Quotes & Sayings About There Being More To Life

There is an underlying rhythm to all text. Sentences crashing fall like the waves of the sea, and work unconsciously on the reader. Punctuation is the music of language. As a conductor can influence the experience of the song by manipulating its rhythm, so can punctuation influence the reading experience, bring out the best (or worst) in a text. By controlling the speed of a text, punctuation dictates how it should be read. A delicate world of punctuation lives just beneath the surface of your work, like a world of microorganisms living in a pond. They are missed by the naked eye, but if you use a microscope you will find a exist, and that the pond is, in fact, teeming with life. This book will teach you to become sensitive to this habitat. The more you do, the greater the likelihood of your crafting a finer work in every respect. Conversely the more you turn a blind eye, the greater the likelihood of your creating a cacophonous text and of your being misread. — Noah Lukeman

So there's much more to life than one's intelligence score. To be a decent human being. To have some character. — Edward Zigler

I probably continue to hope that I will encounter something down there, that if I go down inside and simply wait, it will be possible for me to encounter a certain something. Not that I expect it to restore my life to me. No, I am far too old to hope for such things. What I hope to find is the meaning of the life that I have lost. By what was it taken away from me, and why? I want to know the answers to these questions with absolute certainty. And I would go so far as to say that if I could have those answers, I would not mind being even more profoundly lost than I am already. Indeed, I would gladly accept such a burden for whatever years of life may be left to me. — Haruki Murakami

It's time we admitted that there's more to life than money, and it's time we focused not just on GDP, but on GWB - general well-being — David Cameron

Each day, we feel more distant from each other, more alone, all while being surrounded by millions. Each day we watch as our city turns into a desert, one in which we are all lost, looking for that oasis we like to call "love". The more we wait, the more everything and everyone looks like a grain of sand escaping between our fingers before vanishing into the wind. How do we find something or someone we can no longer see, but which is right there before us? And how do we hold on to what is most precious in life? — Gabriel Ba

Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends! — Albert Camus

There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. But should it come to the very last, the most important one, at this point a man must halt and stand firm if he doesn't want to begin life all over again with idle hands and a feeling of being shipwrecked. — Milan Kundera

You cannot resist something to which you grant no reality. The act of resisting a thing is the act of granting it life. When you resist an energy, you place it there. The more you resist, the more you make it real-whatever it is you are resisting." "Every human being is as special as every other human being who has ever lived, lives now, or every will live. You are all meesengers. Every one of you. You are carrying a message to life about life every day. Every hour. Every moment. — Neale Donald Walsch

Anyway, I think I made a bit of progress."
"How did you manage that?"
"Well, they liked that you served in the First Army, and that you saved their prince's life."
"After he risked his own life rescuing us?"
"I may have taken some liberties with the details."
"Oh, Nikolai will love that. Is there more?"
"I told them you hate herring."
"Why?"
"And that you love plum cake. And that Ana Kuya took a switch to you when you ruined your spring slippers in puddles."
I winced. "Why would you tell them all that?'
"I wanted to make you human," he said. "All they see when they look at you is the Sun Summoner. They see a threat, another powerful Grisha like the Darkling. I want them to see a daughter or a sister or a friend. I want them to see Alina."
I felt a lump rise in my throat. "Do you practice being wonderful?"
"Daily," he said with a grin. Then he winked. "But I prefer 'useful. — Leigh Bardugo

I've got a new life now, a new future, there's a lot more to Lennox Lewis than just being a boxer. — Lennox Lewis

Being famous is not all that one should want in life ... there is much more to life than name and fame ... — Amit Abraham

Nicrominus considered that possibility further and came to the realization that the prospect did not bother him particularly. He had led a long life, seen many things, had mates, eaten them, spawned children, eaten them, allowed one of them to live almost on a whim and found the experience to be, on the whole, rather uplifting. There were still things he wished to see and goals he wished to attain. He had no overt desire for death. But if the next few minutes were to result in his being a red and green splotch on the streets of the Spire city, well ... it wasn't as if he hadn't had more than his share of experiences. — Peter David

The drive of the story is sort of hinted at the beginning, is Joy and Sadness and those two characters. Especially Joy starting to understand that there's more to life than being happy. And so that's based on real life observations and things that we've learned as adults. — Pete Docter

Certainly my inner world will never be a peaceful place of bloom; it will have some peace, and occasional riots of bloom, but always a little fight going on too. There is no way I can be peacefully happy in this society and in this skin. I am committed to Uneasy Street. I like it; it is my idea that this street leads to the future, and that I am being true to a way of life which is not here yet, but is more real than what is here. — James Tiptree Jr.

I really wondered why people were always doing what they didn't like doing. It seemed like life was a sort of narrowing tunnel. Right when you were born, the tunnel was huge. You could be anything. Then, like, the absolute second after you were born, the tunnel narrowed down to about half that size. You were a boy, and already it was certain you wouldn't be a mother and it was likely you wouldn't become a manicurist or a kindergarten teacher. Then you started to grow up and everything you did closed the tunnel in some more. You broke your arm climbing a tree and you ruled out being a baseball pitcher. You failed every math test you ever took and you canceled any hope of being a scientist. Like that. On and on through the years until you were stuck. You'd become a baker or a librarian or a bartender. Or an accountant. And there you were. I figured that on the day you died, the tunnel would be so narrow, you'd have squeezed yourself in with so many choices, that you just got squashed. — Carol Rifka Brunt

All humanity needs, is to be reminded that there has always existed a human consensus on all common human needs and desires (extremely long life in perfect health, abundance, well-being), and that now, transgressing the religious option, he has achieved the scientific option of working for all of them, and for much more.
His rationality, guided by both his ambition and inspiration, will do the rest.

WHATEVER RELIGION PROMISES, SCIENCE WILL DELIVER. — Haroutioun Bochnakian

But even them, my pains, I understand ill. That must come from my not being all pain and nothing else. There's the rub. Then they recede, or I, till they fill me with amaze and wonder, seen from a better planet. Not often, but I ask no more. Catch-cony life! To be nothing but pain, how that would simplify matters! Omnidolent! Impious dream. — Samuel Beckett

I journaled: "Why do I feel like crap after being offered a book deal by one of the best publishers on the planet?" The answer that I came up with surprised me. I knew there were people who would have done anything to get their work out into the world this way. i knew there were people who had worked their butts off and still hadn't made it. I knew there were people who had amazing, life-changing things to say who didn't have the platforms to say it yet. I knew there were people who would have been doing cartwheels in the street if they were me right now. And I felt like because they wanted it more, they should have it instead of me. — Kate Northrup

Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved. — Charlie Kaufman

There's an enormous difference between being a story writer and being a regular person. As a person, it's your duty to stay on a straight and even keel, not to break down blubbering in the streets, not to pull rude drivers from their cars, not to swing from the branches of trees. But as a writer it's your duty to lie and to view everything in life, however outrageous, as an interesting possibility. You may need to be ruthless or amoral in your writing to be original. Telling a story straight from real life is only being a reporter, not a creator. You have to make your story bigger, better, more magical, more meaningful than life is, no matter how special or wonderful in real life the moment may have been. — Rick Bass

The secret of a full life is to live and relate to others as if they might not be there tomorrow, as if you might not be there tomorrow. It eliminates the vice of procrastination, the sin of postponement, failed communications, failed communions. This thought has made me more and more attentive to all encounters. meetings, introductions, which might contain the seed of depth that might be carelessly overlooked. This feeling has become a rarity, and rarer every day now that we have reached a hastier and more superficial rhythm, now that we believe we are in touch with a greater amount of people, more people, more countries. This is the illusion which might cheat us of being in touch deeply with the one breathing next to us. The dangerous time when mechanical voices, radios, telephones, take the place of human intimacies, and the concept of being in touch with millions brings a greater and greater poverty in intimacy and human vision. — Anais Nin

You probably can't imagine there being a glory in your life, let alone one that the Enemy fears. But remember
things are not what they seem. We are not what we seem. You probably believed that your heart was bad too. I pray that fog of poison gas from the pit of hell is fading away in the wind of God's truth. And there is more. Not only does Christ say to you that your heart is good, he invites you now out of the shadows to unveil your glory. You have a role you never dreamed of having ... — John Eldredge

life is to us. A lesson lost in the depths of time and ignorance. A lesson, that all of us can rise to be better people. A lesson, that there exists a potential god in every single human being. All we have to do is listen to ourselves. The Immortals of Meluha is the first book in the trilogy that chronicles the journey of this extraordinary hero. Two more books are to follow: The Secret of the Nagas — Amish Tripathi

Virtue, though often mocked and ridiculed, is as beautiful as wickedness is ugly. Self-denial curiously spawns joyful happiness, while selfishness and arrogance produce desperation and obsession. Being faithful to duty brings great fulfillment, while following unchecked passions eventually leads us to despise ourselves. And the greatest truth of all: There is no higher end, no more glorious life, no better aim, than to live in the fear and favor of Almighty God. — Gary L. Thomas

The whole tendency of modern life is towards scientific planning and organisation, central control, standardisation, and specialisation. If this tendency was left to work itself out to its extreme conclusion, one might expect to see the state transformed into an immense social machine, all the individual components of which are strictly limited to the performance of a definite and specialised function, where there could be no freedom because the machine could only work smoothly as long as every wheel and cog performed its task with unvarying regularity. Now the nearer modern society comes to the state of total organisation, the more difficult it is to find any place for spiritual freedom and personal responsibility. Education itself becomes an essential part of the machine, for the mind has to be as completely measured and controlled by the techniques of the scientific expert as the task which it is being trained to perform. — Christopher Henry Dawson

We who are here to-night are here as the servants of the guests of a great University, a University of knowledge, scholarship, and intellect. You do well to be proud of it. But I have wondered whether there may not be colleges and faculties of other experiences than yours, and whether even now in the far corners of the continents powers not yours are being brought to fruition. I have myself been something of a traveller, and every time I return to England I wonder whether the games of those children do not hold more intense life than the talk of your learned men
a more intense passion for discovery, a greater power of exploration, new raptures, unknown paths of glorious knowledge; whether you may not yet sit at the feet of the natives of the Amazon or the Zambesi: whether the fakirs and the herdsmen, the witch-doctors may not enter the kingdom of man before you — Charles Williams

America today is in danger of drifting from its best traditions. We have allowed false prophets of selfishness to obscure our vision. We have grown numb to a creeping cynicism about progress and public life. We crave human connection yet hide behind walls. We worship the money chase yet decry the toll it exacts on us. We allow the market to dominate our lives, relationships, yearnings and aspirations. We indulge in nostalgia and irony and addictive entertainment, then purge from our hearts any true idealism or passion, any notion that being American should mean something more than "everyday low prices" or "every man for himself." In the midst of this dislocation and disorientation, so many Americans today yearn for higher purpose, for calling
for some assurance that life matters. We wish to believe there is more to our days than is revealed on our screens. Make no mistake: this is a spiritual crisis. — Eric Liu

I mean, mentally you brace yourself for the ending of a novel. As you're reading, you're aware of the fact that there's only a page or two left in the book, and you get ready to close it. but with a film there's no way of telling, especially nowadays, when films are much more loosely structured, much more ambivalent, than they used to be. There's no way of telling which frame is going to be the last. The film is going along, just as life goes along, people are behaving, doing things, drinking, talking, and we're watching them, and at any point the director chooses, without warning, without anything being resolved, or explained, or wound up, it can just...end. — David Lodge

There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being. — Mahatma Gandhi

Why do I have three Super Bowl rings and still think there's something greater out there for me? I mean, maybe a lot of people would say, 'Hey man, this is what is.' I reached my goal, my dream, my life. I think, 'God, it's got to be more than this.' I mean this isn't, this can't be what it's all cracked up to be ... I love playing football and I love being quarterback for this team. But at the same time, I think there are a lot of other parts about me that I'm trying to find. — Tom Brady

I watched him as he lay there, taking the needle without flinching and knowing that even
the relief it brought was temporary, that his end was coming and he could not stop it
and knowing, too, that he was not afraid, and that he would do this the right way, as he
had done everything else in his life the right way. And I knew this, too: Harry understood
me. No one else ever had, and no one else ever would, through all time in all the world.
Only Harry. The only reason I ever thought about being human was to be more like him. — Jeff Lindsay

There is more to life than material well-being. Who would claim that the wholly wage-dependent family enjoys the dignity, the security, the range of choice and the autonomy (not to mention the leisure and freedom) of the family even partially supported by capital ownership? — Louis O. Kelso

I'd like to describe a sort of life 20 years ago as being a fried egg. There was a yolk and a white and the white was maybe work, and the yolk was life. Today, it's more of an omelet. It's more mixed and it's more interspersed and I think that that's a more interesting state of being and for some people, they'll say well I want the crisp, fried egg approach to life. — Nicholas Negroponte

I can't understand people being rude to their spouses. Your husband or wife should be the one person in the world you treat with loving patience. He or she chose you above all others-for a lifetime! And yet I see women who are nicer to their girlfriends, and men who are more thoughtful toward their employees. That's meshuganeh. Friends come and go. Employees move on. Your partner is there for the long haul. He deserves your best every day of your life. — Joanna Campbell Slan

This is the defining event of my life and you're treating it like it's normal. like it's nothing."
He leaned back, looking up at the sk. "Well, maybe it should stop being the defining event. There's a whole lot more to an average life than something that happened before you were a year old."
I knew that he was right, but it was scary. I looked away because I didn't want him to see how lonely I'd been. It was disorienting to think everything that had defined me for so long was only circumstantial. — Brenna Yovanoff

During World War II, Joseph Stalin was once asked by an American writer, according to Professor Dean Russell, how he could justify conscripting all the property of all the people for use by the government to fight the war. Stalin answered by asking why they considered it more immoral and illogical to conscript lifeless property than to conscript life itself, as was being done in the United States and all other capitalistic countries. His American challenger had no answer, because there was no answer. — Ron Paul

What I saw there explained everything
the reason he had stayed away, why he had come to say good-bye. I can only describe what I saw by its effect on me. Every woman should be looked at in such a way, at least once her life. With a longing that cannot be contained
with love that goes beyond mere feeling because it transforms and-like the verse of the poem he had read
it dissolves, as an offering, a gift. I felt my face flush and waves of knowing suffused every pore, every cell of my being. I was loved. And in that love, I felt beauty
my own, unrealized until that moment, suddenly rising to consciousness in a way that made everything in me come alive to the beauty all around me. Nothing more needed to be said. — Nafisa Haji

