What Have You Done With Your Life Quotes & Sayings

Nicias, a famous general and Socrates' friend, warns the company: I don't think you know what it is like to get involved in a discussion with Socrates. Whatever the subject you begin with, he will continue to press the argument and he will not stop until until he has made you give a general account of yourself. You will have to account not only for your present mode of life, but also for everything you have done in the past. And even when he has made you do all of this, Socrates will not let you go until he has examined each question deeply and thoroughly. — Alexander Nehamas

Safe! All I wanted to do was keep them safe. How do you protect your brothers at eight-fucking-teen? How do you make enough money, get enough respect to do that? I wasn't smart, Eve. I'm a big, dumb fucking bastard. I couldn't even get a job as a bagger at the A&P. I wanted to make their lives worth living. That's what they'd done for me - made my life worth living. They're my family. I can't ... I just can't." Beckett pounded his chest.
"They would've been better off without me," he continued. "Blake would still be homeless, but Cole made his own damn way. But I wanted in. I wanted to belong. I was too fucking selfish to walk away. I should have walked away. But I didn't and now - " Beckett choked on a deep, angry sob. "Now, they're paying for it. All my stupid decisions. They'll die tonight. They'll both die, and I can't stop it. I can't plug it with money. I can't bring them back from the dead, even if I act tough or kill more people. — Debra Anastasia

A woman by the name of Terry Cole-Whittaker wrote an incredible book
entitled What You Think of Me is None of My Business. This title bears remembering and
repeating every day because, regardless of the goals, intentions, and dreams you aspire to,
there will always be someone to shower you with negativity. They might tell you that it can't
be done, that you'll never achieve it, or that you lack the ability or intelligence. They might
even laugh at you because of your optimism.

Regardless of the person, if you run with a crowd that doesn't support your goals and
intentions, you might want to get away from them as soon as possible. Their presence in your
life will kill your attitude, smother your energy, and snuff out your dreams. If you can't get
away from them, before you allow them affect you, keep in mind that the influence and power
they have over you is what you allow it to be. — Michael J. Russ

This reminds me of the place in Genesis 4 where God looks at Cain, who is full of self-pity, and says to him, "Cain, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is for you, but you must master it." What's important to understand is that the principle of self in your life is crouching at your door! It wants to have you, it wants to pounce on you, it wants to devour you. And it's up to you to do something about it. God asks that you deny yourself, that you lose yourself to find yourself. If you try to do this without the work of the Spirit, and without belief in all Christ has done for you, then simply giving up your rights and desires will be galling and hardening. But in Christ and with the Spirit, it will be liberating. — Timothy Keller

This is the first truth to be learned in life: that you are always responsible, nobody else. With that comes great freedom, because with that all alternatives are open. If you think that somebody else is responsible then you are a slave; then nothing is open. Then you have to be what you are. If your life is a tragedy then it has to be a tragedy, because others are responsible; unless they change, nothing can be done about it. You don't have any freedom. And that is the reason why millions of people live in misery: they think others are creating their misery. Nobody is creating your misery, nobody can create it; and nobody can create your bliss either. It is a totally individual phenomenon. It is just your work upon yourself. And the most strange thing is: to create misery is difficult and to create bliss is easy, but people always choose the difficult thing, because the difficult thing always gives them an ego-trip. — Osho

Purgatory exists as a result of God's mercy. The requirements for entering Heaven are very high because "nothing unclean will enter it" (Revelation 21:27). To go directly to Heaven you must be completely free from the stain of sin. What this means is that you cannot have any unrepented venial sin in your life, you must have fully paid the penalty for all of your sins, and you can not have attachments to the world that takes you away from God (i.e. materialism, jealousy, hatred, etc.). With this in mind you can see how difficult it is to avoid Purgatory, but with the grace of God it can be done. — Johan Cyprich

