Worthwhile Life Quotes & Sayings

Two great questions are often posed about worthwhile living: Who has the good life? and Who is a good person? The first question gets addressed in ads, the second at funerals. Two — John Ortberg

Uplift & Inspire, do not be envious of others success. You are given the same hours in a day. Make it worthwhile! Instead of focusing on what someone else is doing, pay attention to how you're living and make the best of life — Amaka Imani Nkosazana

He spared a moment to hope that Edmund Herondale would find comfort in the arms of his beautiful mundane love, that he would live a life that made all he had lost and all he had suffered seem worthwhile. — Cassandra Clare

It is so easy to let life go by us in its swift amusing course, that sometimes it hardly seems worthwhile to attempt any bold strokes for truth. Truth, of course, does not need assistance; it can afford to ignore our errors. But in this quiet place, among the whisper of the trees, I seem to have heard a disconcerning sound. I have heard laughter, and I think it is the laughter of God. — Christopher Morley

Life is worthwhile in itself — Amelia Earhart

If a life could have a theme song - and I believe every worthwhile one has - mine is a religion, an obsession, a mania or all of these expressed in one word - individualism. I was born with that obsession, and I've never seen and do not know now a cause more worthy, more misunderstood, more seemingly hopeless and tragically needed. — Ayn Rand

Just because you don't want to see something doesn't mean that it will go away. Do you think inhumanity doesn't exist if you pretend not to see it? Or maybe get too drunk to understand? We've forgotten the things that make life worthwhile. — Bethany Griffin

The only knowledge that is worthwhile, writes Northrop Frye. is the knowledge that leafs to wisdom, for knowledge without wisdom is a body without life. — Leland Ryken

Everything worthwhile begins life as a mistake. — Gareth P. Jones

We have all experienced times when, instead of being buffeted by anonymous forces, we do feel in control of our actions, masters of our own fate. On the rare occasions that it happens, we feel a sense of exhilaration, a deep sense of enjoyment that is long cherished and that becomes a landmark in memory for what life should be like.. moments like these are not the passive, receptive, relaxing timesthe best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The truth is that anything worthwhile we do in life demands effort. — Rosalie De Rosset

Sometimes when we weep in the movies we weep for ourselves or for a life unlived. Or we even go to the movies because we want to resist the emotion that's there in front of us. I think there is always a catharsis that I look for and that makes the movie experience worthwhile. — Edward Zwick

GNP measures neither our courage, our wisdom neither our compassion. It measures everything except what makes life worthwhile — Robert Kennedy

Everything worthwhile ends. We are in the perpetual process now: creation, maturation, cessation. — John Logan

The tragedy of life is what makes it worthwhile. I think that any life which merits living lies in the effort to realize some dream, and the higher that dream is, the harder it is to realize. Most decidedly we must all have our dreams. If one hasn't them, one might as well be dead. The only success is in failure. Any man who has a big enough dream must be a failure and must accept that as one of the conditions of being alive. If ever he thinks for a moment that he is a success, then he is finished — Eugene O'Neill

You grab a bit of connection wherever you can to survive. You have no idea how strong the pull to feel worthwhile is. It's more basic than food. You go to these people who make you feel lovely for an hour that one time, and that's all you get. You're probably not compatible with them for anything long term, but right this minute they can make you feel powerful and valuable. It does not matter what will happen in a month. Whatever happens in a month is probably going to be just about as indifferent as whatever happened today or last week. None of it matters. We don't plan long term because if we do we'll just get our hearts broken. It's best not to hope. You just take what you can get as you spot it. I am not asking for sympathy. I am just trying to explain, on a human level, how it is that people make what look from the outside like awful decisions. — Linda Tirado

If you regret the mistakes you've made and don't wish to repeat them, then your whole life has been worthwhile. — E.R. Mason

Writing's much more romantic when its pen and ink and paper. It's... More timeless. and worthwhile. Think about it. There are so many words gushing out into the universe these days. All digitally. All in Comic Sans or Times New Roman. Silly Websites. Stupid news stories digitally uploaded to a 24-hour channel. Where's all this writing going? Who's keeping a note of it all? Who's in charge of deciding what's worthwhile and what isn't? But back then... Back then, if someone wanted to write something they had to buy paper. Buy it! And ink. And a pen. And they couldn't waste too many sheets cos it was expensive. So when people wrote, they wrote because it was worthwhile... not just because they had some half-baked idea and they wanted to pointlessly prove their existence by sharing it on some bloody social networking site. — Holly Bourne