I'm pretty sure there's a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking. And I plan on finding out what that is. — Ben Stiller

She loved all the wolves behind her house, but she loved one of them most of all.
And this one loved her back. He loved her back so hard that even the things that weren't special about her became special: the way she tapped her pencil on her teeth, the off-key songs she sang in the shower, how when she kissed him he knew it meant for ever.
Hers was a memory made up of snapshots: being dragged through the snow by a pack of wolves, first kiss tasting of oranges, saying goodbye behind a cracked windshield.
A life made up of promises of what could be: the possibilities contained in a stack of college applications, the thrill of sleeping under a strange roof, the future that lay in Sam's smile.
It was a life I didn't want to leave behind.
It was a life I didn't want to forget.
I wasn't done with it yet. There was so much more to say. — Maggie Stiefvater

It was unaccountable not to be obliged to go out to see her, not to have any occasion to be tormenting myself about her, not to have to write to her, not to be scheming and devising opportunities of being alone with her. Sometimes, of an evening, when I looked up from my writing, and saw her seated opposite, I would lean back in my chair, and think how queer it was that there we were, alone together as a matter of course - nobody's business any more - all the romance of our engagement put away on a shelf, to rust - no one to please but one another - one another to please, for life. — Charles Dickens

Of course having a baby derails the writing process for some time. And I will be the first to say that I have essentially no social life, because there's just nothing left after being a mom, professor, and writer. I used to be big into rock climbing. No more. A lot falls by the wayside. — Marie Rutkoski

I think they call that parallas: being able to know the distance of something because you're seeing it from two separate points - and the farther apart those two points are, the more accurate you can be. Put one eye here and one eye fourteen feet away, and you know a whole lot more about the world you're seeing.
The thing is, if you go through life with just your own point of view, you're like that kid with glass eye. If there's something that's right up in your face, it looks really big - overwhelming even. But if you've got that parallax - if you've got that other point of view - you realize that there are bigger, much more important things that are far off toward the horizon. Once you focus on those things rather than the way up close, that close-up stuff becomes nothing more than a nuisance blocking the view. — Neal Shusterman

Expansion in love is an action that is available to every being in the universe all the time. A willing awareness will take
us to heaven, a loving attitude will make us free. Nothing else controls our fate. Good or bad behavior is secondary.
Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are thinking, love yourself for thinking it. Love is the
only dimension that needs to be changed. If you are not sure how it feels to be loving, love yourself for not being sure of
how it feels. There is nothing on earth more important than the love which conscious beings feel towards each other,
whether or not it is ever expressed. — Thaddeus Golas

Thou hast gone on in all thy life hitherto, ever since thou wast born, in a continual opposition to God Himself, unto the infinite Lord, the eternal first being of all the world; thy life hath been nothing but enmity to this God: thou hast as directly opposed, and striven against, and resisted Him, as ever man did oppose, and resist, and strive with another man, and this thou hast done in the whole course of thy life: certainly there is more in this to humble a man than anything that can be spoken to shew him the evil of sin. — Jeremiah Burroughs

The truth is that you are more than you think you are, and it is your responsibility to become more than you are! It is your own growth and development that is the Great Game of Life, the fulfillment of the Great Plan that is the purpose of our being, and it is likewise the Greatest Adventure you can ever undertake for it leads not merely toward the infinity of the physical universe but more toward the infinity of consciousness wherein you become truly crowned with Glory. There are no lesser words that can be used to inspire you to take this Great Journey that is opened before you with the information and the techniques of this book. — Carl Llewellyn Weschcke

It became clear to me how men die. I saw that it is not so hard. Or easy. It is nothing. One just starts living less and less, being less and less, thinking, feeling and knowing less and less. The rich flow of life dries up, and only a thin thread of uncertain consciousness remains, more and more meager, more and more insignificant. And then nothing happens, there is not anything, there is nothing. And nothing matters - it is all the same. — Mesa Selimovic

Living in fear is what every hater, negative person, and the devil wants. Live a righteous life with God and nothing but positivity. You must forgive anyone who has done you dirty, and move on. Your personal life, career, and love life will be that much more amazing after. Life is too short to live it being empty inside, sad, angry, and defensive just to hide your pain. Let it all go and let love and happiness in. Put yourself out there all the way and don't be fearful of losing love. If you don't live life by fully enjoying it and opening your heart, your just not living. — Behdad Sami

We need feminism because girls are shot in the head for going to school. We need feminism because women are burned alive for refusing to submit to grotesque male desirs. We need feminism because women are aunder represented in every sphere of life except being wives and mothers. (...) We need feminism because women's bodies remain politicised, scrutinsed, fetishised. There are countless more reasons why we need feminism, infinitely more reasons; and this in itself is another reason that we need feminism. — Victoria Pepe

But I have thought of you often during these holidays and imagined how quiet you must be in your lonely fort among the empty hills, upon which those big southerly winds precipitate themselves as though they would devour them in great pieces.

