Questions Of Life Quotes & Sayings

We tell ourselves how lovely it would be, would it not, if there were a God who created the universe and benign Providence, a moral world order, and life beyond the grave, yet it is very evident, is it not, that all of this is the way we should inevitably wish it to be. And it would be even more remarkable if our poor, ignorant bondsman ancestors had managed to solve all these difficult cosmic questions. — Sigmund Freud

I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. there are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."
"You're asking a lot of life if you want it to make sense."
Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.
Basset watched him a moment, then said,
"Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want. — Margaret Frazer

We feel that even if all possible scientific questions be answered, the problems of life have still not been touched at all. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

Philosophy has been described as thinking about thinking, and all Christians should do that. The term comes from two Greek words, philia ("love") and sophia ("wisdom"), thus "loving wisdom." Nothing anti-Christian appears in that definition. Problems arise if we seek wisdom apart from God, or elevate human reason above Him, but according to Proverbs 4:5-7, God's people should love and seek wisdom.
Formal philosophy is divided into three major areas-incidentally, all core Christian issues: (1) Metaphysics,
which asks questions about the nature of reality: "What is real?" "Is the basic essence of the world matter, or spirit, or something else?" (2) Epistemology, which addresses issues concerning truth and knowledge: "What do we know?" "How do we know it?" "Why do we think it's true?" (3) Ethics, which considers moral problems: "What is right and wrong?" "Are moral values absolute or relative?" "What is the good life, and how do we achieve it? — Rick Cornish

With death, all suffering would end. Doubt would end. Shame and guilt would end. All her questions would end. Memory - most mercifully of all - would end. She could quietly excuse herself from life. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Warriors of light frequently ask themselves what they are doing here. Very often they believe their lives have no meaning. That is why they are warriors of light. Because they make mistakes. Because they ask questions. Because they continue to look for a meaning. And, in the end, they will find it. — Paulo Coelho

I wish I were a poet. I've never confessed that to anyone, and I'm confessing it to you, because you've given me reason to feel that I can trust you. I've spent my life observing the universe, mostly in my mind's eye. It's been a tremendously rewarding life, a wonderful life. I've been able to explore the origins of time and space with some of the great living thinkers. But I wish I were a poet.
Albert Einstein, a hero of mine, once wrote, 'Our situation is the following. We are standing in front of a closed box which we cannot open.'
I'm sure I don't have to tell you that the vast majority of the universe is composed of dark matter. The fragile balance depends on things we'll never be able to see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. Life itself depends on them. What's real? What isn't real? Maybe those aren't the right questions to be asking. What does life depend on?
I wish I had made things for life to depend on. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Expressiveness in others enriched Mrs. Singer's confidence in her own interpretations, possibly because a certain fear that she had not accomplished anything in her life left her all the more desirous of discovering easy clues to less consequential questions. — William T. Vollmann

Bible publishers are not selling Bibles. What they're selling is that iconic idea of the Bible. Their value-added biblical content promises to provide answers to questions, solutions to problems, and speaks in no uncertain terms about God's plan for your life and how to live it. Adding value to the Bible almost always means adding "biblical" values that are either missing or really hard to find in the Bible itself but that provide that feeling of Bibleness so many seek. — Timothy Beal

Philosophy is then nothing more than properly directed questions made in an attempt to better understand the world in which we live as a means of improving the quality of one's life. — Chris Matakas

Still the voices of your critics. Listen intently to your own voice, to the person who knows you best. Then answer these questions: Do you think you should move ahead? How will you feel if you quit pursuing this thing you want to do? And what does your best self advise? What you hear may change your life. — Steve Goodier

Therefore, at any time of life, follow your own questions; don't mistake other people's questions for your own. — David Whyte

It goes a long way back, some twenty years. All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: That I am nobody but myself. But first I had to discover that I am an invisible man! — Ralph Ellison

Life is a journey, and I may not have always lived up to my ability, but I have always lived purposefully, and I guess readers get caught up with me, raising the questions, looking for the answers, looking to be a little more understanding, a little less judgmental, a little more merciful. I hope so. — Carol Plum-Ucci

The Prophet's life is an invitation to a spirituality that avoids no question and teaches us - in the course of events, trials, hardships, and our quest - that the true answers to existential questions are more often those given by the heart than by the intelligence. Deeply, simply: he who cannot love cannot understand. — Tariq Ramadan