What I used to fear was growing old - not the aches and pains part or the what-have-I-done-with-my-life part or the threat of illness, none of that. I just couldn't imagine what my life would be like without the option of looking good. I had a piece of good luck. I married Rich in my late forties and thus was eased into middle age while living with a man who approved of the way I looked. When after three years of marriage I lamented the fact that I had put on a good deal of weight, he said, "Don't worry. I love it all. You can get as fat as you want." Then, upon reflection, he added sweetly, "As long as you can still get up from your chair. — Abigail Thomas

Must've been off my head, wandering around the harbour so long. Didn't even get the nightgowns. Are the kids okay? Damn, I wish I didn't always have to be home at the right time. At the Day of Judgement, God will say Stacy MacAindra, what have you done with your life? And I'll say, Well, let's see, Sir, I think I loved my kids. And He'll say, Are you certain of that? And I'll say, God, I'm not certain about anything any more. So He'll say, To hell with you, then. We're all positive thinkers up here. Then again, maybe He wouldn't. Maybe He'd say, Don't worry, Stacy, I'm not all that certain, either. Sometimes I wonder if I even exist. And I'd say, I know what you mean, Lord. I have the same trouble with myself. — Margaret Laurence

'It ain't ever over. You can't have no future if you don't have no past, and the past ain't never done with you...At the end of your life, all you have is what you know.' — Vicki Pettersson

Whatever you do, don't wake up at 65 years old and think about what you should have done with your life. — George Clooney

But clearly, they've gone as far as they can go with this whole doll thing. I mean, what are they going to do next? Make a life-size Leia doll? A kind of Stepford Leia? Which would render me obsolete. You'd read her book. So, thank God they haven't done that. And thank God they haven't come up with a life-size Leia sex doll. Because that would be truly humiliating. Thank God that they haven't made an $800 sex doll that you can put in your cornfield to chase away crows. Oh, wait, they have! — Carrie Fisher

Who says you have to be the best anyway?" "My dad." Michael gave him a curious look. "Is it because you've done time that you think you're not as good as anybody else?" "Oh, I think I'm as good. Other people are the problem." "Because you're an ex-con?" "And a carpenter. Not as much status in that as in what your dad does." "But if you do it well, that's all that counts. That's what Mom always says. She says I can be whatever I want in life, as long as I do it with passion. Do you do your work with passion? — Barbara Delinsky

There is a basic truth to shifting your life out of reverse and into a forward gear, and it is this: no matter what your circumstances are or what you have done in the past, God loves you with an everlasting love, and He will make your life count for something wonderful, if you will place your trust in Him. — Charles F. Stanley

Christ's version of kindness:
I know you are hurt. I contributed to that. Maybe, I should have said more. Done more. Listened. I am sorry for my part in the situation. I am sorry if I caused you any pain or confused you with my actions or words. How can I help you move on? I want you to have peace in your life. Let's end this by communicating.
The world's perverted version of kindness:
You caused your own pain. You get what you get. Get over it and move on. Maybe, one day you will figure out what happiness really means. By the way, I am not responsible for giving it to you. Nor, do I have to put up with people that don't bring me joy or who I can't trust. I am only responsible for myself. I will pray for you because I am a good Christian. — Shannon L. Alder

If you want to, you can let go of any feelings of resentment, of regret, of anger. You can accept that you are a fabulous human being because of all the bad things that have happened to you, not in spite of them. What is done is done, and you need to just get on with your life. Don't use the labels "good" and "bad." Yes, I know some of it is indeed bad, but it is how we let it affect us that is the real "bad." You could let all these things get you down, fizzle away internally like some emotional acid making you ill and resentful and stuck. But you will let them go, embrace them as character forming, and in general as positive rather then negative. — Richard Templar

I'm not going to pretend to know what's going on with you," he says. "But if you senselessly risk your life again
"
"I am not senselessly risking my life. I am trying to make sacrifices, like my parents would have, like
"
"You are not your parents You are a sixteen-year-old girl
"
I grit my teeth. "How dare you
"
"
who doesn't understand that the value of a sacrifice lies in its necessity, not in throwing your life away! And if you do that again, you and I are done. — Veronica Roth

Who am I? What have I done with my life? Who can I trust?
That last one is a doozy. It haunts you in moments of doubt. Sometimes when you wake up at night, you wonder if you've put your faith in the right people. Sometimes when you find yourself alone, for whatever reason, you review every little thing you know about someone, searching your memory for small, subtle things you may have missed about them. — Jim Butcher

Pay close attention. Listen carefully. Let's look at what happens when fear is in charge.

With fear in charge, you can never fully relax, let your guard down, be your true self. You can't open up because you are afraid of how people will respond if they were to meet the real you. When fear is in charge, you simply cannot take that chance. Fear will not allow honesty, fear despises spontaneity, and fear refuses to believe in you. Fear may mean well, but it ruins everything by overprotecting you, insisting that you stay hidden and keep a low profile, that your time is coming....sometime later.

Fear is bold, but insists that you be timid. Take a chance and there will be hell to pay: fear will call on its dear friend, shame, to meet you on the other side of your risk taking, to tell you what you should not have done. Fear will trip you, tackle you, smother you, do whatever it takes to cause you to hesitate, to stop you. In this way fear is fearless. — Thom Rutledge

I remember he asked his father, "Can this be true? This is the twentieth century, not the Middle Ages. Who would allow such crimes to be commited? How could the world remain silent?" And now the boy is turning to me. "Tell me," he asks, "what have you done with my future, what have you done with your life?" And I tell him that I have tried. That I have tried to keep memory alive, that I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget we are guilty, we are accomplices. And then I explain to him how naive we were, that the world did know and remained silent. And that is why I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. — Elie Wiesel

MY MOTHER PRAYED on her knees at midday, at night, and first thing in the morning. Every day opened up to her to have God's will done in it. Every night she totted up what she'd done and said and thought, to see how it squared with Him. That kind of life is dreary, people think, but they're missing the point. For one thing, such a life can never be boring. And nothing can happen to you that you can't make use of. Even if you're wracked by troubles, and sick and poor and ugly, you've got your soul to carry through life like a treasure on a platter. — Alice Munro

You can't go back', she told him bluntly. Her voice was neither kind nor unkind. 'That part of your life is over. Set it aside as something you have finished. Complete or no, it is done with you. No being gets to decide what his life is 'supposed to be'. — Robin Hobb

Release blame. It does not help you to go over and over what you think you should have done or said. Stop blaming other people too. You don't need to make yourself or other people "wrong" in order to deal with your life in the moment. — Sheri Kaye Hoff

Now think deeply.
What have you done with your life over the past year?
How do you feel inside? — Sean Covey

An actor is supposed to emulate life. Instead, alas, many are imitating other actors. You don't fashion your knowledge of theatre or your approach to a role on the basis of what other actors have done. This kind of thinking is a great danger, especially in dealing with TV producers who frequently say things like, 'This is a Sean Connery type.' — Theodore Bikel

When you are on your deathbed, and you look back into your life, it won't matter to you what you have done with your life. What will matter to you is what you have done all of your life with your heart. — John De Ruiter

A tear slipped from eye, as I stood helpless beside Kiran. "They have done nothing wrong, except fight for the freedom you have stolen from them, from all of us!" I shouted back, unable to stay silent when my friends stood at his mercy.
"I give you freedom, the freedom to live your life as you please," Lucan challenged, tilting his chin with pride and sincerity. "I ask nothing of you, except for your loyalty. I am the king, it is the least of what I deserve," Lucan turned to address the kingdom, his argument ringing through the air.
"Then why is it only your bloodline that is allowed immortality?" I argued, taking a step forward. "Why do the rest of our people suffer from the separation of races? Why are the Shape-shifters exiled by penalty of death? What have they done? What is their crime? Are you afraid to share true immortality? Are you so scared of a people that realize they don't need a king?" I turned to face the crowd too, hoping to empower them with my words. — Rachel Higginson

