Life is not something to be lived through: it is something to be lived up to. It is a privilege, not a penal servitude of so many decades on earth.
Interpretation
Life should be embraced as a privilege rather than endured as a burden.
This quote emphasizes the idea that life is a valuable experience that should be actively engaged with and cherished. Instead of merely getting through life as if it were a punishment, we should aspire to live it fully and with appreciation for the opportunities it presents.
In practice
In a motivational speech about pursuing aspirations, this quote inspires people to truly engage with their goals.
Plants grow most in the darkest hours preceding dawn; so do human souls. Nature always pays for a brave fight. Sometimes she pays in strengthened moral muscle, sometimes in deepened spiritual insight, sometimes in a broadening, mellowing, sweetening of the fibres of character,βbut she always pays.
Self-confidence without self-reliance is as useless as a cooking recipe without food. Self-confidence sees the possibilities of the individual; self-reliance realizes them. Self-confidence sees the angel in the unhewn block of marble; self-reliance carves it out for oneself.
Love, in the divine alchemy of life, transmutes all duties into privileges, all responsibilities into joys.
Life is so uncertain: you never know what could happen. One way to deal with that is to keep your pajamas washed.
Growing up is difficult. Strangely, even when we have stopped growing physically, we seem to have to keep on growing emotionally, which involves both expansion and shrinkage, as some parts of us develop and others must be allowed to disappear...Rigidity never works; we end up being the wrong size for our world.
People are released from prison so unprepared. They give you $200. We call it gate money. And you have to pay for a bus ticket back to L.A. You get off the Greyhound bus, downtown Skid Row, and you're supposed to make a life from that.
Get into the habit of saying, ''Speak, Lord,'' and life will become a romance.
From our birthday, until we die, Is but the winking of an eye.
Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.