Echoes

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

The purpose of life...is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

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

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?

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

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.

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

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.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

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.

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

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

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

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!

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.

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.

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

Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in that grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

There is a limit to the time assigned you, and if you don't use it to free yourself it will be gone and never return.

Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

...why did we wait for any thing? — why not seize the pleasure at once? — How often is happiness destroyed by preparation, foolish preparation!

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.

Even as we speak, envious time is running away from us. Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in tomorrow.