The stillness must be immense in which such sounds and movements have room, and when one thinks that to it all the presence of the far-off sea comes chiming in as well, perhaps as the inmost tone in that prehistoric harmony, then one can only wish for you that you are confidently and patiently letting that lofty solitude work upon you which is no more to be stricken out of your life; which in everything there is ahead of you to experience and to do will work as an anonymous influence, continuously and gently decisive, much as in us blood of ancestors ceaselessly stirs and mingles with our own into that unique, not repeatable being which at every turning of our life we are. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Your essays spoke of beauty, of love, of light and darkness, of joy and sorrow, and of the goodness of life. They were wonderful compositions. I have seldom read any that have touched me more.
To thank you and your teacher Mrs. Ellis, I am sending you what I think is one of the most beautiful and miraculous things in the world - an egg. I have a goose named Felicity and she lays about forty eggs every spring. It takes her almost three months to accomplish this. Each egg is a perfect thing. I am mailing you one of Felicity's eggs. The insides have been removed - blown out - so the egg should last forever. I hope you will enjoy seeing this great egg and loving it. Thank you for sending me your essays about being somebody. I was pleased that so many of you felt the beauty and goodness of the world. If we feel that when we are young, then there is great hope for us when we grow older. — E.B. White

These are modern times, nicht? Not our grandmother's days. There's more to life than finding some lord and master and being under his thumb. I swear I'll never live in such a prison! — Phyllis Edgerly Ring

Therefore, what you do as a spiritual practitioner in this life shapes that. To seek and find this beautiful, continuing existence, where there can be more progress towards Buddha-hood, toward love, and wisdom, and helping all being etc. So that's the great value of it. — Robert Thurman

We have indeed, felt the effects of the epic journey that has been our life. We have covered a lot of ground, parenting, marriage, career, family and otherwise, and at times, surely, have felt the worse for the wear, especially when different circumstances have chewed us up and spit us out! When it felt as if the kiln was stoked to maximum heat levels, and that we would shatter into a billion pieces that would never all be found! There are some differences now, having a little more seasoning to us. First of all, now we understand there is no such thing as being finished. There is always more firing, refining and glazing we can experience, and it is only a matter of when and how, not if we will do so. Secondly, we look forward to it, knowing now it would take more heat than possible to break us beyond repair. — Connie Kerbs

Even religious people are vulnerable to this longing. Those who belong to communities of faith have acquired a certain patience with what is sometimes called organized religion. They have learned to forgive themselves. They do not expect their institutions to stand in for God, and they are happy to use inherited maps for some of life's journeys. They do not need to walk off every cliff all by themselves. Yet they too can harbor the sense that there is more to life that they are being shown. Where is the secret hidden? Who has the key to the treasure box of More? — Barbara Brown Taylor

In the context of the English language, there were many more important words than "in." There were fancy words, historic words, words that meant life or death. There were multi-syllabic tongue-twisters that required a sort out before speaking, and mission-critical pivotals that started wars or ended wars ... and even poetic nonsensicals that were like a symphony as they left the lips. Generally speaking, "in" did not play with the big boys. In fact, it barely had much of a definition at all, and, in the course of its working life, was usually nothing but a bridge, a conduit for the heavy lifters in any given sentence. There was, however, one context in which that humble little two-letter, one-syllable jobbie was a BFD. Love. The difference between someone "loving" somebody versus being "in love" was a curb to the Grand Canyon. The head of a pin to the entire Midwest. An exhale to a hurricane. — J.R. Ward

In the South American rainforest, there is a tribe called the Desana, who see the world as a fixed quantity of energy that flows between all creatures. Every birth must therefore engender a death, and every death brings forth another birth. This way, the energy of the world remains complete.
When they hunt for food, the Desana know the animals they kill will leave a hole in the spiritual well. But that hole will be filled, they believe, by the Desana hunters when they die. Were there no men dying, there would be no birds or fish being born. I like this idea. Morrie likes it, too. The closer he gets to goodbye, the more he seems to feel we are all creatures in the same forest. What we take, we must replenish.
"It's only fair," he says. — Mitch Albom

The Doctor had a remarkable memory. The problem was, there was so much of it. He had lived eleven lives (or more: there was another life, was there not, that he tried his best never to think about) and he had a different way of remembering things in each life.
The worst part of being however old he was (and he had long since abandoned trying to keep track of it in any way that mattered to anybody but him) was that sometimes things didn't arrive in his head quite when they were meant to. — Neil Gaiman

