To Live A Good Life Quotes & Sayings

We shall all live. We pray for life, children, a good harvest and happiness. You will have what is good for you and I will have what is good for me. Let the kite perch and let the egret
perch too. If one says no to the other, let his wing break. — Chinua Achebe

I thought the line 'I am the daughter of the former governor of Alaska' was very funny. I think the word is 'sarcasm.' In my family we think laughing is good. My parents raised me to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. — Andrea Fay Friedman

Had I life to live over, I see now where I could do more; but neighbour, believe me, my highest aspiration is to be a clean, thrifty housekeeper, a bountiful cook, a faithful wife, a sympathetic mother. That is life work for any woman, and to be a good woman is the greatest thing on earth. Never mind about the ladies; if you can honestly say of me, she is a good woman, you have paid me the highest possible tribute ... To be a good wife and mother is the end toward which I aspire. To hold the respect and love of my husband is the greatest object of my life. — Gene Stratton-Porter

You wander through this city, and wonder if anything you do will make up for the horror that keeps the world turning. To live, you rip your own heart from your chest and hide it in a box somewhere, along with everything you ever learned about justice, compassion, mercy. You throw yourself into games to mark the time. And if you yearn for something different: what would you change? Would you bring back the blood, the dying cries, the sucking chest wounds? The constant war? So we're caught between two poles of hypocrisy. We sacrifice our right to think of ourselves as good people, our right to think our life is good, our city is just. And so we and our city both survive. — Max Gladstone

A writer can't just be well-educated or good at research; to build a living, breathing world with interesting characters, you have to write from the gut. I'm not saying you have to live your life like a fantasy adventure. The trick is the ability to synthesize your own everyday experiences into your fiction. Infuse your characters with believable emotions and motivations. Infuse your world with rich sensory detail. For that you have to be in touch with your own existence and your own soul, the dark and the light of it. — Lynn Flewelling

I don't live a very posh life. There are no drivers waiting or people doing everything for me. I pretty much live like a normal person ... It's not good to have a life without responsibilities, you know ?. — Liv Tyler

The main thing is to WRITE. Some days it might be 2000 words. Some days you might tinker with two sentences until you get them just right. Both days belong in the writing life. Some days you may watch a 'Doctor Who' marathon or become immersed in a book that is so good you can't stop reading. Some days you may be in love or in mourning. Those days belong in the writing life, too. Live them without guilt. — L.K. Madigan

You, you buy into all this stuff about good guys and bad guys in the world. A loan shark breaks a guy's leg for not paying his debt, a banker throws a guy out of his home for the same reason, and you think there's a difference, like the banker's just doing his job but the loan shark's a criminal. I like the loan shark better because he doesn't pretend to be anything else, and I think the banker should be where I am sitting right now. I'm not going to live some life where I pay my fucking taxes and fetch the boss a lemonade at the company picnic and buy life insurance. Get older, get fatter, so I can join a men's club in Back Bay, smoke cigars with a bunch of assholes in a back room somewhere, talk about my squash game and my kid's grades. Die at my desk, and they'll already have scraped my name off the office door before the dirt's hit the coffin. — Dennis Lehane

Reconciliation means that those who have been on the underside of history must see that there is a qualitative difference between repression and freedom. And for them, freedom translates into having a supply of clean water, having electricity on tap; being able to live in a decent home and have a good job; to be able to send your children to school and to have accessible health care. I mean, what's the point of having made this transition if the quality of life of these people is not enhanced and improved? If not, the vote is useless.'
-archbishop Desmond Tutu, chair of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Committee, 2001 — Naomi Klein

It's not that I haven't had a good life. It's that I hadn't allowed myself to live a great one.
- from the essay Dear Someone, Amazed. — Joanne Crisner Alcayaga

The Stoics believed in social reform, but they also believed in personal transformation. More precisely, they thought the first step in transforming a society into one in which people live a good life is to teach people how to make their happiness depend as little as possible on their external circumstances. The second step in transforming a society is to change people's external circumstances. The Stoics would add that if we fail to transform ourselves, then no matter how much we transform the society in which we live, we are unlikely to have a good life. — William B. Irvine

