Quotes about life

We like to think of life as a constant ... Yet it can be ended in a heartbeat."

What do you mean, why? Is it not obvious? What is life but a betrayal? We start out young, full of hope. The sun is good; the world awaits us. But every passing year shows how small you are, how insignificant against the power of the seasons. Then you age. Your strength fails, and the world laughs at you through the jeers of younger men. And you die. Alone. Unfulfilled. But sometimes ... sometimes there will come a man who is not insignificant. He can change the world, rob the seasons of their power. He is the sun.

"Foolish: It's all foolish. Life is a farce— a stupid, sickening farce played out by fools."

Look around you: see the people as they touch and show their love. But don't watch coldly, like an observer. Don't hover outside life—take part in it. There are people waiting to love you. It is not something you should turn down lightly.

All things in the world are created for man, yet all have two purposes. The waters run that we might drink of them, but they are also symbols of the futility of man. They reflect our lives in rushing beauty, birthed in the purity of the mountains. As babes they babble and run, gushing and growing as they mature into strong young rivers. Then they widen and slow until at least they meander, like old men, to join with the sea.

Life is nothing unless death has been faced down.

You may think life is sweet now, but when death is a heartbeat away then life becomes unbearably desirable. And when you survive, everything you do will be enhanced and filled with greater joy: the sunlight, the breeze, a good wine, a woman's lips, a child's laughter.

We are not made for life at all, old horse. It is made for us. We live it. We leave it.

There is a common response from people when they hear that in the absence of evidence to convince me otherwise I don’t have any particular belief in ghosts, psychic powers or an afterlife. It normally runs something along the lines of ‘So you think we just live, die and that’s it? Come on...’ There’s a clear implication there that this earthly life – the wonder of being human – is somehow worthless. That it’s cheap and disappointing enough to warrant that ‘just’ and the accompanying incredulous tone, which are usually reserved for sentences like ‘After all that it was just a little spider? Come on...’ I live, I am sure, in a fairly narrow band of life, and make an embarrassingly pitiful attempt to explore the world I find myself upon. I ache with guilt and conflict when I hear of people living as adventurers, abandoning mainstream lives and living each day with abandon. But I really hope I have a brighter vision for this life and a greater curiosity for its richness than one who can say, and mean, ‘You think we just live, die and that’s it?’

Suck all the juice this life will give! (p33)

She had a yearning to lose herself in this noisy throng of people going about the business of staying alive.

It is written:

That given any one of a thousand million possible paths, life will take them all;

That worlds which will support life will give birth to it;

That worlds which cannot support intelligent life will be colonized;

And that where both can take place, both will take place.

It is written that this is what the vast, unknowing interstellar stage is for: To be given consciousness and purpose while its gift of existence lasts.

It is written:

That this is a random process;

That in the end all will be darkness and silence again;

But that while it lasts, life spreads through it, to make it aware of its own vastness and beauty, which otherwise it can never have known.

This is a gift; but the Giver is unknown.

That too is written.