Quotes About Direction Of Life

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

— Henry David Thoreau

“We were the only humans - the only forms of life, in fact - for hundreds of miles in each direction, unreaching and unreachable as we rocketed back towards civilisation.”

— Heather James

“The heart is the place where our life gets its direction.”

— Jim George

“My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?”

— Charles M. Schulz

“And we saved your life, y'know," Andrew said, jerking his head in Oliver's direction. "I mean, the least you could do is thank us."
"Of course!" Oliver said hastily. "Thank you very much."
"It was really dangerous back there," Patricia said earnestly, as though wanting to make sure he understood the severity of the situation.
"Yes, beheading is a serious business, I suppose," Oliver said kindly. "I think it would have been difficult to keep on living once my head was chopped off.”

— Zeinab Alayan

“Fiction is a kind of compassion-generating machine that saves us from sloth. Is life kind or cruel? Yes, Literature answers. Are people good or bad? You bet, says Literature. But unlike other systems of knowing, Literature declines to eradicate one truth in favor of another; rather, it teaches us to abide with the fact that, in their own way, all things are true, and helps us, in the face of this terrifying knowledge, continually push ourselves in the direction of Open the Hell Up.”

— George Saunders

“It was as if there were no names here, as if there were no words. The desert cleansed everything in its wind, wiped everything away. The men had the freedom of the open spaces in their eyes, their skin was like metal. Sunlight blazed everywhere. The ochre, yellow, gray, white sand, the fine sand shifted, showing the direction of the wind. It covered all traces, all bones. It repelled light, drove away water, life, far from a center that no one could recognize. The men knew perfectly well that the desert wanted nothing to do with them: so they walked on without stopping, following the paths that other feet had already traveled in search of something else.”

— Jean-Marie G. Le Clézio

“To live a distant, withdrawn, and secluded life is diametrically opposed to spirituality as Jesus Christ taught it. The true test of our spirituality occurs when we come up against injustice, degradation, ingratitude, and turmoil, all of which have the tendency to make us spiritually lazy. While being tested, we want to use prayer and Bible reading for the purpose of finding a quiet retreat. We use God only for the sake of getting peace and joy. We seek only our enjoyment of Jesus Christ, not a true realization of Him. This is the first step in the wrong direction. All these things we are seeking are simply effects, and yet we try to make them causes.”

— Oswald Chambers

“Almost everyone today is prepared to say that those teachings of Christianity cannot be things we know and that, in this respect, they are like the teachings of every religion. We in the United States live under a social consensus that seems to require such a response. According to it, the teachings of religion are not possible subjects of knowledge. But we must not accept this conclusion without question, for its implications are of profound importance. They place the teachings of religion at a crushing disadvantage before all that passes for knowledge in our world. They relegate them to practical irrelevance and loosen any grip they might otherwise have on the understanding and direction of life. Is that really justified? Or is it a terrible mistake?”

— Dallas Willard

“Life isn't fair." I said. "It's taken me a while to get that. It's always going to disappoint you in some way or another. You'll make plans, and it'll push you in another direction. You will love people, and they'll be taken away no matter how hard you fight to keep them. You'll try for something and won't get it. You don't have to find meaning in it; you don't have to try to change things. You just have to accept the things that are out of your hands and try to take care of yourself. That's your job.”

— Alexandra Bracken

“Working on 'Downton Abbey' is amazing, but there's an ensemble cast of between 18 and 21 actors. With 'Love Life,' there are two couples and a few other key characters. As a smaller unit, you've got to take more responsibility - at the same time, you can have more ownership of the direction it's going in.”

— Rob James-Collier

“My mom is a painter and an artist. She would play music, and she always had very good taste in music, fashion, and art. She was also a young single mom, so I think she had really good style; she was really free ... just really inspiring in her own way and allowed me to find the direction I wanted to take in my life.”

— Ruby Rose

“Sometimes we don't pivot in the direction of personal success but toward even greater pain. But here's the catch: a calling will always lead you to a life that matters, one you can be proud of.”

— Jeff Goins

“I've met men who've stood in long lines on my book tours, and they've said things like, 'I've read your books and they've changed the direction in my life, and I want to thank you.' I think they're standing in line for their wife or their mother or their sweetheart or somebody, but no.”

— Beverly Lewis

“People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I've lived, the more I've lost what's inside me - and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I'll become. Something's wrong with this picture. Life isn't supposed to turn out like this! Isn't it possible to shift direction, to change where I'm headed?”

— Haruki Murakami

“I cried. In the spring I returned home from captivity, on muddy roads, without my saber, without strength, without joy, without my former self. I was holding on to a mere memory, like a talisman, but even that became weak; it lost its color and freshness, its vivacity and former meaning. I trudged silently onward, through the mud of the gloomy plains; I spent the nights in silence, in village bowers and inns; I walked in silence, in the spring rains, guessing my direction like an animal, driven by the desire to die in my homeland, among the people who had given me life.”

— Mesa Selimovic

“Breaking up is a natural evolution when you try to figure out what you want in life. If you're with an individual who isn't moving in the same direction and at the same rate that you are, it ain't going to work.”

— Usher

“Don't expect a time in your life when you'll be free from change, free from struggle, free from worry. To be resilient, you must understand that your objective is not to come to rest, because there is no rest. Your objective is to use what hits you to change your trajectory in a positive direction.”

— Eric Greitens

“His conviction of having no purpose in life other than to act as a distillation of poison was part of the ego of an eighteen-year-old. He had resolved that his beautiful white hands would never be soiled or calloused. He wanted to be like a pennant, dependent on each gusting wind. The only thing that seemed valid to him was to live for the emotions
gratuitous and unstable, dying only to quicken again, dwindling and flaring without direction or purpose.”

— Yukio Mishima

“My father, who was a cabinetmaker, told me, 'Wood has a grain and if you go into the grain, you have beauty. If you go against it, you have splinters - it breaks.' And I took that as my view of life. You have to follow the grain - to be sensitive to the direction of life.”

— Christian Louboutin

“When we return to our breathing, we return to the present moment, our true home. There's no need for us to struggle to arrive somewhere else. We know our final destination is the cemetery. Why are we in a hurry to get there? Why not step in the direction of life, which is in the present moment?”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

“As long as the mind and ego control the direction of creating, there will always be problems in the outer world, for the ego thinks only of itself and lives in duality. But when the heart is in control, everything comes back to balance, for the heart feels and knows only the oneness of life.”

— Drunvalo Melchizedek

“We stand at a moment in history without precedent. Decisions that are ours to make over the next ten years will have a sweeping impact on the future direction of life on the planet.”

— Eban Goodstein

“Often the lack of clear direction and goals can waste away our time and energy and contribute to imbalance in our lives. A life that gets out of balance is much like a car tire that is out of balance. It will make the operation of the car rough and unsafe. Tires in perfect balance can give a smooth and comfortable ride. So it is with life. The ride through mortality can be smoother for us when we strive to stay in balance.”

— M. Russell Ballard

“People often confuse "goal" and "purpose." A goal is something tangible; a purpose is a direction. A goal can be achieved; a purpose is fulfilled in each moment. We can set ad achieve many goals; a purpose remains constant for life.”

— Roger Delano Hinkins

“To us all, life is a gift, liberty is a right, and the pursuit of happiness is the object supreme. But our conduct in the pursuit differs in accordance with the measure of justice we uphold. A common measure is only possible when we begin to understand and learn to appreciate each other's point of view and point of direction.”

— Ameen Rihani

“A man's life may stagnate as literally as water may stagnate, and just as motion and direction are the remedy for one, so purpose and activity are the remedy for the other.”

— John Burroughs

“The idea of hunting and gathering as the best way for life has become quite popular recently, much more populare in some circles than the idea of simple farming as the best way of life. Many of the new primitives regard the beginnings of agriculture as one of humanity's major steps in the wrong direction. Most of the people who are drawn to such ideas do their actual hunting and gathering in grocery stores, but the *feeling* is there; it takes the form of a religion ... expressed by particpating in American Indian rituals - or primitive-style rituals that are created anew.”

— Walter Truett Anderson

“Now I see it clearly. My whole life has pointed in one direction. I see that now. There never has been any choice for me.”

— Paul Schrader

“Truth is something we discover by carrying it out. It is not a list of statements, but a direction of life.”

— David Steindl-Rast

“The direction of life is from duality to unity.”

— Deepak Chopra

“Positive self-direction is the action plan that all winners in life use to turn imagination into reality, fantasy into fact, and dreams into actual goals.”

— Denis Waitley

“I don't believe in a God. I don't believe in any of that stuff to determine my life or my goals or my direction. I just depend on myself.”

— Sasha Grey

“To look at the issue of life and abortion, actually we're moving in that direction where most Americans oppose most abortions.”

— Barack Obama

“Photography is only a new road from a different direction, but moving toward the common goal, which is life.”

— Paul Strand

“My relationship with God through Christ has given me meaning and direction. My faith has made a big difference in my personal life, and my public life as well. I make personal decisions every day. Some are easy, and some aren't so easy. I have worries just like you do. And I pray. I pray for guidance. I pray for patience. I firmly believe in the power of intercessory prayer; and I know that I could not do my job without it.”

— George W. Bush

“Using your imagination to create mental images stimulates your mind, helps organize your life and keeps your focus in a particular direction. It allows your unconscious mind to work toward the image you have created, the goal. It's about understand the life you want to live, and seeing it unfold before you.”

— Georges St-Pierre

“Any concept of biology is not only sterile and profitless, it is distorted and untrue, if it puts its primary focus on unnatural conditions rather than on those vast forces not of man's making that shape and channel the nature and direction of life.”

— Rachel Carson

“To be ordinary is the greatest virtue - because when you are just ordinary, nothing to claim, of this world or that, the ego disappears. The ego feeds on imbalance, the ego feeds on extremes. The ego lives on the polarities - in the middle it disappears. And in every area, in every direction of life, remember this: just stop in the middle and soon you will find the mind has stopped, the ego has stopped. Nothing to claim, it disappears. And when it disappears you have become virtuous. Now the door is open for the divine. In the middle you meet him; at the extremes you miss.”

— Rajneesh

“Ritual which could entail a wedding or brushing one's teeth goes in the direction of life. Through it we reconcile our barbed solitude with rushing, irreducible conditions of life.”

— Gretel Ehrlich

“The crime which bankrupts men and states is job-work-declining from your main design, to serve a turn here and there. Nothing is beneath you, if it is in the direction of your life, nothing is great or desirable if it is off from that. I think we are entitled here to draw a straight line and say that society can never prosper but must always be bankrupts, until every man does that which he was created to do.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Friendship, on the other hand, serves a great host of different purposes all at the same time. In whatever direction you turn, it still remains yours. No barrier can shut it out. It can never be untimely; it can never be in the way. We need friendship all the time, just as much as we need the proverbial prime necessities of life, fire and water.”

— Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Nature and training (in any sport or art) can teach us all the spiritual laws I describe in another book, The Laws of Spirit. But now I'm happy to share these four purposes of life that lend meaning and direction to anyone's life, especially those in transition, going through changes.”

— Dan Millman