The evils which of necessity encompass the life of man are sufficiently numerous. Why should we add to them by voluntarily distressing and destroying one another? Peace, brothers, is better than war. In a long and bloody war, we lose many friends, and gain nothing. Let us then live in peace and friendship together, doing to each other all the good we can. — Thomas Jefferson

Lily Owens: If your favorite color is blue, why did you paint the house pink?
August Boatwright: [chuckles] That was May's doing. When we went to the paint shop, she latched on to a color called, "Caribbean Pink." She said it made her feel like dancing a Spanish Flamenco. I personally thought it was the tackiest color I had ever seen, but I figured if it could lift May's heart, it was good enough to live in.
Lily Owens: That was awfully nice of you.
August Boatwright: Well, I don't know. Some things in life, like the color of a house, don't really matter. But lifting someone's heart? Now, that matters. — Sue Monk Kidd

I left the convent and that was because I wasn't a very good nun. I could see that I wasn't going to make it. It's very difficult to be a nun, or to live a religious life. It's very difficult to live a life of total celibacy or a life without any possessions or material responsibilities at all, or in total obedience to somebody else, and remain a mature whole human being, and I knew that I wasn't going to be one of those. — Karen Armstrong

I learned to live many years ago. Something really, really bad happened to me, something that changed my life in ways that, if I had my druthers, it would never have been changed at all. What I learned from it is that today seems to be the hardest lesson of all. I learned to love the journey, not the destination. I learned that it is not a dress rehearsal, and that today is the only guarantee you get. I learned to look at all the good in the world and to try to give some of it back because I believed in it completely and utterly. — Anna Quindlen

The word "utopia" has two meanings. It means both "good place" and "nowhere". That's the way it should be. The happiest places, I think, are the ones that reside just this side of paradise. The perfect person would be insufferable to live with; likewise, we wouldn't want to live in the perfect place, either. "A life time of happiness! No man could bear it: It would be hell on earth," wrote George Bernard Shaw, in his play Man and Superman. — Eric Weiner

I became aware that our love was doomed; love had turned into a love affair with a beginning and an end. I could name the very moment when it had begun, and one day I knew I should be able to name the final hour. When she left the house I couldn't settle to work. I would reconstruct what we had said to each other; I would fan myself into anger or remorse. And all the time I knew I was forcing the pace. I was pushing, pushing the only thing I loved out of my life. As long as I could make believe that love lasted I was happy; I think I was even good to live with, and so love did last. But if love had to die, I wanted it to die quickly. It was as though our love were a small creature caught in a trap and bleeding to death; I had to shut my eyes and wring its neck. — Graham Greene

But human beings must suffer, and must make suffering for themselves, and beat themselves up into spiritual frenzies, and oh death and desolation, and oh night space and horror, and oh keep my dream from me. And how very splendid it is that we can do all this to ourselves and have such a splendid and really ingenious gift for inflicting suffering upon ourselves. For suffering and strain are the gauge of life, and who wishes to live like a vegetable?
But sometimes suffering measures life and ends it. And then it is not good at all. And between two people without knowing it a love may grow up, and a link may form, and no one knows or guesses. — Stevie Smith

I don't believe in a personal god. It's good to give thanks, whether or not there's a god. There's no reason not to live life to the fullest. Morality is all the more important for people who don't expect to get a piece of celestial candy after they die. — William T. Vollmann

Are you a good human being, Gerry? I mean good in the sense that if you put everything in the scales, they'd tip that way?" It startled her. "I don't know. I haven't thought of myself that way. I think I like the lush life a little too much. That's why I married George. I'm vain. I like men to admire me. I've got a coarse streak that comes out at the wrong times. But I do try to live up to ... some kind of a better image of myself. And I try to improve. I came from nothing, Trav, from a little raggedy-ass spread in the Panhandle with too many kids and too few rooms. — John D. MacDonald

