c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.
— Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
We are unusual and tragic and alive.
— Dave Eggers
You were put on this earth to achieve your greatest self, to live out your purpose, and to do it courageously.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
It's not my story anymore: whenever I speak about the past now, I feel as if I were talking about something that has nothing to do with me. All that remains in the present are the voice, the presence, and the importance of fulfilling my mission. I don't regret difficulties I experienced; I think they helped me to become the person I am today, I feel the way a warrior must feel after years of training; he doesn't remember the details of everything he learned, but he knows how to strike when the time is right.
— Paulo Coelho, The Zahir
When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only to dream forever.
— Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo
I do not believe anyone can be perfectly well, who has a brain and a heart
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
I know it's not easy for you, living this life, but try to remember, always try to remember, you're not the only one with troubles.
— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke & Bone
We are all equal in the fact that we are all different. We are all the same in the fact that we will never be the same. We are united by the reality that all colours and all cultures are distinct & individual. We are harmonious in the reality that we are all held to this earth by the same gravity. We don't share blood, but we share the air that keeps us alive. I will not blind myself and say that my black brother is not different from me. I will not blind myself and say that my brown sister is not different from me. But my black brother is he as much as I am me. But my brown sister is she as much as I am me.
— C. JoyBell C.
Your "I CAN" is more important than your IQ.
— Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
When a stargirl cries, she sheds not tears but light.
— Jerry Spinelli, Stargirl
We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find a new course.
— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha
The reason many people in our society are miserable, sick, and highly stressed is because of an unhealthy attachment to things they have no control over.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we only have one.
— Tom Hiddleston
Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.
— Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living.
— Mark Twain, Notebook
When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
I suffer from life and from other people. I can’t look at reality face to face. Even the sun discourages and depresses me. Only at night and all alone, withdrawn, forgotten and lost, with no connection to anything real or useful — only then do I find myself and feel comforted.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Dream your own dreams, achieve your own goals. Your journey is your own and unique.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
No one has ever achieved greatness without dreams.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Do not lose hope — what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. (from 'Instructions')
— Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders
I’ve come to the conclusion that people who wear headphones while they walk, are much happier, more confident, and more beautiful individuals than someone making the solitary drudge to work without acknowledging their own interests and power.
— Jason Mraz
Hearing voices no one else can hear isn't a good sign, even in the wizarding world.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
— Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense.
— Rick Warren
Let me give you a tip on a clue to men's characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably
—  the man who respects it has earned it.
What is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying.
— Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays
Perfectly ImperfectWe have all heard that no two snowflakes are alike. Each snowflake takes the perfect form for the maximum efficiency and effectiveness for its journey. And while the universal force of gravity gives them a shared destination, the expansive space in the air gives each snowflake the opportunity to take their own path. They are on the same journey, but each takes a different path.Along this gravity-driven journey, some snowflakes collide and damage each other, some collide and join together, some are influenced by wind... there are so many transitions and changes that take place along the journey of the snowflake. But, no matter what the transition, the snowflake always finds itself perfectly shaped for its journey. I find parallels in nature to be a beautiful reflection of grand orchestration. One of these parallels is of snowflakes and us. We, too, are all headed in the same direction. We are being driven by a universal force to the same destination. We are all individuals taking different journeys and along our journey, we sometimes bump into each other, we cross paths, we become altered... we take different physical forms. But at all times we too are 100% perfectly imperfect. At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey. I’m not perfect for your journey and you’re not perfect for my journey, but I’m perfect for my journey and you’re perfect for your journey. We’re heading to the same place, we’re taking different routes, but we’re both exactly perfect the way we are. Think of what understanding this great orchestration could mean for relationships. Imagine interacting with others knowing that they too each share this parallel with the snowflake. Like you, they are headed to the same place and no matter what they may appear like to you, they have taken the perfect form for their journey. How strong our relationships would be if we could see and respect that we are all perfectly imperfect for our journey.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
The universe may not always play fair, but at least it's got a hell of a sense of humor.
— Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City
Life happens. Shit happens. And it happens a lot. To a lot of people.
— Colleen Hoover, Slammed
Life is hard. After all, it kills you.
