|It is not possible to live pleasantly without living prudently, and honorably, and justly; nor to live prudently, and honorably, and justly, without living pleasantly. But to whom it does not happen to live prudently, honorably, and justly cannot possibly live pleasantly. (Life of Epicurus)
|Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile (Albert Einstein)
|Weak mortals, chained to the earth, creatures of clay as frail as the foliage of the woods, you unfortunate race, whose life is but darkness, as unreal as a shadow, the illusion of a dream, hearken to us, who are immortal beings, ethereal, ever young and occupied with eternal thoughts, for we shall teach you about all celestial matters; you shall know thoroughly what is the nature of the birds, what the origin of the gods, of the rivers, of Erebus, and Chaos. (Aristophanes)
|When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant and which know me not, I am frightened and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me?...  The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me. (Pascal)
|In the purely scientific application of medical research carried out on a human being, it is the duty of the physician to remain the protector of the life and health of that person on whom biomedical research is being carried out. (Declaration of Helsinki)
|Who would fardels bear,/To grunt and sweat under a weary life,/But that the dread of something after death,/The undiscovered country from whose bourn/No traveller returns, puzzles the will,/And makes us rather bear those ills we have/Than fly to others that we know not of? (Hamlet)
|Tzu Kung asked: 'Is there a single concept that we can take as a guide for the actions of our whole life?'
Confucius said, 'What about fairness? What you don't like done to yourself, don't do to others.'
|Man, being reasonable, must get drunk;/The best of life is but intoxication:/Glory, the grape, love, gold, in these are sunk/The hopes of all men, and of every nation;/Without their sap, how branchless were the trunk/Of Life's strange tree, so fruitful on occasion:/But to return--get very drunk, and when/You wake with headache, you shall see what then. (Lord Byron)
|Dolores breezed along the surface of her life like a flat stone forever skipping across smooth water, rippling reality sporadically but oblivious to it consistently, until she finally lost momentum, sank, and due to an overdose of fluoride as a child which caused her to lie forever on the floor of her life as useless as an appendix and as lonely as a five-hundred-pound barbell in a steroid-free fitness center.
(Linda Vernon, 1990)
|Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having. (Juvenal)
|And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. (John)
|Stop and consider! life is but a day;/A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way/From a tree's summit; a poor Indian's sleep/While his boat hastens to the monstrous steep/Of Montmorenci. Why so sad a moan?/Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;/The reading of an ever-changing tale;/The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;/A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;/A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,/Riding the springy branches of an elm. (Keats)
|For it is in giving that we receive;/it is in pardonning that we are pardonned;/and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. (St. Francis of Assisi)
|In the middle of our journey in life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. (Dante)
|Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more.   It is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing. (Macbeth)
|The man who is very rich but unfortunate surpasses the lucky man in only two ways, while the lucky surpasses the rich but unfortunate in many. The rich man is more capable of fulfilling his appetites and of bearing a great disaster that falls upon him, and it is in these ways that he surpasses the other. The lucky man is not so able to support disaster or appetite as is the rich man, but his luck keeps these things away from him, and he is free from deformity and disease, has no experience of evils, and has fine children and good looks.  If besides all this he ends his life well, then he is the one whom you seek, the one worthy to be called fortunate. (Herodotus)
|Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people will get to the promised land. And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.(Martin Luther King)
|Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio.  Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second. By that law of our nature which makes food necessary to the life of man, the effects of these two unequal powers must be kept equal. This implies a strong and constantly operating check on population from the difficulty of subsistence. This difficulty must fall somewhere and must necessarily be severely felt by a large portion of mankind. (Malthus)
|Of human life the time is a point, and the substance is in a flux, and the perception dull, and the composition of the whole body subject to putrefaction, and the soul a whirl, and fortune hard to divine, and fame a thing devoid of judgement. And, to say all in a word, everything which belongs to the body is a stream, and what belongs to the soul is a dream and vapour, and life is a warfare and a stranger's sojourn, and after-fame is oblivion. (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus)
|Let us roll all our strength, and all/Our sweetnesss , up into one ball:/And tear our pleasures with rough strife,/
Through the iron gates of life./Thus, though we cannot make our sun/Stand still, yet we may make him run. (Marvel)
|That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life./
For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John)
|END of Quotations for the Meaning of Life Project.  This file must begin with a vertical bar char.