You will not find your identity in what you have, but in who has you. You will not find your identity in what you do, but in what has been done for you. And you will not find your identity in what you desire, but in who has desired - at infinite cost to Himself - a relationship with you. Christ is your life. He gives you a new identity and will work that new identity out in your life until the day when He appears. On that day you will finally see clearly, as Christ sees you now. You will know as you are known. And you will understand that the truest thing about you - that in Christ God called you His beloved in whom He is well pleased - has been true all along. And is now true forever. Believe. Trust. Base your entire identity and worth on that fact. — David Lomas

I've done a lot of living and a lot of adventuring and I think that's very healthy, ya know. And I think everybody should adventure life 'cos that's what life is, it's for adventuring. You gotta know what you wanna do with your life. And you gotta know when you have something special and you don't wanna blow it. — Joey Ramone

When I give, it does not come with strings. I'm not keeping track of what you owe me. When I give, I choose to do so without ulterior motives. I give because I know what it's like to be without. To long for and be ignored; to speak and not be heard; to care for and have nothing returned. When I give it's because I know the value in what I have in my heart. And I refuse to let the world stop me from sharing that, But when things start being taken for granted, When you no longer appreciate my sincerity, I won't switch, I won't get angry, and I won't be spiteful. I'll just get smart, and change your role in my life. Because when I give, I'm all in. But when I'm done, there's no turning back. — Rob Hill

What is it you do, then? I'll tell you: You leave out whatever doesn't suit you. As the author himself has done before you. Just as you leave things out of your dreams and fantasies. By leaving things out, we bring beauty and excitement into the world. We evidently handle our reality by effecting some sort of compromise with it, an in-between state where the emotions prevent each other from reaching their fullest intensity, graying the colors somewhat. Children who haven't yet reached that point of control are both happier and unhappier than adults who have. And yes, stupid people also leave things out, which is why ignorance is bliss. So I propose, to begin with, that we try to love each other as if we were characters in a novel who have met in the pages of a book. Let's in any case leave off all the fatty tissue that plumps up reality. — Robert Musil

Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes. There is his commission, his work. 'The kingdom is to be in the midst of your enemies. And he who will not suffer this does not want to be of the Kingdom of Christ; he wants to be among friends, to sit among roses and lilies, not with the bad people but the devout people. O you blasphemers and betrayers of Christ! If Christ had done what you are doing who would ever have been spared' (Luther). — Dietrich Bonhoeffer

If you can just immerse yourself in your life, it doesn't matter what you do everyday. Just do it intensely. Be in it, so that when you go to sleep you're exhausted every night and you say, 'Whoa, I just couldn't have done any more with that day.' — Diana Nyad

Stephen Herondale would have killed me if he'd ever met me. I would not have been safe living among people like you, or like him. I am the wife and mother of warriors who fought and died and never dishonored themselves as you have. I have worn gear, wielded blades, and slain demons, and all I wished was to overcome evil so that I could live and be happy with those I loved. I'd hoped I had made this a better, safer world for my children. Because of Valentine's Circle, the Herondale line, the line that was my son's children's children, is finished. That happened through you and your Circle and your husband. Stephen Herondale died with hate in his heart and the blood of my people on his hands. I can imagine no more horrible way for mine and Will's line to end. I will have to carry for the rest of my life the wound of what Valentine's Circle has done to me, and I will live forever. — Cassandra Clare

I'd reached the age where you ask yourself what you've done with your life, what you would have liked to have done with it. I had the impression of not having lived my life, of having always observed it at a distance, of having developed only one side of myself and being poor as a person. You were, and always had been, richer than I was. You'd blossomed and grown in every dimension. You were at one with your life; whereas I'd always been in a hurry to move on to the next task, as though our life would only really begin later. — Andre Gorz

You have to be able to say, OK, that happened back then. Now let's take it from here and see what happens. It would be very easy to hate people for the rest of your life, and some people have done that. You've got to deal with what's happening now and try to make things better. — Michael Jordan