Sometimes, in public life, people ask inappropriate, off-the-wall kinds of questions, don't they? — Hillary Clinton

When young, we're anxious - understandably - to find out if we've got what it takes. Can we succeed? Can we build a viable life for ourselves? But you - in particular you, of this generation - may have noticed a certain cyclical quality to ambition. You do well in high-school, in hopes of getting into a good college, so you can do well in the good college, in the hopes of getting a good job, so you can do well in the good job so you can ...
And this is actually O.K. If we're going to become kinder, that process has to include taking ourselves seriously - as doers, as accomplishers, as dreamers. We have to do that, to be our best selves.
Still, accomplishment is unreliable. "Succeeding," whatever that might mean to you, is hard, and the need to do so constantly renews itself (success is like a mountain that keeps growing ahead of you as you hike it), and there's the very real danger that "succeeding" will take up your whole life, while the big questions go untended. — George Saunders

I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content. — Robert E. Howard

The Taellywood treasure beckoned us. All of us ached for God's wisdom. We had so many questions. We wanted to know why things happened the way they did. We needed to know. We desired the truth and we yearned for answers to many of life's questions. — Pat Patrick

Every human being ask this question of himself — Sunday Adelaja

You have to ask good questions. "What can I do to improve?" or "How can I find a better job?" or "How can I be grateful that I lost this job?" Because inside of every problem is the seed of a "difficult gratitude problem" and it always improves your life to solve those problems. — James Altucher

Man is the question he asks about himself, before any question has been formulated. It is, therefore, not surprising that the basic questions were formulated very early in the history of mankind. — Paul Tillich

Contrary to what a lot of people think, I don't enjoy doing press. I've been asked the same questions a million times now, and I don't particularly like talking about my personal life. — Donald J. Trump

Does anyone suppose that, in real life, answers to any of the great questions that worry us today are going to come out of homogeneous settlements? — Jane Jacobs

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible? — Duane Michals

You are not singular in your suspicions that you know but little," he had told Caroline, in response to her quandary over the riddles of life. "The longer I live, the more I read, the more patiently I think, and the more anxiously I inquire, the less I seem to know. . . . Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly. This is enough. . . . So questions and so answers your affectionate grandfather." Adams — David McCullough

For me life is an inn where I must stay until the carriage from the abyss calls to collect me [ ... ] I could consider this inn to be a prison, since I'm compelled to stay here; I could consider it a kind of club, because I meet other people here. However, unlike others, I am neither impatient nor sociable. I leave those who chatter in the living room, from where the cosy sound of music and voices reaches me. I sit at the door and fill my eyes and ears with the colours and sounds of the landscape and slowly, just for myself, I sing vague songs that I compose while I wait.
Night will fall on all of us and the carriage will arrive. I enjoy the breeze given to me and the soul given to me to enjoy it and I ask no more questions, look no further. If what I leave written in the visitors' book is one day read by others and entertains them on their journey, that's fine. If no one reads it or is entertained by it, that's fine too. — Fernando Pessoa

Now that the book is out in the world, I'm amazed all over again at what my friend did for me in prompting me to ditch realism for a more magical approach. In some ways, the Golem and the Jinni are the ultimate immigrants. They aren't just new to New York or America; they're new to people. Like those around them, they wrestle with issues of religion versus doubt and duty versus self-determination - but as inescapable aspects of their own otherworldly natures. For seven years I've lived with their questions, arguments, and adventures, and it's been one of the greatest gifts of my life. — Helene Wecker

He has broken the bonds that held us back. He has set us free. He has given us life. He has given us the empowering Spirit. So run! Make a break for it. Pursue Him and Him alone, with force, oomph, and passion. Why? To know Him. What stirs your affections for Jesus? What robs you of those affections for Christ? Answering those two questions is serious business, and there is joy to be had once you answer them! — Matt Chandler

The right to or claim on something means nothing more than to do it, or take it or be able to use it without in any way thereby injuring another: simplicity is the sign of the true. This sheds light on the meaninglessness of the same questions, e.g. whether we have the right to take our own life. But as concerns the claims that others could personally have upon us, they rest upon the condition that we are living, and therefore cease if the condition ceases. That the one who no longer wants to live for himself should now continue to live merely as a machine for the use of others is an extravagant demand. — Arthur Schopenhauer