To consider what other people might say is hardly a good reason to take action or to defer it. You have your own life to live, Iris, and at its end, the only opinion that amounts to anything is that which God bestows — Gregory Maguire

Most of the teams who traded for me or signed me needed me to fill a hole in the puzzle. I feel good about that. You've got to roll with it, live your life day-by-day. Tomorrow's not promised to anyone. — Kenny Lofton

As individuals begin to align with their original intent and live a life on purpose, they invite in their highest guidance. I have come to know that the only way to access the assistance of the ascended masters is to become like them so that they can recognize themselves. It does no good to pray for guidance and help if we're living an ego-centered life. At — Wayne W. Dyer

Dena had always been a loner. She did not feel connected to anything. Or anybody. She felt as if everybody else had come into the world with a set of instructions about how to live and someone had forgotten to give them to her. She had no clue what she was supposed to feel, so she had spent her life faking at being a human being, with no idea how other people felt. What was it like to really love someone? To really fit in or belong somewhere? She was quick, and a good mimic, so she learned at an early age to give the impression of a normal, happy girl, but inside she had always been lonely. — Fannie Flagg

I has always thought the world was good, that everyone could find the beauty in themselves. Everyone could honor, and forgive, and live a full and gorgeous life, even when the hands they'd been dealt weren't easy.
But what Davenport had been born into had taken so much from her, leaving her with just the wickedest and the worst. Her father had given her life, and then taken every scrap of joy or freedom, and even now that he was dead, all he had left her with was a deep, abiding hatred for what she was.
Her power was tremendous, working through her, but it had gone to rot, and without someone to help her and to love her, she did not know how to take it back. — Brenna Yovanoff

But it is a perfect world, and you have a perfect life. You do have the power to control your day. You do have the power to think good thoughts. You do have the power to live your dreams! — Robin S. Sharma

Everybody is born so that they can learn to live a good life-like loving everybody and being nice, right? Well animals already know how to do that, so they don't have to live so long — Robin Downing

Great leaders live and leave noble and indelible footprints. Any leader can start something. Any leader can do anything but, the real hallmark and a great measure of a great leader is not necessarily what happens now but, what happens later. The noble works of a true and a great leader stand the test of time and never vanish with time. — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

You know what, my faith is like this - when I die, I'm going to live with God forever and ever. But I believe He wants us to have a good life here on Earth. — Victoria Osteen

And it came to me that these trees had been hardly smaller when I was yet unborn, and had stood as they stood now when I was a child playing among the cypresses and peaceful tombs of our necropolis, and that they would stand yet, drinking in the light of the dying sun, even as now, when I had been dead as long as those who rested there. I saw how little it weighed on the scale of things whether I lived or died, though my life was precious to me. And of those two thoughts I forged a mood by which I stood ready to grasp each smallest chance to live, yet in which I cared not too much whether I saved myself or not. By that mood, as I think, I did live; it has been so good a friend to me that I have endeavored to wear it ever since, succeeding not always, but often. — Gene Wolfe

Live to start your stupid ideas, and start to live a life without regret
a life filled with meaning, freedom, happiness, fun, authenticity, and influence. — Richie Norton

You saw everything inside me, every pathway to my heart. Every thought, profound to petty. You laughed away the bad and celebrated the good.
To be known, really known, is the essence of love. To live without love is a shadow life. — Suzanne Hayes

To be virtuous, then, is to live as we were designed to live; it is to live, as Zeno put it, in accordance with nature.18 The Stoics would add that if we do this, we will have a good life. — William B. Irvine

In fact I wonder if I should bend my own rules a little and for the sake of writing a good song it doesn't have to been so autobiographical, but that's a stupid rule to live by as some of my favourite artists' songs, they have a song that you think is about their life [which] probably even isn't, but it's a great song. — The Rocket Summer