...many forces that influenced the flow of the tale: boons and curses and manmade laws. There was no hero or villain in the epic, just people struggling with life, responding to crises, making mistakes, repeating mistakes, in innocence or ignorance, while trying to make their lives meaningful and worthwhile. — Devdutt Pattanaik

A self-made man, if he is made at all, has already won the battle of life ... he has learned to resist. He has learned the value of money, and how to refuse to spend it. He has learned the value of time, and how the conversion of it into useful things will make of his life something worthwhile. He has learned to say no, to say no at the right time and then to stand by it. Without resistance, and the self-denial which it often imposes, there is no real happiness. In the quest for happiness man must learn that temptation resisted strengthens the mind and the soul. — Alvin R. Dyer

GDP doesn't register, as Robert Kennedy put it, "the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, or the intelligence of our public debate." GDP measures everything, Kennedy concluded, "except that which makes life worthwhile." Nor does GDP take into account unpaid work, the so-called compassionate economy. — Eric Weiner

Otis, on the other hand, didn't miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just "big-boned". Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way.
But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet. — Elizabeth Warren

Hugs are part of everybody life for me. Hug all sorts of people - I don't worry about it looking unmanly or whatever. I think physical human contact is one of the things that makes living worthwhile. — A. J. McLean

Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile. — Vince Lombardi

I'm consciously shedding the assumption that a skeptical point of view is the most intellectually credible. Intellect does not function in opposition to mystery; tolerance is not more pragmatic than love; and cynicism is not more reasonable than hope. Unlike almost every worthwhile thing in life, cynicism is easy. It's never proven wrong by the corruption or the catastrophe. It's not generative. It judges things as they are, but does not lift a finger to try to shift them. I — Krista Tippett

The peaker learns surely and certainly that life can be worthwhile, that it can be beautiful and valuable. There are ends in life, i.e., experiences which are so precious in themselves as to prove that not everything is a means to some end other than itself. — Abraham Maslow

There were days when she was unhappy, she did not know why,
when it did not seem worthwhile to be glad or sorry, to be alive or dead; when life appeared to her like a grotesque pandemonium and humanity like worms struggling blindly toward inevitable annihilation. — Kate Chopin

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we've established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile. — Earl Nightingale

What matters is that life is good. It has a lovely texture, like some rich cloth or fur, or the petals of flowers, and everything else worthwhile. And that's as true for the last man as the first. — Fritz Leiber

There is no situation that could ever confront you that cannot be solved. Life takes on real meaning when you set values for yourself, regard yourself as worthwhile and elevate your thoughts to things that are of God-good. There is a Higher Power. Turn to it and use it; it is yours for the asking. — Bryan Adams

You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile. — Charlie Chaplin

It was a gift. You were a gift. A gift that made my life worthwhile. A gift that made life fun. A gift that filled me with music. A gift that filled me with love. A gift that inspired me to live on the bright side. — Kim Holden

I've been for 10 years trying to make something out of my life as an actor. I've learned a lot but I haven't done much that's worthwhile. So maybe if I make people wonder what I really do look like and make myself unrecognizable, they will be interested and intrigued, which eventually, of course, happened. — Christopher Lee

I found that nothing in life is worthwhile unless you take risks. — Denzel Washington

Unhappily we have to pay in life for everything worthwhile. If we want experience, depth and an understanding of life's infinite phases we have to suffer shock and sorrow and then, if we are strong enough to rise above them, life is a curious bittersweet affair. Too much of its bitter aspect is of course terrible, but too much of unalloyed sweetness can also be bad enough. — Pamela Hicks

Life is certainly only worthwhile as it represents struggle for worthy causes. There is no struggle in perfect security. I am quite certain that the human being could not continue to exist if he or she had perfect security. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

But, Catherine, everything's that true despite us - the things they're talking about, natural laws - will always remain true despite us. What matters is what's true because of us. That's what's up for grabs. That's where the battle is. One remembers and values one's life not for its objective truths, but for the emotional truths ... The only thing that's really true, that lasts, and makes life worthwhile is the truth that's fixed in the heart. That's what we live and die for. It comes in epiphanies, and it comes in love, and don't ever let frightened people turn you away from it. — Mark Helprin

When you spend seven years of your life working on something that you're really passionate about, and other people end up loving it, too, that just makes all of the work worthwhile. — Danielle Fishel

