How You Live Your Life Quotes

1. "Ah, clever clogs, but it will have happened in one of my alternative lives. You know--the lives hot-shot scientists tell us we are living at the same time as this one we know about. Which being so, how do you know that what happens in one of your alternative lives doesn't sometimes leak through into your consciousness in this life, and make you sad that you aren't living that particular alternative life instead of this one? Don't you sometimes feel depressed for no reason you can think of? I do. And maybe that's why. We've had a leak from an alternative life and want that life now. Like wanting an ice cream when you were little, which you knew was in the freezer, but your mom wouldn't let you have it."
Author: Aidan Chambers

2. "Once a rebel, always a rebel. You can't help being one. You can't deny that. And it's best to be a rebel so as to show 'em it don't pay to try to do you down. Factories and labour exchanges and insurance offices keep us alive and kicking - so they say - but they're booby-traps and will suck you under like sinking-sands if you're not careful. Factories sweat you to death, labour exchanges talk you to death, insurance and income tax offices milk money from your wage packets and rob you to death. And if you're still left with a tiny bit of life in your guts after all this boggering about, the army calls you up and you get shot to death. And if you're clever enough to stay out of the army you get bombed to death. Ay, by God, it's a hard life if you don't weaken, if you don't stop that bastard government from grinding your face in the muck, though there ain't much you can do about it unless you start making dynamite to blow their four-eyed clocks to bits."
Author: Alan Sillitoe

3. "Here's a question every angry man and woman needs to consider: How long are you going to allow people you don't even like — people who are no longer in your life, maybe even people who aren't even alive anymore — to control your life? How long?"
Author: Andy Stanley

4. "How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a worthy expression of leaning into the light."
Author: Barry López

5. "So what will happen to your consciousness [after you die]? *Your* consciousness, yours, not anyone else's. Well, what are *you*? There's the point. Let's try to find out. What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys? Your liver? Your blood vessels? No. However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity--in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others--this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life--your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you--the you that enters the future and becomes part of it."
Author: Boris Pasternak

6. "Kid's don't care how many sermons you preach to them. The only sermon they'll hear is how you live your life in front of them."
Author: Bruce Van Horn

7. "Worrying about how you'll be remembered is pointless. Better to try to live your life in such a way that people will respect you while you're still alive."
Author: Charles Cumming

8. "Before you know it you'll be my age telling your own granddaughter the story of your life and you wanna make it an interesting one, don't you? You wanna be able to tell her some adventures, some excitements, some something. How you live your life, little one, is a gift for those who come after you, a kind of inheritance."
Author: Cristina Garcia

9. "Nobody on Earth can tell you how you should live your life. Nobody with any real authority anyway."
Author: Dan Pearce

10. "The people close to you influence your outlook, your values, how you spend your time, and how you treat other people. In other words, who you hang out with matters. If you are consistently in the company of someone who gossips, for example, it's likely you'll gossip. If you live with someone who is depressed, in my experience you are likely to become depressed. Spending time with positive, uplifting people will make you feel positive and hopeful. If you want to improve your attitude and conduct, spend time with someone whose conduct and values you admire. Emulate his or her behavior, and you will likely find it rubs off! You'll notice yourself avoiding actions and statements that might cause disapproval in the person you admire. By the same token, you find yourself naturally guided toward better, more life-affirming, behavior."
Author: Daniel G. Amen

11. "How do you live out God's plan for your life? By living God's way one day at a time."
Author: Elizabeth George

12. "People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave. A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master..."
Author: Elizabeth Gilbert

13. "Watching him, I understood for the first time how you could really live music, how you could listen to it completely and make it come alive, so that it was part of your life."
Author: Eric Clapton

14. "But you decide how you live your life in the meantime. You can hide fear. Or you can live life. - V"
Author: Gayle Forman

