My trade and art is to live.

The moment one is on the side of life peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

A man is an island in the only sense that matters, not an easy way to be. We live in mystery, a cosmos of separate lonely bodies, men, insects, stars. It is all a loneliness and men know it best.

There is certainly no greater happiness than to be able to look back on a life usefully and virtuously employed, to trace our own progress in existence, by such tokens as excite neither shame nor sorrow.

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?

Life without absorbing occupation is hell-joy consists in forgetting life.

The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this.

It is easier to stay out than get out.

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are.

Life finds its wealth by the claims of the world, and its worth by the claims of love.

The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate.

It is by losing himself in the objective, in inquiry, creation, and craft, that a man becomes something.

The kind of relatedness to the world may be noble or trivial, but even being related to the basest kind of pattern is immensely preferable to being alone.

To finish the moment, to find the journey's end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, in wisdom.

Be a football to Time and Chance, the more kicks, the better, so that you inspect the whole game and know its utmost law.

Let the fruition of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction in dying but living rich.

Say Yes to the seedlings and a giant forest cleaves the sky. Say Yes to the universe and the planets become your neighbors. Say Yes to dreams of love and freedom. It is the password to Utopia.

Is it so small a thing To have enjoyed the sun, To have lived in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done?

To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.

The civilized are those who get more out of life than the uncivilized, and for this the uncivilized have not forgiven them.