Think Less Live More Quotes & Sayings

The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth. — John Lancaster Spalding

Where do we get the energy to keep on hoping and praying that things will get better? What makes us believe we DESERVE a happy life to begin with? Is this just an American phenomenon? We just assume that we are entitled to happiness? And when we do get the things we wished so hard for, are we happy? Or do we just want more...? And what about people in less developed countries who's lives are REALLY hard? People who live in places where infant death, widespread disease, rape, general oppression, poverty and starvation are the norm. Why do THEY keep going? Do they hope for happiness too, or do they think there are no other options but to keep living. I need to know. — Jessica Kenley

You'll never live up to the standards of what "everyone" wants you to be, so why fight a battle you can never win. Instead focus on being MORE of who you're meant to be and focus less on what THEY think you should be. You might not see your own beauty but if you continue to conceal and hide who you are, the heart that's for you won't be able to find it either. — Trent Shelton

Unsaid

So much of what we live goes on inside-

The diaries of grief,
the tounge-tied aches
Of unacknowledged love
are no less real.
For having passed unsaid
What we conceal
Is always more
than we dare confide.
Think of the letters
we write our dead. — Dana Gioia

I don't think it really matters whether parents are strict or lenient, as long as they're consistent. Kids can live with more or less any set of rules so long as they know what they are. It's arbitrary tyranny that gets them mixed up. — Ken Follett

We live in a culture that wants to put a redemptive face on everything, so anger doesn't sit well with any of us. But I think women's anger sits less well than anything else. Women's anger is very scary to people, and to no one more than to other women, who think my goodness, if I let the lid off, where would we be? — Claire Messud

One theory is that those who think positively are less affected by stress, but another possibility is that those who think positively tend to live a healthier, longer life in general because they exercise more, follow a better diet, and avoid unhealthy addictions like alcohol and drugs. — Katelyn Williams

I'm a hybrid, from a cultural perspective, but I don't think in these terms. I'm more simple than that. I'm a mammal who will live 70 years, more or less, who believes in God and likes his life. — Ashraf Barhom

I believe how you looked was supposed to mean, something graver, more substantial: I'd gaze at my poor face and think, "It's still not there." Apparently I still do. What isn't there? Beauty? Not likely. Wisdom? Less. Is how we live or try to live supposed to embellish us? All I see is the residue of my other, failed faces.
But maybe what we're after is just a less abrasive regard: not "It's still not there," but something like "Come in, be still. — C. K. Williams

So I think ethics is the broader thing that's less focused on prohibitions and is more perhaps looking at principles and questions and ideas about how to live your life. — Peter Singer

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

You're not like other Wasps."
"Aren't I?" Aagen smiled, but it was a painful smile. "No doubt you've killed my kinsmen by the score."
"A few," Salma allowed.
"Well, next time you shed my kinden's blood, think on this: we are but men, no less nor more than other men, and we strive and feel joy and fail as men have always done. We live in the darkness that is the birthright of us all, that of hurt and ignorance, only sometimes ... sometimes there comes the sun." He let the bowl fall from his fingers to the floor, watching it spin and settle, unbroken. — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Real chessplayers think about chess more or less 24 hours a day. It is a passion and a fate that one has to live with - and it lasts a lifetime. — Simen Agdestein

You don't think your way into finding out who you are; you live your way into it. You make mistakes. You follow your passion. You take wrong turns. You set goals and chase dreams. You figure out what makes you laugh, and you do more of it. You learn what makes you cry, and you do less of it. — Mandy Hale

I think maybe when you live with someone who is really very ill for a long time, it somehow gives you more of a greedy appetite for life and maybe, yes, you are less measured in your behaviour than you would otherwise be. — Nigella Lawson

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say "I think," "I am," but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

We sometimes think of saint, or of people who are living like saints, as being ethereal, living in a higher spiritual realm. But of ten enough they live in an even less ethereal way than the rest of us. They are more fully of this earth, more fully engaged in the dirty, practical problems of the people around them. — David Brooks

Did I learn anything? No way. But all the things you want to learn from
grief turn out to be the total opposite of what you actually learn. There are no revelations, no wisdoms as a trade-off for the things you have lost. You
just get stupider, more selfish. Colder and grimmer. You forget your keys. You leave the house and panic that you won't remember where you live.
You know less than you ever did. You keep crossing thresholds of grief and you think, Maybe this one will unveil some sublime truth about life and
death and pain. But on the other side, there's just more grief. — Rob Sheffield

My chest tightens to the point I fear my heart will suffocate from the pressure of it. Society's standards are the total opposite from how I was raised. The boy who I thought to be so strikingly handsome has less than a year of his life to live, my new friend only a few more months beyond that. Yet they are living these uneventful lives in which they don't think there is a reason for anything. Will I ever see my mother again, or is this how I will be forced to live the rest of my life, as well? — Jen Naumann

Happiness increases and decreases depending on the level of power one has. When you have more power, more control on your life, you feel more happy and self-confident, as your power decreases and the control of your life slips away, you get less and less happy and when you no longer have any power to rely on you reach depression and despair. This is the point where your power meter has hit 0. You now need to rely on the good favors of others to live. For those who believe in the power of god, it sustains them through this dark hour. For those who do not believe, they think they have reached the end and may take their lives. That's why all conflict in life is about power and many lose life in its pursuit. Power is life itself. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I think the future is like anything else that's important. It has to be earned. If we don't earn it, we don't have a future at all. And if we don't earn it, we don't deserve it, we have to live in the present, more or less forever. Or worse, we have to live in the past. I think that's probably what love is - a way of earning the future. — Gregory David Roberts