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

How does one go on after doing such unspeakable things? It's
all rather simple, really," he continued, speaking in someone else's voice. "Say to yourself, 'What things?' And it becomes clear ... you are blameless. They brought it on themselves. What have they ever done for you except control your life? They tore you away from your sister; they ripped you from your home. Did you ask to be saved? No! Forget them and start over ... with us, your true family, my Corcitura, my own. — Melika Dannese Lux

When you have a bad year, there is this need to package it up and write it off-as I have done in the past. I hope, in 2014, when things go badly-people create themselves a New Years's day the moment they need it. Don't make 12 resolutions in January but one with every breath. Don't wait until December 31st to start anew.You can divide time with months and days and weeks-but each minute is only a minute long and belongs completely to itself. What you do in those tiny moments that seem so inconsequential are what will define not only your year-but your life — S.K. Munt

And the most important thing? To know that you were not born like this. You were not born scared and self-loathing and overwhelmed. Things have been done -which means things can be undone. It is hard work. But you are not scared of hard work, compared to everything else you have dealt with. Because what you must do right now, and for the rest of your life, is learn how to build a girl. You. — Caitlin Moran

I wonder what Thoreau would have done...[H}is greatest story, I thought, was his life. He knew that anything is possible when you wield the pen and claim your life as your own. But the truth is so few have the privilege to write their own stories. People are born
into poverty without a hope of redemption. Children are abused and damaged. Disease and war and famine and a million other things prevent them from wielding the pen. But for those of us who can, should it not be our great privilege
to live the lives we've imagined? To be who we want to be? To go on our own great journeys and share our experiences with others? — Ken Ilgunas

If you're constantly ruminating about what you just did- or what you should have done- or what you would have done if you only had the chance, you will miss your life. Ok, you will fail to connect with it. You will fail to connect with other people. — Sam Harris

Imagine, what could you really accomplish if your speech was filled with more statements that began with "I can" than with "I can't"? How far could your dreams soar if you said, "Why not me?" instead of "Why me?" more often? And just like when you are learning a new language, you're still going to slip up and say, "I could have done . . ." instead of "I will do . . ." Surround yourself with native successful speakers, and before you know it, you'll begin to speak the life of your dreams into existence. — Steve Harvey

And when I die all the memories of my own life will go to the grave with me, God willing, and Dick will never have to look back at them. And his children will never even know what my life was like. They'll know nothing of grinding stones and being hungry and ashamed all day and being beaten by a teacher who couldn't write himself and being sure you kept your mind so empty that you had no thoughts at all. And that's what I've done for them, that's my gift to them and to all their children ever after, so don't talk to me about being hard. — Sebastian Faulks

But this book is about something else: what goes on in the lives of real people when the industrial economy goes south. It's about reacting to bad circumstances in the worst way possible. It's about a culture that increasingly encourages social decay instead of counteracting it. The problems that I saw at the tile warehouse run far deeper than macroeconomic trends and policy. too many young men immune to hard work. Good jobs impossible to fill for any length of time. And a young man [one of Vance's co-workers] with every reason to work - a wife-to-be to support and a baby on the way - carelessly tossing aside a good job with excellent health insurance. More troublingly, when it was all over, he thought something had been done to him. There is a lack of agency here - a feeling that you have little control over your life and a willingness to blame everyone but yourself. This is distinct from the larger economic landscape of modern America. — J.D. Vance

So many people have the TV or radio constantly turned on "for company," or spend their time reading trashy novels, aimlessly surfing the Net, and so on. Then suddenly one day you are old or sick and you realize you have done nothing with your life. All your thoughts are other people's thoughts and you have no idea who you really are or what the purpose of your life might be. — Karen Kingston

O your life, your lonely life
What have you ever done with it,
And done with the great gift of consciousness?
What will you ever do before Death's knife
Provides the answer ultimate and appropriate?
As I for my part felt in my heart as one who falls,
Falls in a parachute, falls endlessly, and feels the vast
Draft of the abyss sucking him down and down,
An endlessly helplessly falling and appalled clown:
This is the way the night passes by, this
Is the overnight endless trip to the famous unfathomable abyss. — Delmore Schwartz