Regrets are a terrible thing to live with but, if we take a good look at them, some are not regrets at all, they're situations that taught us a valuable lesson. Don't be so hard on yourself it's not a perfect world. — Ron Baratono

Keep your life simple and stylish and earnest. Do good and donate your time and money to something you care about. Make people laugh. Be frank. Always give people a second chance - but rarely a third. Live light, travel light, and be light. Forget shit and move on. Make everyone you love feel loved. Waste not, want not. Reuse stuff. Stop trying to get a tan and straighten your hair - you're just not made that way. Go to the movies, go to the library, go to the park. Try to make every day feel as close to a vacation as possible. Floss. — Judy Greer

To live in the midst of danger is to know how good life is," his father replied.
"But if we are lost in the danger?" Kino asked anxiously.
"To live in the presence of death makes us brave and strong," Kino's father replied. "That is why our people never fear death. We see it too often and we do not fear it. To die a little later or a little sooner does not matter. But to live bravely, to lobe life, to see how beautiful the trees are and the mountains, yes, even the sea, to enjoy work because it produces food for life - in these things we Japanese are a fortunate people. We love life because we live in danger. We do not fear death because we understand that life and death are necessary to each other."
"What is death?" Kino asked.
"Death is the great gateway," Kino's father said. — Pearl S. Buck

telling him how people had thought the same thing long before he and his brother were born, that it was the hubris of each generation to think this anew, to think that their time was special, that all things would come to an end with them. His father said it was hope that made people feel this, not dread. People talked of the end coming with barely concealed smiles. Their prayer was that when they went, they wouldn't go alone. Their hope was that no one would have the good fortune to come after and live a happy life without them. Thoughts — Hugh Howey

4. The falseness of an opinion is not for us any objection to it: it is here, perhaps, that our new language sounds most strangely. The question is, how far an opinion is life-furthering, life- preserving, species-preserving, perhaps species-rearing, and we are fundamentally inclined to maintain that the falsest opinions (to which the synthetic judgments a priori belong), are the most indispensable to us, that without a recognition of logical fictions, without a comparison of reality with the purely IMAGINED world of the absolute and immutable, without a constant counterfeiting of the world by means of numbers, man could not live - that the renunciation of false opinions would be a renunciation of life, a negation of life. TO RECOGNISE UNTRUTH AS A CONDITION OF LIFE; that is certainly to impugn the traditional ideas of value in a dangerous manner, and a philosophy which ventures to do so, has thereby alone placed itself beyond good and evil. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is good! It is only our thoughts, choices and actions towards the situations we meet in life each moment of time that makes life look bad! The same bad situation in life that makes one person think badly inspires another to do a noble thing! The same good situation in life that makes one person feel so good to get into a bad situation inspires another person to create another good situation because of the good situation. It is all about thoughts, choices and actions! Life is good! Live it well! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

There are actually two separate issues here. The first is whether (as ancient philosophers and Nietzsche assume) only the privileged elite can live a worthwhile life. The second is whether it's possible to fulfill the roles of both serious artist and upstanding citizen. It seems to me that philosophy can dissect both questions, by delineating clearly the anatomy of the good life and the structural conditions of the roles. — Philip Kitcher

a happy child grows up to be a happy adult. When I was growing up, spoiling a child meant ruining a child. If something was spoiled, it either went down the drain or was tossed into the rubbish. These days, however, parents pat themselves on the back because their children want for nothing. Wanting is good. If you want for nothing, then you have no goals. And if you have no goals, you have no life, no drive, and no ambitions. Chances are, if today's children don't inherit a lot of money from their parents, they'll grow up and live off the welfare system. — Jamie Eubanks

We have a good life when we manage to live with both satisfied and unsatisfied needs, when we are not obsessed by what is beyond our reach. — Kjell Magne Bondevik

It took me three and a half years to become a mom, so it makes me feel so good to know I'm giving my baby the best chance I can to develop a strong immune system and live a healthy life. — Constance Marie

Aim to live a wild, generous, full, exciting life - blessing those around you and seeing the good in all. — Bear Grylls