Contemplation often makes life miserable. We should act more, think less, and stop watching ourselves live. — Nicolas Chamfort

People," Geralt turned his head, "like to invent monsters and monstrosities. Then they seem less monstrous themselves. When they get blind-drunk, cheat, steal, beat their wives, starve an old woman, when they kill a trapped fox with an axe or riddle the last existing unicorn with arrows, they like to think that the Bane entering cottages at daybreak is more monstrous than they are. They feel better then. They find it easier to live. — Andrzej Sapkowski

But kids think differently than adults think. Adults have spent so many years thinking more and more like each other because the more you live with other people the less you think like yourself and the more you think like them. But kids are new people so we still think more normally. — Jesse Eisenberg

Hundreds of studies have shown that people overrate their health, leadership ability, intelligence, professional competence, sporting prowess, and managerial skills. People also hold the nonsensical belief that they are inherently lucky. Most people think they are more likely than the average person to attain a good first job, to have gifted children, and to live to a ripe old age. They also think that they are less likely than the average person to be the victim of an accident, crime, disease, depression, unwanted pregnancy, or earthquake. Why — Steven Pinker

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. — John Adams

Human beings do not live forever, Reuven. We live less than the time it takes to blink an eye, if we measure our lives against eternity. So it may be asked what value is there to a human life. There is so much pain in the world. What does it mean to have to suffer so much if our lives are nothing more than the blink of an eye?
I learned a long time ago, Reuven, that a blink of an eye in itself is nothing. But the eye that blinks, that is something. A span of life is nothing. But the man who lives that span, he is something. He can fill that tiny span with meaning, so its quality is immeasurable though its quantity may be insignificant. Do you understand what I am saying? A man must fill his life with meaning, meaning is not automatically given to life.
It is hard work to fill one's life with meaning. That I do not think you understand yet. A life filled with meaning is worthy of rest. I want to be worthy of rest when I am no longer here. — Chaim Potok

A man's voice was saying, "Odette seems a little off tonight."
"You think?" answered a woman.
"Less confident than last night's," said the man. "I wonder if she's injured." A loud put-upon sigh. "Not to mention that the swans sound more like a herd of elephants."
Oh, come on, Grigori wanted to say: You spoiled, spoiled people. The dancer was wonderful, just like the swan-girls, doing their best to deliver them magnificence. If she was "slightly off", it was nothing Grigori had been able to notice. These people - himself included - were all so thoroughly indulged, could they not simply accept the wonder of it, sitting in this lush, gilded theater while a live orchestra accompanied so much physical exquisiteness? And this man thought he had the right to be disappointed! That these people expected so much, that they could expect that much, and not be ashamed of their petty disappointments. — Daphne Kalotay

I don't think you ever understand your life - not till it's finished and probably not then either. The more I live the less I seem to understand. — Sebastian Faulks

I think there's a tremendous sense of complacency in the LGBT community. AIDS has lost the edge of horror it possessed when it swept through the world in the '80s. Today's generation sees it more as something to live with and something to be much less fearful of. And that comes with a sense of, dare I say, laziness. We need to be really vigilant and open about the fact that these drugs are not to be taken to increase our ability to have recreational sex. — Zachary Quinto

I think evangelicals would do better if they concentrated less on bolstering the formal authority of the Scripture - which I certainly would want to affirm - and more on displaying how biblical texts can shape lives in salutary ways, how they are fruitful texts, how they are texts one can live according to. — Miroslav Volf

He laughed softly. "My dearest Mistress Ashbrooke, while I will admit to a certain misguided attraction to your more earthly charms, I would not now, or ever, consider them worth relinquishing my freedom. I would not relinquish that for you or, indeed, any other woman."
The candor heightened the flush in her cheeks. "You have an aversion to marriage, sir?"
"Distinct and everlasting, madam. But aside from that, do I honestly strike you as the type of man who would take an unwilling wife to hearth and home?"
"I suppose ... if I thought about it ... "
He laughed again. "If women thought about a tenth of the things they should think about, I warrant the world would be a far less complicated place to live in. — Marsha Canham

Think Positively.
Network well.
Eat healthy.
Work Smart.
Stay Strong.
Build faith.
Worry less.
Read more.
Be happy.
Volunteer freely.
Relax often.
Love always.
Live eternally
and you will see doors open to your favor. — Ifeanyi Enoch Onuoha

Maybe you think you'll be entitled to more happiness later by forgoing all of it now, but it doesn't work that way. Happiness takes as much practice as unhappiness does. It's by living that you live more. By waiting you wait more. Every waiting day makes your life a little less. Every lonely day makes you a little smaller. Every day you put off your life makes you less capable of living it. — Ann Brashares

The contemplative life is often miserable. One must act more, think less, and not watch oneself live. — Nicolas Chamfort

But although the rules are vague
And widely disregarded now
Some precepts remain: live with love -
That is a rule we all can understand;
Forgive those who need forgiveness,
Which I think is everybody, more or less;
Be kind - that, perhaps, is first and foremost
In any postmodern, new-fangled
Code we devise for ourselves;
Yes, be kind: love one another,
And most of all tend with gentleness
The small patch of terra firma
That is allocated to each of us ... — Alexander McCall Smith