Quotes & Sayings About Taking Life Seriously

If life is no fun, it is because you are no fun. Your life is always a reflection of who you are ... Try this: Stop taking things, including yourself, so seriously. Life is not as complicated as you have made it out to be. — Larry Winget

Life is supposed to be fun! When you're having fun, you feel great and you receive great things! Having fun brings the life you want, and taking things too seriously brings a life you have to take seriously. — Rhonda Byrne

The thing you don't realize, my dear girl, is that I have been forced by the economic realities to start taking publishing very seriously. For example, it has been brought to my attention that our ability to continue to pay the hordes of people employed by M&S (God knows how many mouths have to be fed) depends directly on the number of copies of your new book [Life Before Man] that we are able to sell between September and Christmas. In past I have been able to treat this whole thing as a fun game. I have never been troubled by the cavalier explanations about lost manuscripts and fuck-ups of various sorts. Now I have learned that this is a deadly serious game. I don't laugh at jokes about the Canadian postal service. I cry. (in a letter to author Margaret Atwood, dated February, 1979) — Jack McClelland

I'm strangely comforted when I hear from scientists that human beings are the most complex creatures we know of in the universe, still, by far. Black holes are in their way explicable; the simplest living being is not. I lean a bit more confidently into the experience that life is so endlessly perplexing. I love that word. Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity - taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages. — Krista Tippett

I do not at all believe in human freedom in the philosophical sense... Schopenhauer's saying, 'A man can do what he wants, but not will what he wants,' has been a very real inspiration to me since my youth; it has been a continual consolation in the face of life's hardships, my own and others', and an unfailing wellspring of tolerance. This realization mercifully mitigates the easily paralyzing sense of responsibility and prevents us from taking ourselves and other people too seriously; it is conducive to a view of life which, in part, gives humour its due. — Albert Einstein

One thing a girl has to have is a good sense of a humor. I'm a really laid back guy who can find humor in just about anything, so my girlfriend would need to be a little like that too. She doesn't have to be a big jokester, but to me finding humor in things and not taking too much too seriously is a way of enjoying life, so that is important to me. — Logan Lerman

I'm taking (the training) a little more seriously than I normally would to speed up the process. I don't care if people say I was a surprise pick. I feel like it's an honor and the people who made the decision to put me on the team know what they are talking about. To play for your country is something you can hold on to the rest of your life. — Matt Holliday

Somewhere along the way, I think I realised that taking yourself seriously is the worst thing that you can do in life, so once I let that go, I've just let it all go. I have no standard of personal dignity. — Casey Wilson

Sorry," I said, realizing I was taking my frustrations out on her. "I'm still getting over Soph," I said, referring to my old prep school friend.
Sophie Price was the most beautiful girl you'd ever met. Seriously. Take it from someone who's met Bar Refaeli in person. Soph was even more stunning. Especially since she'd had a personality makeover. I'd never regret anything as much as I would not making her fall in love with me.
"You can't make anyone fall, Spence. Either they do or they don't."
"I said that out loud?"
"Duh and it's been two years, Spencer. You seriously need to get over her. She's with that Ian guy anyway, right?"
"Right."
"That hot South African guy named Ian," she concluded.
"Thanks."
"That hot saffy named Ian who gives his life to mutilated Ugandan orphans and worships the ground Sophie walks on."
I stopped and glared at her. "That'll do, Bridge. — Fisher Amelie

Such a principled disregard of ad hominem evidence is a characteristically modern prejudice of professional philosophers. For most Greek and Roman thinkers from Plato to Augustine, theorizing was but one mode of living life philosophically. To Socrates and the countless classical philosophers who tried to follow in his footsteps, the primary point was not to ratify a certain set of propositions (even when the ability to define terms and analyze arguments was a constitutive component of a school's teaching), but rather to explore 'the kind of person, the sort of self' that one could elaborate as a result of taking the quest for wisdom seriously. — James Miller

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

Oh sorry, I was taking life seriously. — Bill Hicks

I think this movie, 'Moneyball,' symbolizes becoming a man for me, and I think my character becomes a man. It's important to me: I'm becoming a man. I'm taking my life seriously. I'm taking my acting really seriously, and it's important for me to play adults. It's important for me to change and develop as I get older. — Jonah Hill

I discovered later, and I'm still discovering right up to this moment, that is it only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life's duties, problems, successes and failures. In so doing we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world. That, I think, is faith. — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Spiritual life is a way of dwelling with perplexity - taking it seriously, searching for its purpose as well as its perils, its beauty as well as its ravages. In — Krista Tippett

In general, the best advice I can give people is to take criticism seriously, apologize for anything you have done wrong, and pull back from conflict. Of course, if you are right on a content matter, you should press forward in the interest of quality, but conflict often has a way of taking on a life of its own, unfortunately. — Jimmy Wales

I don't need extra hours to clear my mind. I just need to stop taking everything seriously and drown myself in worry. All I need is to be a child again. To be free. And, start living again! — Saru Singhal