Dreamline Questions:
What are you good at?
What could you be the best at?
What makes you happy?
What excites you?
What makes you feel accomplished and good about yourself?
What are you most proud of having accomplished in your life? Can you repeat this or further develop it?
What do you enjoy sharing or experiencing with other people? — Timothy Ferriss

I noticed that no matter where I went in the country, there was this group of questions that got asked. I would track them and keep them in categories. Like body image, school, family, friendship, you name it, the emotional life of a teenage girl. — Elizabeth Berkley

There were periods of my life when a lot of people didn't believe in me. I still had faith in myself. I really had to ask myself life questions. Where do I see myself in five years? Create a ladder for yourself, and walk up the steps. Climb that ladder. — Fergie

We all lead double lives. It's a privilege for the artist and a curse for the ordinary man. One has to get used to it."
"It's a terrible thing to know too much. In life, our words are improvisations and our actions careless mistakes that end up by becoming habits. Fate beign the distraction of the gods, I distract myself by evading questions that I never asked myself in the past. We are in the hands of the improbable, are we not, my dear Cosette?"
- Monsieur Verjat- — Victor Hugo

Rich people don't have to have a life-and-death relationship with the truth and its questions; they can ignore the truth and still thrive materially. I am not surprised many of them understand literature only as an ornament. Life is an ornament to them, relationships are ornaments, their "work" is but a flimsy, pretty ornament meant to momentarily thrill and capture attention. Why didn't I reread my F. Scott Fitzgerald sooner? I might have saved myself some time. — Sergio Troncoso

More interest you have more knowledge you have and more knowledge you have more questions you have and more questions means more wisdom you have and you are already inside the vein of life which is running with enormous speed. — Baris Gencel

I bent my head and breathed the fresh new scent of her. I looked into her deep blue eyes and saw reflected there the dawn of my own new life. This little girl seemed to me, at that moment, answer enough to all my questions. To have saved this small, singular one - this alone seemed reason enough that I lived. I knew then that this was how I was meant to go on: away from death and toward life, from birth to birth, from seed to blossom, living my life amongst wonders. — Geraldine Brooks

Who am I? What am I doing here? Who are these others? This trilogy of spiritual conundrums is as practical as it is philosophical. Mindful inquiry devoted to these three questions is as spiritual as it is material and as obvious as it is unanswerable. Knowledge isn't to comfort our souls; it is to enhance awareness - that is what some call an awakening. Some things have to be believed to be seen. Feelings articulate truth in ways that our brains cannot. We may have a sense about who we are, what our purpose is and how we relate to the rest of the world even without the vocabulary to articulate it. Recovery is visceral as much as it is intellectual. The Eleventh Step is our spiritual barometer, feeding back sensations, feelings and thoughts as we observe our life. — Joe C.

But most of all he liked to listen to stories of real life. He smiled gleefully as he listened to such stories, putting in words and asking questions, all aiming at bringing out clearly the moral beauty of the action of which he was told. Attachments, friendships, love, as Pierre understood them, Karataev had none, but he loved and lived on affectionate terms with every creature with whom he was thrown in life, and especially so with man- not with any particular man, but with the men that happened to be before his eyes.
But his life, as he looked at it, had no meaning as a separate life. It only had meaning as part of a whole, of which he was at all times conscious. — Leo Tolstoy

I sat and reflected on the situation I had faced
I needed answers to the questions I still, didnt have the courage to ask ...
But I need to know,
How was this to be apart of my destiny? — Nikki Rowe

From time to time, ask yourself these questions: "Am I ready to meet my Maker?" "Am I worthy of all the blessings He has in store for His faithful children?" "Have I received my endowment and sealing ordinances of the temple?" "Have I remained faithful to my covenants?" "Have I qualified for the greatest of all God's blessings-the blessing of eternal life." — Russell M. Nelson

But if we are to say anything important, if fiction is to stay relevant and vibrant, then we have to ask the right questions. All art fails if it is asked to be representative - the purpose of fiction is not to replace life anymore than it is meant to support some political movement or ideology. All fiction reinscribes the problematic past in terms of the present, and, if it is significant at all, reckons with it instead of simply making it palatable or pretty. What aesthetic is adequate to the Holocaust, or to the recent tragedy in Haiti? Narrative is not exculpatory - it is in fact about culpability, about recognizing human suffering and responsibility, and so examining what is true in us and about us. If we're to say anything important, we require an art less facile, and editors willing to seek it. — Michael Copperman

