Life

"Oh, Life ! — the wearisome, the vexatious — whose pleasures are either placed beyond our reach, or within it when we no longer desire them — when youth toils for the riches, age may possess but not enjoy; — where we trust to friendship, one light word may destroy ; or to love, that dies even of itself; — where we talk of glory, philosophical, literary, military, political — die, or, what is much more, live for it — and this coveted possession dwells in the consent of men of whom no two agree about it."

"Life is years of sheer, endless boredom punctuated by bouts of the mildly interesting."

"We sleep, but the loom of life never stops and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up to-morrow."

"We are all but Fellow-Travelers, Along Life's weary way; If any man can play the pipes, In God's name, let him play."

": It is a misery to be born, a pain to live, a trouble to die."

"The long habit of living indisposeth us for dying."

"A well-written life is almost as rare as a well-spent one."

"Life is too short and hard and strange not to blame God for what He done made of the world."

"The life that I aspire to live No man proposeth me— No trade upon the street Wears its emblazonry."

"If you are eating well and your condition is pure and clean, life itself becomes like the dreams or visions that you have when sleeping."

"I live for those who love me, For those who know me true; For the heaven so blue above me, And the good that I can do."

"Life is not as idle ore, But iron dug from central gloom, And heated hot with burning fears, And dipt in baths of hissing tears, And batter'd with the shocks of doom, To shape and use."

"תֹּֽודִיעֵנִי֮ אֹ֤רַח חַ֫יִּ֥ים שֹׂ֣בַע מָחֹות אֶת־פָּנֶ֑יךָ נְעִמֹ֖ות בִּימִינְךָ֣ נֶֽצַח"

"At the beginning, mankind and the obligation of selfless service were created together. Through selfless service, you will always be fruitful and find the fulfillment of your desires: this is the promise of the Creator... Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. Brahman is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law O Arjuna. Those who violate it, indulging the senses for their own pleasure and ignoring the needs of others, have wasted their life. But those who realize the Self are always satisfied. Having found the source of joy and fulfillment, they no longer seek happiness from the external world. They have nothing to gain or lose by any action; neither people nor things can affect their security. Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life."

"Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world."

"The radical tension between good and evil, as man sees it and feels it, does not have the last word about the meaning of life and the nature of existence. There is a spirit in man and in the world working always against the thing that destroys and lays waste. Always he must know that the contradictions of life are not final or ultimate; he must distinguish between failure and a many-sided awareness so that he will not mistake conformity for harmony, uniformity for synthesis. He will know that for all men to be alike is the death of life in man, and yet perceive harmony that transcends all diversities and in which diversity finds its richness and significance."

"Germs... share all the attributes that... form the scientific definition of life. Simply put, they are born and they die, and in between they engage in the three processes of metabolism, growth, and reproduction. Metabolism comprises all of the physical and chemical processes... including extracting energy from the environment to fuel growth and reproduction. ...All living things on Earth share one more feature. They are made up of cells... The most elementary units of life, cells are bits of bounded by a thin membrane and containing s (DNA and RNA), s, s, s, and carbohydrates. ...In the simplest terms, cells carry s on their DNA, and the job of genes is to code precise sequences of amino acids, known as peptide chains or peptide sequences, into proteins, the building blocks of life. All living organisms are made up largely of proteins, and the formation of carbohydrates and fats is governed by proteins acting as s. Every cell contains enough genetic information to reproduce itself, and single-celled creatures generally clone themselves by dividing in two. ...living material basically consists of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These fundamental elements of nature... occur throughout the universe... researchers recently identified... a sugar molecule called glycoaldehyde, in a dust cloud near the center of the Milky Way... it is not hard to imagine that glycoaldehyde or a similar sugar molecule, of stellar origin, could easily have formed , the sugar backbone of the nucleic acids..."

"Life is something that everyone should try at least once."

"The Road goes ever on and on Down from the door where it began, Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow if I can, Pursuing it with eager feet, Until it joins some larger way Where many paths and errands meet. And whither then? I cannot say."

