Isn't it nice… once you've outgrown the ideas of what life should be and you just enjoy what it is.
—Taylor Jenkins Reid in After I Do
The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.
—Barbara Kingsolver
Life is pain. Anyone who says different is trying to sell you something.
—William Goldman
The spiritual life does not remove us from the world, but leads us deeper into it.
—Henri J. M. Nouwen
It is my intention to make my entire life a rejection of, a protest against the crimes and injustices of war and political tyranny which threaten to destroy the whole race of [humankind] and the world with [it] .… I make monastic silence a protest against the lies of politicians, propagandists, and agitators, and when I speak it is to deny that my faith and my church can ever be aligned with these forces of injustice and destruction. But it is true, nevertheless, that the faith in which I believe is also invoked by many who believe in war, believe in racial injustices, believe in self-righteous and lying forms of tyranny. My life must, then, be a protest against these also, and perhaps against these most of all.
—Thomas Merton
It is better to live a holy life than to talk about it. Lighthouses do not ring bells and fire cannons to call attention to their shining; they just shine.
—D. L. Moody
The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs.
—Joan Didion
You desire to know the art of living, my friend? It is contained in one phrase: make use of suffering.
—Henri Frederic Amiel
The thing you are ripening toward is the fruit of your life. It will make you bright inside, no matter what you are outside. It is a shining thing.
—Stewart Edward White
At the moment you are most in awe of all there is about life that you don't understand, you are closer to understanding it all than at any other time.
—Jane Wagner
All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love.
—Morihei Ueshiba
Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.
—E. B. White
The continued existence of wildlife and wilderness is important to the quality of life of humans.
—Jim Fowler
But life doesn't always turn out the way you think it will, and that can be rather wonderful.
—Victoria Connelly in At Home with Mr. Darcy
If you don't try at anything, you can't fail. It takes back bone to lead the life you want.
—Richard Yates in Revolutionary Road