— Katharine Hepburn, Me: Stories of My Life
But we can't go back. We can only go forward.
— Libba Bray
If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.
— Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom
Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.
— Robert E. Howard
His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred. Later he became conscious of his damaged wings and of their construction and he learned to think and could not fly any more because the love of flight was gone and he could only remember when it had been effortless.
— Ernest Hemingway
Hobbes: Do you think there's a God?Calvin: Well, somebody's out to get me!
— Bill Watterson
I have known the joy and pain of friendship. I have served and been served. I have made some good enemies for which I am not a bit sorry. I have loved unselfishly, and I have fondled hatred with the red-hot tongs of Hell. That's living.
— Zora Neale Hurston
Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.
— Hans Christian Andersen
I am ready for whatever's coming. I expect nothing but to be let down or turned away. I am alone. Goddamn. The shit hurts sometimes, but I realize what I am, what I have become.
— Henry Rollins
Art is to console those who are broken by life.
— Vincent van Gogh
The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help.
— Jeanette Winterson, Sexing the Cherry
Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels
—  only when the clock stops does time come to life.
Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lustLike diamonds we are cut with our own dust
— John Webster
Pierre was right when he said that one must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and I now believe in it. Let the dead bury the dead, but while I'm alive, I must live and be happy.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
— David Eagleman, Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives
Fear robs you of your freedom to make the right choice in life that can bridge the gap between where you are and where you want to be. On the other side of fear, lies freedom. If you want to grow, you need to be brave and take risks. If you're not uncomfortable, you're not growing.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Life teaches us the right path is rarely the easy one.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Stay strong, stay positive, and never give up.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.
— Jeffrey Eugenides, The Virgin Suicides
Look. I have a strategy. Why expect anything? If you don’t expect anything, you don’t get disappointed.
— Patricia McCormick, Cut
You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.
— Mary Tyler Moore
Life is a blank canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can.
— Danny Kaye
Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish—a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow—to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80's
She was like a drowning person, flailing, reaching for anything that might save her. Her life was an urgent, desperate struggle to justify her life.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.
— Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
He is the most beautiful creature I have ever seen and it's not about his face, but the life force I can see in him. It's the smile and the pure promise of everything he has to offer. Like he's saying, 'Here I am world, are you ready for so much passion and beauty and goodness and love and every other word that should be in the dictionary under the word life?' Except this boy is dead, and the unnaturalness of it makes me want to pull my hair out with Tate and Narnie and Fitz and Jude's grief all combined. It makes me want to yell at the God that I wish I didn't believe in. For hogging him all to himself. I want to say, 'You greedy God. Give him back. I needed him here.
— Melina Marchetta, On the Jellicoe Road
This is how the entire course of a life can be changed: by doing nothing.
— Ian McEwan, On Chesil Beach
We can never judge the lives of others, because each person knows only their own pain and renunciation.
— Paulo Coelho, By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future.
— Thich Nhat Hanh
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
— Gustave Flaubert
The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
My destination is no longer a place, rather a new way of seeing.
— Marcel Proust
Maybe happiness didn't have to be about the big, sweeping circumstances, about having everything in your life in place. Maybe it was about stringing together a bunch of small pleasures. Wearing slippers and watching the Miss Universe contest. Eating a brownie with vanilla ice cream. Getting to level seven in Dragon Master and knowing there were twenty more levels to go. Maybe happiness was just a matter of the little upticks- the traffic signal that said "Walk" the second you go there- and downticks- the itch tag at the back of your collar- that happened to every person in the course of the day. Maybe everybody had the same allotted measure of happiness within each day. maybe it didn't matter if you were a world-famous heartthrob or a painful geek. Maybe it didn't matter if your friend was possibly dying. Maybe you just got through it. Maybe that was all you could ask for.
— Ann Brashares, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
I'm not saying it's going to be easy. Nothing in life is easy. But that's no reason to give up. You'll be surprised what you can accomplish if you set your mind to it. After all, you only have one life, so you should try to make the most of it.