The ego can exist only if you take yourself and everything seriously. Nothing kills the ego like playfulness, like laughter. When you start taking life as fun, the ego has to die, it cannot exist anymore. Ego is illness; it needs an atmosphere of sadness to exist. Seriousness creates the sadness in you. Sadness is a necessary soil for the ego. Hence your saints are so serious, for the simple reason that they are the most egoistic people on the earth. They may be trying to be humble, but they are very proud of their humbleness. They take their humbleness very seriously. — Rajneesh

Eternal life then is a certain kind of life I am living more and more now and will go on forever.17 I am living more and more in connection with God, and I will live connected with God forever. This has huge implications for when I do stumble, when I sin and the old person comes back from the dead for a few moments. I admit it. I confess it. I thank God I am forgiven. I make amends with anyone who has been affected by my actions. And then I move on. Not because sin isn't serious, but because I am taking seriously who God says I am. The point isn't my failure; it is God's success in remaking me into the person he originally intended me to be. God's strength, not mine. God's power, not mine. — Rob Bell

It's so easy and convenient to buy our children gifts, but I encourage and challenge you to give them gifts that TRULY matter! The gift of unconditional love. The gift of encouragement. The gift of support. The gift of friendship. The gift of communication, understanding, and patience. The gift of guidance and support. The gift of quality time. And the gift of loving them for who THEY are. Material things are nice, but NOTHING compares to genuine love! Parenting should be taking seriously. — Stephanie Lahart

Good work and joyous play go hand in hand. When play stops, old age begins. Play keeps you from taking life too seriously. — Lord Byron

Christian theology provides some of the best arguments for respecting animal life and for taking seriously animals as partners with us within God's creation. It may be ironical that this tradition, once thought of as the bastion of human moral exclusivity, should now be seen as the seed-bed for a creative understanding of animal liberation. — Andrew Linzey

Elise, you're taking this too seriously. We're men. If we have a problem, we punch one another. It's just how we handle things. — K.M. Shea

What stops me from taking myself seriously, even though I am essentially a serious person, is that I find myself extremely ridiculous, not in the sense of the small-scale ridiculousness of slap-stick comedy, but rather in the sense of ridiculousness that seems intrinsic to human life and that manifests itself in the simplest actions and the most extraordinary gestures. — Gustave Flaubert

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously. — Hunter S. Thompson

When I first started out in music, I was so negative. I was knee-deep in the streets. Then my friends started going to jail. They said, 'Boy, you better start taking this seriously; you got a chance to do something with your life.' That's when I realised I had to focus. The music led to the acting. — Ice-T

I was taking myself very seriously when I was going through life changes. And I realized that I needed to laugh at myself, particularly at my mistakes. — Spencer Johnson

With some guys, drugs became a way of life. They went through tremendous personality changes, or they died. Drugs didn't do them any good. In the same way, at certain times in my life, alcohol didn't do me any good. A lot of kids today seem to be taking themselves, their health and their education more seriously, and that's good. — Greg Noll

Many who think that they are taking life seriously are actually only taking themselves seriously. Who takes himself seriously is over conscious of his rights; who takes life seriously is fully conscious of his obligations. — Joseph T. O'Callahan

Instead of taking the camp's difficulties as a test of their inner strength, they did not take their life seriously and despised it as something of no consequence. They preferred to close their eyes and to live in the past. Life for such people became meaningless. — Viktor E. Frankl

If taking one-self seriously as a woman means committing to a life of grooming, pumicing, pruning and polishing one's exterior for the benefit of onlookers, then I may as well leave my unwieldy rucksack to the top of a bleak Scottish hill and make my home there under a stone, where I'll fashion shoes out of mud and clothes out of leaves. — Miranda Hart

One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you. — Edward T. Hall

Taking life seriously requires taking death seriously. — Studs Terkel

..i'd like to take my professional life, my career, my writing, my family and my friends seriously, but please, please protect me from ever taking myself too seriously.... Seumas — Seumas Gallacher

Angels have a sense of humor ... The angels wants us to enjoy life. Have a good laugh at yourself every now and again for taking life seriously. Then take time to laugh with the angels! — Margaret Neylon

The central attitudes driving Mr. Right are:
You should be in awe of my intelligence and should look up to me intellectually. I know better than you do, even about what's good for you.
Your opinions aren't worth listening to carefully or taking seriously.
The fact that you sometimes disagree with me shows how sloppy your thinking is.
If you would just accept that I know what's right, our relationship would go much better. Your own life would go better, too.
When you disagree with me about something, no matter how respectfully or meekly, that's mistreatment of me.
If I put you down for long enough, some day you'll see. — Lundy Bancroft

I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything. Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know, that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in sorrow? — Ernest Becker

When you focus on the positive, the blessings and the humor and just do your thing and you stop worrying SO much about what every one else is thinking and doing and STOP taking life way too seriously ... Awesomeness happens! — Tanya Masse

