themselves, so the rest of us can know what it means to be a human.
Most people lead their private lives. They have been given a natural modesty that feels to them like morality, but it's not
it's luck. They shake their heads at the people with their clothes off rather than learning about human life from their example, but they are wrong to act so superior. Some of us have to be naked, so the rest can be exempted by fate. — Sheila Heti

Like a fractal, wetiko operates on multiple dimensions simultaneously
intra-personally (within individuals), inter-personally (among ourselves), collectively (as a species), as well as trans-personally (in a realm beyond our personal selves). Those afflicted with wetiko consume, like a cannibal, the life force of others
human and nonhuman
for private purposes or profit, and do so without giving back something from their own lives. — Paul Levy