— Louis Sachar
Life is the tragedy,' she said bitterly. 'You know how they categorize Shakespeare's plays, right? If it ends with a wedding, it's a comedy. And if it ends with a funeral, it's a tragedy. So we're all living tragedies, because we all end the same way, and it isn't with a goddamn wedding.
— Robyn Schneider, The Beginning of Everything
Your time is way too valuable to be wasting on people that can't accept who you are.
— Turcois Ominek
If you learn to really sit with loneliness and embrace it for the gift that it is…an opportunity to get to know YOU, to learn how strong you really are, to depend on no one but YOU for your happiness…you will realize that a little loneliness goes a LONG way in creating a richer, deeper, more vibrant and colorful YOU.
— Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass
Oh, you hate your job? Why didn't you say so?There's a support group for that. It's called EVERYBODY, and they meet at the bar.
— Drew Carey
We know from daily life that we exist for other people first of all, for whose smiles and well-being our own happiness depends.
— Albert Einstein
Maybe everyone is just waiting for someone else to save them.
— Margaret Peterson Haddix, Among the Brave
You can have everything you want if you can put your heart and soul into everything you do.
— Roy T. Bennett
We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically.
— Neil deGrasse Tyson
Sometimes I just think depression's one way of coping with the world. Like, some people get drunk, some people do drugs, some people get depressed. Because there's so much stuff out there that you have to do something to deal with it.
— Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story
When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.
— Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
I won't tell you that the world matters nothing, or the world's voice, or the voice of society. They matter a good deal. They matter far too much. But there are moments when one has to choose between living one's own life, fully, entirely, completely—or dragging out some false, shallow, degrading existence that the world in its hypocrisy demands. You have that moment now. Choose!
— Oscar Wilde
A man is like a novel: until the very last page you don't know how it will end. Otherwise it wouldn't even be worth reading.
— Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
What do you most value in your friends?Their continued existence.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.
— Woody Allen
This life is for loving, sharing, learning, smiling, caring, forgiving, laughing, hugging, helping, dancing, wondering, healing, and even more loving. I choose to live life this way. I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, 'aw shit, he's up!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Chocolate says "I'm sorry" so much better than words.
— Rachel Vincent, My Soul to Save
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
— Haruki Murakami, 1Q84
I've crossed some kind of invisible line. I feel as if I've come to a place I never thought I'd have to come to. And I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little harmless dreaming and then some sleepy, early-morning talk has led me into considerations of death and annihilation.
— Raymond Carver, Where I'm Calling From: New and Selected Stories
If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.
— C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
— Joseph Campbell, A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
You can get all A's and still flunk life.
— Walker Percy, The Second Coming
Me: “I refuse to attend Support Group.”Mom: “One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities.”Me: “Please just let me watch America’s Next Top Model. It’s an activity.”Mom: “Television is a passivity.”Me: “Ugh, Mom, please.”Mom: “Hazel, you’re a teenager. You’re not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life.”Me: “If you want me to be a teenager, don’t send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot.”Mom: “You don’t take pot, for starters.”Me: “See, that’s the kind of thing I’d know if you got me a fake ID.”Mom: “You’re going to Support Group.”Me: “UGGGGGGGGGGGGG.”Mom: “Hazel, you deserve a life.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
People rarely bring flowers to a suicide.
— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
Part of me suspects that I'm a loser, and the other part of me thinks I'm God Almighty.
— John Lennon
Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.
— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines
When someone sees the same people every day, as had happened with him at the seminary, they wind up becoming a part of that person's life. And then they want the person to change. If someone isn't what others want them to be, the others become angry. Everyone seems to have a clear idea of how other people should lead their lives, but none about his or her own.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Life is problems. Living is solving problems.
— Raymond E. Feist, Silverthorn
Consistency is the true foundation of trust. Either keep your promises or do not make them.
— Roy T. Bennett
Be with someone who inspires you and makes you be the best version of yourself.
— Roy T. Bennett
You were not born on earth to please anyone; you have to live life to express yourself, not to impress someone. Don't pretend to be someone you're not, and never lose yourself in search of other people's acceptance and approval.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
How much you can learn when you fail determines how far you will go into achieving your goals.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Push your boundaries beyond the ordinary
—  be that “extra” in “extraordinary.