Consistency in life is so important for success. It stems from taking what we are doing seriously. — Tsem Tulku

Whenever you make a big decision in life, at least any decision
where you have a viable alternative, there is an inevitable uneasy aftermath.
Anxiety is merely a sign that you're taking something seriously. — Emily Giffin

I do not believe in free will. Schopenhauer's words: 'Man can do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wills,' accompany me in all situations throughout my life and reconcile me with the actions of others, even if they are rather painful to me. This awareness of the lack of free will keeps me from taking myself and my fellow men too seriously as acting and deciding individuals, and from losing my temper. — Albert Einstein

He had realized that the labels he had been taking so seriously are human inventions
it's all a game. The Number 68 is invented and the A is invented, so we might as well choose to invent something that brightens our life and the lives of the people around us. — Benjamin Zander

Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously. — Tom Robbins

You've got to face facts and the fact is life is a joke, a fucking bad joke, or, no, a bad fucking joke. There's no point taking it seriously because whatever happens, and I mean whatever the fuck, the punch line is the same: you go out horizontally. You see the point? No fucking point. — Jeet Thayil

Donata seriously considered taking up a life of crime just so she could pay to have this coffee every morning, — Deborah Blake

It would have been better to do what everyone else does, neither taking life too seriously nor seeing it as merely grotesque, choosing a profession and practicing it, grabbing one's share of the common cake, eating it and saying, "It's delicious!" rather than following the gloomy path that I have trodden all alone; then I wouldn't be here writing this, or at least it would have been a different story. The further I proceed with it, the more confused it seems even to me, like hazy prospects seen from too far away, since everything passes, even the memory of our most scalding tears and our heartiest laughter; our eyes soon dry, our mouths resume their habitual shape; the only memory that remains to me is that of a long tedious time that lasted for several winters, spent in yawning and wishing I were dead — Gustave Flaubert

I don't care what the press is about a person that I'm working with. I care about how they come to work every day. I don't care who broke up with who or who is sleeping with who or who went out where. I don't care what you do with your personal life. It's when people take their personal lives into a space where it affects their performance at work, that's when I would stop taking someone seriously. — Sophia Bush

Taking the things people do wrong seriously is part of taking them seriously. It's part of letting their actions have weight. It's part of letting their actions be actions rather than just indifferent shopping choices; of letting their lives tell a life-story, with consequences, and losses, and gains, rather than just being a flurry of events. It's part of letting them be real enough to be worth loving, rather than just attractive or glamorous or pretty or charismatic or cool. — Francis Spufford

I quickly found that the American church is a difficult place to fit in if you want to live out New Testament Christianity. The goals of American Christianity are often a nice marriage, children who don't swear, and good church attendance. Taking the words of Christ literally, and seriously, is rarely considered. That's for the 'radicals' who are 'unbalanced' and who go 'overboard.' Most of us want a balanced life we can control, that is safe, and that does not involve suffering. — Francis Chan

Have you never known a cruel wind? What an easy, balmy, tropical life you must have! I never tease, madam! I coax, I beguile, I stomp, I throw tantrums, and for certain, I freeze - I am the Coldest and Harshest of all the Harsh Airs! I am the shiver of the world! But I do not tease. You can cause ever so much more trouble by taking folk seriously, asking just what they're doing and doing just what they ask. — Catherynne M Valente

They think it's what we need to hear, but it's the opposite. Inviting glamorous people to school, asking them to parade their glamorous lives onstage, getting them to inspire us with their message that anything is possible if only we believe. Dream. Reach for the stars. Well, no thanks. That's not for me. I'm not going to get there, and neither are most people that I know, and that's fine by me. It is. It really is. When did it stop being fine for everyone else? The normal stuff. Sunday dinners and, I don't know , taking a walk in the park and listening to music and working in an ordinary job for an ordinary wage that will allow you to maybe go on holiday once a year, and really look forward to it too because you're are not a greedy bastard wanting more, more, more all the time. That's who should be doing a talk at school. Seriously. Show me someone happy with a life like that, because it's enough. It should be enough. All that other stuff is meaningless. — Annabel Pitcher

Human life is held in much higher esteem, and the taking of it, whether in private quarrel or by judicial procedure, is looked upon much more seriously than it was formerly. — Elihu Root

I don't consider myself a funny girl, but I do have a sense of humor because I don't take myself too seriously. Taking yourself too seriously, I think, is not right. Life is supposed to be funny. Because if you can laugh about yourself when you made a mistake or when you did something wrong, you can learn from it. — Stephanie Sigman

Living simply means concentrating on what's important in light of eternity. And not taking the rest of life too seriously. — Annie Chapman

A low mood is not the time to analyze your life. To do so is emotional suicide. If you have a legitimate problem, it will still be there when your state of mind improves. The trick is to be grateful for our good moods and graceful in our low moods - not taking them too seriously. The next time you feel low, for whatever reason, remind yourself, "This too shall pass." It will. — Richard Carlson