Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

Great grief does not of itself put an end to itself.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

The best thing to hold onto in life is each other.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

If a man had more than one life, I think a little hanging would not hurt this one; but after he is once dead, we cannot bring him back, no matter how sorry we may be; so the boy shall be pardoned.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.

I mean… in life… what relationship is easy?

Passions are the gales of life.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

It’s not morbid to talk about death. Most people don’t worry about death, they worry about a bad death.

How did it get so late so soon? Its night before its afternoon. December is here before its June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

I think, often, people who run away are people who got into things most enthusiastically, and then they want more. They just demand more of life than what is happening in the moment. Sometimes this is a great mistake, as it’s always a good deal different than you expect it.

I’m here as a product of process of evolution, which doesn’t make very many exceptions. And which rates life relatively cheaply.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

You never get over losses. I’ve never gotten over one loss I’ve had in my career. They always stick with me.

Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery’s shadow or reflection: the fact that you don’t merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.

The Bible says that as Christians we don’t grieve the same way people do who have no hope of eternity and of Heaven – but we still grieve.

Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

We spend our lives, all of us, waiting for the great day, the great battle, or the deed of power. But that external consummation is not given to many: nor is it necessary. So long as our being is tensed, directed with passion, towards that which is the spirit of all things, then that spirit will emerge from our own hidden, nameless effort.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Health is the soul that animates all the enjoyments of life, which fade and are tasteless without it.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

My weak spot is laziness. Oh, I have a lot of weak spots: cookies, croissants.

My life is mine to remember.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes.

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.

We do not know what love is. We know the symptoms of it, the pleasure, the pain, the fear, the anxiety and so on. We try to solve the symptoms, which becomes a wandering in darkness. We spend our days and nights in this, and it is soon over in death.

I’ve lost both parents in the last two years, so you pick up on that stuff. That’s the most terrible thing about being an author – standing there at your mother’s funeral, but you don’t switch the author off. So your own innermost thoughts are grist for the mill.

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

Nowadays, manners are easy and life is hard.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

Life is so, so short. Bible says it’s like a vapor.

If a whole bunch of people want to make your life a living hell, they’re gonna do it.

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

An unused life is an early death.

I had a friend who was a clown. When he died, all his friends went to the funeral in one car.

Fate pulls you in different directions.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.

Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die.

Life is a lively process of becoming.