Inspirational Quotes on Life

“Ah me!" said he, "what might have been is not what is!”

“If nothing worse than Ale happens to us, we are well off.”

“In the Eastern story, the heavy slab that was to fall on the bed of state in the flush of conquest was slowly wrought out of the quarry, the tunnel of the rope to hold it in its place was slowly carried through the leagues of rock, the slab was slowly raised and fitted in the roof, the rope to the great iron ring. All being made ready with much labour, and the hour come, the sultan was aroused in the dead of the night, and the sharpened axe that was to sever the rope from the great iron ring was put into his hand, and he struck with it, and the rope parted and rushed away, and the ceiling fell. So, in my case; all the work, near and afar, that tended to the end had been accomplished, and in an instant the blow was struck, and the roof of my stronghold dropped upon me.”

“God does not require a perfect, sinless life to have fellowship with Him, but He does require that we be serious about holiness, that we grieve over sin in our lives instead of justifying it, and that we earnestly pursue holiness as a way of life.”

“Our lives should be, according to our Lord's plans, quiet but steadily flowing streams of blessing, which through our prayers and intercession should reach our whole environment.”

“That is what a well-guarded prayer life can reveal about us, that our trust is not in ourselves but in seeking God's strength for what we do. Prayer is not a substitute for action, but prayer undergirds action with the strength that makes the difference.”

“It should be the art of Christians to present death as a passage to a better life, to labour to bring our souls into such a condition, as to think death not to be a death to us, but the death of itself. Death dies when I die, and I begin to live when I die. It is a sweet passage to life. We never live till we die.”

“Fortune, if thou’ll but gie me still Hale breeks, a scone, an whisky gill, An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will, Take a’ the rest, An’ deal’t about as thy blind skill Directs thee best.”

“In other words, I have tried to learn in my writing a monastic lesson I could probably not have learned otherwise: to let go of my idea of myself, to take myself with more than one grain of salt... In religious terms, this is simply a matter of accepting life, and everything in life as a gift, and clinging to none of it, as far as you are able. You give some of it to others, if you can. Yet one should be able to share things with others without bothering too much about how they like it, either, or how they accept it. Assume they will accept it, if they need it. And if they don’t need it, why should they accept it? That is their business. Let me accept what is mine and give them all their share, and go my way.”

“When I knelt to kiss her hand, she sighed heavily. 'Ask me nothing,' she said. 'Life itself is too joyless to be more embittered by explanations. Let all rest between us as now. I will love coldly, you warmly, with no nearer approaching.' ("The Basilisk")”

“God meets daily needs daily. Not weekly or annually. He will give you what you need when it is needed.”

“The lame (as they say) in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it, and it is clear that the very skill and swiftness of him who runs not in the right direction must increase his aberration.”

“If you really love life you're walking in the shadow of death all the time...Death is the shadow of life, and the more one is obsessed with life the more one is obsesses with death. I'm greedy for life and I'm greedy as an artist. Francis Bacon in conversation in Daniel Farson”

“If you are not happy for a minute, then you lost 60 seconds of happiness in your life”

“Life is either a great adventure or nothing at all.”

“Living is death; dying is life. We are not what we appear to be. On this side of the grave we are exiles, on that, citizens; on this side, orphans, on that, children; on this side, captives; on that, freemen; on this side, disguised, unknown; on that, disclosed and proclaimed as the sons of God.”

“There comes a time when people get tired of being trampled over by the iron feet of oppression.”

“If a man has not discovered something that he could die for, he’s not fit to live.”

“Of all the things which man can do or make here below, by far the most momentous, wonderful, and worthy are the things we call books.”

“You can get anything you want in this life if you help enough other people get what they want.”