Difficulties and adversities viciously force all their might on us and cause us to fall apart, but they are necessary elements of individual growth and reveal our true potential. We have got to endure and overcome them, and move forward. Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Every choice comes with a consequence. Once you make a choice, you must accept responsibility. You cannot escape the consequences of your choices, whether you like them or not.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
You are -- your life, and nothing else.
— Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit
All knowledge is worth having.
— Jacqueline Carey, Kushiel's Dart
Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest
Mistakes are, after all, the foundations of truth, and if a man does not know what a thing is, it is at least an increase in knowledge if he knows what it is not. 
— C.G. Jung
Wisdom is having things right in your lifeand knowing why.
— William Stafford
Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death--ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.
— James     Baldwin, The Fire Next Time
Normal is an illusion. What is normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.
— Charles Addams
I definitely learned a lesson this time. I know that I can be broken. I am not as tough as I thought. I see it now. At this point, it's the only thing good that came out of all of this. I know myself better now and know what I have to do.
— Henry Rollins, The Portable Henry Rollins
The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.
— Albert Einstein
The right thing to do and the hard thing to do are usually the same.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
When you make a choice, you change the future.
— Deepak Chopra
We pass through this world but once. Few tragedies can be more extensive than the stunting of life, few injustices deeper than the denial of an opportunity to strive or even to hope, by a limit imposed from without, but falsely identified as lying within.
— Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man
I am suddenly comsumed by nostalgia for the little girl who was me, who loved the fields and believed in God, who spent winter days home sick from school reading Nancy Drew and sucking menthol cough drops, who could keep a secret.
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
There's no advantage to hurrying through life." -Shikamaru Nara
— Masashi Kishimoto
It's funny how, in this journey of life, even though we may begin at different times and places, our paths cross with others so that we may share our love, compassion, observations, and hope. This is a design of God that I appreciate and cherish.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.
— Anne Lamott, Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you'll always find despair.
— Irvin D. Yalom, When Nietzsche Wept
The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?
— Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial
It's important in life if you don't give a shit. It can help you a lot.
— George Carlin
Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.
— Nikki Sixx, The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star
A boo is a lot louder than a cheer.
— Lance Armstrong
And when I saw him[my father] lying dead in a pool of his own blood, I knew then that I hadn't stopped believing in God. I'd just stopped believing God cared. There might be a God, Clary, and there might be not. Either way, we're on our own.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
Jamie: You know what I figured out today?Landon: What?Jamie: Maybe God has a bigger plan for me than I had for myself. Like this journey never ends. Like you were sent to me because I'm sick. To help me through all this. You're my angel.
— Nicholas Sparks, A Walk to Remember
What if life could be this way? Only the happy parts, none of the terrible, not even the mildly unpleasant. What if we could just cut out the bad and keep the good? This is what I want to do with Violet - give her only the good, keep away the bad, so that good is all we ever have around us.
— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
We judge others instantly by their clothes, their cars, their appearance, their race, their education, their social status. The list is endless. What gets me is that most people decide who another person is before they have even spoken to them. What's even worse is that these same people decide who someone else is, and don't even know who they are themselves.
— Ashly Lorenzana
I scream for everything that has gone wrong. I scream for everything broken in our lives.
— Marie Lu, Champion
I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and I saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.
— Kahlil Gibran
Live fast. Die young. Be wild. Have fun.
— Lana Del Rey
If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.
— Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace
Change course, but don’t give up.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Do your own thing on your own terms and get what you came here for
— Oliver James
I'll never know, and neither will you, of the life you don't choose. We'll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important and beautiful and not ours. It was the ghost ship that didn't carry us. There's nothing to do but salute it from the shore.
— Cheryl Strayed, Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar
Art is unquestionably one of the purest and highest elements in human happiness. It trains the mind through the eye, and the eye through the mind. As the sun colors flowers, so does art color life.
— John Lubbock, The Pleasures of Life
One swallow does not make a summer,neither does one fine day; similarly one day or brief time of happiness does not make a person entirely happy.