Devotion to your goal makes you live a clean and orderly life , given to search for truthand to helping people, and realization makes noble virtue easy and spontaneous, by removing for good the obstacles in the shape of desires and fears and wrong ideas . — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

You see that car?' he said. 'I drive where I want, I have everything I want and all my life I have had three meals a day. I have nice clothes and a good place to live. I've been given everything and it's time I did some- thing for someone besides myself. — Mike Ericksen

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

The thoughts that you think define your life that you live. So have good thoughts to have a great life. — Debasish Mridha

If they think you admire them, they will admire you because of your good taste, and when they admire you, you have an illusion for a moment that there's something to admire. All my life I've tried to live that illusion. — Graham Greene

I did not have an answer for the maestro that day. Instead my answer has been the labor of my life, principally my Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livy but also my little Prince. Despite what so many say, I did not embark upon this voyage to show men how evil can triumph, but to demonstrate that evil surely will triumph if good men do not strive to learn well its lessons. And now that my usefulness, if not my life itself, has ended, I can say before God and man that I have met the challenge of the great maestro of revered memory issued on the road to Cesenatico. For in my life's work, I crossed the unknown sea and charted a route for all men to follow, should they wish to live in peace and security. — Michael Ennis

Subtle brain differences often cause people like me to respond differently - strangely even - to common life situations. Most of us have a hard time with social situations; some of us feel downright crippled. We get frustrated because we're so good at some things, while being completely inept at others. There's just no balance. It's a very difficult way to live, because our strengths seem to contrast so sharply with our weaknesses. "You read so well, and you're so smart! I can't believe you can't do what I told you. You must be faking!" I heard that a lot as a kid. — John Elder Robison

Here's the core problem we have with the Sermon on the Mount: it isn't that Jesus' teachings are absurd; it's that we don't see the world that Jesus sees. We see a world of injustice and anger and hatred and violence--a world where everything good is in short supply and life itself is fragile. But Jesus saw a world in which his father was in control, in which justice was guaranteed, in which goodness was breaking forth, and in which life itself is without end. And if you see that world through the lens of the gospel, then what Jesus tells us to do and how he informs us to live makes perfect sense. — Skye Jethani

Sobriety is okay enough," Denny says, "but someday, I'd like to live a life based on doing good stuff instead of just not doing bad stuff. You know? — Chuck Palahniuk

Life is good to those who know how to live. I do not ever hope to accumulate great funds of worldly wealth, but I shall accumulate something far more valuable, a store of wonderful memories. When I reach the twilight of life I shall look back and say I'm glad I lived as I did, life has been good to me. — Sigurd F. Olson

Everybody enjoys what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy, and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when they walk into the room. Everybody wants that. It's easy to want that. A more interesting question, a question that most people never consider, is, "What pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for?" Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out. For — Mark Manson

The most important thing in my life is to be the best mother that I can be to my daughter and two sons; full of blessings and love. I can guide them, pray for their goals to be achieved, and follow a good path; but ultimately it will be up to them to live their own lives and make their own choices knowing there are rewards and consequences. — Ana Monnar

I can't do anything about my past, but I can do a lot to cooperate with my destiny. I am re-created in Christ Jesus, born anew, that I might do the good works that he laid out for me and live the good life. — Joyce Meyer

I've always been someone who's really tried to live in the here and now. My memory isn't very good so maybe that's why, but it just seems like I've been living this life, my current chapter, for a really long time and I don't really remember what it was like before. It's just been sort of ingrained in me. What I deal with day to day. — Jude Law

I learned what education was expected to do for an individual. Before going there I had a good deal of the then rather prevalent idea among our people that to secure an education meant to have a good, easy time, free from all necessity for manual labor. At Hampton I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labor, but learned to love labor, not alone for its financial value, but for labor's own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy. — Booker T. Washington

Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish - a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow - to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested ... Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll. — Hunter S. Thompson

A conscience without regrets ~ to live life without having to say you're sorry. — E.A. Bucchianeri

