Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear? --Pema Chodron (in Little Panic: What It Takes to Break Free from Anxiety)

You may not have saved a lot of money in your life, but if you have saved a lot of heartaches for other folks, you are a pretty rich man. --Seth Parker (in The Price on Everything is Love)

I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels. --Pearl S. Buck (in Laura Grace Weldon: Four Poems)

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
--Kahil Gibran (in Raise Your Children to Be Happy, Healthy, Complete)

If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath.
--Amit Ray (in Breathing into Balance)

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. --Norman Cousins (in BJ Miller Understands Mortality)

Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
And between the two my life moves.
--Nisargadatta Maharaj (in The Monk, the Butcher & the Origins of Deep Counting)

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything? --Vincent Van Gogh (in How to Break the Loop of Our Destructive Patterns)

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more.
--Melodie Beattie (in Say Grace)

God is not always silent, and man is not always blind. In every man's life there are moments when there is a lifting of the veil. --Rabbi Abraham Heschel (in What Are You Doing With Your Freedom?)

Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts --Rachel Carson (in The Meadow Across the Creek)

Into the void of silence, into the empty space of nothing, the joy of life is unfurled. --C. S. Lewis (in The Japanese Words for "Space")

Love is the most ordinary, simplest, and most direct way to uncover what is real -- the innermost secrets of life. -- Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee (in Unity and the Power of Love)

But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical. --Carl Sagan (in Sustainability and the Sacred)

The best part of life is not just surviving, but thriving with passion and compassion and humor and style and generosity and kindness.
--Maya Angelou (in Grateful Changemakers: Karma Kitchen)

Life is like carrying a message from the child you were to the old man you'll become, without losing it along the way. --Yann Arthus-Bertrand (in Home: The Movie)

When you're living a committed life, your own small desires start becoming petty. Your commitment wakes you up in the morning and tells you what to wear, who to meet with, why to go here or there. --Lynne Twist (in The Extra-Ordinarily Committed Life of Lynne Twist)

Life is full of losses and disappointments, and the art of living is to make of them something that can nourish others. --Rachel Naomi Remen- (in Matthew Sanford Transforms Loss)

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, It's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. --Dr. Seuss (in Maira Kalman: Daily Things to Fall in Love With)

The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life. --Wendell Berry (in When the Market is Our Only Language)

Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it. --Mary Oliver (in Mary Oliver: Instructions for Living A Life)

In the Light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life means peace and happiness in the world.
--Thich Nhat Hanh (in The New and Ancient Story of Interbeing)

Life is embodied network. --David George Haskell (in First, the Work of Paying Attention to the World)

You change your life by changing your heart. ---Max Lucado- (in Welcome to Fearless Dialogues. Are You Ready for Change?)

There is no passion in playing small--in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. --Nelson Mandela (in Thoughts in Passing)

The soil is the great connector of lives, the source and destination of all...Without proper care for it we can have no community, because without proper care for it we can have no life. --Wendell Berry (in Reconnecting to the Soil, to Heal Ourselves and the Planet)

You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life --Mary Oliver (in Mary Oliver: Poet of Awe)

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely. --Louisa May Alcott (in Discovering the Sacred in Everyday Life)

A river doesn't just carry water, it carries life. --Amit Kalantri (in In Which the River Makes Off with Three Stationery Characters)

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. --Kahlil Gibran (in A Good Death: An Interview with Stephen Jenkinson)

Democracy is not just an election, it is our daily life. --Tsai Ing-wen (in Can Borrowing from Neighbors Strengthen Democracy?)

I was really on death's door. It brought very vividly to mind how extremely precious this life is, and what tremendous potential we have in this lifetime for purifying our hearts and our minds our souls--and for knowing reality. --Alan Wallace (in Coming Back to Being: A Conversation with Alan Wallace)

Don't we all die someday and someday comes all too soon? What will you do with your own wild, glorious chance at this thing we call life? --Mary Oliver (in The Courageous Mary Oliver)

Attending to life is an act of love. --Katie Rubinstein (in Mother's Day: Belonging to Each Other)

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 --Ralph Waldo Emerson (in Solar Sister)

Deep trust in life is not a feeling but a stance that you deliberately take. It is the attitude we call courage. --Br. David Steindl-Rast (in Deepening Our Comfort with Uncertainty)

We do have enough time. Life is long, if we listen to ourselves often enough, and look up. --Erling Kagge (in Why We Walk)

Dwell as near as possible to the channel in which your life flows. --Henry David Thoreau (in Meredith's Joy Jars)

We're all--trees, humans, insects, birds, bacteria--pluralities. Life is embodied network. --David George Haskell (in The True Life of the Forest)

I just needed to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees. --Jane Hirshfield (in On Calligraphic Perception: A Conversation with Jane Hirshfield)

To learn that the most practical thing in life is to be idealistic is an enormous gift. --Godfrey Reggio (in If Life Wins There Will Be No Losers)

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls. --Pablo Picasso (in The Wanderer: Earth as Art)

Tell me, what is it you plan to do.
With your one wild and precious life? --Mary Oliver (in Finding a Way Back)

One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter. --James Earl Jones (in Coastal Communication: A Mother and Son's Moving Collaboration)

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future. --David Whyte (in Gathering as a Form of Leadership)

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. --Gilda Radner (in Uncomfortable Place of Uncertainty)

The life of an animal lies outside of conjecture. It is far beyond the scientific papers and the campfire stories. It is as true as breath. It is important as the words of children. --Craig Childs (in Bearing Witness: The Animal Dialogues)

Every creature was designed to serve a purpose. Learn from animals for they are there to teach you the way of life. --Suzy Kassem (in The Animal Rescuer of Assam)

I have learned things in the dark that I could never have learned in the light, things that have saved my life over and over again, so that there is really only one logical conclusion. I need darkness as much as I need light. --Barbara Brown Taylor (in Why We Need Darkness)

Life can survive in the constant shadow of illness, and even rise to moments of rampant joy, but the shadow remains, and one has to make space for it. --Diane Ackerman (in Diane Ackerman: 100 Names for Love)