22 Lively Quotes for 2022

(Picture source: Ariel & Shya Kane)

 

I start with the core sentence of all «Peanuts» stories and the core sentence of our own life:

One evening Charlie Brown sits by the water with Snoopy and reflects on things that go wrong:
«Some day, we will all die.» 
And Snoopy replies: «True, but on all the other days, we will not.»

― Charles M. Schulz

In case you’re into the «Peanuts», some more timeless Snoopy wisdom & solace: 
https://www.besser-fernsehen.ch/blog/entry/snoopy-wisdom-for-life-1-1.html

  

I have always liked Don Quixote’s comment, «Until death it is all life.»

― Eleanor Roosevelt

  

It is easy to slip into self-absorption and it is equally fatal. When one becomes absorbed in himself, in his health, in his personal problems, or in the small details of daily living, he is, at the same time losing interest in other people; worse, he is losing his ties to life. From that it is an easy step to losing interest in the world and in life itself. That is the beginning of death.

― Eleanor Roosevelt

  

Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

― Howard Thurman

  

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It’s a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.

― Joseph Campbell

 

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms. When it is over, I don’t want to wonder if I have made of my life something particular, and real. I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened, or full of argument. I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

― Mary Oliver

 

The great affair, the love affair with life, is to live as variously as possible, to groom one’s curiosity like a high-spirited thoroughbred, climb aboard, and gallop …

― Diane Ackerman

 

Every day is a new adventure in terms of profoundness of experience. There is no reward to life – the only reward is life itself. Enliven! Don't live the same year 75 times and call it a life.

― Robin S. Sharma

 

You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the water slide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.

― Tina Fey

 

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear.

― Franklin D. Roosevelt

  

Best advice I ever got was an old friend of mine, a black friend, who said you have to go the way your blood beats. If you don’t live the only life you have, you won’t live some other life, you won’t live any life at all. That’s the only advice you can give anybody. And it’s not advice, it’s an observation.

― James Baldwin

  

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.

― Steve Jobs

 

Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.

― Sarah Bernhardt

 

Marketplace philosophy doesn’t work with life: In life, we give it all. We just give it all, we don’t need to get anything. In this, there is tremendous joy! A tremendous sense of fulfillment. And above all it leads to the unfolding of our being. Our genius and all other possibilities we hold within ourselves. May we know the joy of being an offering to the world. May we know the joy of blossoming into the fullest possible human being! Everything that happens in the material world is essentially a certain kind of wave. If we are a good sailor, every wave is a possibility.

― Sadhguru

 

Life is not a having and a getting, but a being and a becoming.

― Matthew Arnold

 

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes, your easy smile is your museum.

― Ansel Adams

 

I prefer living in color.

― David Hockney

 

You must get drunk. That’s it: your sole imperative. To immunize yourself from the back-breaking, body-bending burdens of time, you must get drunk and stay that way ... But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, your choice. But get drunk.

― Charles Baudelaire

 

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming: Wow! What a ride!

― Hunter S. Thompson

 

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and being alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You have to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes too near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself that you tasted as many as you could.

― Louise Erdrich

 

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 function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

― Jack London

 

I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes – everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!

― Audre Lorde

 

  

PS: Maybe you finally want to declutter your home & life – but without the vicious circle of «discarding mania», «donation mania» and «re-buying mania»: 

«Decluttering without Sparking Joy Mania!» 
https://www.besser-fernsehen.ch/blog/entry/decluttering-without-sparking-joy-mania.html

We don’t need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to decluttering. The English all-rounder William Morris left us an immortal «golden rule» ages ago:

HAVE NOTHING IN YOUR HOUSE 
THAT YOU DO NOT KNOW TO BE USEFUL 
OR BELIEVE TO BE BEAUTIFUL

William Morris was a pioneer in sustainable production, in focusing on beauty, usefulness and longevity of things, in meaningful work in times of industrialization. «Nothing should be made by man's labour which is not worth making, or which must be made by labour degrading to the makers.» He wanted a life as good as possible, in as many areas as possible, for as many people as possible. He was ahead of his time in the 19th century – and probably still would be.

Some more inspiration: 
«Sun Deck Avenue» 
http://www.besser-fernsehen.ch/english.html

Stay safe & healthy!