Quotes on Life

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.

I write for the same reason I breathe - because if I didn't, I would die.

It's much more important to write than to be written about.

The first thing to do in life is to do with purpose what one purposes to do.

It's the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.

If you can learn to love yourself and all the flaws, you can love other people so much better. And that makes you so happy.

I could not sit down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life.

It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.

Surrounded by all the members of my dear family, enjoying the affection of numerous friends, who have never abandoned me, and possessing a sufficient share of all that contributes to make life agreeable, I lift my grateful eyes towards the Supreme Being and feel that I am happy.

When you learn to keep fighting in the face of potential failure, it gives you a larger skill set to do what you want to do in life. It gives you vision. But you can't acquire it if you're afraid of keeping score.

If you know that life is basically going to be horrendously difficult, at best, and all but unlivable at worst, or possibly even unlivable, do you go on? And the choice to go on is the only thing that I think can be called hope. Because if hope isn't forced to encounter the worst possibility, then it's a lie.

Survivorship comes with unspoken pressures, responsibilities and challenges. After all, what is the point of saving a life if the life isn't a meaningful one?

Sometimes, success in life is knowing one's limitations.

Well, I believe life is a Zen koan, that is, an unsolvable riddle. But the contemplation of that riddle - even though it cannot be solved - is, in itself, transformative. And if the contemplation is of high enough quality, you can merge with the divine.

A man walks on through life - with the external call ringing in his ears but with no response stirring in his heart, and then suddenly, without any warning, the Spirit taps him on the shoulder. What happens? He turns 'round. The word 'repentance' means 'turning 'round.' He repents and believes and is saved.

I believe that architecture, as anything else in life, is evolutionary. Ideas evolve; they don't come from outer space and crash into the drawing board.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

In general, I agree with Socrates that what democracies badly need is the examined life, and we need to think critically about ourselves.

We all have people who are literally one life shock away from going into a crisis. For many of us, we have a buffer in one way or another. We have a savings account, or we have credit that we can go to. The underserved don't have that luxury.