"I have little use for the past and rarely think about it; however, I would briefly like to tell you how I came to be a spiritual teacher and how this book came into existence. Until my thirtieth year, I lived in a state of almost continuous anxiety interspersed with periods of suicidal depression. It feels now as if I am talking about some past lifetime or somebody else's life. Introduction"

"The greater part of human pain is unnecessary. It is self created as long as the unobserved mind runs your life....The pain that you create now is always some form of non acceptance, some form of unconscious resistance to what is. On the level of thought, the resistance is some form of judgment. On the emotional level, it is some form of negativity. p. 25"

"Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath. Or when a dark mood comes upon you and you start getting into a negative mind-pattern and thinking how dreadful your life is, your thinking has become aligned with the pain-body, and you have become unconscious... p. 29-30"

"You think that your attention is in the present moment when it's actually taken up completely by time. You cannot be both unhappy and fully present in the Now. What you refer to as your "life" should more accurately be called your "life situation." It is psychological time: past and future. p. 43"

"On the surface it seems that the present moment is only one of many, many moments. Each day of your life appears to consist of thousands of moments where different things happen. Yet if you look more deeply, is there not only one moment, ever? Is life ever not this moment? This one moment, now, is the only thing you can never escape from. The one constant factor in your life. No matter what happens. No matter how much your life changes. One thing is certain. Its always now. Since there is no escape from the now, why not welcome it, become friendly with it? (Chapter 4 The Now)"

"Confusion, anger, depression, violence, and conflict arise when humans forget who they are. Yet how easy it is to remember the truth and thus return home: I am not my thoughts, emotions, sense perceptions, and experiences. I am not the content of my life. I am Life. I am the space in which all things happen. I am consciousness. I am the Now. I Am.(Chapter 4 The Now)"

"When you walk though a forest that has not been tamed and interfered with by man, you will see not only abundant life around you, but you will also encounter fallen trees and decaying trunks, rotting leaves and decomposing matter at every step... Wherever you look, you will find death as well as life. Upon closer scrutiny, however, you will discover that the decomposing tree trunk and rotting leaves not only give birth to new life, but are full of life themselves... Microorganisms are at work. Molecules are rearranging themselves. So death isn’t to be found anywhere. There is only the metamorphosis of life forms. What can you learn from this?... Death is not the opposite of life. Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.(Ch 9)"

"The interconnectedness of all things: Buddhists have always known it and physicists now confirm it. Nothing that happens is an isolated event, it only appears to be. The more we judge and label it, the more we isolate it....The wholeness of life becomes fragmented through our thinking. Yet the totality of life has brought this event about. It is part of the web of interconnectedness that is the cosmos. This means whatever is could not be otherwise... In most cases, we cannot begin to understand what role a seemingly senseless event may have within the totality of the cosmos but recognizing its inevitability within the vastness of the whole can be the beginning of an inner acceptance of what is and thus a realignment with the wholeness of life. (Ch 10)"

"It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence."

"If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect."

"Could it be … that the hero is one who is willing to set out, take the first step, shoulder something? Perhaps the hero is one who puts his foot upon a path not knowing what he may expect from life but in some way feeling in his bones that life expects something of him."

"Natasha has just come up to the window from the courtyard and opened it wider so that the air may enter more freely into my room. I can see the bright green strip of grass beneath the wall, and the clear blue sky above the wall, and sunlight everywhere. Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression and violence, and enjoy it to the full."

"This oppressor, this machine that has gone mad and run amok, it is beserk. They keep telling us, "progress.” They keep telling us “face reality.” Well, let’s deal with reality. Reality is the Earth can no longer take this attack. We can no longer allow this Thing to continue when it’s polluting the air, it’s polluting the water, polluting our food. ... The earth gives us life, not the multi-national corporate government. The Earth gives us life. We need to have the Earth. We must have it, otherwise our life will be no more. So we must resist what they do."

"I think my philosophy basically is there has to be something to this. I mean we just can't be put here for the sake of living our 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years, whatever it might be, and just end up with nothing at the end of that time after all the combat, and I really look at life to a certain extent as combat. There has to be something. I mean we have to be in a test period or there has to be something after this. Otherwise, it just seems so futile."

"“Life is hard.” Rodriguez shrugged. “And after life is done, then you die.” He shrugged again. “What can anyone do?” It was a good question. It was, when Pinkard thought about it, a very good question. If there were any better questions out there, he had no idea what they might be. “You do the best you can, is all,” he answered slowly, and then looked around at the hole in the ground in the middle of nowhere he was currently inhabiting. “If this here is the best I can do, I been doin’ somethin’ wrong up till now.”"

"Well, what was life but the difference between what you planned and what you got?"

"Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles."

"Life is totally about losing everything. As life goes on, we lose more than we acquire."

"Life, too, is like that. You live it forward, but understand it backward."

"Life is an ulcer on the body of universe."

"Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis."

"Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta Jam sua: nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur."

"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself."

"Life is a game and true love is a trophy."

"Living should be perpetual and universal benediction."

"Lo! on a narrow neck of land, 'Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand. Secure, insensible."

"I desire to have both heaven and hell ever in my eye, while I stand on this isthmus of life, between two boundless oceans."

"Jigsaw: Congratulations. You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore."

"You know life is cruel; life is never kind."

"The essence of life is change, he said, and the essence of eternal life is eternal change."

"So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."