We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. --Winston Churchill (in Clean Water World)

He who binds to himself a Joy, Does the winged life destroy; He who kisses the Joy as it flies, Lives in Eternity's sunrise. --William Blake (in Kissing Joy)

A different language is a different vision of life. --Federico Fellini (in Rosetta Project)

Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still. For once on the face of the earth let's not speak in any language, let's stop for one second, and not move our arms so much. It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines, we would all be together in a sudden strangeness. Fishermen in the cold sea would not harm whales and the man gathering salt would look at his hurt hands. Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire, victory with no survivors, would put on clean clothes and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing. What I want should not be confused with total inactivity. Life is what it is about; I want no truck with death. If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving, and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves and of threatening ourselves with death. Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems dead and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count up to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go. --Pablo Neruda (in Keeping Quiet)

All things are parts of one single system, which is called Nature; the individual life is good when it is in harmony with Nature. --Zeno, 300 - 260 B.C. (in Endangered Species Chocolate)

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. --George Bernard Shaw (in Song Bird)

Generosity during life is a very different thing from generosity in the hour of death; one proceeds from genuine liberality and benevolence, the other from pride or fear. --Horace Mann (in Empty Pockets, Full Heart)

The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life. --Jane Addams (in The Garbage Lady)

We don't realize that the gods are not out there somewhere. They live in us all. They are the energies of life itself. --Joseph Campbell (in Elves)

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. --Albert Einstein (in Mosaic Music)

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life -- happiness, freedom, and peace of mind -- are always attained by giving them to someone else. --Peyton Conway March (in Fairy Godmother)

The pressure of the hands causes the springs of life to flow. --Tokujiro Namikoshi (in Human Touch)

We are not seeking a meaning of life, we are seeking an experience of being alive. --Joseph Campbell (in Untitled)

Where there is love there is life. --Gandhi (in Untitled)

To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance. --Oscar Wilde (in Locks of Love)

If you deliberately plan on being less than you are capable of being, then I warn you that you'll be unhappy for the rest of your life." --Abraham Maslow (in Born to Run)

I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. --George Bernard Shaw (in Co-Housing)

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Operation Katrina)

Live your life and forget your age. --Norman Vincent Peale (in Love Life)

“My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate face of universal struggle. You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people, and that leads you into land reform into Black English into Angola leads you back to your own bed where you lie by yourself, wondering if you deserve to be peaceful, or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your own unfaltering heart. And the scale shrinks to the size of a skull: your own interior cage. And then if you’re lucky, and I have been lucky, everything comes back to you. And then you know why one of the freedom fighters in the sixties, a young Black woman interviewed shortly after she was beaten up for riding near the front of the interstate bus––you know why she said, ‘We are all so very happy’? It’s because it’s on. All of us and me by myself: we’re on." --june jordan, poet (in Untitled)

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is discord, union; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; Where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; It is in pardoning that we are pardoned; And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. --The Prayer of St Francis (in The Prayer of St Francis)

The day I saw beneath dark clouds the passing light over the water and I heard the voice of the world speak out, I knew then, as I had before life is no passing memory of what has been nor the remaining pages in a great book waiting to be read. It is the opening of eyes long closed. It is the vision of far off thinks seen for the silence they hold. It is in the heart after years of secret conversing speaking out loud in the clear air. It is Moses in the desert fallen to his knees before the lit bush. It is the man throwing away his shoes as if to enter heaven and finding himself astonished, opened at last, fallen in love with solid ground. --David Whyte (in The Opening of Eyes)

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. --Alan Watts (in Cerebral Calasthenics)

At the end of our life our questions are simple: Did I live fully? Did I love well? --Jack Kornfield (in Near Death)

If we sell you the land, you must remember that it is sacred, and you must teach your children that it is sacred and that each ghostly reflection in the clear water of the lakes tells of events and memories in the life of my people. The water's murmur is the voice of my father's father. --Chief Seattle (in The Value of Earth)

I have one life and one chance to make it count for something . . . I'm free to choose what that something is, and the something I've chosen is my faith. Now, my faith goes beyond theology and religion and requires considerable work and effort. My faith demands -- this is not optional -- my faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference. --Jimmy Carter (in Faith)

We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the longer pains of our spiritual growth. --Mary Antin, 1912 (in Birth Pains)

It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life, that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Tsunami Service)

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. --Barbara Kingsolver (in Social Capitalists)

Learn from the lowliest in the earth, in the birds, in the trees, in the grass, in the flowers, in the bees -- likewise listen to the birds, watch the blush of the rose, listen to the life rising in the tree. --Edgar Cayce (in Honey Bee Network)

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. --Barbara Kingsolver (in Wings of Hope)

Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Live the actual moment. Only this moment is life. --Thich Nat Hahn (in Tea Time)

Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you. --Don Juan as quoted by Carlos Casteneda (in A Path With Heart)

Could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy. --Kahlil Gibran (in The Miracle of Positive Thinking)

The seemingly uneventful and motionless moment when our future steps into us is so much closer to life than that other loud and accidental point of time when it happens to us as if from outside. --Rainer Maria Rilke (in Stand-by Energy Drain)

I see your life as already artful, waiting, just waiting and ready for you to make it art. --Toni Morrison (in $30,000 Dumpster Dive)

Music is the language of the spirit. It opens the secret of life bringing peace, abolishing strife. --Kahlil Gibran (in Playing For Change: Peace Through Music)

When we share -- that is poetry in the prose of life. --Sigmund Freud (in Breaking Bread Together)

I have never come across anything in nature that is superfluous and does not fulfill a function. There seems to be no redundancy or unemployment in these natural worlds. Be it rock or plant, bird or tree, or even the bacteria within the soil, everything occupies a vital place in the dance of life. --Michael Lindfield (in Eco-Cities For 400 Million People)

Ironically, rural America is viewed by a growing number of people as having a higher quality of life not because of what it has, but rather because of what it does not have! --Don Dillman (in Urban Takes Over Rural)

Together, we see new leaves glowing against the sun, green hillsides shimmering with the breeze, the bright purple bursts of lupine. And it's okay if there is nothing beyond this, because there is this: life, everlasting, in the bloom of every flower. --Jamaica Ritcher (in This I Believe)

One way or another, we all have to find what best fosters the flowering of our humanity in this contemporary life, and dedicate ourselves to that. --Joseph Campbell (in America’s Best-Selling Poet)

I have always thought it would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his early adult life. Darkness would make him appreciate sight; silence would teach him the joys of sound. --Helen Keller (in Nobel Laureate's Odes To Common Things)

Life shrinks and expands in proportion to one's courage. --Anais Nin (in Class of One)

Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around. --Leo Buscaglia (in Anonymous Kindness Catches On!)

Every life has a story. What's yours? --Autobiography Project Tagline (in Bus Stand Autobiographies)

In the future, people will live by the motto, "If it can live, let it live". Everything we have and everything we do and everything we would consider buying will in some way embrace life. --Richard Reames (in How To Grow A Chair)

There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age. --Sophia Loren (in 12 Year Old Who Doesn't Age)

Life is the only real counseler; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue. --Edith Wharton (in 41 Letters To Younger Selves)

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood. --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Serving on Philadelphia's Streets)