Man always gets less than he demands from life.
—Jack London
He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything.
—Thomas Carlyle
How many people have gotten older and forgotten about the things they hoped for and dreamed about when they were young? Or given up without ever taking a chance, or settled in life because it’s easier, or they’re scared, or whatever other excuses? How many people need a reminder of who they once were?
—Jessi Kirby in Golden
I hate life, I hate death and everything in between just doesn't interest me.
—Chris Rapier
Kindness, I've discovered, is everything in life.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer
Blame someone else and get on with your life.
—Alan Woods
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word love here not merely in a personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace—not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.
—James Baldwin
Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
—William Goldman
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
—Christopher Morley
That’s what life is about: People come and go.
—Cecelia Ahern in Love, Rosie
Don’t do it. Don’t go to that job you hate. Do something you love today. Ride a roller coaster. Swim in the ocean. Go to the airport and get on the next flight to anywhere just for the fun of it. Maybe stop a spinning globe with your finger and then plan a trip to that very spot; even if it’s in the middle of the ocean you can go by boat. Eat some type of ethnic food you’ve never even heard of. Stop a stranger and ask her to explain her greatest fears and her secret hopes and aspirations in detail and then tell her you care because she is a human being. Sit down on the sidewalk and make pictures with colorful chalk. Close your eyes and try to see the world with your nose—allow smells to be your vision. Catch up on your sleep. Call an old friend you haven’t seen in years. Roll up your pant legs and walk into the sea. See a foreign film. Feed squirrels. Do anything! Something! Because you start a revolution one decision at a time, with each breath you take. Just don’t go back to that miserable place you go every day.
—Matthew Quick in Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock
If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
—Albert Camus
It is necessary, and even vital, to set standards for your life and the people you allow in it.
—Mandy Hale in The Single Woman
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
—James Thurber
I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
—Eleanor Roosevelt