With the opening of the New Year, all the closed portals of limitations will be thrown open and I shall move through them to vaster fields, where my worthwhile dreams of life will be fulfilled. — Paramahansa Yogananda

I would like to mention some preparations that were required of me. The first preparation is to take a right attitude toward life. This means, stop being an escapist! Stop being a surface liver who stays right in the froth of the surface. There are millions of these people, and they never find anything really worthwhile. Be willing to face life squarely and get down beneath the surface of life where the verities and realities are to be found. That's what we are doing here now. — Peace Pilgrim

KERRYANNE: Paul didn't think it was worthwhile.
KYLE: Paul's a jackass. Well he's not in your life anymore so you're free to do whatever the heck you want ain't you? — Jordan Silver

Experienced things that caused you to deemed yourself unworthy. Healing the wounds of the past is one of the biggest and most worthwhile challenges of life. It's important to know when and how you were programed so you can change the program. In doing so is your responsibility no one else's. — Oprah Winfrey

Ah, that we lack the courage of our romantic convictions; and thereby miss the wine of life, forgoing the very thing that makes living worthwhile. — Hunter S. Thompson

We will never accomplish anything worthwhile in life if we require the guarantee of success at the onset. — Sherry Thomas

Don't spend too much time grieving for me, Elena. I know you're probably a little sad as you're reading this, since that means I'm dead and you're having to learn how to go on in a new way. I would be sad if you didn't miss me, so I won't tell you not to, but I will tell you to keep on living. The world is full of beautiful music, flowers, places, and experiences. Enjoy it all as much as you can. Just remember it's the people in your life that make it worthwhile...People and memories, not things are what's important in the end. Nothing else matters as much as that. — M. Reed McCall

Love is wonderful and worthwhile and enriching but it should never be a standoff between the person and the life that you want. — Heidi Priebe

God gave us dreams, but he gave us kids to make all those dreams worthwhile. And when I look at all my kids, I say everything that I've ever went through in my life was worthwhile. — Tracy Morgan

My mother worked for the social services all her life. She always said that in the middle of all the crap, in the thick of it all, you always had a sunny story turning up. Which makes it all worthwhile.' The next words that come are smiling. 'You're my sunny story, Britt-Marie. — Fredrik Backman

He would, he realized, find them or spend the rest of his life looking, and this might not take so long. So be it. All he had ever needed, in that desert or this, was some say in how it went, some reassurance that he would go doing something worthwhile. A sappy idea, but not therefore false. — Claire Vaye Watkins

My mom just died. We blink and another decade passes. I don't want to reach the end of my life and regret not having given my days everything in me to make them worthwhile. — Diana Nyad

All human beings seek the happy life, but many confuse the means - for example, wealth and status - with that life itself. This misguided focus on the means to a good life makes people get further from the happy life. The really worthwhile things are the virtuous activities that make up the happy life, not the external means that may seem to produce it. — Epictetus

The whole thing that makes a mathematician's life worthwhile is that he gets the grudging admiration of three or four colleagues. — Donald Knuth

Possible Ending #16 (Life Imitates Art Imitates Life Imitates Art Imitates): I'd seen this movie. Obvious ending: outright betrayal, lesson learned, life is heartbreak, people who mean well still fuck you over, everyone's sad, greedy, looking out for number one, no consideration for the fragile fat boy whose displayed cynicism only masks a deeper hope that everyone's okay, will ultimately end up all right, that love exists, that happiness may not be stable but at least comes in bursts, that everything worthwhile wasn't just a self-created illusion. — Adam Wilson

no worthwhile effort in one's life is either a success or a failure. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

- But, if life is just that, just being reasonable, then there is nothing in it - nothing worthwhile. So, the yearning that we have to keep dead things living - or to make unreasonable things reasonable. That is why a person should live. — Jesse Ball

Even a dull life could make worthwhile reading, he said, provided the writer paid sufficient attention to detail. — Susan Hubbard

Someone like you makes the sun shine brighter. Someone like you makes a sigh half a smile. Someone like you makes my troubles much lighter. Someone like you make life seem worthwhile. — James Wright Foley

Your life is your choice, so make it worthwhile — Wennie Lin

1. If something is worthwhile doing - do it well. Don't waste your and other's time.
2. Life is brief - never postpone forgiveness when in your power - it may set you free. — Danie Botha

Danger is the spice of life and you've got to take a risk now and then ... that's what makes life worthwhile. — Anthony Hopkins

