How old where you when you thought you were grown up? How old were you when you started to think about what Life Is?
Did you think it was possible to explain what ‘Life Is’ in just one sentence?
Age lets you be the person you would have been, if you hadn’t been so busy being the person you were earlier in life.
– Margie –
Life is short… ask directions.
– Unknown –
The rest of the quotations about Life are at Life and What it is.
I’ve been thinking about “life” as well. I don’t have a quote, but maybe something just as long lasting. My next business venture…..thinking of calling it “The Good Life”. It will be an urban homestead that gathers together various experts to teach about what they do to promote health, happiness, creativity, better communities, food, fun, growing, etc. Any of the things that would help define, The Good Life.
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Perhaps this Quote by Annie Dillard: There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by.
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“Age lets you be the person you would have been, if you hadn’t been so busy being the person you were.”
I absolutely LOVE this quote! At 43 I am just starting to understand this and trying to figure out how to alter the “person I am” part before it becomes the “person you were” part. Great stuff!
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The quote you like is actually mine, as far as I know… but I read a lot, and I have vivid dreams, so it is sometimes hard to tell where things actually come from.
It is a tricky task to alter who you are now. Much of that has to do with who you have to be for the people who depend on you. That is what is so good about life after the kids achieve independence. You have the freedom to invent a new self!
You’ve go lots of time – enjoy the journey!
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Not upbeat, but two of my favorites:
“Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.”
“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.”
And one from the movie, Con Air, uttered by an insane killer (in the movie, of course); However, I still like it: “What if I told you insane was working fifty hours a week in some office for fifty years at the end of which they tell you to piss off; ending up in some retirement village hoping to die before suffering the indignity of trying to make it to the toilet on time? Wouldn’t you consider that to be insane?”
I guess I like them because they keep this journey in perspective, a bit. HF
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Hi Harper – Thanks for three sober reflections about the end of the road – makes me think we all need to work harder at enjoying the now!
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I have carried with me, through almost 53 years of life TWO subtle quotes that really have meaning – at least for me anyway. Incidentally, I was amused to find this page on your volume and it made me happy. As a result I thought I’d share these with the readership, wherever and whoever that may be…
1. “Life is simply a collection of memories, and memories are like starlight, they go on forever”. Bill Fries
2. “You are what you think you are” . Robert G. Allen
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Thank you for the contributions to the Life Is page. I think the list could go on forever too!
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For some absurd, nonsensical reason, your post made me think of the opening of the wild and weird movie Trainspotting:
Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family….
Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pishing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish brats you have spawned to replace yourself.
Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that?
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I see you edited out all the ‘square’ words (that would be ‘swear’ words to us, but when my kids were little, they were ‘square’ words.)
I choose not to think about what life is going to be like near the end – do you?
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Good point. It’s not death that bothers me; only the manner of dying.
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Love this post, Margie – great collection of quotes. “Life is short… ask directions” is my favorite, I think, and so apropos for me right now. Thanks for a new mantra 🙂
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I always think of men on a driving holiday when I read this quote – men often won’t ask for directions when they get lost!
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Exactly! Fortunately, my husband has no problem asking 🙂
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One of my favourite quotes – ” sometimes we need a few people in our lives who will calmly call our bluff” – Dr. Sun Wolf
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That is an excellent observation – what I’d call a reality check!
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Wonderful! Thanks for sharing.
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Thanks for reading!
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Great collection of quotes. Thanks.
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I’ll keep adding to this list. It won’t be finished until my blogging life is finished!
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Alfred E. Neuman said it best: “It’s crackers to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.” Learn it, live it.
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I had to look that one up! It is British slang from Margery Allinghams’s crime novels, but was made famous by Mad Magazine. It’s crackers (madness) to slip a rozzer (policeman) the dropsy (packet of money) in snide (worthless — i.e. worthless or counterfeit money).
Mad Magazine – good memories!
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Kudos for your efforts, Marge! Most people just chalk me up as a nut case and move on. I first read that as a teenager in Mad and it’s always lurking in the back of my mind.
By the way,as pertains to your post, the prescient yearbook editors at my high school chose the following caption to put under my picture: “Life is a jest that has just begun.” Thought you might like to know that my being a wise a – – is not something that occurred just recently.
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Seems to me that you are more wise than ass…
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You are my new favorite person in the whole world.
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What a great list! In keeping with the wisdom of the great Alfred E. Neuman What, Me Worry?
I have figured that as long as there is no funeral having to be planned, it’s not the end of the world.
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Your comment reminds me of the quotation from the movie ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’:
“Everything will be all right in the end… if it’s not all right then it’s not yet the end”.
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