It was a lovely landscape. It was idyllic, poetical, and it inspired me. I felt good and noble. I felt I didn't want to be sinful and wicked anymore. I would come and live here, and never do any more wrong, and lead a blameless, beautiful life, and have silver hair when I got old, and all that sort of thing. — Jerome K. Jerome

Not all men are destined for greatness," I reminded him. "Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I changed the world today? — Robin Hobb

Pride was his life force; for us it was a live nerve that he could teach us to brush. One stroke, a good practice, and we could tingle for days ... First, he found the pride in each of us, then he taught us how good it could feel. What he was ultimately after was for every one of us to learn to light our own fires and glow our brightest. — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Animals praise a good day, a good hunt. They praise rain if they're thirsty. That's prayer. They don't live an unconscious life, they simply have no language to talk about these things. But they are grateful for the good things that come along. — Mary Oliver

Augustus Waters was the Mayor of the Secret City of Cancervania, and he is not replaceable", Isaac began.
"Other people will be able to tell you funny stories about Gus, because he was a funny guy, but let me tell you a serious one: A day after I got my eye cut out, Gus showed up at the hospital. I was blind and heartbroken and dind't want to do anything and Gus burst into my room and shouted, 'I have wonderful news!' And I was like, 'I don't really want to hear wonderful news right now' and Gus said, 'This is wonderful news you want to hear' and I asked him, 'Fine, what is it?' and he said, 'You're going to live a good and long life filled with great and terrible moments that you cannot even imagine yet!'"
Isaac couldn't go on, or maybe that was all he had written. — John Green

To write out the precepts again, we contend with them, and keep them; we build our humanity, and keep our humanity alive ... Thay has named the precepts 'wonderful' ... Wonderful because they can protect us, and show us how to live a joyous life, an interesting, adventurous, deep, large life, and how to be with one another, and with animals, plants, and all the Earth and universe. Wonderful because when we practice the precepts, we existentially become humane, we embody loving kindness ... Standing in the midst of burning ruins, I was glad that I knew the precepts. Though I kept their tenets imperfectly, even in aspiration I created some invisible good that could not be destroyed ... The Five Wonderful Precepts give clear and simple directions to finding that life. In devastation, I have blueprints for making home anew (90-92).
For a Future to Be Possible: Commentaries on the Five Wonderful Precepts — Maxine Hong Kingston

Between the dark, heavily laden treetops of the spreading chestnut trees could be seen the dark blue of the sky, full of stars, all solemn and golden, which extended their radiance unconcernedly into the distance. That was the nature of the stars. and the trees bore their buds and blossoms and scars for everyone to see, and whether it signified pleasure or pain, they accepted the strong will to live. flies that lived only for a day swarmed toward their death. every life had its radiance and beauty. i had insight into it all for a moment, understood it and found it good, and also found my life and sorrows good. — Hermann Hesse

If you have a story to tell, put it out there. Get the thing done. No excuses. No procrastinating. No apologies. It will never be as good as you want it to be, so forget about perfection. Just be satisfied that you've done the best work you can do at this stage in your life as an author. Then roll the rocket onto the launch pad and fire it off. After that, write another story. Always keep going. Move fast. Stay one step ahead of the forces of distraction and self-doubt. Love your characters enough to give them a good home. Love your readers enough to give them a place of refuge from life's tragedies, big and small. And love the world you live in enough to make it the world of your dreams. — James Hampton

All the way to heaven is heaven.' It is not just about the happy ending, but making every step along the way matter. It is a good way to live a life, do you think? — Becky Doughty

We face those that we have to face, and there will be times when we must make the choice to act for a greater good, even at risk to ourselves, but we do not lay down our lives needlessly. Each of us has only one life to live, and one life to give. — John Connolly

