Life One Quotes

“Positive thoughts help us construct a positive life, one thought at a time.”

— Janet Gallagher Nestor

“I cannot draw a human figure if I don't know the order of his bones, muscles or tendons. Same is that I cannot draw a human face if I don't know what's going on his mind and heart. In order to paint life one must understand not only anatomy, but what people feel and think about the world they live in. The painter who knows his own craft and nothing else will turn out to be a very superficial artist.”

— Irving Stone

“There are two paths of which one may choose in the walk of life; one we are born with, and the one we consciously blaze. One is naturally true, while the other is a perceptive illusion. Choose wisely at each fork in the road.”

— T.F. Hodge

“You've got one life, one shot, and all the power to make it happen. Get ready to dream big and live big. It's all up to you. And it starts now.”

— Jolene Stockman

“You've got one life, one world, and one person to get a hold of.”

— Jolene Stockman

“Take life one day at a time, and make each day better than the last.”

— Mark Sanborn

“My mother sings One day at a time sweet Jesus, and even Daddy likes to say that, one day at a time, as if it's some strategy for living. And yet the quickest way to not live at all is to take life one day at a time. It's the way I've discovered to not do a damn thing. If you can break a day down into quarters, then hours, then half hours, then minutes, you can chew down any stretch of time to bite size. It's like dealing with losing a man. If you can bear it for one minute, then you can swallow two, then five, then another five and on and on. If I don't want to think about my life, I don't have to think about life at all, just hold for one minute, then two, then five, then another five, before you know it, a month can pass and you don't even notice because you've only been counting minutes.”

— Marlon James

“There are many ways to find meaning in life, one of them is the love of art”

— Ndiritu Wahome

“By then I had moved often enough not to have the usual illusions about a clean slate or a fresh start or a new life. I knew that I could not escape myself. And the idea of beginning again, with no furniture and no friends, was exhausting. So my happiness then is hard to explain. I am tempted now to believe that entering the life one is meant to inhabit is a thrilling sensation and that is all.”

— Eula Biss

“The most significant factor in an individual's ability to remain in good health may be a sense of control over the events of life, one psychologist has remarked.”

— Alfie Kohn

“You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just ... is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbors.”

— Terry Pratchett

“She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell and she had felt that was true of life - one scratched on the wall.”

— Virginia Woolf

“It is like a beautiful sunset you see once in your life, one you swear you will never forget as long as you live. And you never do forget, but you never have a reason to restore the memory-so it remains hidden inside. Until one day, for no apparent reason, you remember that sunset. You recall the way your skin felt as the sun brushed across it, the way the colors painted the sky. You wonder why it took you so long to go back to that place again, swearing you won't take so long next time. Only you do forget the memory and you may or may not ever relive it again.”

— J.A. Saare

“Success is following the pattern of life one enjoys most.”

— Al Capp

“Meanwhile you just lived on and there was nothing to it. She understood perfectly well why people had cocktail parties, and jazzed, and Charlestoned till they were ready to drop. You had to take it out some way or other, your youth, or it ate you up. But what a ghastly thing, this youth! You felt as old as Methuselah, and yet the thing fizzed somehow, and didn't let you be comfortable. A mean sort of life! And no prospect! She almost wished she had gone off with Mick, and made her life one long cocktail party, and jazz evening. Anyhow that was better than just mooning yourself into the grave.”

— D.H. Lawrence

“Among the many signs of a lively faith and hope we have in eternal life, one of the surest is not being overly sad at the death of those whom we dearly love in our Lord.”

— Saint Ignatius

“Imagination which comes into play in falling in love is different from any other. Certainly in my case, and I've fallen in love all my life, one imagines the person to be as you want them to be. They frequently turn out to be someone different, for better or worse.”

— Mary Wesley

“He hadn't let what he looked like run his life one way or the other, any more than he'd let the Combine mill him into fitting where they wanted him to fit.”

— Ken Kesey

“At my time of life, one knows that the worst is usually true.”

— Agatha Christie

“I think one of the basic tasks in life - one of the nice things we can do for each other - is to take things that are horrible and scary and make them acceptable and less frightening and, if possible, funny. It feels great to succeed at that.”

— Julia Sweeney

“Let the dead bury their dead, but while one has life one must live and be happy! thought”

— Leo Tolstoy

“[Soho] is all things to all men, catering comprehensively for those needs which money can buy. You see it as you wish. An agreeable place to dine; a cosmopolitan village tucked away behind Piccadilly with its own mysterious village life, one of the best shopping centres for food in London, the nastiest and most sordid nursery of crime in Europe. Even the travel journalists, obsessed by its ambiguities, can't make up their minds.”

— P.D. James

“I lived my life one way for 35 years, for me. And then the focus came in on what I really was.”

— Pete Maravich

“Whatever I was, I owed to my family and to all those who struggled with me. But my biggest debt I owed to my wife. She was the one who gave my life meaning. All I could pledge to her, and to all those millions, was that I would do all I could to justify the faith that she, and they, had in me. I would try more than ever to make my life one of which she, and they, could be proud. I would do in private that which I knew my public responsibility demanded.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

“If every life is a payment for a previous life, one also wonders why Buddha was so reluctant to allow women into the sacred order and decreed that the rules for governing them be far greater. In fact, even a woman who had been in the order for years owed greater reverence to a man who was just an initiate. If kamma is in operation, why were these rules superimposed, assuming a virtue of higher order placed upon some? Unless of course, a woman, by virtue of being a woman, inherited a greater kamma. What”

— Ravi Zacharias

“By the very fact of public life, one seems to lose humanity in people's eyes.”

— Abigail McCarthy

“Knowledge has been a passion with me during my whole life, one which has not lost its charm to the present day.”

— LiliÊ»uokalani

“But this element of failure is a very condition of his life; one can never dream of eliminating it without immediately dreaming of death. This does not mean that one should consent to failure, but rather one must consent to struggle against it without respite.”

— Simone De Beauvoir

“We can put the chairs in a circle, but as long as they are occupied by people who have an
inner hierarchy, the circle itself will have a divided life, one more form of "living within the lie": a false community.”

— Parker J. Palmer

“Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul. With a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale they say. He was made of snow but the children know how he came to life one day.”

— Jack Nelson

“After everything he'd built, planned, fought for, fretted over, dreamed of, this was the summation of his life; one disappointing son and two suitcases.”

— Khaled Hosseini

“I live an artistic double life: one of classical realism and the other of aesthetic exploration.”

— Alton Tobey

“I've got two contracts in my life: One with my wife and the other to protect Andy Dalton.”

— Andrew Whitworth

“In life one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.”

— Franz Liszt

“When something drastic happens in our life, one person goes and hides and doesn't want to be seen. That's what I did. [Others] want to stand up and fight and think they're tough. Like if someone gets shot, you're either scared of guns or you think you're Superman. In my situation, I wanted to hide. I didn't want to be seen anymore.”

— Gilbert Arenas

“To make good use of life, one should have in youth the experience of advanced years, and in old age the vigor of youth.”

— Stanislaw I Leszczynski

“Two things are necessary for success in life; one is a sense of purpose and the other, a touch of madness.”

— John Harricharan

“Retracing the various episodes of one's life, one is disconcerted to discover that one was not as noble as one thought oneself at the time.”

— Phyllis Bentley

“To live an art-filled life, one must be willing to try new things & accept that things change.”

— Lee Hammond

“In spiritual life, one must conduct one's whole life under the guidance of the guru. Only one who executes his spiritual life under the direction of the spiritual master can achieve the mercy of Krishna.”

— A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

“Throughout the whole of life one must continue to learn to live and what will amaze you even more, throughout life you must learn to die. Seneca (Roman philosopher)”

— Seneca The Younger

“The world's definitions are one thing and the life one actually lives is quite another. One cannot allow oneself, nor one's family, friends, or lovers - to say nothing of one's children - to live according to the world's definitions: one must find a way, perpetually, to be stronger and better than that.”

— James A. Baldwin

“I have learned to live my life one step, one breath, and one moment at a time, but it was a long road. I set out on a journey of love, seeking truth, peace and understanding. I am still learning.”

— Muhammad Ali

“All I need is one mic . All I need is one life, one try, one breath, I'm one man.”

— Nas

“One's only real life is the life one never leads.”

— Oscar Wilde

“Like a mother who protects her child, her only child, with her own life, one should cultivate a heart of unlimited love and compassion towards all living beings.”

— Gautama Buddha

“Later in life, one of the compensations is gliding effortlessly into focus in a thing. Since it is who we are, anything that is not the focus or supportive thereof is just not us. Even outside issues, when they arise, are interesting in that they only help define the focus more clearly.”

— Twyla Tharp

“To know life, one must love many things.”

— Vincent Van Gogh

“It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.”

— Charles Darwin

“In life one cannot eat his cake and have it, too; he must make his choice and then do the best he can to be content to go the way his judgment leads.”

— Clarence Darrow