Life's pretty tough . . . you're lucky if you live through it.
Woody GuthrieRead
I think so, too. I know I felt that way. For years. It was as if I was a character in a movie and the real action was about to start at any minute. But I think some people wait forever, and only at the end of their lives do they realize that their life has happened while they were waiting for it to start.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on how many people wait for significant moments to begin their lives, missing the present.
Jess Walter's quote captures the essence of life being lived in the present rather than waiting for a perfect moment that may never come. It suggests that many individuals spend their time in anticipation of an ideal scenario, only to realize at the end of their life that they have been inactive while life was happening around them. This is a reminder to embrace the current moment and take action instead of postponing living.
In practice
During a motivational speech about seizing opportunities.
Life's pretty tough . . . you're lucky if you live through it.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
This was life! Ah, how he loved it! Civilization held nothing like this in its narrow and circumscribed sphere, hemmed in by restrictions and conventionalities. Even clothes were a hindrance and a nuisance. At last he was free. He had not realized what a prisoner he had been.
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
a process of aging had taken place in him that was so rapid and critical that soon he was being treated as one of those useless great-grandfathers who wander about the bedroom like shades, dragging their feet, remembering better times aloud, and whom no one bother about or remembers really until the morning they find them dead in their bed.
There's mistakes that I have made. Some chances I just threw away. Some roads I never should've taken. Been some signs I didn't see. Hearts that I hurt needlessly. Some wounds that I wish I could have one more chance to mend, but it don't make no difference: The past can't be rewritten. You get the life you're given.
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