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
About once or twice every month I engage in public debates with those whose pressing need it is to woo and to win the approval of supernatural beings. Very often, when I give my view that there is no supernatural dimension, and certainly not one that is only or especially available to the faithful, and that the natural world is wonderful enough—and even miraculous enough if you insist—I attract pitying looks and anxious questions. How, in that case, I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about?Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.
— Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22: A Memoir
All that happens means something
—  nothing you do is ever insignificant.
I love you. I hate you. I like you. I hate you. I love you. I think you’re stupid. I think you’re a loser. I think you’re wonderful. I want to be with you. I don’t want to be with you. I would never date you. I hate you. I love you…..I think the madness started the moment we met and you shook my hand. Did you have a disease or something?
— Shannon L. Alder
Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
There's always another storm. It's the way the world works. Snowstorms, rainstorms, windstorms, sandstorms, and firestorms. Some are fierce and others are small. You have to deal with each one separately, but you need to keep an eye on whats brewing for tomorrow.
— Maria V. Snyder, Fire Study
Thermodynamic miracles... events with odds against so astronomical they're effectively impossible, like oxygen spontaneously becoming gold. I long to observe such a thing.And yet, in each human coupling, a thousand million sperm vie for a single egg. Multiply those odds by countless generations, against the odds of your ancestors being alive; meeting; siring this precise son; that exact daughter... Until your mother loves a man she has every reason to hate, and of that union, of the thousand million children competing for fertilization, it was you, only you, that emerged. To distill so specific a form from that chaos of improbability, like turning air to gold... that is the crowning unlikelihood. The thermodynamic miracle.But...if me, my birth, if that's a thermodynamic miracle... I mean, you could say that about anybody in the world!.Yes. Anybody in the world. ..But the world is so full of people, so crowded with these miracles that they become commonplace and we forget... I forget. We gaze continually at the world and it grows dull in our perceptions. Yet seen from the another's vantage point. As if new, it may still take our breath away. Come...dry your eyes. For you are life, rarer than a quark and unpredictable beyond the dreams of Heisenberg; the clay in which the forces that shape all things leave their fingerprints most clearly. Dry your eyes... and let's go home.
— Alan Moore, Watchmen
Youth offers the promise of happiness, but life offers the realities of grief.
— Nicholas Sparks, The Rescue
When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?
— Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See
You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.
— Max Ehrmann, Desiderata - A Poem for a Way of Life
That’s how I know they are dreams. Because the simple and plain and everyday things are the ones that we can never have. (Cassia Reyes)
— Ally Condie, Matched
Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
— Oscar Wilde
If you try to change it, you will ruin it. Try to hold it, and you will lose it.
— Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
No one ever does live happily ever after, but we leave the children to find that out for themselves.
— Stephen King, Wolves of the Calla
Stay hungry, stay young, stay foolish, stay curious, and above all, stay humble because just when you think you got all the answers, is the moment when some bitter twist of fate in the universe will remind you that you very much don't.
— Tom Hiddleston
Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled ‘This could change your life’.
— Helen Exley
I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
— Steve Jobs
In the Book of Life, The answers aren't in the back.
— Charles M. Schulz
Develop an attitude of gratitude, and give thanks for everything that happens to you, knowing that every step forward is a step toward achieving something bigger and better than your current situation.
— Brian Tracy
I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.
— Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.
— Arthur Conan Doyle, A Case of Identity
Singing in the rain. I'm singing in the rain. And it's such a fucking glorious feeling. An unexpected downpour and I am just giving myself into it. Because what the fuck else can you do? Run for cover? Shriek and curse? No--when the rain falls you just let it fall and you grin like a madman and you dance with it because if you can make yourself happy in the rain, then you're doing pretty alright in life.
— David Levithan, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist
A joke is a very serious thing.
— Winston S. Churchill
In case you never get a second chance: don't be afraid!" "And what if you do get a second chance?" "You take it!
— C. JoyBell C.
Life will hit you hard in the face, wait for you to get back up just so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air.
— Sarah Kay
Well, I like to eat, sleep, drink, and be in love.I like to work, read, learn, and understand life.
— Langston Hughes
I believe in looking reality straight in the eye and denying it. 
