Quotes About Life

I am aware of how often over the past year I have listened to sermons and religious leaders turn the biblical narratives into a useful handbook for making one's life work more successful. I'm aware of how this Oprahization of the Christian narrative has turned us ever more quickly into anxiety-laden, functional atheists needing ways to use God to make our lives work.

The book that simply demands to be read, for no good reason, is asking us to change our lives by putting aside what we usually think of as good reasons. It's asking us to stop calculating. It's asking us to do something for the plain old delight and interest of it, not because we can justify its place on the mental spreadsheet or accounting ledger (like the one Benjamin Franklin kept) by which we tote up the value of our actions.

Things happened, as soon as they had they were in the past, once they were, there was nothing you could do. Days and nights followed in a seamless phantasmagoria of action and inaction, of weariness, privation, duty, routine and waiting, always so much waiting. What had happened yesterday might have been in another life, as remote from today as the unknowable events of tomorrow.

facts in the sense of an individual past. Facts were like longitude on a map, measurements of temporal relativity, evoking but not containing the myriad associations, tones, colours, remarks, incidents, feelings that formed the patchwork brocade of a life.

Death is the meaning of life, the race against oblivion; man being the only animal who is conscious that he will one day die; there lies the seed of self-destruction, greed for more, even if only to be remembered a short time longer than others, as if it mattered to the other walking dead.

the church's growth; it is life in "the way of Christ," distinctive and hopeful. Christians, as Cyprian knew well, were growing in numbers because they were distinct from the "unjust"—living patiently in relation to their neighbors and enemies, doing good to them, and waiting for them to come to faith.

Time scoots along pretty fast when you grow up.

Time equals life; therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.

Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.

Time is life. It is irreversible and irreplaceable. To waste your time is to waste your life, but to master your time is to master your life and make the most of it.

Auden turns to his guest and asks: "Do you know the frightening thing about the dandelions?" The guest, bracing himself for a riddle, confesses that he doesn't. Auden says: "The dandelions originally were sexual plants. We don't know when, but in the course of evolution they gave it up. They go on, though, with the same genes.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or of joy. The tragedy of this world is that everyone is alone. For a life in the past cannot be shared with the present. Each person who gets stuck in time gets stuck alone.

If a person holds no ambitions in this world, he suffers unknowingly. If a person holds ambitions, he suffers knowingly, but very slowly.

The tragedy of this world is that no one is happy, whether stuck in a time of pain or joy.

Some say it is best not to go near the center of time. Life is a vessel of sadness, but is noble to live life and without time there is no life. Others disagree. They would rather have an eternity of contentment, even if that eternity were fixed and frozen, like a butterfly mounted in a case.

In a world of fixed future, life is an infinite corridor of rooms, one room lit at each moment, the next room dark but prepared. We walk from room to room, look into the room that is lit, the present moment, then walk on. We do not know the rooms ahead, but we know we cannot change them. We are spectators of our lives.

Who would fare better in this world of fitful time? Those who have seen the future and live only one life? Or those who have not seen the future and wait to live life? Or those who deny the future and live two lives?

In a world without future, each moment is the end of the world.

Religion is not a panacea for all of life's tragedies.

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.

My experience of life is that it is not divided up into genres; it's a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.

Everybody is special. Everybody. Everybody is a hero, a lover, a fool, a villain. Everybody. Everybody has their story to tell.

Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.

God is in the rain.