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Talk:Life

Latest comment: 12 years ago by BD2412 in topic Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Anyone else notice? edit

When you go to edit this article, it says Editing Life if only it was possible

Hahaha, brilliant! "Life is too important to be taken seriously" - Oscar Wilde (who shares the same birthday as me)

Sub-themes edit

What do people think of the current section headings: Inspiring; Life as a form of Death; Silly? Do you think they are:

  1. a great idea
  2. useful in concept but with slight changes (Perhaps Silly could be renamed to something else?)
  3. a bad idea

Maybe section headings within theme pages could be regarded as sub-themes, assuming a theme divided somewhat neatly into sub-themes (a lthough above a certain size the page would split into separate pages and link to each other)? Nanobug 02:36, 17 Sep 2003 (UTC)

quotes from fictional characters edit

I don't think fictional characters should be quoted without either reference to the source of the quote, or the fact that the character is fictional... example Jack Handy = not a person, fictional 'character' Saturday Night Live?, therefore without attribution, possible copyright issue, regardless of that though, it seems wrong to mix say Bart Simpson with Thomas Paine... comments?66.245.206.16 17:35, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)Pedant 17:36, 10 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Acutally, Jack Handey (note spelling) is a real person.

Quotes by possible unnotable edit

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Moved following quote here. Person has no wp page, no wq page, and seems to be an average New-Zealand economist. If anyone disagrees, please provide evidence of notability here and move quote back to page. Thanks ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:01, 9 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Anonymous edit

Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

The following quote does not actually appear in any episode of "The Office" and was in the public domain beforehand (quoted in a University of Bath aeronautical engineering thesis (gas turbine film cooling) in 2000 as John Bedfield):

"Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines." - Rickey Gervais in "The Office"


I would like to question the validity of the quote, “Life's a game it can't be won only played.* **Unknown Philosopher** (2010)” as it is probably a spurious quotation without any known source. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Wise Raven (talk • contribs) 00:41, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

"Anonymous" quotes can be included if they are cited to notable sources that quote them. This isn't, and I am removing it as patently made up. ~ Ningauble 16:44, 2 February 2010 (UTC)Reply

Questionable Quote edit

"Man is like a spark. Some will start a fire, but most will burn out quickly." Decent quote, but its attributed to J. Michael Delaney. Who the hell is that? Anyone know? Google doesn't.

Unsourced edit

Latest comment: 14 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Positive edit

  • It's all about options. Once one disappears, there are many others.
  • I grew up knowing I could have had a million different lives. It makes your life mysterious and your imagination go wild.
  • Life is a waterfall; we're one in the river and one again after the fall.
  • A man is like a spark. Some will start a fire, but most will burn out quickly.
  • If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
    • Henry David Thoreau, Walden: or, Life in the Woods‎ (1854), Vol. 1, p. xli.
    • Often partially misreported as beginning with "Do not worry if you have built your castles in the air", or "Have you built your castles in the air?".
  • Every day is my best day; this is my life. I'm not going to have this moment again.
  • I love life so much sometimes it just brings a tear to my eye... Losing my mind was definitely the best thing to ever happen to me.
  • Far away in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see the beauty, believe in them and try to follow where they lead.
  • Life is like pizza, When it's good, It's really good. When it's bad, it's still pretty good.
    • Unknown
  • Life isn't what you want it to be, it's what you make it become.
  • The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
    • Oscar Wilde, reported in Epigrams: An anthology‎ (1952), p. 102.
  • The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
  • I am waiting for a sign that will indicate to me what meaning I must give to my life, but right now my existence is satisfactory.
  • I've created my own path and I'm content with that.
  • It is never too late to be what you might have been.
  • Let us endeavor to live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
  • Let's live today, let's live tomorrow, and let's live the day after that - even if it means living in eternal pain.
    • Vash the Stampede (Trigun)
  • Life is a challenge, meet it; life is love, share it; life is a dream, realize it; life is a game, play it.
  • Life is beautiful. Let the future generations cleanse it of all evil, oppression, and violence, and enjoy it to the full.
  • Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you plan to stop pedaling.
  • Live all you can - it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
  • Man is happy only as he finds work worth doing — and does it well.
  • Man performs and engenders so much more than he can or should have to bear. That's how he finds that he can bear anything.
  • Purpose of mankind: To better yourself and all that you know by seeking knowledge and truth, while at the same time never forgetting that all life is as equally important as your own.
  • The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
  • You don't love a woman because she is beautiful, but she is beautiful because you love her.
  • When nothing is sure, everything is possible.
  • Humans can choose the type of life they want to live. The important thing is that you choose life...and then...live!
  • Life is a sequence of moments, live each moment to its fullest and you're bound to live a happy life
  • I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirm the worth of life as an end in itself.

