Living Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The beginning as well as the end of all his thoughts was hatred of human law, that hatred which, if it be not checked in its growth by some providential event, becomes, in a certain time, hatred of society, then hatred of the human race, and then hatred of creation, and reveals itself by a vague and incessant desire to injure some living being, it matters not who.

Physiologists should think before putting down the instinct of self-preservation as the cardinal instinct of an organic being. A living thing seeks above all to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power; self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most frequent results.

Friedrich Nietzsche

We crawled up to bed, tumbled down half dressed, and stayed there ten hours. Most of my Saturday nights went like this. On the whole, the two hours when one was perfectly and wildly happy seemed worth the subsequent headache. For many men in the quarter, unmarried and with no future to think of, the weekly drinking-bout was the one thing that made life worth living.

Every chemical substance, whether natural or artificial, falls into one of two major categories, according to the spatial characteristic of its form. The distinction is between those substances that have a plane of symmetry and those that do not. The former belong to the mineral, the latter to the living world.

A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object. But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.

War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny...Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.

Charles de Gaulle

The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwara of Hindus. Even as there are numerous names of God in Hinduism, there are as many names of God in Islam. The names do not indicate individuality but attributes, and little man had tried in his humble way to describe mighty God by giving Him attributes, though He is above all attributes, Indescribable, Inconceivable, Immeasurable. Living faith in this God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind. It also means equal respect for all religions.

All living creatures, whether they swim, or walk, or fly, and whether they come into the world with the form of an animal or of an egg, are engendered in the same way.

The laws would not prevent each man from living according to his inclination, unless individuals harmed each other; for envy creates the beginning of strife.

Born in the same land, we ought to live as brothers, doing to each other all the good we can, and not listening to wicked men, who may endeavor to make us enemies. By living in peace, we can help and prosper one another; by waging war, we can kill and destroy many on both sides; but those who survive will not be the happier for that.

Thomas Jefferson

Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.

G. K. Chesterton

A man may travel fast enough and earn his living on the road.

Henry David Thoreau

Religious life ought to promote growth in the Church by way of attraction. The Church must be attractive. Wake up the world! Be witnesses of a different way of doing things, of acting, of living! It is possible to live differently in this world.

I look forward confidently to the day when all who work for a living will be one with no thought to their separateness as Negroes, Jews, Italians or any other distinctions. This will be the day when we bring into full realization the American dream — a dream yet unfulfilled.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. 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.

I could have never have known so well how paltry men are, and how little they care for really high aims, if I had not tested them by my scientific researches. Thus I saw that most men only care for science so far as they get a living by it, and that they worship even error when it affords them a substance.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times.

This we can all bear witness to, living as we do plagued by unremitting anxiety. It becomes more and more imperative that the life of the spirit be avowed as the only firm basis upon which to establish happiness and peace.

Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii if a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision.

We, as Aryans, can conceive of the state only as the living organism of a nationality which not only assures the preservation of its nationality, but by the development of its spiritual and ideal abilities leads it to the highest freedom.

No, forgive me.
If you are not living,
If you, beloved, my love,
If you
You have died
All the leaves will fall on my breast,
It will rain on my soul night and day,
The snow will burn my heart.

I felt like I might as well have been living in another part of the solar system.

Through the fortunate effect of my frankness, I had the rarest and surest opportunity to know a man well, which is to study him at leisure in his private life and living, so to speak, with himself. For he share himself without reservation and made me feel as much at home in his house as in mine. I had almost no other abode than his own.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

Bertrand Russell

It was Adam Smith, the father of free-market economics, who once said, They who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged. And for those of you who don't speak old-English let me translate. It means if you work hard, you should make a decent living. If you work hard, you should be able to support a family.