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

If a worldview is true, it should answer all of life's fundamental and central questions coherently. — Abdu H Murray

Sometimes, it just gets mentally tough, but at the end of the day, I'm playing golf for a living. And reaching out to a huge fan base and knowing people are following my progress and looking up to me means the world to me. So if all I have to do is some photo shoots and answer questions, that's nothing to me. That's part of my life. — Lexi Thompson

So much of life is made up of questions that we think matter today but are forgotten tomorrow. — Donna VanLiere

He had recorded a message to be played upon his death. He had told no one - except Teela, his shopping companion and health care worker, who delivered the tape to his family. It was brief. But in it, the Reb answered the two questions he had most been asked in his life of faith. One was whether he believed in God. He said he did. The other was whether there is life after death. On this he said, "My answer here, too, is yes, there is something. But friends, I'm sorry. Now that I know, I can't even tell you." The whole place broke up laughing. — Mitch Albom

Often the most tricky questions are the ones we secretly know the answers of.
What are you running from?
What are you waiting for? — Sanhita Baruah

Others of us are lost. We're forever seeking. We torture ourselves with philosophies and ache to see the world. We question everything, even our own existence. We ask a lifetime of questions and are never satisfied with the answers because we don't recognize anyone as an authority to give them. We see life and the world as an enormous puzzle that we might never understand, that our questions might go unanswered until the day we die, almost never occurs to us. And when it does, it fills us with dread. — Lisa Unger

My hope is that you will see this book for what it is...a conversation about the core questions that call us into humanity. Who am I? What am I? Who created me? What is my purpose? This is the story about the journey through the mysteries that make up the depths of life. — Julia J. Gibbs

That which is called humanism, but what would be more correctly called irreligious anthropocentrism, cannot yield answers to the most essential questions of our life — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Philosophic questions are attempts to understand the root nature of reality, existence, and knowledge. — Kilroy J. Oldster

That catharsis is really the core of the incredibly personal comedy of Louis C.K. or Marc Maron or whatever. And look - I find it fascinating that I'm sitting here talking about some of these things, and not to low tones, and my kids are in the other room. I have to trust that if they hear what I'm saying and they have questions about it, I'll be able to answer it, and that's fine. But that's part of the scariness of it - the reality of opening up my own life and my own feelings. — John Hodgman

Press on, then, in the exercise of introspection. It is important to know yourself really well. It will not help you a bit if you lie when it comes to yourself. In other words, don't lie to yourself about you. Know where you're weak. Know your thoughts. Know the places in your heart that you don't want to give to the Lord. You must build time into your life to become aware of what's really going on in your heart, in your mind, and deep inside of you. Constantly ask yourself good diagnostic questions about areas of doubt and disbelief. — Matt Chandler

Question everything, even the question mark, that shepherd's crook floating in the air above that small round rock

If you - stubbornly - still wish to be unhappy,
maybe you can grasp it. — Dick Allen

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

Life has a funny way of giving us answers when we haven't even asked the questions. — Jennifer Olds

You think I don't know what I want? You think I love the idea of relying on my looks for life? No! It's pathetic! In my head, I have a nice, quiet, normal job that involves me running my own business. I carry a briefcase around my office with important documents, I have a nice assistant who calls me boss, and people ask me questions - they ask for my advice because I matter! I'm important to them! I'm recognized as something more than a pretty face and a pair of legs. I have a brain and interests and thoughts about religion, and poverty, and economics. I'm not a miserable girl with a number attached to her chest, stripping her clothes off in a room full of people. — Elisa Marie Hopkins

Scientific reason, with its strict conscience, its lack of prejudice, and its determination to question every result again the moment it might lead to the least intellectual advantage, does in an area of secondary interest what we ought to be doing with the basic questions of life. — Robert Musil

So the professor takes the student's point seriously, and responds with a concise but adequate argument in defence of the disputed equation. The professor tries hard to show no sign of being irritated by criticism from so lowly a source. Most of the questions from the floor will have the form of criticisms which, if valid, would diminish or destroy the professor's life's work. But bringing vigorous and diverse criticism to bear on accepted truths is one of the very purposes of the seminar. Everyone takes it for granted that the truth is not obvious, and that the obvious need not be true; that ideas are to be accepted or rejected according to their content and not their origin; that the greatest minds can easily make mistakes; and that the most trivial-seeming objection may be the key to a great new discovery. — David Deutsch

And from the time I was a kid, I've had this internal monologue roaring through my head, which doesn't stop - unless I'm asleep. I'm sure every person has this; it's just that my monologue is particularly loud. And particularly troublesome. I'm constantly asking myself questions. And the problem with that is that your brain is like a computer: If you ask a question, it's programmed to respond, whether there's an answer or not. I'm constantly weighing everything in my mind and trying to predict how my actions will influence events. Or maybe manipulate events are the more appropriate words. It's like playing a game of chess with your own life. And I hate fucking chess! — Jordan Belfort

I feel a little uncomfortable at being asked the sorts of questions that other Catholics in public life tend not to be asked. — Tony Abbott

My interest in philosophy began as early as eight years old - I started thinking about those kinds of heavy questions about life and humanity. — Steve Weinstein

While the West had lulled itself to sleep with the comforting doctrine of man's achievements, a great revolution had been in progress in Russia. The hammer pounded and the sickle gleaned until a new social order called Communism emerged as one of the most powerful ideologies of all time. It challenged every concept man had ever held. It threatened the life of the whole world. It became the greatest challenge Christianity had faced in 2,000 years. It was a fanatic religion that asked questions and demanded answers. — Billy Graham

He had a particular facination with the I Ching, that art of tossing three coins three times and divining a pattern out of heads and tails. Pete would begin with questions:
What determined the pattern? Was it random? Was it a higher power? Was is mathematical? Wasn't poker based on mathematical probability and not just luck? Did that mean randomness was actually mathematical? And if the I Ching was governed by mathematics, hey, wouldn't that mean the I Ching was actually predictable, a prescribed answer? And if it was prescribed, did that mean that your life followed the I Ching, like some sort of equation? Or did the I Ching simply capture correctly what had already been determined as the next series of events in your life? — Amy Tan

In life hard times will befall you that will create doubt in yourself, and life will ask questions of the authenticity of the person you are. Carrying the lotus means being true to yourself and in the realization that you were always meant to grow above this mud. We are meant to grow, progress, and evolve in this relentless environment of the World and through it all achieve happiness with grace in letting go. Carry the Lotus within; grow and rise above from the harsh and remorseless world beneath you. — Forrest Curran

Allowances can always be made for your friends to disagree with you. Disagreement, vehement disagreement, is healthy. Debate is impossible without it. Evil does not question itself, only hope questions itself. Even the incorruptible are corruptible if they cannot accept the possibility of being mistaken. Infallibility is a sin in any man. All laws can be broken and are. Often. Like when a bumblebee flies or an ancient regime is toppled. — Craig Ferguson

I learned a lot that night - like how incredibly mind blowing ho-hos and wine coolers were together, how that you could discover the answers to life's most difficult questions by watching Buffy, but most of all, that no matter what was going on in life - a best friend could make it all seem bearable. — Peggy Martinez

Is there some meaning to this life?
What purpose lies behind the strife?
Whence do we come, where are we bound?
These cold questions echo and resound
through each day, each lonely night.
We long to find the splendid light
that will cast a revelatory beam
upon the meaning of the human dream.
Courage, love, friendship,
compassion, and empathy
lift us above the simple beasts
and define humanity. — Dean Koontz

Many life-affirming questions lead to an endless spool of disconcerting propositions and contradictory conclusions, and even more troubling, some queries prove unanswerable. — Kilroy J. Oldster

All my life I've been harassed by questions: Why is something this way and not another? How do you account for that? This rage to understand, to fill in the blanks, only makes life more banal. If we could only find the courage to leave our destiny to chance, to accept the fundamental mystery of our lives, then we might be closer to the sort of happiness that comes with innocence. — Luis Bunuel

James Thompson, a twenty-six-year-old cafeteria worker, eloquently articulated the Negro dilemma in a letter he wrote to the Pittsburgh Courier: "Being an American of dark complexion," wrote Thompson, "these questions flash through my mind: 'Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?' ... 'Will colored Americans suffer still the indignities that have been heaped upon them in the past?' These and other questions need answering; I want to know, and I believed every colored American, who is thinking, wants to know. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Not enough books focus on how a culture responds to radically new ideas or discovery. Especially in the biography genre, they tend to focus on all the sordid details in the life of the person who made the discovery. I find this path to be voyeuristic but not enlightening. Instead, I ask, After evolution was discovered, how did religion and society respond? After cities were electrified, how did daily life change? After the airplane could fly from one country to another, how did commerce or warfare change? After we walked on the Moon, how differently did we view Earth? My larger understanding of people, places and things derives primarily from stories surrounding questions such as those. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Wellbeing is a notion that entails our values about the good life, and questions of values are not ultimately scientific questions. — Julian Baggini

