Alive Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Then it had not been merely the stars to which he had aspired on that June night. He came alive to me, delivered suddenly from the womb of his purposeless splendour.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

As slippery as smooth grapes, words exploding in the light like dormant seeds waiting in the vaults of vocabulary, alive again, and giving life: once again the heart distills them.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

Vincent van Gogh

If I wasn't hard, I wouldn't be alive. If I couldn't ever be gentle, I wouldn't deserve to be alive.

Raymond Chandler

But now I see I was not plucked for naught,
And after in life's vase
Of glass set while I might survive,
But by a kind hand brought
Alive
To a strange place.

Henry David Thoreau

Poetry reproduces an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself. Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting, as she is here in Virgil.

Michel de Montaigne

I want to feel all there is to feel, he thought. Let me feel tired, now, let me feel tired. I mustn't forget, I'm alive, I know I'm alive, I mustn't forget it tonight or tomorrow or the day after that.

But speak the truth, and all nature and all spirits help you with unexpected furtherance. Speak the truth, and all things alive orbrute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is by his activities and not by enjoyment that man feels he is alive. In idleness we not only feel that life is fleeting, but we also feel lifeless.

Perhaps man has a hundred senses, and when he dies the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive... Everything that is unattainable for us now will one day be near and clear... But we must work.

We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. No belief will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed.

I spent a long time looking at faces, drinking in smiles. Am I happy or unhappy? It's not a very important question. I live with such frenzied intensity. Things and people are waiting for me, and doubtless I am waiting for them and desiring them with all my strength and sadness. But, here, I earn the right to be alive by silence and by secrecy. The miracle of not having to talk about oneself.

Suffering will come, trouble will come - that's part of life; a sign that you are alive. If you have no suffering and no trouble, the devil is taking it easy. You are in his hand.

Prayer is as necessary as the air, as the blood in our bodies, as anything to keep us alive-to keep us alive to the grace of God.

What have we here? a man or a fish? dead or alive? A fish: he smells like a fish; a very ancient and fishlike smell; a kind of not of the newest poor-John. A strange fish!

William Shakespeare

He who cannot read is worse than deaf and blind, is yet but half alive, is still-born.

Henry David Thoreau

This world is empty to him alone who does not understand how to direct his libido towards objects, and to render them alive and beautiful for himself, for Beauty does not indeed lie in things, but in the feeling that we give to them.

To honor with hymns and panegyrics those who are still alive is not safe; a man should run his course and make a fair ending, and then we will praise him; and let praise be given equally to women as well as men who have been distinguished in virtue.

We are all very imperfect and weak things, and if we are to destroy all whose ways we do not like, there will be not a man left alive.

Usefulness, whatever form it may take, is the price we should pay for the air we breathe and the food we eat and the privilege of being alive.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Nature seemed to me full of wonders, and I wanted to steep myself in them. Every stone, every plant, every single thing seemed alive and indescribably marvelous. I immersed myself in nature, crawled, as it were, into the very essence of nature and away from the whole human world.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality. That is why you write and for no other reason that you know of. But what about all the reasons that no one knows?

Ernest Hemingway

When all the suns and nebulae have passed away, each one of you will still be alive.

There are means that cannot be excused. And I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice. I don't want just any greatness for it, particularly a greatness born of blood and falsehood. I want to keep it alive by keeping justice alive.

A man is really alive only when he delights in the good-will of others.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe