Quotes About Life

the man took my passport and asked me the purpose of my visit, I wrote in my daybook, 'To mourn,' and then, 'To try to live,' he gave me a look and asked if I would consider that business or pleasure, I wrote, 'Neither.' 'For how long do you plan to mourn and try to live?' I wrote, 'For the rest of my life.

Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.

Was his death an essential stage in the continuation of his life?

Or maybe what he fears is just the opposite: that nobody is looking; that his death, like his life, is without purpose; that there is neither greater good nor evil--only people living and dying because their bodies function and then do not; that the universe is a rip.

It's a shame that we have to live, but it's a tragedy that we get to live only one life, because if I'd had two lives, I would have spent one of them with her.

One can build a perfect home, but not live in it.

What is suffering? I'm not sure what it is, but I know that suffering is the name we give to the origin of all the sighs, screams, and groans — small and large, crude and multifaceted — that concern us. The word defines our gaze even more than what we are looking at.

How did she end up here, like this? How could there have been so much - so many moments, so many people and things, so many razors and pillows, timepieces and subtle coffins - without her being aware? How did her life live itself without her?

Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive and thinking is killing me

I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live.

Death is the only thing in life that you absolutely have to be aware of as it's happening.

When I got off the plane, after eleven hours of travel and forty years away, the man took my passport and asked me the purpose of my visit, I wrote in my daybook, To mourn, and then, To mourn try to live, he gave me a look and asked if I would consider that business or pleasure, I wrote, Neither. For how long do you plan to mourn and try to live? For as long as I can. Are we talking about a weekend or a year? I didn't write anything. The man said, Next.

Jonathan Safran Foer

He wrote, I do not know how to live. I do not know either, but I am trying. I do not know how to try. There were things I wanted to tell him. But I knew they would hurt him, so I buried them, and let them hurt me.

What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

Life overflows with imperfections, but some matter more than others

Rabbi, I feel no despair anymore. For seventy years I had only nightmares, but I have no nightmares anymore. I feel only gratitude for my life, for every moment I lived. Not only the good moments. I feel gratitude for every moment of my life. I have seen so many miracles.

It's true, I am afraid of dying. I am afraid of the world moving forward without me, of my absence going unnoticed, or worse, being some natural force propelling life on. Is it selfish? Am I such a bad person for dreaming of a world that ends when I do?

I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What so great about feeling and dreaming?

There are worse things, worse than being like us. Look, at least we're alive.

I think after you live it's like before you lived.

I got incredibly heavy boots about how relatively insignificant life is, and how, compared to the universe and compared to time, it didn't even matter if I existed at all.

There was a single thought in my head: Keep thinking. Thinking would keep me alive. But now I am alive, and thinking is killing me. I think and think and think.

I just couldn't be dead any longer.