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I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
WILLIAM FAULKNER, Mosquitoes
Black river of torture, writhing senselessly, whirlpool of life, in vain I search thee for one moment's rest.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT, "Arizona"
When people say that they are happy with their lives, they do not usually mean that they are literally joyful, or experiencing pleasure, all the time. They mean that, upon reflection on the balance sheet of pleasures and pains, they feel the balance to be reasonably positive over the long term.
DANIEL NETTLE, Happiness: The Science Behind Your Smile
We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.
IMMANUEL KANT, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Life asks for a preparation as complete as we can afford; the great contest should be fought with spirit but with good temper always; we should never think the game lost while it is still going; and finally we should have the satisfaction of quitting the field able to say: I did my best.
ARTHUR LYNCH, Moods of Life
Solve the problem of life? Live, and you solve it.
Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God.
LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace
- Yes, life is but a waste,
- A cheerless pathway, where
- No healthy fruit allures the taste,
- No flowerets balm the air,
- If Love, the wild rose, ne'er luxuriates there.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN, "Love"
It is time to stop looking outside yourself for the answers to why you haven't created the life and results you want, for it is you who creates the quality of life you lead and the results you produce. You--no one else! To achieve major success in life--to achieve those things that are most important to you--you must assume 100% responsibility for your life. Nothing less will do.
JACK CANFIELD, The Success Principles
Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, Q, August, 1992
We must rejoice when love is great, and pardon its excess, for love is the staff of life, and life without love is life in vain.
ARTHUR LYNCH, Moods of Life
He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
MUHAMMAD ALI, Woman's Day, Apr. 1, 2009
He who loveth, knoweth the inner sun; he see'th Life's blaze.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT, "Arizona"
- Life divine! O life eternal!
- Man cannot translate the thought.
- Strong the chain that God hath welded;
- Link on link hath chain been wrought.
- Fabric new each day is woven,
- Woven it on God's own loom.
- We the threads can ne'er unravel,
- Hidden they in Nature's womb.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, "Dost Thou Know?"
The best life is that which makes the best of life.
Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living.
Life is magical. There is something wonderful in being alive, in having within one's self all sorts of possibilities.
ARTHUR LYNCH, Moods of Life
Most important thing in life ... is learning how to fall.
JEANNETTE WALLS, Half Broke Horses
- Seek not life's jewels where the poppies grow,
- Nor where Desire, all passion-poisoned, rears
- Her luring domes, but in the heart of woe,
- With shores far washed by sanctifying tears.
EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR, "Life's Jewels"
- Life, with the Soul predominant,
- Is a noble mosaic, a bewitching arabesque.
EDWIN LEIBFREED, "The Song of the Soul"
- Scorn ye not the little things,
- For life is made from them.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, "Little Things"
Life is not meant to be hard: if it is, we make it so.
We have come to the wrong star ... That is what makes life at once so splendid and so strange. The true happiness is that we don't fit. We come from somewhere else. We have lost our way.
G. K. CHESTERTON, Orthodoxy
The meaning of our lives is revealed through experiences that at first seem at odds with each other--moments we wish would never end and moments we wish had never begun.
When life looks like it's falling apart, it may just be falling in place.
BEVERLY SOLOMON, Good Housekeeping, Aug. 2009
- So life discloses--
- Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
- New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
- In changing splendor night or day;
- New joys that drive old griefs away.
ANDREW DOWNING, "Among the Roses"
- Much too oft we make life gloomy--
- When happy we might be,
- If we gathered more of sunshine,
- And not dark shadows see.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON, Thoughts
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