Quotes About Well Lived Life

“Happiness is not a goal ... it's a by-product of a life well lived.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”

— Jack Kerouac

“He felt lighter than he had in weeks, and he realized that the monster he had been running from wasn't really a monster after all. It was simply that place in the heart that holds the measure of your history, the joy and the grief, the laughter and the tears, the magic and the wonder; all the ingredients that add up to the story of a life well lived.”

— Lilli Jolgren Day

“Time is ungovernable, but grief presents us with a choice: what do we do with the savage energies of bereavement? What do we do with the memory - or in the memory - of the beloved? Some commemorate love with statuary, but behavior, too, is a memorial, as is a well-lived life. In death, there is always the promise of hope. The key is opening, rather than numbing, ourselves to pain. Above all, we must show our children how to celebrate existence in all its beauty, and how to get up after life has knocked us down, time and again. Half-dead, we stand. And together, we salute love. Because in the end, that's all that matters. How hard we loved, and how hard we tried.”

— Antonella Gambotto-Burke

“There are many things in this world that are an outrage, to be sure, but death at our current life expectancy doesn't strike me as one of them. Maybe I sound like some Victorian who felt that forty years ought to be enough for any man, but one of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind.”

— David Rakoff

“I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable
that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself,
that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as
well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor
memory; and then all of a sudden they stop.”

— Michel Houellebecq

“I suppose it was the end of the world for her when her husband and her baby were killed. I suppose she didn't care what became of her and flung herself into the horrible degradation of drink and promiscuous copulation to get even with life that had treated her so cruelly. She'd lived in heaven and when she lost it she couldn't put up with the common earth of common men, but in despair plunged headlong into hell. I can imagine that if she couldn't drink the nectar of the gods any more she thought she might as well drink bathroom gin.'
That's the sort of thing you say in novels. It's nonsense and you know it's nonsense. Sophie wallows in the gutter because she likes it. Other women have lost their husbands and children. It wasn't that that made her evil. Evil doesn't spring from good. The evil was there always. When that motor accident broke her defences it set her free to be herself. Don't waste your pity on her, she's now what at heart she always was.”

— W. Somerset Maugham

“I just want to make sure Mama. Sometimes I don't even know what I want. A lot of times I'm just tired."
Mama reached up and smoothed Liza's curls away from her face. "Well darlin', that's the sign of a life being lived. I think we're all tired when we're giving it our best.”

— Gwenn Wright

“Einmal ist keinmal, says Tomas to himself. What happens but once, says the German adage, might as well not have happened at all. If we have only one life to live, we might as well not have lived at all.”

— Milan Kundera

“It was all very strange, Mr. Gray thought, as he wiped the coffee canister clean with a sponge. Very, very mysterious. You were born; you lived a whole life; and at the end, you wound up in a coffee canister.
"Ah, well," he said out loud quietly. "That's just the way things are. Life's a funny business." Death, he supposed, was the punch line.”

— Lauren Oliver

“Many people experience the travesty of regret in their end days; the realization that nothing held them back, that nothing was in their way, that there is no one to blame, only themselves. Don't just sit by waiting for your life to happen, make it happen! Don't just hope your dreams will come alive, breathe life into them! Don't let your fear help you birth a well-nourished regret, take action today! At the end of the day, at the end of the year, at the end of your life, live in such a manner that you can hold your head up high, smile, and be proud of a life well lived.”

— Steve Maraboli

“I refuse to live with the regret of gambling for tomorrow. I will not lay on my deathbed wondering what might have been. I will ride the waves of purpose and chance towards the wonderful splendor of my dreams. At the end of my day, I will rest my head on the pillow of a day well-lived and a life well-ventured.”

— Steve Maraboli

“Well-developed faith results in well-defined prayers, and well-defined prayers result in a well-lived life.”

— Mark Batterson

“They lived on the edge too, but they-they danced on the edge, they jumped up and down on it, made faces at it, thumbed their snotty noses at it, refused to see the peril of their situation and, in general, seemed to have a huge appetite for life, alcohol, adventure and alcohol. As a copper, he shouldn't say it, because they could be a bloody nuisance, but there was something commendable about the cheerfully feisty way they faced, well, everything ...”

— Terry Pratchett

“It sounds as if you supposed that argument was the way to keep him out of the Enemy's clutches. That might have been so if he had lived a few centuries earlier. At that time the humans still knew pretty well when a thing was proved and when it was not; and if it was proved they really believed it. They still connected thinking with doing and were prepared to alter their way of life as the result of a chain of reasoning. But what with the weekly press and other such weapons we have largely altered that. Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn't think of doctrines as primarily 'true' or 'false', but as 'academic' or 'practical', 'outworn' or 'contemporary', 'conventional' or 'ruthless'. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church.”