Ordinary philosophy is like a hound hunting his own tail. The more he hunts the farther he has to go, and his nose never catches up with his heels, because it is forever ahead of them. So the present is already a foregone conclusion, and I am ever too late to understand it...The truth is that we travel on a journey that was accomplished before we set out; and the real end of philosophy is accomplished, not when we arrive at, but when we remain in, our destination (being already there) - which may occur vicariously in this life when we cease our intellectual questioning — Benjamin Paul Blood

I think in the heart of every human being there burns an ember of hope that warmly entices us to believe everything will eventually come together into one perfect day, and that potentially the hours in this day will stretch on indefinitely. And so we live our lives in hopeful anticipation, dreaming and praying to reach this wondrous day, while in the process we miss out on the anxious affair that life truly is. Life is not perfection; it is everything else. We must taste and experience heartaches and trials in order to feel the genuine joy that comes from enduring them well. We then move on, wiser and more capable of charity - this being pure love and the reason for life's trials altogether. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The whole point of marriage is to stop you getting anywhere near real life. You think it's a great struggle with the mystery of being. It's more like being smothered in warm cocoa. There's sex, but it's not what you think. Marvellous, for the first fortnight. Then every Wednesday. If there isn't a good late-night concert on the Third. Meanwhile you become a biological functionary. An agent of the great female womb, spawning away, dumping its goods in your lap for succour. Daddy, daddy, we're here, and we're expensive. — Malcolm Bradbury

Why would anyone wish to be provincial in time, any more than being tied down to one place through life, when the whole reach of the human drama is there to experience in some of the greatest books ever written. — David McCullough

There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn't strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind. — David Rakoff

Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees anyone whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter life, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he have a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den. — Daniel Keyes

It's not a case of the glass being half full or half empty; more that we tipped a whole half-pint into an empty pint pot. I had to see how much was there, though, and now I know. — Nick Hornby

THERE IS ONE MORE POINT to be made about animal minds and evolution. Evolution is not a progressive force. Although it was once thought that there was a scale of nature or a Great Chain of Being, with all the forms of life ascending in some orderly, preordained fashion - from jellyfish to fish to birds to dogs and cats to us - this is not the case. We are not the culmination of all these "lesser" beings; they are not lesser and we are not the pinnacle of evolution. — Virginia Morell

The little girl's sense of secrecy that developed at prepuberty only grows in importance. She closes herself up in fierce solitude: she refuses to reveal to those around her the hidden self that she considers to be her real self and that is in fact an imaginary character: she plays at being a dancer like Tolstoy's Natasha, or a saint like Marie Leneru, or simply the singular wonder that is herself. There is still an enormous difference between this heroine and the objective face that her parents and friends recognise in her. She is also convinced that she is misunderstood: her relationship with herself becomes even more passionate: she becomes intoxicated with her isolation, feels different, superior, exceptional: she promises that the future will take revenge on the mediocrity of her present life. From this narrow and petty existence she escapes by dreams. — Simone De Beauvoir

Adults tend to spend a lot of time analysing and judging life (and themselves) rather than just being in the moment. This is why teaching children meditation can be easier than teaching adults. The young mind is much more open. With children there are usually no logical barriers that interrupt meditation. However, — Lorraine E. Murray

... Have you ever reflected that posterity may not be the faultless dispenser of justice that we dream of? One consoles oneself for being insulted and denied, by reyling on the equity of the centuries to come; just as the faithful endure all the abominations of this earth in the firm belief of another life, in which each will be rewarded according to his deserts. But suppose Paradise exists no more for the artist than it does for the Catholic, suppose that future generations prolong the misunderstanding and prefer amiable little trifles to vigorous works! Ah! What a sell it would be, eh? To have led a convict's life - to have screwed oneself down to one's work - all for a mere delusion!...

"Bah! What does it matter? Well, there's nothing hereafter. We are even madder than the fools who kill themselves for a woman. When the earth splits to pieces in space like a dry walnut, our works won't add one atom to its dust. — Emile Zola

Love is life is love. There is no way to envision life without love, and at this point in my life, I don't think there is anything more important - love of family, love of nature, love of travel, love of learning, love of life in every way - all of it. Love is being thankful, love is paying attention, love is being open and compassionate. Love is using all the privileges you possess to help those who are in need. Love is giving voice to those who don't have one. Love is a way of feeling alive and respecting life. I have been in love many times, but — Diane Von Furstenberg

It was not that donors had no loyalty to each other, but they were not ashamed to betray a fellow donor. In its wisdom the Alliance promulgated the moral rules - the main one being one's duty to the Alliance. The Alliance was sacred - all else secondary. But not all donors - or citizens - bought into that. Many knew in their hearts there was more to life. — Cate Campbell Beatty

Seventy-five percent of our energy around the earth is being poured into war efforts. Are we servants of death and destruction? This 75 percent of energy could be poured into life, into the service of life-and there will be laughter, and there will be greater health, and there will be more wealth, more food. There will be no poverty. There is no need for poverty to exist at all. — Rajneesh

So to be sick unto death is not to be able to die
yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life; but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one's hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die. — Soren Kierkegaard