Cynical edit

  • Life is a bad game, imperfect and unfair. Let us play it well.
  • Life comes with lousy odds. You wouldn't want to bet on it.
  • Life is a manure sandwich. The more dough you have, the less it tastes like manure.
    • Elevator wall, Columbia University, 1981
  • Life is strange. If you don't believe me, just live longer.
  • Life... is like a box of chocolates. A cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that nobody ever asks for. Unreturnable, because all you get back is another box of chocolates. You're stuck with this undefinable whipped-mint crap that you mindlessly wolf down when there's nothing else left to eat. Sure, once in a while, there's a peanut butter cup, or an English toffee. But they're gone too fast, the taste is fleeting. So you end up with nothing but broken bits, filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, and if you're desperate enough to eat those, all you've got left is a... is an empty box... filled with useless, brown paper wrappers.
  • Life — and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison — is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.
  • There have to be clouds for there to be silver linings.
  • After all we can do....life is still a terminal disease.
  • The meaningless absurdity of life is the only incontestable knowledge accessible to man.
  • It is not true that life is one damn thing after another — it's one damn thing over and over.
  • Life is like a butterfly: it doesn't last long.

Philosophical: in relation to death edit

  • The primary question about life after death is not whether it is a fact, but even if it is, what problems that really solves.
  • Let us endeavor so to live that, when we come to die, even the undertaker will be sorry.
  • Do not seek death; death will find you. But seek the road which makes death a fulfillment.
  • The inevitability of death is the greatest affirmation of life.
  • Must not all things in the last be swallowed by death?
  • I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.
  • I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.
  • Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterward. These are games; one must first answer.
  • Sometimes, dead is bettah
  • We are born with two incurable diseases, life, from which we die, and hope, which says maybe death isn't the end.
  • We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.
  • What a folly to dread the thought of throwing away life at once, and yet have no regard to throwing it away by parcels and piecemeal.
  • While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.
  • Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there.
  • What else can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the Reaper Man?
  • We do what we must because we can, for the good of all of us (except the ones who are dead) but there's no use crying over every mistake, you just keep on trying until you run out of cake, and the science gets done and you make a neat gun for the people who are still alive'
    • Still Alive from Portal

Philosophical: other edit

  • Life, man is given as something worthy of sacrifice in the way of His love; free will, as exemplary of justice, is the mechanism by which one's choice in that sacrifice must be made.
  • Each person that has ever lived has had the same problem. They wanted to be remembered by everyone for what they were. To be forgotten is worse than death. People wanted to be remembered by other things than books and stories. But in the end that's all we can be remembered by. There's nothing you can do at this points but live. But when I'm to die I want to be remembered by one thing. I want people to say "He was the type of person that believed and saw the good in others even when they couldn't believe or see it in themselves." That is how I want to be remembered.
  • ...for you to be here now trillions of drifting atoms had somehow to assemble in an intricate and intriguingly obliging manner to create you. It's an arrangement so specialized and particular that it has never been tried before and will only exist this once. For the next many years (we hope) these tiny particles will uncomplainingly engage in all the billions of deft, cooperative efforts necessary to keep you intact and let you experience the supremely agreeable but generally underappreciated state known as existence.
    Why atoms take this trouble is a bit of a puzzle. Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don't actually care about you — indeed, don't even know that you are there. They don't even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse to keep you you.
  • We each carry the weight of personal choice and the responsibility for playing our part in furthering the persistence of life. At the same time, we each hold within the possibility for an awareness of the lightness at work in existence, the ultimate illusion of the material world, the absence of meaning beyond the meaning of that which presents itself to us.
  • Life is like a farm, one wrong step and you're in DEEP SHIT!!!
  • I don't believe in miracles — I rely on them.
  • Lives aren't handed out somewhere, they're rewarded. And that reward, that priceless reward is only given out once. It's so fragile that one little tear, one little scratch, can destroy it.
  • I think that somehow, we learn who we really are and then live with that decision.
  • If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
  • Living a life is a hard thing to do, clutching it in your grasp and protecting it is easy for some, but not for others.
  • If the path be beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.
  • In the midst of winter, I found there was within me, an invincible summer.
  • Is that your own life you're living?
  • It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... Let's go exploring!
  • Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
  • Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.
  • Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
  • A little simplification would be the first step toward rational living, I think.
  • Nearly all the best things that came to me in life have been unexpected, unplanned by me.
  • ...nothing is desperately important and the joy of life is just looking at it.
  • Opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.
  • The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.
  • Reality is a term for people who refuse to see things as they can be, so that they might be, instead seeing things as they are, and lazily assuming that's how they'll always be.
  • The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
    • Isaac Asimov. Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
  • So many people tiptoe through life, so carefully, to arrive, safely, at death.
  • Somewhere along the line of development we discover what we really are, and then we make our real decision for which we are responsible. Make that decision primarily for yourself because you can never really live anyone else's life, not even your own child's.
  • The difference between theory and practice is that in theory there isn't any.
  • The major value in life is not what you get. The major value in life is what you become.
  • The real world: no time to do it right, but always time to do it over.
  • There is only one success – to be able to spend your life in your own way.
  • There's no point in living, if you can't feel alive.
    • Shirley Ann Manson, in song performed by Garbage, The World Is Not Enough
  • To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man's life.
  • We are a wondrous gathering of atoms formed into an incredible being, capable of experiencing our own existence. While we live this experience we must be thankful for it, and live it fully. When it ends, we return to what we were before it began. What we create and leave behind is our gift to those who will follow us. We return to the universe as we came from it, to be recreated, and recycled into the infinite all.
  • What ought one to say then as each hardship comes? I was practicing for this, I was training for this.
  • With dried blood stiff on my temples I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic way of men, yet knowing myself vile, for they had not known what they were doing, but I betrayed an innocent; and the tears— weak whiskey tears— would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother." [after a killing of a badger by villagers]
  • Life isn't easy unless you behave as though it is.
  • The special way of growing that real living things employ is exponential growth. Another way of saying this is that living things grow by local doubling.
  • Life is like an incessant series of problems, all difficult, with brutal choices, and a time limit. The worst thing you can do is to make no choice, waiting for the ideal conclusion to present itself.
    • [Chapel the Evergreen]
  • We've been evolving for millions of years, how come life still feels so short?
  • Life doesn't revolve around what you need to know, it revolves around what you need to understand.
  • There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
  • Life is a journey, you know; and a lot of journeys, you go out, you come back.
    • Yusuf Islam [Cat Stevens], English musician. From an interview on London Tonight, an ITV (UK) television news programme, 8th December 2009
  • If you're not living life on the edge, you're not taking up enough room.
  • I believe everyone decision is neither wrong or right because it affects your life no matter what! So how can you affect you life in a wrong way? It's your life, You choose how it goes.
  • If everything went the way we want it to in life, then we'd never learn.
  • Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
  • In life, everything will be ok...As long as you don't define ok.
  • Life is like a "Potluck supper" whatever is available is acceptable.
  • My secret to a long, healthy life is to always keep working. It keeps me busy and happy, and gives me a reason to stay alive.
    • Johannes Heesters (Dutch-German actor, singer, entertainer and media-personality, worlds oldest living performer)