— C.S. Lewis

“A lot of people might define a life well lived by how much is in the bank. I feel like it's how much you laugh.”

— Jill Kargman

“My biography of Frank Sinatra is not paean to his music but rather an illumination of the man behind the music, who once described himself as 'an 18-karat manic-depressive who lived a life of violent emotional contradictions with an over-acute capacity for sadness as well as happiness.'”

— Kitty Kelley

“When it's good, cinema can be one of the most important things in a person's life. A film can be a catalyst for change. You witness this and it is an incredibly spiritual experience that I'd never lived before; well, maybe only in a football match.”

— Gael Garcia Bernal

“Abraham Lincoln because he was a man filled with great compassion who believed that all men are created free and equal, and was not afraid to stand on that platform. The way Lincoln lived his life has served me well in mine.”

— Sidney Sheldon

“To do what you wanna do, to leave a mark - in a way that you think is important and lasting - that's a life well-lived.”

— Laurene Powell Jobs

“I was well acquainted with the Calcutta literary circle since I was 17, when I lived in Bangladesh and published and edited a little magazine called 'Sejuti,' for which young poets from both Bengals wrote. If you look at my life, there is no question of using anyone for anything. I have only got banned, blacklisted and banished.”

— Taslima Nasrin

“Time flies, knells call, life passes, so hear my prayer.
Birth is nothing but death begun, so hear my prayer.
Death is speechless, so hear my speech.
This is Jake, who served his ka and his tet. Say true.
May the forgiving glance of S'mana heal his heart. Say please.
May the arms of Gan raise him from the darkness of this earth. Say please.
Surround him, Gan , with light.
Fill him, Chloe, with strength.
If he is thirsty, give him water in the clearing.
If he is hungry, give him food in the clearing.
May his life on this earth and the pain of his passing become as a dream to his waking soul, and let his eyes fall upon every lovely sight; let him find the friends that were lost to him, and let every one whose name he calls call his in return.
This is Jake, who lived well, loved his own, and died as ka would have it.
Each man owes a death. This is Jake. Give him peace.”

— Stephen King

“People say, 'What if your name was Niki Smith?' Well, if Niki Smith lived the life I've lived, it would have great bearing.”

— Niki Tsongas

“Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself, there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself.
But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was not thinking of the meaning of his life.
What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.”

— Leo Tolstoy

“So what will happen to your consciousness [after you die]? *Your* consciousness, yours, not anyone else's. Well, what are *you*? There's the point. Let's try to find out. What is it about you that you have always known as yourself? What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys? Your liver? Your blood vessels? No. However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity
in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others
this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life
your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you
the you that enters the future and becomes part of it.”

— Boris Pasternak

“I decided that if I was never going to sell anything as long as I lived, I might as well do what I want to do 'cause then at least I would've done what I wanted to do in life. What's that worth?”

— Janet Fitch

“I find it really liberating to be in a place where I am a foreigner in every way. I've lived with this all my life - this divide, this bifurcation. And in Italy, I don't feel it. There's none of that tension, only the expectation I place on myself to speak the language well. I find it relaxing. Something drops away, and I observe.”

— Jhumpa Lahiri

“The idea was flawed, of course," he said irritably. "Innately and fatally flawed. It depended on two of the human race's greatest myths: the possibility of permanence, and the simplicity of human nature. Both of which are all well and good in literature, but the purest fantasy outside the covers of a book. Our story should have stopped that night with the cold cocoa, the night we moved in: and they all lived happily ever after, the end. Inconveniently, however, real life demanded that we keep on living.”

— Tana French

“Here we must examine the classical understanding of happiness proclaimed by Moses, Solomon, Jesus, Aristotle, Plato, the church fathers and medieval theologians, and many more-the understanding that has recently been replaced by "pleasurable satisfaction." According to the ancients, happiness is a life well lived, a life of virtue and character, a life that manifests wisdom, kindness, and goodness.”

— J.P. Moreland

“Regret, Daisy knew, was the only confirmation of a well-lived life. If you didn't occasionally go too far, you weren't going anywhere.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

“Not only did I rediscover every experience of my life, I had to live each unfulfilled desire as well-as though they'd been fulfilled. I saw that what transpires in the mind is just as real as any flesh and blood occurrence. What had only been imagination in life, now became tangible, each fantasy a full reality. I lived them all-while, at the same time, standing to the side, a witness to their, often, intimate squalor. A witness cursed with total objectivity.”

— Richard Matheson

“Socrates famously said that the unconsidered life is not worth living. He meant that a life lived without forethought or principle is a life so vulnerable to chance, and so dependent on the choices and actions of others, that it is of little real value to the person living it. He further meant that a life well lived is one which has goals, and integrity, which is chosen and directed by the one who lives it, to the fullest extent possible to a human agent caught in the webs of society and history.”

