When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive — to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.
Themes
Life
How to live, and how most people avoid the question.
Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, but do so with all your heart.
The unexamined life is not worth living.
What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.
One lives but once in the world.
Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.
I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish only to be a Yes-sayer.
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
Without music, life would be a mistake.
It is not the length of life, but the depth of life.
All life is an experiment.
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
Most people die at twenty-five and aren't buried until they're seventy-five.
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts.
Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow.
Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.