Live and let live

“ Yes, do as you would be done by—and not to the dark man and the white woman alone, but to the sorrel horse and the gray squirrel as well; not to creatures of your own anatomy only, but to all creatures. You cannot go high enough nor low enough nor far enough to find those whose bowed and broken beings will not rise up at the coming of the kindly heart, or whose souls will not shrink and darken at the touch of inhumanity. Live and let live. Do more. Live and help live. Do to beings below you as you would be done by beings above you. Pity the tortoise, the katydid, the wild-bird, and the ox. ”

“ I may yet live, as I know others live,
To wish in vain to let go with the mind—
Of cares, at night, to sleep; but nothing tells me
That I need learn to let go with the heart. ”

“ Whatever state this world could have reached must ere now have been attained, and not only once but an incalculable number of times. 249
My doctrine is: Live so that thou mayest desire to live again,—that is thy duty,—for in any case thou wilt live again! He unto whom striving is the greatest happiness, let him strive; he unto whom peace is the greatest happiness, let him rest; he unto whom subordination, following, obedience, is the greatest happiness, let him obey. ”

“ Let us rather resign ourselves to complete death, which comes to every living thing, being just with ourselves and with others as long as we live, without looking for future reward, but simply because God wishes it, as he wishes every star to give light, and every tree to give shade. ”

“ And let me cool the ache and smart
⁠Of wrongs some others do!
Oh, let me bear the heavy cross
⁠Borne by some falt'ring man,
And let his gain become my loss
⁠In life's fine sifting pan!
Oh, let me live a little while ”

“ “To be rid of our individuality, which is our will, which is our effort—to live effortless, a kind of curious sleep—that is very beautiful, I think; that is our after-life—our immortality.” ”

“ Oh let me live my own, and die so too! (To live and die is all I have to do:) Maintain a poet's dignity and ease, And see what friends, and read what books I please; ”

“ If you will but live, it cries, that grave but yet passionate voice—if you will but live! Were there a heaven, and you reached it, you could do no more than live. The true heaven is here where you live, where you strive and lose, and weep and laugh. ”

“ I am forced to live, for I cannot die,
But my life is empty and all in vain.
Yet sometimes I hear my spirit, elate
At the thought of the glorious deeds to be done,
Cry: "Strike! 'Tis the time!" But, in answer, one —
Shall I ever know who? — whispers: "Silence! Wait!" ”

“ When we shall cease in human guise to haunt this world of men,
Is that the end? or will our souls revive to live again
In some state, higher, purer far than any we have known,
With endless life and endless love, when both shall be our own? ”

“ Are you content just to live and flourish and die? Are there no compelling obligations with which one is born? Do you never feel cramped—in your mind, I mean?—feel that you want to push your way through the clouds into some other life? ”

“ So if you have to live amongst men, you must allow everyone the right to exist in accordance with the character he has, whatever it turns out to be: and all you should strive to do is to make use of this character in such a way as its kind and nature permit, rather than to hope for any alteration in it, or to condemn it off-hand for what it is. This is the true sense of the maxim—Live and let live. That, however, is a task which is difficult in proportion as it is right; and he is a happy man who can once for all avoid having to do with a great many of his fellow creatures. ”

“ What would your existence be without the toil of those men and women who live and die in want of every comfort which seems as natural to you as the air you breathe? Don’t you feel that you owe them something? ”

“ Go back again, then, and while you live you will see all round you people engaged in making others live lives which are not their own, while they themselves care nothing for their own real lives—men who hate life though they fear death. Go back and be the happier for having seen us, for having added a little hope to your struggle. Go on living while you may, striving, with whatsoever pain and labour needs must be, to build up little by little the new day of fellowship, and rest, and happiness. ”

“ When I was well, I wished to live,
For clothes, for warmth, for food, and fire;
But they to me no joy can give,
No pleasure now, and no desire.
Then here contented will I lie;
Alone I cannot fear to die. ”

“ There amidst the world new-builded shall our earthly deeds abide,
Though our names be all forgotten, and the tale of how we died.
Life or death then, who shall heed it, what we gain or what we lose?
Fair flies life amid the struggle, and the Cause for each shall choose.
Hear a word, a word in season, for the day is drawing nigh,
When the Cause shall call upon us, some to live, and some to die! ”

“ Never let a day so pass that you will have cause to say, "I will live better to-morrow," and I will promise you, in the name of the Lord Jesus, that {138} your lives will be as a well of water springing up to everlasting life. ”

“ We live by desire to live; we live by choices; by will, by thought, by virtue, by the vivacity of the laws which we obey, and obeying share their life,—or we die by sloth, by disobedience, by losing hold of life, which ebbs out of us. But whilst I find the signatures, the hints and suggestions, noble and wholesome,—whilst I find that all the ways of virtuous living lead upward and not downward,—yet it is not my duty to prove to myself the immortality of the soul. ”

“ Have any of us the right, we ask, to withdraw from present evils, to leave our fellow-men unaided, while we live a life which, though arduous and austere, is yet plainly good in its own nature? When these questions arise, the true answer is, no doubt, that some must keep alive the sacred fire, some must preserve, in every generation, the haunting vision which shadows forth the goal of so much striving. ”

“ Whatever there is in them calculated to stir the heart of our common Humanity,—to voice forth its joys or its sorrows,—to truly interpret its emotions,—or to give utterance to its aspirations and its hopes, will live; that which does not thus speak for Humanity, has no right to live ”

“ That should be a great happiness, Fru Beck, and much to live for."
"To live for!" she exclaimed—"to live for! I will confide to you something that no one but you now knows. I am dying—dying every day. No one knows as well as I do myself how much is left of me. ”

“ To will, not from self, but with the Eternal, is to live. ”

