The internal machinery of life, the chemistry of the parts, is something beautiful. And it turns out that all life is interconnected with all other life.

In every parting there is an image of death.

Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you, you’re gonna die, so how do you fill in the space between here and there? It’s yours. Seize your space.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

Civilisations have been destroyed many times, and this civilisation is no different. It can be destroyed. We can think of time in terms of millions of years and life will resume little by little. The cosmos operates for us very urgently, but geological time is different.

Parting is all we know of heaven, and all we need of hell.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Anything in any way beautiful derives its beauty from itself and asks nothing beyond itself. Praise is no part of it, for nothing is made worse or better by praise.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

When you’re 25 or 30, you know, you can’t wear lime-green eye shadow anymore.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

Whether for life or death, do your own work well.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.

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

My work is about my life, and what I want to do with it.

I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

In judging of a beautiful statue, the aesthetic faculty is absolutely and completely gratified by the splendid curves of those marble lips that are dumb to our complaint, the noble modelling of those limbs that are powerless to help us.

Life is a lively process of becoming.

Mars is the only place in the solar system where it’s possible for life to become multi-planetarian.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

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

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Without doubt, machinery has greatly increased the number of well-to-do idlers.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

One of the most basic factors in sports is that winning becomes a habit, and losing is the same way. When failure starts to feel normal in your life or your work or even your darkest vices, you won’t have to go looking for trouble, because trouble will find you. Count on it.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

Beauty in distress is much the most affecting beauty.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.

Consider a tree for a moment. As beautiful as trees are to look at, we don’t see what goes on underground – as they grow roots. Trees must develop deep roots in order to grow strong and produce their beauty. But we don’t see the roots. We just see and enjoy the beauty. In much the same way, what goes on inside of us is like the roots of a tree.

The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.

It is impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture. That which I have insisted upon as the life of the whole, that spirit which is given only by the hand and eye of the workman, can never be recalled.

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Courage is the price that life exacts for granting peace.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

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.

If a work of art is rich and vital and complete, those who have artistic instincts will see its beauty, and those to whom ethics appeal more strongly than aesthetics will see its moral lesson. It will fill the cowardly with terror, and the unclean will see in it their own shame.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Beauty is worse than wine, it intoxicates both the holder and beholder.

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.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.