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Living quotes

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“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

“it was easy enough to despise the world, but decidedly difficult to find any other habitable region.” Edith Wharton, House of Mirth

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies . . . The man who never reads lives only one.” George R. R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

“you guys are going to have to come up with a lot of wonderful new lies, or people just aren't going to want to go on living.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home.” L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

“I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“if one has money without brains, he cannot use it to advantage; but if one has brains without money, they will enable him to live comfortably to the end of his days.” L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

“A man finds himself, to his great astonishment, suddenly existing, after thousands and thousands of years of non-existence: he lives for a little while; and then, again, comes an equally long period when he must exist no more. The heart rebels...” Arthur Schopenhauer, Studies in Pessimism

“You’re alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything.” Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

“Haven’t you learned anything, not even with the approach of death? Stop thinking all the time that you’re in the way, that you’re bothering the person next to you. If people don’t like it, they can complain. And if they don’t have the...” Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“One can survive everything nowadays, except death, and live down anything except a good reputation.” Oscar Wilde, A Woman of No Importance

“While I hope that the chemical gets rid of my chronic depression, I want to continue being crazy, living my life the way I dream it, and not the way other people want it to be.” Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“To be awake is to be alive.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“There’s something to be said for hunger: at least it lets you know you’re still alive.” Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

“You’re mine . . . Mine, as I’m yours. And if we die, we die. All men must die, Jon Snow. But first we’ll live.” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“I had chosen the dead rather than the living, the thing thought rather than the thing thinking!” George MacDonald, Lilith

“Every day was there to be lived or to mark one's departure from this world.” Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Any relic of the dead is precious, if they were valued living.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“I'm wearying to escape into that glorious world, and to be always there: not seeing it dimly through tears, and yearning for it through the walls of an aching heart: but really with it, and in it.” Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights

“A person who longs to leave the place where he lives is an unhappy person.” Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.” Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her alive, because it was worth feeling.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“Stuff your eyes with wonder . . . live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. See the world. It's more fantastic than any dream made or paid for in factories.” Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451

“what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying” Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus

“Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. And unselfishness is letting other people’s lives alone, not interfering with them.” Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism

“Happy is the man who can make a living by his hobby!” George Bernard Shaw, Pygmalion

“To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.” Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy

“Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget that until the day when God shall deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is summed up in these two words,—'Wait and hope.'” Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

“Each person who ever was or is or will be has a song. It isn’t a song that anybody else wrote. It has its own melody, it has its own words. Very few people get to sing their own song. Most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our...” Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys

“Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime.” Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

“the question is not how to get cured, but how to live.” Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim

“As long as we don’t die, this is gonna be one hell of a story.” John Green, Paper Towns

“Live all you can; it's a mistake not to.” Henry James, The Ambassadors

“Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.” Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.” Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement address

“the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time” William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying

“The easiest way to avoid living is to just watch.” Chuck Palahniuk, Lullaby

“Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.” Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

“The trouble with the theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing.” Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom

“we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive.” George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

“When you start to live outside yourself . . . it's all dangerous.” Ernest Hemingway, The Garden of Eden

“This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don't you think so?” Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d'Urbervilles

“I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?” John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

“Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!” Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live” Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I'd want it real. I'd take no pride in any hopeless longing. I wouldn't hold a stillborn aspiration. I'd want to have it, to make it, to live it.” Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“If you're lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.” John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany

“I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.” Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

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Related topics

life happiness longing death feeling world time reality nature existence reason place self fear courage past personality reading love dream

Related authors

Ray Bradbury (4)
Paulo Coelho (4)
John Green (3)
Oscar Wilde (3)
Chuck Palahniuk (3)
Neil Gaiman (3)
L. Frank Baum (3)
Edith Wharton (2)
Emily Brontë (2)
George R. R. Martin (2)
John Steinbeck (2)
Ayn Rand (2)
Andy Warhol (2)
Jonathan Safran Foer (2)
George Bernard Shaw (1)
Kurt Vonnegut (1)
Milan Kundera (1)
Henry David Thoreau (1)
Albert Camus (1)
Haruki Murakami (1)

Related sources

Fahrenheit 451 (2)
The Soul of Man under Socialism (2)
Veronika Decides to Die (2)
The Alchemist (2)
House of Mirth (2)
Wuthering Heights (2)
The Marvelous Land of Oz (2)
The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (2)
Atlas Shrugged (2)
Dandelion Wine (2)
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2)
Lilith (1)
Pygmalion (1)
The Fault in Our Stars (1)
Les Misérables (1)
The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1)
A Woman of No Importance (1)
Walden (1)
Studies in Pessimism (1)
Meditations (1)