15. "And without you is how I disappear,And live my life alone forever now.And without you is how I disappear,And live my life alone forever now.Who walks among the famous living dead,Drowns all the boys and girls inside your bed.And if you could talk to me,Tell me if it's so,That all the good girls go to heaven.Well, heaven knowsThat without you is how I disappear,And live my life alone forever now.And without you is how I disappear,And live my life alone forever now.Can you hear me cry out to you?Words I thought I'd choke on figure out.I'm really not so with you anymore.I'm just a ghost, So I can't hurt you anymore,And now, you wanna see how far down I can sink?Let me go, fuck!So, you can, well now so, you canI'm so far away from you.Well now so, you can.And without you is how I disappear,And without you is how I disappear,Whoa whoa... (And without you is how I disappear)Whoa whoa... (And without you... is how, is how, is how...)Forever, forever now!"
Author: Gerard Way

16. "Let me have my tax money go for my protection and not for my prosecution. Let my tax money go for the protection of me. Protect my home, protect my streets, protect my car, protect my life, protect my property...worry about becoming a human being and not about how you can prevent others from enjoying their lives because of your own inability to adjust to life."
Author: Harvey Milk

17. "How you live does not depend so much on what life brings you as on the attitude that you approach your life with."
Author: Ivinela Samuilova

18. "How are you going to spend your day today? The key word being spend. Our time is one of the most precious gifts in our lives. Once today is over, that's it. Think about how you really want to spend your day. Tomorrow, today will be history. It's your life, your history. How do you want to write the history of your life today…?"
Author: James A. Murphy

19. "It was like that Talking Head song. „And you may ask yourself, 'How did I get here?' … And you may tell yourself, 'This is not my beautiful house. And you may tell yourself, 'This is not my beautiful wife' ". As he responded to the essay questions, Mitchell kept bending his answers toward their practical applications. He wanted to know why he was here, and how to live. It was perfect way to end your college career. Education had finally led Mitchell out into life."
Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

20. "He said that seeing and understanding are two different things. Our eyes show us one side of an object, but that doesn't mean there aren't five other sides we can't see. So why thrust your eyes? Why live your whole life thinking that just because you can't see every side to something, those other sides don't exist?"
Author: Jessica Khoury

21. "The point I'm trying to make is that you go to church on Sunday. But the real Christ is out there in your life every day, whether it be the guy you help on the street, how you live your life, and your countenance that makes people want to be you."
Author: Jim Caviezel

22. "Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you're going to live your life."
Author: Joel Osteen

23. "Yeah,Livie?""How do you figure out the right way to live your life?" There's a long pause. So long that I check the screen of my cell phone to see if the call is still connected."Trial and error, Livie. That's the only way that I know of."
Author: K.A. Tucker

24. "That goes for old wounds, too, you know. I really wish we'd had the chance to talk before this," he says, cracking the window so the smoke can escape. "There's a Longfellow quote I have stuck on my bulletin board at the church office- 'There is no grief like the grief that does not speak'- and it's true. I've found that keeping pain inside doesn't give it a chance to heal, but bringing it out into the light, holding it right there in your hands and trusting that you're strong enough to make it through, not hating the pain, not loving it, just seeing it for what it really is can change how you go on from there. Time alone doesn't heal emotional wounds, Sayre, and you don't want to live the rest of your life bottled up with anger and guilt and bitterness. That's how people self-destruct."
Author: Laura Wiess

25. "I'd forgotten it's an important thing to give thought to your morality and how you intend to live your life."
Author: Lee Pace

26. "We all have freedom of choice. Over and over again, minute by minute. How will you live your life? For yourself Or for others? For something good? For love? Love."
Author: Lisa Tawn Bergren

27. "You aimin' to go the full circle now? How long before I have to come get you up from the sidewalks? You got hurt and pain in you? Well, I used to know a man who knew how to live with his pain and make his hurt work for him. Your daddy died with dignity; there wasn't no bum in him. And he known some hurts in this life you ain't never even heard of!"
Author: Lorraine Hansberry

28. "So you know how things stand. Now forget what they think of you. Be satisfied if you can live the rest of your life, however short, as your nature demands. Focus on that, and don't let anything distract you. You've wandered all over and finally realized that you never found what you were after: how to live. Not in syllogisms, not in money, or fame, or self-indulgence. Nowhere."
Author: Marcus Aurelius

