Quotes on Life

When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you.

Embrace struggle... It is your greatest teacher.

Never become so much of an expert that you stop gaining expertise. View life as a continuous learning experience.

It was not just that Ross Macdonald taught us how to write; he did something much more, he taught us how to read, and how to think about life, and maybe, in some small, but mattering way, how to live.

There is force and vitality in a first sketch from life which the after-work rarely has. You want a picture to seize you as forcibly as if a man had seized you by the shoulder! It should impress you like reality!

If you find out what it is you love to do and give your whole life to it, then there is no contradiction, and in that state your being is your doing.

There is timing in the whole life of the warrior, in his thriving and declining, in his harmony and discord. Similarly, there is timing in the Way of the merchant, in the rise and fall of capital. All things entail rising and falling timing. You must be able to discern this.

To use what has a boundary to pursue what is limitless is dangerous; with this knowledge, if we still go after knowledge, we will run into trouble. Do not do what is good in order to gain praise. If you do what is bad be sure to avoid the punishment. Follow the Middle Course, for this is the way to keep yourself together, to sustain your life, to care for your parents and to live for many years.

The true man breathes with his heels.

If you ever start taking things too seriously, just remember that we are talking monkeys on an organic spaceship flying through the universe.

It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.

I was very invested in being smart and thought to be smart was more important than accomplishing anything in life.

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

Be patient with all that is uncertain in your heart...do not search for answers, which will not be given: you will not be able to live them, and its importat to live everything.

I like to walk about among the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

Religion says earn your life. Secular society says create your life. Jesus says, 'My life for your life.

My view is that, you know, life unfolds at its own rhythm. You know, I have never lived a life that I thought I could plan out. And I'm just trying to do the best I can every day. I find I have a lot to get done between the time I get up and the time I go to bed.

Failing is an event, not a person. Yesterday ended last night.

What I wanted to do was slap him down a bit with wit and words. Grammar and vocabulary as a weapon. But what kind of world would it be if we all took every opportunity presented to us to assault the weak?

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.