Echoes

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place towards which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?

The point is, not how long you live, but how nobly you live. And often this living nobly means that you cannot live long.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.

The measure of a man's life is the well spending of it, and not the length.

The person who has lived the most is not the one who has lived the longest, but the one with the richest experiences.

Do not, my soul, seek immortal life, but exhaust the limits of the possible.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Our bodies are perishable, wealth is not at all permanent and death is always nearby. Therefore we must immediately engage in acts of merit.

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

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.

Not to live as if you had endless years ahead of you. Death overshadows you. While you're alive and able—be good.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

There is surely nothing other than the single purpose of the present moment. A man's whole life is a succession of moment after moment. If one fully understands the present moment, there will be nothing else to do, and nothing else to pursue. Live being true to the single purpose of the moment. Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it were somewhere else.

Do not act as if thou wert going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over thee. While thou livest, while it is in thy power, be good.

To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act, to make use of our organs, senses, faculties — of all those parts of ourselves which give us the feeling of existence.

Thou oughtest in every deed and thought so to order thyself, as if thou wert to die this day.

The fashion of this world passeth away and I would fain occupy myself with the things that are abiding.

Life is too short to waste The critic bite or cynic bark, Quarrel, or reprimand; ’Twill soon be dark; Up! mind thine own aim, and God speed the mark!

Yes, you can--if you do everything as if it were the last thing you were doing in your life, and stop being aimless, stop letting your emotions override what your mind tells you, stop being hypocritical, self-centered, irritable.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure — these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Be thou never without something to do; be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or doing something that is useful to the community.

Happy is the man who hath the hour of his death always before his eyes, and daily prepareth himself to die.

Remember that man lives only in the present, in this fleeting instant; all the rest of his life is either past and gone, or not yet revealed. Short, therefore, is man's life, and narrow is the corner of the earth wherein he dwells.