“ The same great Something makes all life and death, all light and dark, all love and hate—then why one fate for one living thing, and the opposite for another? But suppose there IS nothing after death—would it make me say: 'I'd rather not live'? ”

“ And yet a thought freighted with light beams through the dark clouds which its darker sisters have thrown around me, and the only inscription which it bears is, 'Live for others.' And another thought follows in rapid succession,—like a far-off echo it repeats the words of its predecessor, 'Live for others,' and then adds (while a vivid flash of the lightning of truth lights up the darkness of error) , 'Live for God and for heaven.' A loud crash follows. Peals of thunder shake the atmosphere of my soul! Self has fallen: I will live for others, for God and for heaven. ”

“ Let the world end, yes, let the world end before this strange new companion, gained in want, and poverty, and suffering, and now lost by reason of comforts and health, shall shed one tear of suffering! ”

“ May you live, as long as you are fit to live, but no longer! or, may you rather die, before you cease to be fit to live, than after! My true tenderness for you makes me think more of the manner than of the length of your life, and forbids me to wish it prolonged, by a single day, that should bring guilt, reproach, and shame upon you. ”

“ Wouldst thou desire to live for ever? Wouldst thou only wish thy life to last for a thousand years? Remember the long hours of weariness in thy short career, thy frequent fainting under the burden. Thou wast aghast at the limited horizon of a short, uncertain and fugitive life: what wouldst thou have said if thou hadst seen an immeasurable, inevitably long future of weariness and sorrow stretch before thy eyes! ”

“ If he shall day by day dwell merciful, Holy and just and kind and true; and rend Desire from where it clings with bleeding roots, Till love of life have end: He—dying—leaveth as the sum of him A life-count closed, whose ills are dead and quit, Whose good is quick and mighty, far and near, So that fruits follow it. No need hath such to live as ye name life ”

“ We doubt not but there is in the heart of the reader a strong desire to live life as it should be lived. Thank God, you can. You desire your life to be like the fertile oasis, where the weary traveler refreshes himself. You have seen the rays of light lingering upon the hillside and treetop and gilding the fleecy cloud after the sun had gone down. You desire the beautiful rays of light from your life to linger long after your sun has gone down. You can have it that way. The deeds you do will live after you are gone. They are the footprints. ”

“ And they who die that others may live are but those in whom the life-flame burns so hot and bright that they can feel the life and the longing to live in others as if it were their own—more than their own. Yea, life carries with it a very passion for existence.
To what then shall we turn that we may keep sane, watching this harvest of too young deaths, the harvest of the brave, whose stocks are raised before us, casting each its shadow in the ironic moonlight? ”

“ "'Twas not that life or death itself was good,
That these heroic spirits shed their blood:
This was their aim, and this their latest cry,
'Let us preserve our honour, live or die.'"
[Pg 2] ”

“ Still seems it strange, that thou should’st live for ever?
Is it less strange, that thou should’st live at all?
This is a miracle; and that no more. ”

“ And Life replied:
“Sorrow, unceasing struggle, disappointment;
after these
Darkness and silence.” The Soul said unto Death:
“What dos thou offer me?” And Death replied:
“In the beginning what Life gives at last.”
Turning to Life: “And if I live and struggle?”
“Others shall live and struggle after thee
Counting it easier where thou hast passed.” ”

“ But I must have my moral, if I draw it from such a lean text as crumbling bones. Let us hope that what we leave behind us, when our journey over the drear expanse of mortal life shall cease, may serve to guide some future wanderer in the devious way, and lead him to the bright oasis of eternal life and rest. ”

“ So great a sight soon satisfies, making us content with itself, and with what is less than itself. Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily. Having "lived one day," we would depart, and become worthy to live another. ”

“ Let us therefore live as if every moment were to be our last, and set our accounts right every day that passes over our heads. ”

“ I wanted to live—to live like others. I wanted to have a wife and children and live. And so I rushed from the field; and so it has happened that the young men whom I don't know are going to their death and that I still live on at seventy-nine and will survive them all—all—all. ”

“ Who can tell ... what does it matter ... what is life after all? But the all-pervading ardour of youth's "Will of Life" whispers with a bitter realisation of what death really means that you WANT to live. ”

“ One venerable respondent wrote in substance that no words could describe the rest and peace that slowly supervened after he had ridded his mind of every vestige of the old belief in which he was trained of a future personal life and realized that he would live on only in the contribution he had made to the sum of human knowledge and welfare, in the grateful memory of his friends, in his posterity, and that his individuality, with all its limitations, would be resolved into or rendered back to the cosmos with his mouldering corpse. ”

“ Would it be ‘far better’ either to leave this actual tangible life throbbing with hopes and passions, to leave its busy, Christ-like working, its quiet joys, its very sorrows which are near and human, for a nap of several ages, or even for a vague, lazy, half-alive, disembodied existence? ”

“ The seductions and attractions of life crowding faster and faster round one as we near the gate of death—the redoubled anxieties of friends, their kinder sympathies—how delightful would these be if they did not suggest the wish to live! ”

“ But,—and there it is,—we want to live and move, though we have no reason to, because it happens that it is the nature of life to live and move, to want to live and move. If it were not for this, life would be dead. ”

“ Here then we come to the fact, valid for every level of spiritual life, which lies behind all the declarations concerning surrender, self-loss, dying to live, dedication, made by writers on this theme. All involve a relaxing of tension, letting ourselves go without reluctance in the direction in which we are most profoundly drawn; a cessation of our struggles with the tide, our kicks against the pricks that spur us on. ”

“ If we were to live here always, with no other care than how to feed, clothe, and house ourselves, life would be a very sorry business. It is immeasurably heightened by the solemnity of death. ”