There was, however, a fundamental difference - namely, that Maggie Louise, at least at that point in her life, had the ability to be satisfied, which, while different from being happy, is essential in finding contentment. In this regard, there may be two kinds of people, or perhaps, more accurately, two extremes, and if so, Agee and Maggie Louise represented them. — Dale Maharidge

While I wouldn't wish being teased on anyone, I think it eventually leads to a kind of solidarity in adult life. The few people I know who weren't picked on in school are people I find I can't relate to on much more than a surface level. There's a sensitivity that comes with feeling like an outsider at some point in your life. — Anna Kendrick

For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people - a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance. - William Longgood, The Queen Must Die — Susan Wiggs

I normally don't initiate conversations with guys unless they want to talk about certain things - when I'm at the facility, I'm there to play football. If you want to talk about the meaning of life, games, whatever, I'm more than happy to, but when I'm in that building, I'm being paid to play football. Conversely, when I'm not at the facility, that's my life to live. — Chris Kluwe

There is one thing I can say for certain: the older a person gets, the lonelier he becomes. It's true for everyone. But maybe that isn't wrong. What I mean is, in a sense our lives are nothing more than a series of stages to help us get used to loneliness. That being the case, there's no reason to complain. And besides who would be complaint to anyway? (A Walk To Kobe, Granta 124: Travel) — Haruki Murakami

... I have fallen in love with a painting. Though that phrase doesn't seem to suffice, not really - rather's it that I have been drawn into the orbit of a painting, have allowed myself to be pulled into its sphere by casual attraction deepening to something more compelling. I have felt the energy and life of the painting's will; I have been held there, instructed. And the overall effect, the result of looking and looking into it's brimming surface as long as I could look, is love, by which I mean a sense of tenderness toward experience, of being held within an intimacy with the things of the world. — Mark Doty

We respect your learning, Dr Einstein; but there is one thing you do not seem to have learned: that God is a spirit and cannot be found through the telescope or microscope, no more than human thought or emotion can be found by analyzing the brain. As everyone knows, religion is based on Faith, not knowledge. Every thinking person, perhaps, is assailed at times with religious doubt. My own faith has wavered many a time. But I never told anyone of my spiritual aberrations for two reasons: (1) I feared that I might, by mere suggestion, disturb and damage the life and hopes of some fellow being; (2) because I agree with the writer who said, 'There is a mean streak in anyone who will destroy another's faith.' . . . I hope, Dr Einstein, that you were misquoted and that you will yet say something more pleasing to the vast number of the American people who delight to do you honor. — Richard Dawkins

The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered ... We know that. And yes, there are certainly times when we aren't able to muster as much strength and patience as we would like. It's called being human. But I have found that in the simple act of living with hope, and in the daily effort to have a positive impact in the world, the days I do have are made all the more meaningful and precious. And for that I am grateful. — Elizabeth Edwards

None of us laughed at Helen. Maybe because in 1970 we listened more to new ideas, however sentimental or foolish they sound all these years later in the harsh light of the millennium's end. We wanted to find new answers for old questions, or we just thought there were new answers. And even with all the death that came daily, the death that would come to our gathering in the meadow, life in America felt as if it were being recast, reshaped, even redeemed by some transcendent thing. — Scott Lax

It was a matter of not living lavishly but enjoying what you had, growing things with your hands, working hard, but not being tied to a nine-to-five job, and generally feeling that there's more to life than money. — John Sulston

The way I played music there was the way I wanted to farm, chop wood, cook, make love, raise children. Everything. A lo of it had to do with things I felt while I played. If only I could feel that sense of total absorption in what I was doing when I was doing other things. It was more than absorption, it was spontaneity, competence, a sense of grace and playfulness, of being in touch with an inexhaustible source of energy and beauty. — Mark Vonnegut

The alternative connection to what is ultimate is, of course, revelation. In this view, it is not the human being reaching up to seize the meaning of life, or gazing into itself for that meaning, but God reaching down to explain life's meaning. In this understanding, there can be no speaking of God, no speaking of meaning, before his speaking to us is heard. This way was treated rudely by the Enlightenment luminaries because it both limited human freedom in shaping the meaning of reality and resorted to what was miraculous in the way revelation has been given. And it has not been treated any more kindly by the postmoderns for whom its grand, overarching Story is anathema and who do not believe that they can escape their own subjectivity. But this is the Christian confession. — John Piper

Try to relax, and you will find out that you feel more tense than ever. Try harder and you will feel more tense and more tense. Relaxation is not a consequence, is not a result of some activity; it is the glow of understanding. This is the first thing I would like to relate to you: life is purposeless. It is very hard to accept it. And why is it so hard to accept that life is purposeless? It is hard because without purpose the ego cannot exist. It is hard to conceive that life has no goal because without any goal being there, there is no point in having a mind, in having an ego. — Rajneesh