29. "We stayed all day long. We closed our eyes and paryed, which we had not doen together in a long time. The nurse came in and out of the room. Everything felt awful and I wondered why the whole world didn't seem to notice how bad things really were. I thought of how I'd gotten used to awful, how after my dad died the planets kept on spinning and I got up and ate breakfast every morning and kept going to school. Something happens and it's terrible and you think you can't live another day, but then your mother gets used to it and you get used to it and you both keep on living, and you're not sure if that getting-used-to-things is good or the way life should be."
Author: Margaret McMullan

30. "Real life often ends badly, like our marriage did, Pat. And literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for people to endure nobly. It sounds like you have endured very nobly since you returned to New Jersey, and I want you to know I admire that. I hope you are able to reinvent yourself and live out the rest of your life with a quiet sense of satisfaction, which is what I have been trying to do since we parted."
Author: Matthew Quick

31. "How do you get the happy ending? John Irving ought to know. One of my favorite authors, Irving writes these multigenerational epics of fiction that somehow work out in the end. How does he do it? He says, 'I always begin with the last sentence ; then I work my way backwards, through the plot, to where the story should begin.' Thst sounds like a lot of work, especially compared to the fantasy that great writers sit down and just go where the story takes them. Irving lets us know that good stories and happy endings are more intentional than that. Most 20 something's can't write the last sentence of their lives. But when pressed, they usually can identify things they want in their 30s or 40s or 60s -or things they don't want- and work backward from there. This is how you have your own multigenerational epic with a happy ending. This is how you live your life in real time."
Author: Meg Jay

32. "What marriage doesn't involve uncountable accretions, a language of gestures, a sense of recognition sharp as a toothache? Unhappy, sure. What couple isn't unhappy, at least part of the time? But how can the divorce rate be, as they say, skyrocketing? How miserable would you have to get to be able to bear the actual separation, to go off and live your life so utterly unrecognized?"
Author: Michael Cunningham

33. "I often laughed, and you often gave me a dissatisfied look, till you pressed me to unfold my past before you as if it were a roll of pictures. It was then I felt respect for you. Because you unreservedly showed me your resolution to catch something alive in my being, and to sip the warm blood running in my body, by cutting my heart. At that time, I was still living, and did not want to die. So I rejected your request, promising to satisfy you some day. Now I am going to destroy my heart myself, and pour my blood into your veins. I shall be happy if a new life can enter into your bosom, when my heart has stopped beating."
Author: Natsume Sōseki

34. "No, that's not the case at all. Shishio's logic dictates that the winner of a battle, in other words, the strong, is always correct that it does. If the truth could be discovered through fighting one or two battles, then we'd all be going through life without ever being wrong. A person's life isn't so simple a matter that it isn't. The true answer is something you find out yourself by how you live your life from this day onward that it is."-Kenshin"
Author: Nobuhiro Watsuki

35. "Funny how you can live your whole life waiting and not know it... Waiting for your real life to begin. Maybe the most real thing the end. To realize when it's too late. I know now that I loved him more than anything on earth or off of it."
Author: Peter Heller

36. "You haven't lost Iraki, you know. I don't know if it helps to say that. I lost a friend once myself, and I know how it goes.'He'll find his way inside you, and you'll carry him onward. Behind your heartbeat, you'll hear another one, faint and out of step. People will say you are speaking his opinions, or your hair has turned like his.'There are no more facts about him, that part is over. Now is the time for essential things. You'll see visions of him wherever you go. You'll see his eyes so moist, his intentions so blinding, you'll think he is more alive than you. You will look around and wonder if it was you who died.'Gradually you'll grow older than him, and love him as your son. 'In the future, you'll live astride the line separating life from death. You'll become experienced in the wisdom of grief. You won't wait until people die to grieve for them. You'll give them their grief while they are still alive, for then judgement falls away, and there remains only the miracle of being.'"
Author: Rana Dasgupta