If you can cut yourself - your mind - free of what other
people do and say, of what you've said or done, of the things
that you're afraid will happen, the impositions of the body
that contains you and the breath within, and what the whirling
chaos sweeps in from outside, so that the mind is freed from
fate, brought to clarity, and lives life on its own recognizance
- doing what's right, accepting what happens, and speaking
the truth
If you can cut free of impressions that cling to the mind,
free of the future and the past - can make yourself, as
Empedocles says, "a sphere rejoicing in its perfect
stillness," and concentrate on living what can be lived
(which means the present) ... then you can spend the time
you have left in tranquillity. And in kindness. And at peace
with the spirit within you. — Marcus Aurelius

No, you're the girl I'm in love with. I love you more than my own life," Jack declared fervently. "If anything happens to you Maia, it will be over for me. I'm never gonna come back from losing you - not in ten, not in fifty years. So I'm asking you not to throw away what we have on some fucking job someone else can do. I'm begging you to give what we have a chance. You've done your time; it's OK to slow down, babe. I promise you, I'll make it my life's priority to make you happy."
~Jack to Maia — Victoria Paige

I do not long for those days. I have no desire to make you "tough" or "street," perhaps because any "toughness" I garnered came reluctantly. I think I was always, somehow, aware of the price. I think I somehow knew that a third of my brain should have been concerned with more beautiful things. I think I felt that something out there, some force, nameless and vast, had robbed me of ... what? Time? Experience? I think you know something of what that third could have done, and I think that is why you may feel the need for escape even more than I did. You have seen all the wonderful life up above the tree-line, yet you understand that there is no real distance between you and Trayvon Martin, and thus Trayvon Martin must terrify you in a way that he could never terrify me. You have seen so much more of all that is lost when they destroy your body. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

He will not, I think, find it logical to live with what he has done today. I have told him that you are his responsibility. While he believes that, he will continue to protect you. I tell you this, so that you will understand what is happening. He will measure his life by your helplessness. — Dorothy Dunnett

Now put down only what you actually had to do in the event." "What I had to do?" "Right. Because there are no such things as shoulds and woulds in the universe." "There aren't?" I'm starting to suspect Keith a bit. For someone in Anxiety Management, he's giving me an exercise that is fairly confusing and anxiety-provoking. "No," he says. "There are only things that could have turned out differently. You don't have any shoulds or woulds in your life, see? You only have things that could have gone a different way." "Ah." "You never know what truly would have happened if you had done your shoulds and woulds. Your life might have turned out worse, isn't that possible?" "I don't see how it's really possible, seeing as I'm on the phone with you. — Ned Vizzini

You're wasting your time, she wanted to tell them. I don't care about your cars or your properties or your bags of gold. What have you done with your life? What are you going to do with it? That's all that matters. — Sharon Shinn

A writer is a dangerous friend. Everything you say, all of your life and experience, is fodder for our writing. We mean you no harm, but what you know and what you've done is unavoidably fascinating to us. Being friends with a writer is a bit like trying to keep a bear as a pet. They're wonderful, friendly creatures, but they play rough and they don't know their own strength or remember that they have claws. Choose the stories you tell to your writer friends carefully. — Randy Murray

Life is funny. You start out with limitless potential, but time is always shaving away the possibilities. Every choice you make is the choice not to do a thousand other things. What's important, when all is said and done, is that you made a difference. Your choices, and everything undone, have to mean something. Otherwise, what was the point? I'm lucky that way. My path was already there. I had only to walk it. I often thought even if no one knew of the good I had done with my life, it didn't matter. That it was done is all that counts in the end. But then I died. And I hadn't gotten to do any of it yet. — Brian Clevinger

Someone once asked me what I regarded as the three most important requirements for happiness. My answer was: A feeling that you have been honest with yourself and those around you; a feeling that you have done the best you could both in your personal life and in your work; and the ability to love others. — Eleanor Roosevelt

