‘What do you want out of life?’ I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Just wait on tables and try to get along.’ She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. Jack Kerouac, On the Road
That’s what life is – someone giving you a slapping and lots of crying. Derek s1e6, Dougie, Channel 4 2013
I don't think it matters whether you believe in God or not ... So just be nice. ibid. Derek
Rule #1: Always get up. Derek – The Special, Derek, Channel 4 2014
You’re going to stop drowning your sorrows and get through the day sober. And you will lay awake at night wishing you were dead. And you’ll wake up in the morning wishing you were dead. But you’re just going to get through it. And that’ll keep going on, all right? You’ll keep wishing you were dead … ibid. Hannah to Kev
Nasty, brutish, and short – that’s what life was all about. And dirty and boring, and it had been like that for the over-populated frenetic non-stop stressful high-tech rat race that is the modern world. Life was suddenly no longer as simple as it had been. And the extraordinary thing is none of that was planned. James Burke, Connections s2e1: Revolutions, BBC 1994
I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations. Bill Watterson
All you have to decide is what to do with the time given to you. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring 2001 starring Elijah Wood & Ian McKellen & Viggo Mortensen & Liv Tyler & Sean Astin & Cate Blanchett & John Rhys-Davis & Dominic Monaghan & Orlando Bloom & Christopher Lee & Hugo Weaving & Sean Bean & Ian Holm & Andy Serkis et al, director Peter Jackson, Gandolph
The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life. William Morris
Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. John F Kennedy
The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. A man does what he must – in spite of personal consequences, in spite of obstacles and dangers, and pressures – and that is the basis of all human morality. In whatever area in life one may meet the challenges of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul. John F Kennedy
In a story you had to find a reason, but real life gets on very well without even Freudian motivations. Anthony Burgess, Earthly Powers
And then all I can think about is like trying to snuff it. Snuff it, sir. And death I mean er, missus. I just want to die peacefully. Like with no pain. Erm no, sir, not exactly, I still feel very miserable, very much down in spirits. Well put it this way I feel very low in meself, I can’t see very much into the future, and I feel that any second something terrible is going to happen to me. A Clockwork Orange 1971 starring Malcolm McDowell & Patrick Magee & Michael Bates & Warren Clarke & John Clive & Adrienne Corri & Carl Duering & Paul Farrell & Clive Francis & Michael Gover et al, director Stanley Kubrick
It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy: to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self. George Eliot, Middlemarch
Yet we have gone on living,
Living and partly living. T S Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral, 1935
Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information? T S Eliot
The pain of living and the drug of dreams
Curl up the small soul in the window seat
Behind the Encyclopedia Britannica. T S Eliot, Animula, 1929
The truth is pain and sweat and paying bills and making love to a woman you don’t love any more. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof 1958 starring Paul Newman & Elizabeth Taylor & Burl Ives & Judith Anderson & Jack Carson & Madeleine Sherwood & Larry Gates & Vaughn Taylor, director Richard Brooks, Big Daddy to Brick
I’ve got the guts to die; what I want to know is, have you got the guys to live? ibid. Big Daddy to Brick
Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle. F Scott Fitzgerald
Acceptable food rots while we are chased from bins behind restaurants, chased from sleeping on the street, chased from relieving ourselves unless we pay for food or gas, until finally we are so hungry, sleepless, smelly, constipated and beaten-down that we simply die of lack of will to live. Jane Siberry
People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly. Andy Warhol
It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. Bhagavad Gita
They say that life is an accident, driven by sexual desire, that the universe has no moral order, no truth, no God.
Driven by insatiable lusts, drunk on the arrogance of power, hypocritical, deluded, their actions foul with self-seeking, tormented by a vast anxiety that continues until their death, convinced that the gratification of desire is life’s sole aim, bound by a hundred shackles of hope, enslaved by their greed, they squander their time dishonestly piling up mountains of wealth.
Today I got this desire, and tomorrow I will get that one; all these riches are mine, and soon I will have even more. Already I have killed these enemies, and soon I will kill the rest. I am the lord, the enjoyer, successful, happy, and strong, noble, and rich, and famous. Who on earth is my equal? ibid.
I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life that both thou and thy seed may live. Deuteronomy 30:19
And Satan answered the Lord, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. Job 2:4
So that my soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.
I loathe it; I would not live alway: let me alone; for my days are vanity. Job 7:15&16
Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul: I would despise my life. Job 9:21
My soul is weary of my life; I will leave my complaint upon myself; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul. Job 10:1
Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had seen me!
I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.
Are not my days few? Cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little,
Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;
A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death, without any order, and where the light is as darkness. Job 10:18-22
For my life is spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength faileth because of mine iniquity, and my bones are consumed. Psalms 31:10
Therefore I hated life; because the work that is wrought under the sun is grievous unto me: for all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Ecclesiastes 2:17
I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
For man also knoweth not his time: as the fishes that are taken in an evil net, and as the birds that are caught in the snare; so are the sons of men snared in an evil time, when it falleth suddenly upon them. Ecclesiastes 9:11&12
He was cut off out of the land of the living. Isaiah 53:8