Life

"Ein unnütz Leben ist ein früher Tod."

": A useless life is an early death."

"Singet nicht in Trauertönen."

": Sing it not in mournful numbers."

"I would live the same life over if I had to live again, And the chances are I go where most men go."

"Life is mostly froth and bubble; Two things stand like stone: Kindness in another's trouble Courage in our own."

"Along the cool sequestered vale of life, They kept the noiseless tenour of their way."

"Qui n'a pas vécu dans les années voisines de 1789 ne sait pas ce que c'est le palisir de vivre."

"Life's little ironies."

"[George Herbert] a conspicuous example of plain living and high thinking."

"Who but knows How it goes! Life's a last year's Nightingale, Love's a last year's rose."

"Life is a smoke that curls— Curls in a flickering skein, That winds and whisks and whirls, A figment thin and vain, Into the vast inane. One end for hut and hall."

"I made a posy, while the day ran by: Here will I smell my remnant out, and tie My life within this band. But time did beckon to the flowers, and they By noon most cunningly did steal away, And wither'd in my hand."

"Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold; Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold, Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway, Can bribe the poor possession of the day."

"For Fate has wove the thread of life with pain, And twins ev'n from the birth are Misery and Man!"

"live so nothing will be left for death at the end"

"O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.! Strange is the gift that I owe to you; Such a gift as never a king Save to daughter or son might bring,— All my tenure of heart and hand, All my title to house and land; Mother and sister and child and wife And joy and sorrow and death and life!"

"What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?"

"If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son."

"Nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus."

"Then take, good sir, your pleasure while you may; With life so short 'twere wrong to lose a day."

"He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine.""

"Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean."

"Life is a hopeless rear guard action against an overwhelming foe; still how can we not admire those who battle on regardless?"

"We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life."

"When one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and noble virtues -- far more deserving in every way -- perishing of want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him -- that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their supposed Creator."

"LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy."

"The aim of life is inquiry into the Truth, and not the desire for enjoyment in heaven by performing religious rites, Those who possess the knowledge of the Truth, call the knowledge of non-duality as the Truth, It is called Brahman, the Highest Self, and w:Bhagavan."

"The loss of belief in reincarnation, and of a sane view as to the continuity of life, whether it were spent in this or in the next two worlds, brought with it various incongruities and indefensible assertions, among them the blasphemous and terrible idea of the eternal torture of the human soul for sins committed during the brief span of one life spent on earth. p. 307"

"All evolution consists of an evolving life, passing from form to form as it evolves, and storing up in itself the experiences gained through the forms; the reincarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet the conditions rendered necessary by the individualisation of the continuously evolving life... A life of extreme hardship, of ceaseless struggle with nature, will develop very different powers from those evolved amid the luxuriant plenty of a tropical island; both sets of powers are needed, for the soul is to conquer every region of nature, but striking differences may thus be evolved even in souls of the same age, and one may appear to be more advanced than the other, according as the observer estimates most highly the more “practical” or the more “contemplative” powers of the soul, the active outward-going energies, or the quiet inward-turned musing faculties. The perfected soul possesses all, but the soul in the making must develop them successively, and thus arises another cause of the immense variety found among human beings. For again, it must be remembered that human evolution is individual. p.180-202"

"Human evolution is the evolution of the Thinker... At first, as little conscious as a baby’s earthly body, he almost slept through life after life, till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his own hands, and an ever-increasing control over his future destiny. p. 131"

"What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world."

"The quest for other, and better, forms of life, society, technology, ethics, and law may not reveal that they are actually elsewhere; but it may in the long run help us to make some of them actual on earth."

"One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion."

"We require in our life both personal effort and Divine Guidance. Nothing can be achieved simply by personal effort, we also require Divine Mercy. But simply Divine Mercy is not enough, we require the strength and courage to receive it. Just as a bird cannot fly without both wings, so also a man cannot attain success in spiritual life without personal endeavour and Divinity."

"Science leads to great achievements, which, quite rightly, fill of joy those who seek the truth, but if pursued, teaches us that we must seek other sources of ultimate truth and find answers to existential questions about the meaning of life and the mystery of death."

"Life has compensations, but there’s no way of knowing what they are."

"Life! we've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; Tis hard to part when friends are dear,— Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear. Then steal away, give little warning. Choose thine own time, Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime, Bid me "Good-morning.""

"Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important."

"Life hath more awe than death."

"It matters not how long we live, but how."

"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."

"Practically all the teaching given anent rebirth or reincarnation, has emphasised the material phenomenal side, though there has always been a more or less casual reference to the spiritual and mental gains acquired in the school of life upon this planet, from incarnation to incarnation. The true nature of the unfolding awareness, and the growth of the inner consciousness of the true man, have been little noted; the gain of each life in added grasp of the mechanism of contact, and the result of increased sensitivity to the environment, are seldom if ever stressed."

"The new psychology must inevitably be built upon the premise that this one life is not man's sole opportunity in which to achieve integration and eventual perfection. The great Law of Rebirth must be accepted, and it will then be found to be, in itself, a major releasing agent in any moment of crisis, or any psychological problem case."

"All souls incarnate and re-incarnate under the Law of Rebirth. Hence each life is not only a recapitulation of life experience, but an assuming of ancient obligations, a recovery of old relations, an opportunity for the paying of old indebtedness, a chance to make restitution and progress, an awakening of deep-seated qualities, the recognition of old friends and enemies, the solution of revolting injustices, and the explanation of that which conditions the man, and makes him what he is. Such is the law which is crying now for universal recognition."

"Karma is the Law of Cause and Effect as applied to the life of the soul — the law whereby it reaps the results of its own sowing, or suffers the reaction from its own action... however, it has a larger meaning, and is used in the sense of the Law of Justice, or the Law of Reward and Punishment, operating along the lines of personal experience, personal life, and personal character. p. 223"

"I once went through books and wanted to understand what philosophers said about life. Some of them saw everything as dark. "Since we are nothing and we will reach zero, there is no room for joy and happiness during our temporary life on earth," they said. I read other books, written by wiser men. They were saying: "Since the end is zero anyway, let us at least be joyful and cheerful as long as we live." For my own character I like the second view of life, but within these limits: A man who sees the existence of all mankind in his own person is pathetic. Obviously that man will perish as an individual. What is necessary for any man to be satisfied and happy as long as he lives is not to work for himself, but for those who will come after him. Only in this way can a man of understanding act. Complete pleasure and happiness in life can only be found in working for the honor, existence and happiness of future generations."

"Reconciling the opposites of life and death, of celebration and grief, of laughter and rage is no simple task, yet it is one worthy of our best understanding and our best effort. If, in all these centuries of death, we have continued to endure, we must celebrate that fact and the fact of our vitality in the face of what seemed, to many, inevitable extinction. For however painful and futile our struggle becomes, we have but to look outside at the birds, the deer, and the seasons to understand that change does not mean destruction, that life, however painful and even elusive it is at times, contains much joy and hilarity, pleasure and beauty for those who live within its requirements with grace."

"The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff. The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best."

"Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households."