Life Celebration Quotes
Crafted with the reader in mind, this collection is clearly divided by themes:
Alan Watts
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.
You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.
You are wasting your energy all the time in self defense, trying to manage things, trying to force things to conform to your will.
Albert Einstein
The soul given to each of us is moved by the same living spirit that moves the Universe.
When something vibrates, the electrons of the entire universe resonate with it. Everything is connected. The greatest tragedy of human existence is the illusion of separateness.
Time and space are not conditions in which we live, but modes by which we think. Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, determined by the external world.
Everything is energy and that is all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.
We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library, whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different languages. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books, a mysterious order, which it does not comprehend but only dimly suspects.
Carl Jung
The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.
The meaning of my existence is that life has addressed a question to me. or, conversely, I myself am a question which is addressed to the world, and I must communicate my answer, for otherwise I am dependent upon the world’s answer.
Charles Bukowski
Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?
Epictetus
Circumstances do not rise to meet our expectations. Events happen as they do. People behave as they are. Embrace what you actually get. Open your eyes. See things for what they really are, thereby sparing yourself the pain of false attachments and avoidable devastation.
Epicurus
Why should I fear death? If I am, death is not. If death is, I am not. Why should I fear that which cannot exist when I do?
Frida Kahlo
Pain, pleasure and death are no more than a process for existence. The revolutionary struggle in this process is a doorway open to intelligence.
Jack Kerouac
Hold together, pass through everything, everything is one dream, one appearance, one flash, one sad eye, one crystal lucid mystery, one word. Hold still, man, regain your love of life and go down from this mountain and simply be.
Jean-Paul Sartre
I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Now where do we begin to understand ourselves? Here am I, and how am I to study myself, observe myself, see what is actually taking place inside myself? I can observe myself only in relationship because all life is relationship. It is no use sitting in a corner meditating about myself. I cannot exist by myself. I exist only in relationship to people, things and ideas, and in studying my relationship to outward things and people, as well as to inward things, I begin to understand myself. Every other form of understanding is merely an abstraction and I cannot study myself in abstraction; I am not an abstract entity; therefore I have to study myself in actuality - as I am, not as I wish to be.
You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing, and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.
Joseph Campbell
We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.
Marcus Aurelius
Everything you see will soon alter and cease to exist. Think of how many changes you’e already seen. The world is change. Our life is only perception.
Don’t fool yourself into thinking you are going to live ten thousand years. Death walks every step with you. While you are alive, be good.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.
Oscar Wilde
In the wild struggle for existence, we want to have something that endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.
Paul Gauguin
Colour which, like music, is a matter of vibrations, reaches what is most general and therefore most indefinable in nature: its inner power.
Socrates
Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.
Soren Kierkegaard
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Sun Tzu
Your life is what your thoughts make it.
William Shakespeare
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
Other Voices
For these sections without caricature the quote comes first, the cited person after. In case you are using text-to-speech be aware.
Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement... get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.
Abraham Joshua Heschel
Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
You're afraid of surrender because you don't want to lose control. But you never had control. All you had was anxiety.
Elizabeth Gilbert
It's enough for me to be sure that you and I exist at this moment.
Gabriel García Márquez
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
Jack London
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.
Sylvia Plath