Buffett's methodology was straightforward, and in that sense 'simple.' It was not simple in the sense of being easy to execute. Valuing companies such as Coca-Cola took a wisdom forged by years of experience; even then, there was a highly subjective element. A Berkshire stockholder once complained that there were no more franchises like Coca-Cola left. Munger tartly rebuked him. 'Why should it be easy to do something that, if done well two or three times, will make your family rich for life? — Roger Lowenstein

We will go out into the world and plant gardens and orchards to the horizons, we will build roads through the mountains and across the deserts, and terrace the mountains and irrigate the deserts until there will be garden everywhere, and plenty for all, and there will be no more empires or kingdoms, no more caliphs, sultans, emirs, khans, or zamindars, no more kings or queens or princes, no more quadis or mullahs or ulema, no more slavery and no more usury, no more property and no more taxes, no more rich and no more poor, no killing or maiming or torture or execution, no more jailers and no more prisoners, no more generals, soldiers, armies or navies, no more patriarchy, no more caste, no more hunger, no more suffering than what life brings us for being born and having to die, and then we will see for the first time what kind of creatures we really are. — Kim Stanley Robinson

There's more to life than passing exams, and paper qualifications can only take you so far. A lot depends on luck, and on being in the right place at the right time, which was certainly true in my case. — Terry Wogan

There is nothing wrong with you ... Life isn't supposed to be easy ... It is designed to be challenging so that you will grow into a more conscious, loving human being. — Barbara De Angelis

I teach my sons that there are really only three rules to being a good man. The first rule is to fish often. And by fish, I mean find the quiet times to fish around in your minds for what is most important. The second rule is to protect everyone smaller than them. This means physically smaller, and in all other ways ... protect the more vulnerable. The third rule states that if something is truly important to you, then you should prove it. You say you would lay your life down for someone, but will you give them the busiest five minutes of your day, if they need it? — Spuds Crawford

There has got to be more to life than being a really, really, ridiculously good actor. — Gary Busey

There's more to life than being an actor in a Hollywood movie. I'm not going to adapt my life after that existence, where a lot of people do. And they get the publicist, and they get all that stuff, and it becomes them. I think it's a stupid way to live your life. A really dumb way to live your life. — Zach Galifianakis

Too often, the notion of progress is used as a code word for perfection, the chain of being in a different guise. The term should be employed with caution. Some see an arrow of time in biology, as in physics, but in the opposite direction- a relentless tendency to improve, just as a universe has a built-in trend towards chaos and disorder. That is too optimistic. Some lineages get more complicated, some simpler, and much of life has to struggle to stay in the same place. If everyone is evolving, nobody can afford to stop, and there may be constant change with no overall advance at all. — Steve Jones

Upon this, I (who took the boldness to speak freely before the Cardinal) said, 'There was no reason to wonder at the matter, since this way of punishing thieves was neither just in itself nor good for the public; for, as the severity was too great, so the remedy was not effectual; simple theft not being so great a crime that it ought to cost a man his life; no punishment, how severe soever, being able to restrain those from robbing who can find out no other way of livelihood. — Thomas More

For two weeks, I lay awake at night and said Hail Marys over and over to stop my heart from beating too fast. I suddenly realized how much being a husband was about fear: fear of not being able to keep somebody safe, of not being able to protect somebody from all the bad stuff you want to protect them from. Knowing they have more tears in them than you will be able to keep them from crying. I realized that Renee had seen me fail, and that she was the person I was going to be failing in front for the rest of my life. It was just a little failure, but it promised bigger failures to come. Additional ones, anyway. But that's who your wife is, the person you fail in front of. Love it so confusing; there's no peace of mind. — Rob Sheffield

There's a void inside most people.
It's been created by not being contented with who we are, not being happy with what we have, not being present and looking for something more, better, more exciting out there.
And we've always been trying to fill this void with something external. — Lidiya K.

As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form. — Charles Darwin

More than anything, I like just being there while he works, doing what he knows to do, in his own place. — Deb Caletti

For a moment sitting there above the city, i imagined life outside of narcissism. I wondered how beautiful it might be to think of others as more important than myself. I wondered how peaceful it might be not to be pestered by that childish voice that wants for pleasure and attention. I wondered how it would be like not to live in a house of mirrors, everywhere i go being reminded of myself. — Donald Miller

There is a road in the hearts of all of us, hidden and seldom traveled, which leads to an unkown, secret place. The old people came literally to love the soil, and they sat or reclined on the ground with a feeling of being close to a mothering power. Their teepees were built upon the earth and their altars were made of earth. The soul was soothing, strengthening, cleansing, and healing. That is why the old Indian still sits upon the earth instead of propping himself up and away from its life giving forces. For him, to sit or lie upon the ground is to be able to think more deeply and to feel more keenly. He can see more clearly into the mysteries of life and come closer in kinship to other lives about him. — Luther Standing Bear