Men live a moral life, either from regard to the Diving Being, or from regard to the opinion of the people in the world; and when a moral life is practised out of regard to the Divine Being, it is a spiritual life. Both appear alike in their outward form; but in their inward, they are completely different. The one saves a man, but the other does not; for he that leads a moral life out of regard to the Divine Being is led by him, but he who does so from regard to the opinion of people in the world is led by himself. — Emanuel Swedenborg

Life at a vile boarding school is in this way a good preparation for the Christian life, that it teaches one to live by hope. — C.S. Lewis

Nothing has to happen for me to feel good! I feel good because I'm alive! Life is a gift, and I revel in it. — Tony Robbins

The world somehow is always the same. The only thing that can improve is the individual life. One can live a good life. One can give life a meaning. Either by drinking oneself to death or by painting oneself to death or by loving oneself to death. — Odd Nerdrum

We only live once, and how would you want to be remembered? I have kids. I have, due to my job, a probably higher responsibility to do good things in my life. But also, since I was a kid, I love doing things out of context, helping friends, being different, being a special kind of man is important for me. — Gilles Marini

The woman who truly intends to live a good life is already living phenomenally since intent is part of the achievement. — Maya Angelou

It's a pity Bilbo didn't kill Gollum when he had the chance.
Pity? It is pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. My heart tells me Gollum has some part to play in this, for good or evil ... (not finished yet) — J.R.R. Tolkien

After all, what good is a life saved if you fail to live it? — Lisa Wingate

Friends challenge the flaws in our thinking and the flaws in our character. When they do that, they make us better. Good friends hold us to a higher standard when we are ready to make an excuse for ourselves. Friends sympathize with our pain, but they stop us from wallowing in it. Friends point out our blind spots, and they do so not with vindictiveness or cruelty, but out of honesty, love, and a desire that we live the fullest and best life possible. — Eric Greitens

You can't write about stuff you don't know about. You have to live it. You have to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty. Live life to be a good songwriter. — Dierks Bentley

Today, I slept in until 10,
Cleaned every dish I own,
Fought with the bank,
Took care of paperwork.
You and I might have different definitions of adulthood.
I don't work for salary, I didn't graduate from college,
But I don't speak for others anymore,
And I don't regret anything I can't genuinely apologize for.
And my mother is proud of me.
I burnt down a house of depression,
I painted over murals of greyscale,
And it was hard to rewrite my life into one I wanted to live
But today, I want to live.
I didn't salivate over sharp knives,
Or envy the boy who tossed himself off the Brooklyn bridge.
I just cleaned my bathroom,
did the laundry,
called my brother.
Told him, "it was a good day. — Kait Rokowski

To affirm life is to deepen, to make more inward, and to exalt the will-to-life. At the same time the man who has become a thinking being feels a compulsion to give every will-to-live the same reverence for life that he gives to his own. He experiences that other life as his own. He accepts as being good: to preserve life, to raise to its highest value life which is capable of development; and as being evil: to destroy life, to injure life, to repress life which is capable of development. This is the absolute, fundamental principle of the moral, and it is a necessity of thought. — Albert Schweitzer

Don't live as though you were going to live a myriad years. Fate is hanging over your head; while you have life, while you may, become good. — Marcus Aurelius

Non-thinking is an act of annihilation, a wish to negate existence, an attempt to wipe out reality. But existence exists; reality is not to be wiped out, it will merely wipe out the wiper. By refusing to say 'It is,' you are refusing to say 'I am.' By suspending your judgment, you are negating your person. When a man declares: 'Who am I to know?'- he is declaring: 'Who am I to live? — Ayn Rand

Evil" is an inverted anagram of "live." As we live our life, learn to tame our own private demons and conquer evil with a good, pure, humble, courageous, patient heart. — Angelica Hopes

What do I miss, as a human being, if I have never heard of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? The answer is: Nothing. And what do I miss by not knowing Shakespeare? Unless I get my understanding from another source, I simply miss my life. Shall we tell our children that one thing is as good as another-- here a bit of knowledge of physics, and there a bit of knowledge of literature? If we do so, the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, because that normally is the time it takes from the birth of an idea to its full maturity when it fills the minds of a new generation and makes them think by it.