— Garrison Keillor
I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just...in between.
— Jim Morrison
I don’t really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits
— Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
I'm afraid of time... I mean, I'm afraid of not having enough time. Not enough time to understand people, how they really are, or to be understood myself. I'm afraid of the quick judgements or mistakes everybody makes. You can't fix them without time. I'm afraid of seeing snapshots, not movies.
— Ann Brashares
Spending time with God is the key to our strength and success in all areas of life. Be sure that you never try to work God into your schedule, but always work your schedule around Him.
— Joyce Meyer
Let all of life be an unfettered howl.
— Vladimir Nabokov
It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, but it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: music, laughter,the physics of falling leaves, automobiles, holding hands,the scent of rain, the concept of subway trains... if only one could leave this life slowly!
— Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy
I am nothing more than the consequence of catastrophe.
— Tahereh Mafi, Unravel Me
I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage with my books, my family and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post, which any human power can give.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Changing is what people do when they have no options left.
— Holly Black, Red Glove
Life is 10 percent what you make itand 90 percent how you take it.
— Irving Berlin
All that is important is this one moment in movement. Make the moment important, vital, and worth living. Do not let it slip away unnoticed and unused.
— Martha Graham
Always forgive, but never forget, else you will be a prisoner of your own hatred, and doomed to repeat your mistakes forever.
— Wil Zeus, Sun Beyond the Clouds
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."]
— Anne Bradstreet, The Works of Anne Bradstreet
Pulvis et umbra sumus. It's a line from Horace. 'We are dust and shadows'. Appropriate, don't you think?" Will said. "It's not a long life, killing demons; one tends to die young, and then they burn your body - dust to dust, in the literal sense. And then we vanish into the shadows of history, nary a mark on the page of a mundane book to remind the world that once we existed at all.
— Cassandra Clare, Clockwork Angel
Life is a bowl of cherries. Some cherries are rotten while others are good; its your job to throw out the rotten ones and forget about them while you enjoy eating the ones that are good! There are two kinds of people: those who choose to throw out the good cherries and wallow in all the rotten ones, and those who choose to throw out all the rotten ones and savor all the good ones.
— C. JoyBell C.
All sacrifice and suffering is redemptive. It is used to either teach the individual or to help others. Nothing is by chance.
— A.J. Russell
The sense of tragedy - according to Aristotle - comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist's weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I'm getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues....[But] we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Failures are the stairs we climb to reach success.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
No matter how much experience you have, there’s always something new you can learn and room for improvement.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Do not let your negative thoughts have power over you because those thoughts will end up controlling your life. No one can live a positive life with a negative mind.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
If you can't do anything about it, laugh like hell.
— David Cook
I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end.
— Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca
Sharing tales of those we've lost is how we keep from really losing them.
— Mitch Albom, For One More Day
Life is but a day
— A fragile dew-drop on its perilous wayFrom a tree’s summit.
Life is too short when you think of the length of death
— Sean Mangan
Without music, life would be a blank to me.
— Jane Austen, Emma
My point is, life is about balance. The good and the bad. The highs and the lows. The pina and the colada.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
...when pain is over, the remembrance of it often becomes a pleasure.
— Jane Austen, Persuasion
It might be possible that the world itself is without meaning.
— Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
How would your life be different if…You stopped worrying about things you can’t control and started focusing on the things you can? Let today be the day…You free yourself from fruitless worry, seize the day and take effective action on things you can change.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
We cast a shadow on something wherever we stand, and it is no good moving from place to place to save things; because the shadow always follows. Choose a place where you won't do harm - yes, choose a place where you won't do very much harm, and stand in it for all you are worth, facing the sunshine.
— E.M. Forster, A Room with a View
I've come to believe that all my past failure and frustration were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy. 
— Anthony Robbins
My life is a reading list.
— John Irving, A Prayer for Owen Meany
The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
— Alan W. Watts
No one else has access to the world you carry around within yourself; you are its custodian and entrance. No one else can see the world the way you see it. No one else can feel your life the way you feel it. Thus it is impossible to ever compare two people because each stands on such different ground. When you compare yourself to others, you are inviting envy into your consciousness; it can be a dangerous and destructive guest.
