‚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.‘

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Fate pulls you in different directions.

Forever is composed of nows.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

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

There is nothing permanent except change.

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.

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.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

What we feel and think and are is to a great extent determined by the state of our ductless glands and viscera.

I have always reckoned the dignity of the republic of first importance and preferable to life.

Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment.

You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Once I knew only darkness and stillness… my life was without past or future… but a little word from the fingers of another fell into my hand that clutched at emptiness, and my heart leaped to the rapture of living.

This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life’s possibilities.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Life is very difficult. One of the most ancient of religious ideas that emerges everywhere, I would say, is that life is essentially suffering.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

If I can put one touch of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God.

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

Without discipline, there’s no life at all.

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

Life is a lively process of becoming.

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.

You see, you are a spirit, you have a soul, and you live in a body. You have emotions, you have thoughts, you have a will, and you have a conscience. You are a complex being! And Jesus came to heal every single part of you. There’s not one part that He doesn’t want to make completely whole.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

I’ll die a crazy old man!

No one can pass through life, any more than he can pass through a bit of country, without leaving tracks behind, and those tracks may often be helpful to those coming after him in finding their way.

First and foremost comes my family and my life with Brad. We have so much joy in raising our children and teaching them about the world that nothing really compares to that.

Life is too short for long-term grudges.

Life in abundance comes only through great love.

Please don’t make the mistake of thinking that ‚Oryx and Crake‘ is anti-science. Science is a way of knowing, and a tool. Like all ways of knowing and tools, it can be turned to bad uses. And it can be bought and sold, and it often is. But it is not in itself bad. Like electricity, it’s neutral.

Satisfaction consists in freedom from pain, which is the positive element of life.

If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun. A true friend is more to be esteemed than kinsfolk.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

Music is the voice that tells us that the human race is greater than it knows.

In seeking comfort, we generally find a quiet corner in life where there is a minimum of conflict, and then we are afraid to step out of that seclusion.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

Eloquence is a painting of the thoughts.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

On life’s vast ocean diversely we sail. Reasons the card, but passion the gale.