Humorous edit

  • The BBC would like to make a correction: several weeks ago, a singer was on this program singing a song to the effect that life was a bowl of cherries. The BBC would like to point out that Life is not a bowl of cherries, but rather Life is a state of being categorized by organic metabolic reactions. The BBC would also like to apologize to one viewer who, in an attempt to take his own life, instead took a bowl of cherries, and was then promptly sick in the upstairs lavatory.
  • Ever since I was a kid, I've always been a real deep thinker and stuff.
  • Always look on the Bright Side of Life
  • Everybody has their moment of great opportunity in life. If you happen to miss the one you care about, everything else in life becomes eerily easy.
  • Hush. For we are going to stay buried here in this tomb together for a very, very long time, so hug me!
  • I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying.
    • Life's a Laugh and Death's a Joke,its true.You'll see its all a Show,keep 'Em laughing as You go,just Remember that the last Laugh is on You
    • Eric Idle,Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life
  • You wish that you could do something this ugly, and make it look this good.
  • I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it.
  • I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different.
  • If it turns out to be a joke at the end, I'm going to be so pissed at whoever started it.
  • If your parents never had children, chances are ... neither will you.
  • Life: adjusting a necktie in a funhouse mirror.
  • Life is gamble at terrible odds — if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it.
  • Life is anything that dies when you stomp on it.
  • Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering — and it's all over much too soon.
  • Life is like a sewer — what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
  • Life is too important to be taken seriously.
  • Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
  • You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
  • Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
    • David Brent in "The Office" [NB this source is a falsehood given the quote existed before the office]
  • Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get.
  • I can face anything in life, except difficulties.
  • Life is like underwear. Should be changed twice daily.
  • Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.
  • My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.
  • If life were perfect, it would be boring.

Verse edit

  • After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends
No was the night. Yes is this present sun.
  • My friend, the things that do attain
    The happy life be these, I find:
    The riches left, not got with pain:
    The fruitful ground, the quiet mind.
  • Isn't your life extremely flat
    With nothing to grumble at?

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. edit

Latest comment: 12 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

An editor has made the following comment regarding the quote, "Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away":

This mystery has been solved! While sourcing quotes for a book I'm writing, I was shocked to find this popular quote in a 1989 thirty-two-page booklet on Tahitian dance. (Tahitian Choreographies, Dance Fantasy Productions, August 1, 1989, page 36.) I called the author, Vicki Corona, on April 17, 2012, and she said that, to the best of her knowledge, the quote was hers because she always wrote original material for the series of dance booklets she produced. This book is by far the earliest publication of this quote that I could find. Conclusion: Credit Vicki Corona.

I moved this here from the main page. Cheers! BD2412 T 18:17, 17 April 2012 (UTC)Reply

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