Human Life Quotes - Page 30

• None can be an impartial or wise observer of human life but from the vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Wise, Poverty, Should

  Henry David Thoreau (2015). “Thoreau on Nature: Sage Words on Finding Harmony with the Natural World”, p.26, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Egypt loved the lotus becuase it never dies. It is the same for people who are loved. Thus can something as insignificant as a name-two syllables, one high, one sweet- summon up the innumerable smiles, tears, sighs and dreams of a human life.

  Anita Diament

  Dream, Sweet, Egypt

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• Of course I loved books more than people. Of course I valued "Jane Eyre" over the anonymous stranger...Of course all of Shakespeare was worth more than a human life.

  Diane Setterfield

  Book, People, Stranger

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• We have two alternatives: either we question our beliefs - or we don't. Either we accept our fixed versions of reality- or we begin to challenge them. In Buddha's opinion, to train in staying open and curious - to train in dissolving our assumptions and beliefs - is the best use of our human lives.

  Pema Chodron

  Buddhist, Reality, Two

  Pema Chodron (2002). “The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times”, p.26, Shambhala Publications

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• I had always had a little problem looking out for myself in love. I was afraid people would leave me. So I sort of clung and did everything possible to keep someone around. I didn't have a hard talk with myself about who I was keeping around. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. I clung to people like human life preservers. I thought i'd die if someone left me. Its ironic because now I'm the one who's leaving.

  Deb Caletti

  People, Leaving, Ironic

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• Who in the world has not yearned for a loved one, has never said, If only he or she could come back just once, just one more time...? Despite the fact that it can never happen, never ever. Surely this is the saddest thing about our mortal world, and its sadness will go on shrouding human life like a blanket of fog until its final extinction.

  Ismail Kadaré

  Sadness, Fog, Finals

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• I am convinced that human life is filled with many pure, happy, serene examples of insincerity, truly splendid of their kind-of people deceiving one another without (strangely enough) any wounds being inflicted, of people who seem unaware even that they are deceiving one another.

  Osamu Dazai

  People, Deception, Example

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.37, New Directions Publishing

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• Happily for me, ninety-nine percent of all human life is spent simply repeating the same old actions, speaking the same tired clichés, moving like a zombie through the same steps of the dance we plodded through yesterday and the day before and the day before. It seems horribly dull and pointless-but it really makes a great deal of sense. After all, if you only have to follow the same path every day, you don't need to think at all. Considering how good humans are at any mental process more complicated than chewing, isn't that the best for everybody?

  Jeff Lindsay

  Moving, Tired, Thinking

  Jeff Lindsay (2011). “Double Dexter: Dexter Morgan (6)”, p.36, Vintage Crime/Black Lizard

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• Do you know who Karl Marx is? He is this strange little man, long dead, who lived his narrow little life, and somehow managed by the power of his wayward brain to lay hold upon millions of human lives!

  Anchee Min

  Men, Long, Brain

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• Service is the measure of greatness; it always has been true; it is true today, and it always will be true, that he is greatest who does the most of good. Nearly all of our controversies and combats grow out of the fact that we are trying to get something from each other--there will be peace when our aim is to do something for each other. The human measure of a human life is its income; the divine measure of a life is its outgo, its overflow--its contribution to the welfare of all.

  William Jennings Bryan

  Greatness, Trying, Facts

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• One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.

  John Green

  Truth, Memories, Children

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• Of the gladdest moments in human life, methinks, is the departure upon a distant journey into unknown lands. Shaking off with one mighty effort the fetters of Habit, the leaden weight of Routine, the cloak of many Cares and the slavery of Civilization, man feels once more happy.

  Richard Francis Burton

  Nature, Travel, Journey

  "How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer". www.believermag.com. October 2011.

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• The world is little, people are little, human life is little. There is only one big thing — desire.

  Willa Cather

  People, Desire, World

  Willa Cather (1970). “The World and the Parish: Willa Cather's Articles and Reviews, 1893-1902”, p.5, U of Nebraska Press

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• If I correctly understand the sense of this succinct observation, our poet suggests here that human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Life Is, Obscure, Poet

  Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1968). “Pale fire”, Berkley

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• If man is not made in the image of God, nothing then stands in the way of inhumanity. There is no good reason why mankind should be perceived as special. Human life is cheapened. We can see this in many of the major issues being debated in our society today.

  Francis Schaeffer

  Children, Men, Issues

  "The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian view of the west".

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• For men and women alike, this journey is a the trajectory between birth and death, a human life lived. No one escapes the adventure. We only work with it differently.

  Jon Kabat-Zinn

  Life, Adventure, Journey

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• Listen to me: Life is not about principles; it`s about happiness.` `But if you don`t have any principles, and if you don`t have faith, you can`t be happy at all,` said Kadife. `That`s true. But in a brutal country like ours, where human life is cheap, it`s stupid to destroy yourself for the sake of your beliefs. Beliefs? High ideas? Only people in rich countries can enjoy such luxuries.` `Actually, it`s the other way round. In a poor country, people`s sole consolation comes from their beliefs.

  Orhan Pamuk

  Country, Stupid, Rich Countries

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• I have no wish to take life, not even human life

  George Orwell

  Wish, Humans

  George Orwell (2001). “The Complete Novels of George Orwell: Animal Farm, Burmese Days, A Clergyman's Daughter, Coming Up for Air, Keep the Aspidistra Flying, Nineteen Eighty-Four”, p.32, Penguin UK

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• No, I had never intentionally caused anyone physical pain, but I had hurt Ian deeply enough just by hurting myself. Human lives were so impossibly tangled. What a mess.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Hurt, Pain, Tangled

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• How much of human life is lost in waiting.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Life, Waiting, Losing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.364, Library of America

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• No human face is exactly the same in its lines on each side, no leaf perfect in its lobes, no branch in its symmetry. All admit irregularity as they imply change; and to banish imperfection is to destroy expression, to check exertion, to paralyze vitality. All things are literally better, lovelier, and more beloved for the imperfections which have been divinely appointed, that the law of human life may be Effort, and the law of human judgment, Mercy.

  John Ruskin

  Happiness, Expression, Law

  John Ruskin (1900). “The Stones of Venice (Complete)”, p.763, Library of Alexandria

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• The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. But they've learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong — for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.

  Orson Scott Card

  Blow, Enemy, Insane

  "Ender's Shadow". Book by Orson Scott Card, 1999.

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• I shield my eyes from the sun to see her cold look—the expression I saw in my mind even before I looked at her. She looks older to me than she ever has, stern and tough and worn by time. I feel that way, too. “These people have no regard for human life,” she says. “They’re about to wipe the memories of all our friends and neighbors. They’re responsible for the deaths of a large majority of our old faction.” She sidesteps me and marches toward the door. “I think they’re lucky I’m not going to kill them.

  Veronica Roth

  Memories, Eye, Thinking

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• Time is the most precious gift in our possession, for it is the most irrevocable. This is what makes it so disturbing to look back upon the time which we have lost. Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Time, Creative, Suffering

  Life Magazine (p. 47), April 22, 1957; later quoted in Dietrich Bonhoeffer "Letters and Papers from Prison" (p. 47), 1967.

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• Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.

  Dietrich Bonhoeffer

  Time, Creative, Suffering

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