You ask yourself: where are your dreams now? And you shake your head and say how swiftly the years fly by! And you ask yourself again: what have you done with your best years, then? Where have you buried the best days of your life? Have you lived or not? Look, you tell yourself, look how cold the world is becoming. The years will pass and after them will come grim loneliness, and old age, quaking on its stick, and after them misery and despair. Your fantasy world will grow pale, your dreams will fade and die, falling away like the yellow leaves from the trees ... Ah, Nastenka! Will it not be miserable to be left alone, utterly alone, and have nothing even to regret - nothing, not a single thing ... because everything I have lost was nothing, stupid, a round zero, all dreaming and no more! — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

You could've sent a message to a letter station at one of the portal gates."
"What should I have written? Dear Harlot, rumor has it that you are very happy with your new life in Rothkalina with your beloved brother Omort. I hear that you have all the gold you could ever want, and I know how much you always enjoyed a good blood orgy. Well done, Melanthe! By the way, would you like to meet for a rational discussion about our future?"
"Well. I did have a lot of gold."
Do not strangle her! — Kresley Cole

I need to check your ankle."
"Ask."
"If you object, I - "
"Giving me a chance to object is not the same as asking permission. You're used to telling people what to do. That works with those guards you're in charge of. You aren't in charge of me. You have to ask."
One corner of his mouth turned up. "It's more efficient my way."
"If your primary goal in life is efficiency, you should just die."
That startled him. His head actually jerked back. "What?"
"The most efficient way to live a life is to die a couple seconds after you're born. Pfft. Done." She dusted her hands to demonstrate that. "It's too late for you to achieve optimal efficiency, but you could still ... — Eileen Wilks

What is life without this? which was why, in the end, it was I, and not her, who blurted out, not once, but many, many times, You'll kill me if you stop, you'll kill me if you stop, because it was also my way of bringing full circle the dream and the fantasy, me and him, the longed-for words from mouth to mouth, which was when I must have begun using obscenities that he repeated after me, softly at first, till he said, "Call me by your name and I'll call you by my name," which I'd never done in my life before and which, as soon as I said my own name as though it were his, took me to a realm I never shared with anyone in my life before, or since. — Andre Aciman

You are thinking about where your brain is at any time. It's very tricky but it's why women are very well suited to rule the world in the future, because of the multi-tasking they do and their ability to be moving in 15 directions at once. It's the women who behave like men, who focus in that singular way with the blinkers on, who have problems. You get a lot more done that way maybe, but you also lose the perception of who's behind you, what's going on, the 360 degrees of it, the whole picture of life that we do have as women. — Meryl Streep

You get a tattoo like this and a 'do like this, and wear a shirt where the tattoo shows, and you walk into a room of people and feel the animosity, the disapproval, the how-dare-you. You can feel it coming off them like heat off a stove. And the thing I want to ask them is, how have I deserved this, what have I done that so offends you? I have not asked you to cut your hair this way. I have not asked you what you thought of it, or to approve it. So why do you feel this way towards me? If you can't get past my 'too - my tattoo - and my 'do - the way I got my hair cut - it's only because you have decided there are certain things that can be done with hair and certain things that cannot be done with hair. And certain of them are right and proper and decent, and the rest indicate a warped, degenerate nature; therefore I am warped and degenerate. 'Cause I got my hair cut a different way, man? You gonna really live your life like that? What's wrong with you? — Harry Crews

On earth, however, God doesn't prescribe a happy life. Look at some of the Psalms. They are written by people of great faith, yet they run the emotional gamut. One even ends with "darkness is my closest friend" (Ps. 88:18). When your emotions feel muted or always low, when you are unable to experience the highs and lows you once did, the important question is not "How can I figure out what I have done wrong?" but it is, "Where do I turn - or, to whom do I turn - when I am depressed? — Edward T. Welch

when you forgive someone, it doesn't diminish or erase what was done to you. You don't have to understand why they did it, and you certainly don't have to be on friendly terms with someone who's hurt you. When you forgive someone, you're doing it to release their debt to you." "Debt?" "Yes, you're moving on with your life and you don't require anything from the person who hurt you. — Andrew Peterson