Science cannot produce ideas by which we could live. — Ernst F. Schumacher

The New Testament describes the characteristics of a "virtuous widow" who is qualified to receive help from believers. This woman's description seems to parallel the miraculous, poured-out life portrayed by the Proverbs 31 woman. She does not live for her own pleasure but is well reported for good works, bringing up children, lodging strangers, washing the saints' feet, relieving the afflicted, and diligently following every good work. How does she accomplish all of this? "She trusts in God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day" (1 Timothy 5:5-6,10). She lives a supernatural existence, accomplishing incredible things without stress and exhaustion because she makes prayer the foundation of her life. — Leslie Ludy

Time goes on, and your life is still there, and you have to live it. After a while you remember the good things more often than the bad. Then, gradually, the empty silent parts of you fill up with sounds of talking and laughter again, and the jagged edges of sadness are softened by memories. — Lois Lowry

The problem may be a literary one: we are given a single story line about what makes a good life, even though not a few who follow that story line have bad lives. We speak as though there is one good plot with one happy outcome, while the myriad forms a life can take flower - and wither - all around us.
Even those who live out the best version of the familiar story line might not find happiness as their reward. This is not necessarily a bad thing. I know a woman who was lovingly married for seventy years. She has had a long, meaningful life that she has lived according to her principles. But I wouldn't call her happy; her compassion for the vulnerable and concern for the future have given her a despondent worldview. What she has had instead of happiness requires better language to describe. There are entirely different criteria for a good life that might matter more to a person - honor, meaning, depth, engagement, hope. — Rebecca Solnit

It is an awful, just sickening feeling, I discovered, to live with somebody, to exist in the midst of sharing a life, only to realize it is utterly doomed. It was botulism of the soul. I'd had such ambition for building a life together, because I wanted that strength of character and security. But I had overlooked the most important thing: he wasn't right for me. I wasn't right for him. Merely wanting us to be right and good together wasn't enough. — Augusten Burroughs

But in short, the recipe for a growing person is always grace plus truth over time. Give a person grace (unmerited favor) an truth (structure), and do that over time, and you have the greatest chance of this person growing into a person of good character. Grace includes support, resources, love, compassion, forgiveness, and all of the relations sides of God's nature. Truth is the structure of life; it tells us how we are supposed to live our lives and how life really works. — Henry Cloud

Don't depend on a guy for your happiness. You have to live your own life and do your own thing. That's when good things come around - when you do your own thing and you're not worried about a man. It will happen in due time. — Keke Palmer

Shambhala does have unique teachings, as do many Buddhist traditions. For example, certain teachings within Shambhala have to do with raising the personal windhorse, or the energy of the individual, so a person has good fortitude to be able to live a good life. — Sakyong Mipham

I am always saddened by the death of a good person. It is from this sadness that a feeling of gratitude emerges. I feel honored to have known them and blessed that their passing serves as a reminder to me that my time on this beautiful earth is limited and that I should seize the opportunity I have to forgive, share, explore, and love. I can think of no greater way to honor the deceased than to live this way. — Steve Maraboli

He looked around. The room, a few suitcases, some belongings, a handful of well-read books - a man needed few things to live. And it was good not to get used to many things when life was unsettled. Again and again one had to abandon them or they were taken away. One should be ready to leave every day. That was the reason he had lived alone - when one was on the move one should not have anything that could bind one. Nothing that could stir the heart. The adventure - but nothing more. — Erich Maria Remarque

It's a a damn good day to be alive. — Michael Clifford

You were put on Earth to live a full life. To see and experience. To dream. To improve yourself and everything around you. To do good and to love. Mostly to love. That's worship, too, because that's the primary thing God asks of us." "Did — Scott Thompson

I was born Ezeogo Igariwey to live my life a legacy for the world,like a wound that healed with a scar that remains."My legacy will leave a mark on the world and I shall never be forgetten for my good,bad,and ugly deeds. — Tupac Shakur