— John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the lives they lead. Of all these the richest in beauty is the beautiful life. That is the perfect work of art.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Painted Veil
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are. A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating. The worse their rhymes are, the more picturesque they look. The mere fact of having published a book of second-rate sonnets makes a man quite irresistible. He lives the poetry that he cannot write. The others write the poetry that they dare not realize.
— Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
I really think I write about everyday life. I don't think I'm quite as odd as others say I am. Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that's what makes it so boring.
— Edward Gorey
A bend in the road is not the end of the road…Unless you fail to make the turn.
— Helen Keller
I feel sorry for anyone who is in a place where he feels strange and stupid.
— Lois Lowry, The Giver
When we're connected to others, we become better people.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
I'm sure you think that I don't understand what you're going through, but I do. It's just that sometimes, our future is dictated by what we are, opposed to what we want.
— Nicholas Sparks
By the way, when Oprah Winfrey is suggesting you may have overextended yourself, you need to examine your fucking life.
— Tina Fey, Bossypants
Create a vision for the life you really want and then work relentlessly towards making it a reality.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Be where you are, stop over-thinking, and focus on what you are doing.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
There is no more profitable investment than investing in yourself. It is the best investment you can make
—  you can never go wrong with it. It is the true way to improve yourself to be the best version of you and lets you be able to best serve those around you.
Life is like a box of crayons. Most people are the 8 color boxes, but what you're really looking for are the 64 color boxes with the sharpeners on the back. I fancy myself to be a 64 color box, though I've got a few missing. It's okay though, because I've got some more vibrant colors like periwinkle at my disposal. I have a bit of a problem though in that I can only meet the 8 color boxes. Does anyone else have that problem? I mean there are so many different colors of life, of feeling, of articulation. So when I meet someone who's an 8 color type...I'm like, hey girl, Magenta! and she's like, oh, you mean purple! and she goes off on her purple thing, and I'm like, no I want Magenta!
— John Mayer
We never know which lives we influence, or when, or why.
— Stephen King, 11/22/63
Too many people seem to believe that silence was a void that needed to be filled, even if nothing important was said.
— Nicholas Sparks, Nights in Rodanthe
Instructions for freedom":1. Life's metaphors are God's instructions.2. You have just climbed up and above the roof, there is nothing between you and the Infinite; now, let go.3. The day is ending, it's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go.4. Your wish for resolution was a prayer. You are being here is God's response, let go and watch the stars came out, in the inside and in the outside.5. With all your heart ask for Grace and let go. 6. With all your heart forgive him, forgive yourself and let him go.7. Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering then, let go.8. Watch the heat of day pass into the cold night, let go.9. When the Karma of a relationship is done, only Love remains. It's safe, let go.10. When the past has past from you at last, let go.. then, climb down and begin the rest of your life with great joy.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
no, no, it's not all random, if it really was all random, the universe would abandon us completely. and the universe doesn't. it takes care of its most fragile creations in ways we can't see. like with parents who adore you blindly. and a big sister who feels guilty for being human over you. and a little gravelly-voiced kid whose friends have left him over you. and even a pink-haired girl who carries your picture in her wallet. maybe it is a lottery, but the universe makes it all even out in the end. the universe takes care of all its birds.
— R.J. Palacio, Wonder
It was ironic, really - you want to die because you can't be bothered to go on living - but then you're expected to get all energetic and move furniture and stand on chairs and hoist ropes and do complicated knots and attach things to other things and kick stools from under you and mess around with hot baths and razor blades and extension cords and electrical appliances and weedkiller. Suicide was a complicated, demanding business, often involving visits to hardware shops.And if you've managed to drag yourself from the bed and go down the road to the garden center or the drug store, by then the worst is over. At that point you might as well just go to work.
— Marian Keyes, Lucy Sullivan Is Getting Married
Life isn’t about what you get, it’s about what you DO with what you get.
— Stephanie Perkins, Lola and the Boy Next Door
Hopes are like hair ornaments. Girls want to wear too many of them. When they become old women they look silly wearing even one.
— Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha