Actually Living Quotes

• Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

  Confucius

  Inspirational, Life, Positive

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• If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me to attend to the here and now. If, then , my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

  Alan Watts

  Buddhist, Memories, Real

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.

  Marina Abramovic

  Reality, Minutes, Parallel Lives

  "Marina Abramovic Talks 'The Artist is Present,' Her Thoughts On Censorship, Art & More". Interview with Christopher Bell, www.indiewire.com. June 15, 2012.

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• Pride comes from a place of real acknowledgment that somebody's actually living their life for themselves, and I want to be that example for my son.

  Charlize Theron

  Real, Pride, Son

  Source: wwd.com

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• I've lived a lot in communist countries and they're intensely interested in money. I think they are more interested in money than capitalists are. They're the most materialistic people in the world. What they're actually living for is material things. The irony of that is that in communist countries there isn't anything to buy.

  Truman Capote

  Country, Thinking, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• Most people can't imagine a life that is any different from the one they are actually living. They can dream about it, they can even go into the streets and demonstrate for it, but they still can't imagine what it would be like.

  Ivan Klíma

  Life, Dream, People

  Ivan Klíma, Paul Wilson (2006). “Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light”, p.18, Grove Press

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• There is a big difference between just learning something, and actually LIVING what you learn.

  Hal Elrod

  Differences, Wake Up, Waking Up Early

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• It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.

  Alice Munro

  Writing, Important, World

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• I've nothing against eye make-up and lipstick. But the fact is that we’re actually living on a planet in space. For me that’s an extraordinary thought. It’s mind-boggling just to think about the existence of space at all. But there are girls who can’t see the universe for eye liner.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Girl, Eye, Thinking

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• I want to say to mothers out there, you know, take your children to marches. Take them to meetings because this is a way that they can become strong, and they understand what politics is all about because they are actually living it.

  Dolores Huerta

  Mother, Strong, Children

  Source: www.npr.org

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• People were so naive about plants, Ellie thought. They just chose plants for appearance, as they would choose a picture for the wall. It never occurred to them that plants were actually living things, busily performing all the living functions of respiration, ingestion, excretion, reproduction---and defense.

  Michael Crichton

  Wall, People, Defense

  Michael Crichton (1997). “Michael Crichton's Jurassic World”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

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• Having stumbled upon a tolerable career, for the first time in my life I was actually living above the poverty line. My hunger to climb had been blunted, in short, by a bunch of small satisfactions that added up to something like happiness.

  Jon Krakauer

  Careers, Lines, Satisfaction

  Jon Krakauer (2011). “Into Thin Air: A personal account of the Everest disaster”, p.28, Pan Macmillan

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• If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.

  Alan Watts

  Real, Past, World

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

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• I have a little brother. He's actually living at my house right now. He's going to be 18.

  Edward Furlong

  Brother, House, Littles

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• I want my job to include a little adventure, a little more of a heightened reality than what I'm actually living. And 'Castle' has that. He gets this opportunity to tail these homicide detectives, and he's driven by that. He's a little immature, but he's obviously loving life.

  Nathan Fillion

  Jobs, Adventure, Opportunity

  Interview with Steve Heisler, tv.avclub.com. March 9, 2009.

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• The day before is what we bring to the day we're actually living through, life is a matter of carrying along all those days-before just as someone might carry stones, and when we can no longer cope with the load, the work is done, the last day is the only one that is not the day before another day.

  Jose Saramago

  Done, Stones, Might

  "A Caverna (The Cave)". Book by Jose Saramago (p. 61), 2002.

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• I call this book The Intent to Live because great actors don't seem to be acting, they seem to be actually living.

  Larry Moss

  Book, Acting, Actors

  Larry Moss (2004). “The Intent to Live: Achieving Your True Potential as an Actor”, Bantam

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• Of course, Texas is so huge it really is empty places; people can easily drive an hour and a half to work every day, so even if they're actually living in the suburbs, it sure feels as if they're in a remote location.

  Gail Collins

  Texas, People, Empty Places

  "Interview With Gail Collins: How Texas Hijacked the American Agenda". Interview with Martha Rosenberg, www.huffingtonpost.com. December 14, 2012.

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• Everybody wants to have a commentary on my life, like they are actually living it. Cool, comment all you want but I'm the one that's living it.

  Katy Perry

  Want, Comment, Commentary

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• Knowledge is the reward of action. For it is by doing things that one becomes transformed. Executing a symbolical gesture, actually living through, to the very limit, a particular role, one comes to realize the truth inherent in the role. Suffering its consequences, one fathoms and exhausts its contents.

  Heinrich Zimmer

  Suffering, Roles, Gestures

  Heinrich Zimmer (2013). “Philosophies of India”, p.533, Routledge

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• I think maybe 50 years ago people and businesses felt like they had to choose between maximizing profits and making customers happy or making employees happy, and I think we're actually living in a special time where everyone's hyperconnected, whether through Twitter or blogs and so on. Information travels so quickly that it's actually possible to have it all, to make customers happy through customer service, to make employees happy through strong company cultures, and have that actually drive growth and profits.

  Tony Hsieh

  Strong, Thinking, Years

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• Writing is a way of living other lives. It is a way of expanding your life. It's not actually living a different life, it just means that you're hungry for life. There are so many things you want to do.

  Etgar Keret

  Writing, Mean, Way

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• I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that's going on. I feel like I'm in my own bubble.

  Kendrick Lamar

  Thinking, Understanding, Live In The Moment

  Interview with Erykah Badu, www.interviewmagazine.com. April 23, 2013.

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• I want my job to include a little adventure, a little more of a heightened reality than what I'm actually living.

  Nathan Fillion

  Jobs, Adventure, Reality

  Interview with Steve Heisler, www.avclub.com. March 9, 2009.

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• Try to be happy within the context of the life we are actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves.

  Wayne Coyne

  Mind, Trying, Lucky

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