I would so live as if I knew that I received my being only for the benefit of others.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (c.4 BCE–65 CE) Roman Stoic Philosopher, Statesman, Tragedian
I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying experience, and I’ve enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but always a song in the other.
—Sean O’Casey (1880–1964) Irish Dramatist, Memoirist
We live in deeds, not years:
In thoughts, not breaths;
In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
—Philip James Bailey (1816–1902) English Poet
It is reported that more than 90% of what we worry about never happens. That means that our negative worries have less than a 10% chance of being correct. If this is so, isn’t being positive more realistic than being negative? Think about your own life. I’ll wager that most of what you worry about never happens. So are you being realistic when you worry all the time? No!
—Susan Jeffers (1938–2012) American Psychologist, Self-Help Author
To the student I would say, “Life is principally multiple choice, but at the end there’s a tough essay question”.
—Robert Brault
If you can’t run with the big dogs, stay up on the porch.
—Anonymous
You can preach a better sermon with your life than with your lips.
—Oliver Goldsmith (1730–74) Irish Novelist, Playwright, Poet
The average person living to age 70 has 613,000 hours of life. This is too long a period not to have fun.
—Unknown
The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.
—Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919) Scottish-American Industrialist
Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.
—Martin H. Fischer
There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
Your life is not just about you. It’s also about contributing to others. It’s about living true to your mission and reason for being here on this earth at this time. It’s about adding your piece of the puzzle to the world. Most people are so stuck in their egos that everything revolves around me, me, and more me. But if you want to be rich in the truest sense of the word, it can’t only be about you. It has to include adding value to other people’s lives.
—T. Harv Eker (b.1954) American Motivational Speaker, Lecturer, Author
Personal relationships are the fertile soil from which all advancement, all success, all achievement in real life grows.
—Ben Stein (b.1944) American Writer, Actor, Commentator
There is nothing in life so irrational, that good sense and chance may not set it to rights; nothing so rational, that folly and chance may not utterly confound it.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German Poet
Commerce is a game of skill, which every man cannot play, which few men can play well. The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call commonsense; a man of strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune; and so, in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this, and believe in magic, in all parts of life. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent-for every effect a perfect cause-and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82) American Philosopher
My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot.
—Ashleigh Brilliant (b.1933) British Cartoonist, Author
The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English Novelist
Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee and I’ll forgive Thy great big one on me.
—Robert Frost (1874–1963) American Poet
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
—Charles Kingsley (1819–75) English Clergyman, Academic, Historian, Novelist
To know oneself is the first step toward making flow a part of one’s entire life. But just as there is no free lunch in the material economy, nothing comes free in the psychic one. If one is not willing to invest psychic energy in the internal reality of consciousness, and instead squanders it in chasing external rewards, one loses mastery of one’s life, and ends up becoming a puppet of circumstances.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (1934–2021) Hungarian-American Psychologist
As Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel laureate, and supporter of the Tibetan people, “We must understand that there can be no life without risk—and when your spirit is strong, everything else is secondary, even the risks.
—Robert K. Cooper (b.1957) American Author, Psychologist
There is no perfect fit when you’re looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.
—Sheryl Sandberg (b.1969) American Executive, Author
Men, for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
—Margaret Fuller (1810–50) American Feminist, Writer, Revolutionary
The rewards are profound. Shadow-work enables us to alter our self-sabotaging behavior so that we can achieve a more self-directed life.
—Connie Zweig (b.1949) American Author, Psychotherapist
Life is fruitful in the ratio in which it is laid out in noble action or patient perseverance.
—Henry Liddon (1829–90) English Theologian
It is not necessary to live, but to carve our names beyond that point, this is necessary.
—Gabriele D’Annunzio (1863–1938) Italian Writer, Adventurer, Political Leader
I do like a little bit of butter to my bread.
—A. A. Milne (1882–1956) British Humorist, Playwright, Children’s Writer
Feeling dissatisfied over what life presents in any given moment is like standing before the whole ocean and getting negative because part of you believes there�s only one place to enter its waters where it�s possible to enjoy yourself.
—Guy Finley
To live is like to love—all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
—Samuel Butler
Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else’s lie, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life and what you become yourself.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American First Lady, Diplomat, Humanitarian
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