Imagine the spirit as a mansion. You'll guess we don't use many rooms. Apart from a few moments in childhood we don't dance around it in sunlight. But there's a traffic of things in and out, and what happens is that unwanted bulks can gather inside. Gather and gather, menacing us. Unable to shift them, we hide in ever-smaller spaces. And in our last hole, life offers a choice: to play out our demise in parallel theatres - psychosis, zealotry, religion, cancer, addiction - or to bow quietly out. But beware: life doesn't ask these high questions when we're confident and fresh - it waits for hopelessness. — D.B.C. Pierre

You need to change the questions you ask yourself and of your situations, in order to change the trajectory of your life. These are questions that will help you define and refine your purpose. — Archibald Marwizi

I cannot really play. Either at piano or at life; never, never have I been able to. I have always been too hasty, too impatient; something always intervenes and breaks it up. But who really knows how to play, and if he does know, what good is it to him? Is the great dark less dark for that, are the unanswerable questions less inscrutable, does the pain of despair at eternal inadequacy burn less fiercely, and can life ever be explained and seized and ridden like a tamed horse or is it always a mighty sail that carries us in the storm and, when we try to seize it, sweep us into the deep? Sometimes there is a hole in me that seems to extend to the center of the earth. What could fill it? Yearning? Dispair? Happiness? What happiness? Fatigue? Resignation? Death? What am I alive for? Yes, for what am I alive? — Erich Maria Remarque

We have reached a new milestone as a human family. With seven billion of us now inhabiting our planet, it is time to ask some fundamental questions. How can we provide a dignified life for ourselves and future generations while preserving and protecting the global commons - the atmosphere, the oceans and the ecosystems that support us? — Ban Ki-moon

In this method, you don't ask, What do I want from life? You ask a different set of questions: What does life want from me? What are my circumstances calling me to do? In this scheme of things we don't create our lives; we are summoned by life. — David Brooks

You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ... — Kevin Brooks

Granted, I should love my neighbor as myself, the questions which, under modern conditions of large-scale organization, remain for solution are, 'Who precisely is my neighbor?' and 'How exactly am I to make my love for them effective in practice?'... It had insisted that all men were brethren. But it did not occur to it to point out that, as a result of the new economic imperialism, which was begging to develop in the 17th century, the brethren of the English merchant were the Africans whom he kidnapped for slavery in America, or the American Indians from whom he stripped of their lands, or the Indian craftsmen whom he bought muslin's and silks at starvation prices. Religion had not yet learned to console itself for the practical difficulty of applying its moral principles by clasping the comfortable formula that for the transaction of economic life no moral principles exist. — R. H. Tawney

For not even one person to have ever exhibited this interest in writing nor for any to have so satisfied it is bizarre. Saying this all went on in person is simply insufficient to answer the point: if everything was being resolved in person, Paul would never have written a single letter; nor would his congregations have so often written him letters requesting he write to satisfy their questions - which for some reason always concerned only doctrine and rules of conduct, never the far more interesting subject of how the Son of God lived and died. On the other matters Paul was compelled to write tens of thousands of words. If he had to write so much on those issues, how is it possible no one ever asked for or wrote even one word on the more obvious and burning issues of the facts of Jesus' life and death? — Richard Carrier

The answer you may be seeking, to the questions which have caused you to ponder over the strangeness of life, maybe found in your own mind, — Napoleon Hill

Austin - it's a stimulating center. In this conversation, the very first two questions were talking about my kind of wanderlust and my adventures. Some people at my time in life travel forever. I don't know whether it's the British or the Australians - whoever it is, you can kind of stagger into some sort of far-off bastion in the middle of nowhere, and you'll find someone from Britain or someone from Australia or maybe an American. — Robert Plant

Normally when we think about politics, we think about issues, policies, programs - the stuff of day-to-day government. Or we think of the contest of politics - the parties, the polls, the candidates, the strategies.