— A.C. Grayling

“What did I know of life, I who had lived so carefully? Who had neither won nor lost, but just let life happen to him? Who had the usual ambitions and settled all too quickly for them not being realised? Who avoided being hurt and called it a capacity for survival? Who paid his bills, stayed on good terms with everyone as far as possible, for whom ecstasy and despair soon became just words once read in novels? One whose self-rebukes never really inflicted pain? Well, there was all this to reflect upon, while I endured a special kind of remorse: a hurt inflicted at long last on one who always thought he knew how to avoid being hurt - and inflicted for precisely that reason.”

— Julian Barnes

“Whatever news we get about the scans, I'm not going to die when we hear it. I
won't die the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. So
today, right now, well this is a wonderful day. And I want you to know
how much I'm enjoying it.
I thought about that, and about Jai's smile.
I knew then. That's the way the rest of my life would need to be lived.”

— Randy Pausch

“The gifts of an honorable, well-lived life are in those who will miss you once you're gone.”

— Donald E. Williams, Jr.

“I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another.”

— Albert Camus

“Anxiety and depression are the price you pay for a well-lived life.”

— George Vaillant

“The dignity to be sought in death is the appreciation by others of what one has been in life, ... that proceeds from a life well lived and from the acceptance of one's own death as a necessary process of nature ... It is also the recognition that the real event taking place at the end of our life is our death, not the attempts to prevent it.”

— Sherwin B. Nuland

“I've lived in a preindustrial (rural Argentina) as well as an industrial world. You experience a different sense of time in a community that works the land. Human relationships aren't professionalized or contractualized; family and friends take primacy. Life has much more continuity than discontinuity. There's a great deal of poetry in everyday life.”

— Shoshana Zuboff

“There is a great good in returning to a landscape that has had extraordinary meaning in one's life. It happens that we return to such places in our minds irresistibly. There are certain villages and towns, mountains and plains that, having seen them walked in them lived in them even for a day, we keep forever in the mind's eye. They become indispensable to our well-being; they define us, and we say, I am who I am because I have been there, or there.”

— N. Scott Momaday

“About 80 percent of the stuff I live with is old. I like letting things take on the character they're meant to have by really being used. ... when you own things that have the imperfections they deserve, that they've earned from a well-lived life, it frees you from feeling as though they're untouchable.”

— Nate Berkus

“It had been happy for me if I could have lived a private life in peace and plenty, enjoying all the happiness that results from a well-tempered society founded on mutual esteem. But the injury done my country, and the chains of slavery forging for all posterity, calls me forth to defend our common rights, and repel the bold invaders of the sons of freedom.”

— Nathanael Greene

“It never occurred to me that I'd be typecast, although I was. And I never thought of the role as a commercial product, because I was ... well, I was playing this slightly messianic alien. He isn't violent, he doesn't get his leg over the girl, he doesn't steal, and he's rather wry, and adorable, and mysterious. He's lived for 900 years or something. He lives the life of the old patriarchs of the Old Testament. That's not commercial. He's special.”

— Tom Baker

“Growing older is an opportunity for you to increase your value and competence as the neural connections in your hippocampus and throughout your brain increase, weaving into your brain and body the wisdom of a life well lived, which allows you to stop living out of fear of disappointing others and being imperfect. Ageless living is courageous living. It means being undistracted by the petty dramas of life because you have enough experience to know what's not worth worrying about and what ought to be your priorities.”

— Christiane Northrup

“One of the hallmarks of a life well lived, a life worthy to return to God's presence and receive a fulness of the Father, is to be "valiant in the testimony of Jesus". Paul was valiant, and we can be valiant as well. To be "valiant in the testimony of Jesus" is to be faithful.”

— Lawrence E. Corbridge

“Being a musician, being a person who's playing tours and making records is a part-time thing for me at age. I did it, I lived it and I breathed it every day of my life for 30-odd years and now I am slowing down a little bit. But it does not mean that I am any less intense and dedicated to the work that I am doing now. I have other priorities in life as well.”

— David Gilmour

“Well, after Zombie Birdhouse came out, I toured behind it in the fall of 1982, into the spring, and in the summer in the Far East. At that time, I found my work self-referential; it was getting to be rock songs about a rock singer who lived a rock life on the rock road, and I was starting to wonder what I would be like to rent my own apartment, what it would be like to have a checkbook.”

— Iggy Pop

“Never stop hoping for all of the righteous desires of your heart. But don't close your eyes and hearts to the simple and elegant beauties of each day's ordinary moments that make up a rich, well-lived life”

— Dieter F. Uchtdorf

“Some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all. In which case you have failed by default. Failure gave me an inner security that I had never obtained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things that I could not have learned any other way. I discovered I had a strong will and more discipline than I had suspected.”

— J.K. Rowling

“A life well lived is the most exquisite work of art.”

— Erwin McManus