Fuck them," says Susan Falls. This is the first time, in her entire life, that she has employed an extra-cerebral profanity. Though in fantasy she has often used swear words, she has never spoken one. It feels good, and it occurs to Susan that, as stupid as most people sound when they use profanities, as stupid as she must have sounded just now, the feeling of power that just rushed through her, from inner labia to thyroglossal duct, the trace sensations leftover from just now, just now when she said the word fuck, make sounding stupid more than worthwhile.
"Fuck them, then," Carla Ribisi agrees, and it is the hottest motherfucking thing Susan has ever heard. — Adam Levin

Summer makes me suicidal. It sucks all the magick out of life, and even sleeping becomes an exercise in fruitless brutality. I cannot comprehend what it is in the souls who await this misery. Nothing worthwhile can survive the heat. The birds and the bees are harbingers of hell, ushering in a season of disease. There is nothing in these months that speaks to me. It conspires to keep me from ever reaching home. — Damien Echols

One of the tests for positive thinking, for constructive thinking, is to test one's idle moments. At those times, is one's mind turning over negative critical thoughts; fighting battles that have been won or lost; rehashing senseless arguments? If so, then one is out of tune. But if one is thinking how to improve a situation or a procedure, how to gain a worthwhile objective, then one is on the constructive side of life. — Paul Davis

Nor should they be, but everyone needs to feel they're part of something worthwhile. That, in the last analysis, their life has some meaning in a larger context. The questions is what am I part of? What have I done? — Julian Fellowes

We choose this. This place. This life. What it will be, and how we live it. We are not slaves to gods, or fate, or destinies woven in veils of smoke. We choose the people we want to be, and we choose the shape of the world in which we live. Nothing worthwhile comes without sacrifice. There is nothing so easy as swimming with the current, nothing so difficult as being the first to stand up. To say no. To point at a thing wrong and name it so. There are none so brave as those who choose to stand, when all others are content to kneel. None so worthy of the title 'hero' as those who fight when there are none to see it. Who choose a life bereft of accolade or fanfare, a life of struggle for the idea that we are all the same. Every one of us. And every one of us has the right to be happy. To know peace. To know love. — Jay Kristoff

Embracing change can be daunting, but it is our willingness to do better that makes it worthwhile. — Peprah Boasiako

I believe that a worthwhile life is defined by a kind of spiritual journey and a sense of obligation. — William J. Clinton

Don't expect good things to come easily, we must work at them. Easy is to think about improving. Difficult is to put these thoughts into action. Easy is to stumble and fall. Difficult is to get back up. Easy is to judge the mistakes of others. Difficult is to recognize your own mistakes. Easy is to receive. Difficult is to give. Easy is to promise something. Difficult is to fulfill that promise. Easy is to say "I love you." Difficult is to show it every day. Most of the things we need in life are simple, but not easy. But things that are difficult are often the most worthwhile! — Anonymous

Life, he realize, was much like a song. In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile. — Nicholas Sparks

Life is like a movie, if you've sat through more than half of it and it's sucked every second so far, it probably isn't going to get great right at the end and make it all worthwhile. None should blame you for walking out early. — Doug Stanhope

You, Emily. You're worth fighting for. I fought all my life, but never for anything worthwhile. Now... Now I'm fighting for my heart. Bullshit ends here and now. — Nashoda Rose

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

It is part of the moral tragedy with which we are dealing that words like 'democracy,' 'freedom,' 'rights,' 'justice,' which have so often inspired heroism and have led men to give their lives for things which make life worthwhile, can also become a trap, the means of destroying the very things men desire to uphold. — Norman Angell

I resolve to be more patient, less selfish, cherish my friends, and in my small way help whoever needs help. I cannot conceivably influence the world's destiny, but I can make my own life more worthwhile. I can give some help to some people; that is not vital to all the world's problems and yet, I think if everyone did just that, we might see quite a world in our time! — Gladys Taber

Life isn't as magical here, and you're not the only one who feels like you don't belong, or that it's better somewhere else. But there ARE things worth living for. And the best part is you never know what's going to happen next. — O.R. Melling

Wishes I wish you sunshine on your path and storms to season your journey. I wish you peace - in the world in which you live and in the smallest corner of the heart where truth is kept. I wish you faith - to help define your living and your life. More I cannot wish you - except perhaps love - to make all the rest worthwhile. ROBERT A. WARD — Various

I wish I could understand the window in your soul. Mine has none such, but I believe in others'. It is as though mine says to me, You alone are damned. To you the daylight, to you the reality of what appears; for you the dead of Carthage will be dead forever, the pain everywhere the overmastering reality, the skull beneath the fairest skin always visible beneath the blue-veined temples, in the laughing teeth. To you, the lone and level sands covering human endeavor, the ephemerality of laughter. ... Only for others, the reality of human life, the game worthwhile as it is being played. Only for others, any kind of hope. Only for others, the window in the closed room.--or closed galaxy, it makes no difference. — James Tiptree Jr.