I have no regrets."
"That's a pity," Hunt said easily. "Having regrets is the only sign that you've done anything interesting with your life."
"What are your regrets, then?"
"Oh, I don't have regrets, either." A wicked glint appeared in his dark eyes. "Not for the lack of trying, of course. I keep doing unspeakable things in the hopes that I'll be sorry for them later. But so far ... nothing."
-Annabelle & Simon — Lisa Kleypas

I would like to say to the men and women of the generations which will come after us: you will look back at us with astonishment. You will wonder at passionate struggles that accomplished so little, at the, to you, obvious paths to attain our ends which we did not take. At the intolerable evils before which it will seem to you we sat down passive. At the great truths staring us in the face which we failed to see, at the great truths we grasped at but could not get our fingers quite 'round. You will marvel at the labour that ended in so little. But what you will never know that it was how we were thinking of you and for you that we struggled as we did and accomplished the little that we have done. That it was in the thought of your larger realization and fuller life that we have found consolation for the futilities of our own. All I aspire to be and was not, comforts me. — Olive Schreiner

You may have success in life, but then just think of it - what kind of life was it? What good was it - you've never done the thing you wanted to do in all your life. I always tell my students, go where your body and soul want to go. When you have the feeling, then stay with it, and don't let anyone throw you off. — Joseph Campbell

I am completely in charge of the choices I make about what I am doing to lose weight and get healthy. And you know what? We all have this power. Don't be angry with me for something good I've done for myself. Be angry with yourself for not having the courage to do the same in your own life. — Jennifer Hudson

One of Us:
Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us. — Brian Andreas

If we are sowing lots of thoughts about shoes, cars, clothes, computer games, shopping, guns, and very few thoughts about things of the Lord, we will not reap spiritual maturity, spiritual priorities, greater desire for the Lord, or a closer relationship with the Lord. We will reap vanity, shallowness, and even greater spiritual disinterest and distance from the Lord. If we struggle with being uninterested in the things of the Lord, we need to consider that this is something we have actually done to ourselves. If we sow a desire to charm, amuse, or impress our friends, we will not reap relationships based on a selfless, sacrificial, Christ-like interest in our friend's spiritual welfare. We will reap self-serving, exploitive relationships that can actually drag our friends down. This is a life and death matter: what you are sowing in every little conversation that you have. Are you building up, edifying your friends? — Botkin

She shook her head and said," If there's one thing I've learned in my life, it's that shitty things happen. You can't always stop them. They just happen. And yeah, you can let them destroy you, but what's the point? Might as well learn to deal with all those shitty things and move on."
"Is that what you did?"
"Yes." She paused. "And you will too. You just have to accept your loss and try your best to live out the rest of your life without letting the loss destroy you."
"Easier said than done," he muttered.
She laughed. "Who said life was easy? — Elle Kennedy

Your generation is suffering from what for lack of a better word I shall call over-debunk. There was a lot of debunking that had to be done, of course. Bigotry, militarism, nationalism, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, phonyness, all sorts of dangerous, ready-made, artificially preserved false values. But your generation and the generation before yours went too far with their debunking job. You went overboard. Over-debunk, that's what you did. It's moral overkill. It's like those insecticides Rachel Carson speaks of in her book, that poison everything, and kill all the nice, useful bugs as well as the bad ones, and in the end poison human beings as well. In the end, it poisons life itself, the very air we breathe. That's what you did, morally and intellectually speaking. Yours is a silent spring. You have overprotected yourselves. You are all no more than twenty, twenty-two years old, but yours is a silent spring, I'm telling you. Nothing sings for you any more. — Romain Gary

When a lot of athletes get done playing, they end up in some really tough positions. They have a hard time transitioning because their identity is wrapped up in who they are as a player and what they do rather than who they can be in Christ. We desire to help people understand the invitation that God has given each one of us as Christ followers to be a part of this global redemptive story. If you can't give your life to something with meaning and purpose of that magnitude then there's nothing there. — Aaron Kampman