37. "Just in general, no matter what you're doing, be true to yourself. Never let anyone else dictate how you live your life."
Author: Rumer Willis

38. "In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economy is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care how you lived your life? Crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn't have a thing to do with it, only to suffer the effects."
Author: Salman Rushdie

39. "Study history, Alleluia. In this century history stopped paying attention to the old psychological orientation of reality. I mean, these days, character isn't destiny any more. Economics is destiny. Ideology is destiny. Bombs are destiny. What does a famine, a gas chamber, a grenade care how you lived your life? Crisis comes, death comes, and your pathetic individual self doesn't have a thing to do with it, only to suffer the effects. This Gibreel of yours: maybe he's how history happens to you."
Author: Salman Rushdie

40. "How Do You Live If Your Life Dies?"
Author: Samantha Towle

41. "Student: I don't feel like living anymore. Teacher: If you don't feel like doing something then don't do. This means that in finding many ways how not to live your life, you have the possibility to discover how to live your life."
Author: Santosh Kalwar

42. "Life can be long or short, it all depends on how you choose to live it. it's like forever, always changing. for any of us our forever could end in an hour, or a hundred years from now. you can never know for sure, so you'd better make every second count. what you have to decide is how you want your life to be. if your forever was ending tomorrow, is this how you'd want to have spent it?"
Author: Sarah Dessen

43. "How you live your life is up to you. You have to go out and grab the world by the horns. Rope it before it ties you down and decides for you."
Author: Sarah Reijonen

44. "Wrong Question: How to love?Right Question: Why am I afraid to love?Wrong Question: Why do you love me?Right Question: Do I love myself as much as you do?Wrong Question: Why does love hurt?Right Question: Why do I live in fantasies and expect so much without really giving anything back?Wrong Question: What will you do for me?Right Question: Am I capable of making your life more beautiful?Wrong interpretation: Let's be practical.Right interpretation: Let's be wild and unconditional in our love without pretending.Wrong Confession: I want love in life.Right Confession: I am lonely and I will start by being friendly with myself first.Wrong Advice: Mind and ThoughtsRight Advice: Heart"
Author: Saurabh Sharma

45. "It's amazing how everyone has an opinion on how you should live your life."
Author: Sherry Stringfield

46. "Stop living within the confines of how others define you! You weren't created to live their life; you were created to live yours - so LIVE it! You can reignite that fire within and bring the passion back into your goals, dreams, ambitions, careers, and relationships by reclaiming control of your own life. Be unapologetically YOU!"
Author: Steve Maraboli

47. "Age shouldn't affect you. It's just like the size of your shoes - they don't determine how you live your life! You're either marvellous or you're boring, regardless of your age."
Author: Steven Morrissey

48. "I don't want you forgetting how different our circumstaces are. If you die, and I live, there's no life for me at all back in District Twelve. You're my whole life." Peeta says. "I would never be happy again. It's different for you. I'm not saying it wouldn't be hard. But there are other people who'd make your life worth living.""No one really needs me," he says, and there's no selfpity in his voice. It's true his family doesn't need him. They will mourn him, as will a handfull of friends. But they will get on.... I realise only one person will be damaged beyond repair if Peeta dies. Me."I do," I say. "I need you."
Author: Suzanne Collins

49. "You will actually die twice. Once when you stop breathing and once when people stop saying your name. You may not have much control over when your life will end, but you do have control over how long your legacy will live. Live so that your life is not defined by what you have acquired, but what you have given away; not by what is etched on a gravestone but what is etched in the lives and hearts of those you have touched. For more tips read, "The Angel Affect." Become It, Let It Become You, and GREAT Things Will Happen To You, For You and Because of You!"
Author: The Angel Affect

50. "How do you go to your own house when something has gone bad on the inside, when it doesn't seem like your place to live anymore, when you almost cannot recall living there although it was the place you mostly ate and slept for all your grown-up life? Try to remember two or three things about living there. Try to remember cooking one meal."
Author: William Kittredge

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