What makes life worthwhile is having a big enough objective, something which catches our imagination and lays hold of our allegiance, and this the Christian has in a way that no other person has. For what higher, more exalted, and more compelling goal can there be than to know God? — J.I. Packer

We care about knowledge because knowledge is crucial to a worthwhile, valuable life. The questions of epistemology may be abstract, but their importance to our lives is vital. — Duncan Pritchard

A person desires to leave a mark of goodness on earth before death arrives. All artists are creators in the face of death. All of life a person seeks to salvage something worthwhile and enduring from living a tragic life. We must eventually dance with death. A person begins on a road leading to personal enlightenment by giving up false beliefs, quelling destructive desires, overcoming fearfulness, and by seeking truth. In order to lead an evocative life full of truth, I must stop living a false life, conquer my fearfulness, and begin expressing love, wonder, and gratitude for all the beauty and splendor of the world. — Kilroy J. Oldster

For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is - limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death - He had the honesty and the courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game He is playing with His creation, He has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile. — Dorothy L. Sayers

I wasn't perfect, and I made mistakes; but I learned from them and became a better person for it. I always followed my heart. And most of all, I loved - with every ounce of my being. I guess you could say the greatest love story ever written isn't confined to the pages of a book. It's in our lives; and we're the ones who write it. So that's what life's all about, isn't it? Why we're here. It has nothing to do with dollars. In fact, it's totally free. Life's greatest gift. And the best part is, the best part, this gift we give to others ... we get it back. It's what makes the journey so worthwhile ... it's LOVE. — Sebastian Cole

The pursuit of meaning, not happiness, is what makes life worthwhile. — Tom Rath

The pursuit of happiness seems worthwhile only because of the chase. You love it only if you don't realize you're never going to catch up. — Bryan Way

Having a strong intent and purposes makes life worthwhile. — Steven Redhead

Would it have been worthwhile
If one settling a pillow by her head should say:
That is not what I meant at all
That is not it at all — T. S. Eliot

Apparently there is no profit in the unique, or not enough to make it worthwhile to preserve. Ultimately it drains the life out of us, and existentialism starts to make more and more sense. — Lewis Black

Everything that makes man's life worthwhile - family, work, education, a place to rear one's children and a place to rest one's head - all this depends on the decisions of government; all can be swept away by a government which does not heed the demands of its people, and I mean all of its people. — Robert Kennedy

Live an active life among people who are doing worthwhile things, keep eyes and ears and mind and heart open to absorb truth, and then tell of the things you know, as if you know them. The world will listen, for the world loves nothing so much as real life. — Dale Carnegie

Your mind is a galaxy. More dark than light. But the light makes it worthwhile. Which is to say, don't kill yourself. Even when the darkness is total. Always know that life is not still. Time is space. You are moving through that galaxy. Wait for the stars. 10. — Matt Haig

Everything worthwhile in life is attained through hard work. Happiness is not an exception. — Dennis Prager

Anything worthwhile is opposed. — Michael Hyatt

Awareness of having better things to do with their lives is the secret to immunizing our children against false values
whether presented on television or in "real life." The child who finds fulfillment in music or reading or cooking or swimming or writing or drawing is not as easily convinced that he needs recognition or power or some "high" to feel worthwhile. — Polly Berrien Berends

Everything worthwhile in life requires incremental effort — Radhakrshna Dasari

The travail of freedom and justice is not easy, but nothing serious and important in life is easy. The history of humanity has been a continuing struggle against temptation and tyranny - and very little worthwhile has ever been achieved without pain. — Robert Kennedy

I came to understand the value of education, not just to enable me to make a good living, but to enable me to make a worthwhile life. — Ruth Simmons

Life is short. We're only here to chase moments. I'd rather make those moments worthwhile. — Claire Contreras

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development. — Brian Tracy

Each small kindness given or received is evidence that life is worthwhile. — Donald Altman

It is very worthwhile to be tormented for two or three years of one's life, for the sake of being able to read all the rest of it. — Jane Austen