These are all important questions, of course, but they are only surface manifestations of deeper political issues, issues which are moral, psychological, and ultimately, spiritual. Politics is all about how we live together as human beings, and all spiritual practices point to one profound truth about human life - that only love leads to peace, hatred never does. This is as true for nations as it is for individuals. — Melvin McLeod

Genuine trust involves allowing another to matter and have an impact in our lives. For that reason, many who hate and do battle with God trust Him more deeply than those whose complacent faith permits an abstract and motionless stance before Him. Those who trust God most are those whose faith permits them to risk wrestling with Him over the deepest questions of life. Good hearts are captured in a divine wrestling match; fearful, doubting hearts stay clear of the mat. — Dan B. Allender

d'Artagnan is right," said Athos; "here are our three leaves of absence which came from Monsieur de Treville, and here are three hundred pistoles which came from I don't know where. So let us go and get killed where we are told to go. Is life worth the trouble of so many questions? — Alexandre Dumas

There are always two sides of a coin, our Life too has two sides... on one side there is life where there are questions and fears but, on the other side there is a whole new world full of answers and peace. — Viraj J. Mahajan

20. The day she graduated from college, Keegan told her mother that she was especially proud of her Yale Daily News article "Even Artichokes Have Doubts," which went on to be adapted for the New York Times and discussed on NPR. When The Opposite of Loneliness was first published in April 2014, columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote, "Keegan was right to prod us all to reflect on what we seek from life, to ask these questions, to recognize the importance of passions as well as paychecks - even if there are no easy answers." As Keegan reminds other young people that "we can do something really cool to this world" (p. 200), what points does she emphasize? What counterarguments might she have considered more specifically? Do you share her concern about where so many top young graduates take their first jobs? Do you worry that you need to compromise your own dreams for practical concerns? Why or why not? — Marina Keegan

I'm not claiming divinity. I've never claimed purity of soul. I've never claimed to have the answers to life. I only put out songs and answer questions as honestly as I can ... But I still believe in peace, love and understanding. — John Lennon

If I had an unlimited budget, I would really be probing that question of life because we know what the questions are, and we know what the destinations are. — Ellen Stofan

One of the hardest lessons I had to learn was that I was going to need a lot of help, and for a long time. (Even this morning.) What saved me was that I found gentle, loyal and hilarious companions, which is at the heart of meaning: maybe we don't find a lot of answers to life's tougher questions, but if we find a few true friends, that's even better. — Anne Lamott

We care about knowledge because knowledge is crucial to a worthwhile, valuable life. The questions of epistemology may be abstract, but their importance to our lives is vital. — Duncan Pritchard

When you think of it, really there are four fundamental questions of life. You've asked them, I've asked them, every thinking person asks them. They boil down to this; origin, meaning, morality and destiny. 'How did I come into being? What brings life meaning? How do I know right from wrong? Where am I headed after I die?' — Ravi Zacharias

When you really want to find the answers to the great questions of your life, you need to look for them deep in yourself. — Frank M. Wanderer

Rain caused one to reflect on the shadowed, more poignant parts of life - the inescapable sorrows, the speechless longings, the disappointments, the regrets, the cold miseries. It also allowed one the leisure to ponder questions unasked in the bustle of brighter days; and if one were snug under a sound roof, as Abel was, one felt somehow mothered, though mothers were nowhere around, and absolved of responsibilities. — William Steig

Is love always like this? Is it always so passionate, yet so damn painful? — Anna Todd

If America leads a blessed life, then why did God put all of our oil under people who hate us? — Jon Stewart

I carefully read each letter myself. Some of them are serious in tone, discussing the meaning of life, invoking the supremacy of the soul, the mystery of every existence. And by a curious reversal, the people who focus most closely on these fundamental questions tend to be people I had known only superficially. Their small talk had masked hidden depths. Had I been blind and deaf, or does it take the harsh light of disaster to show a person's true nature? Other — Jean-Dominique Bauby

Having spent all my life among academics, I can tell you that hearing how wrong they area is about as high on their priority list as finding a cockroach in their coffee. The typical scientist has made an interesting discovery early on in his or her career, followed by a lifetime of making sure that everyone else admires his or her contribution and that no one questions it. There is no poorer company than an aging scientist who has failed to achieve these objectives. — Frans De Waal