Also see Success and Failure, Acceptance, Worry and Regret, Anger, Forgiveness, Attitude, Life Song Titles, and Beginning Song Titles.

Quotes

• The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. (Henry Miller)
• Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't.
• All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart. (Carlos Castenda)
• Always acknowledge a fault. This will throw those in authority off their guard and give you an opportunity to commit more.
• Always put off until tomorrow the things you should not do today.
• Always take the scenic route!
• Always try to do things in chronological order. It's less confusing that way.
• The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. (Marcus Aurelius)
• Blessed are the censors; they shall inhibit the earth.
• By the time a person has achieved years adequate for choosing a direction, the die is cast and the moment has long since passed which determined the future. (Zelda Fitzgerald)
• Death is more universal than life - everyone dies but not everyone lives.
• Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside of us while we live. (Norman Cousins)
• Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" make the unexpected expected?
• Doing what you like is freedom; liking what you do is happiness.
• Don't be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. (Grace Hansen)
• Don't take life too seriously...it's not permanent.
• The enthusiastic to those who are not, are always something of a trial. (Allen Goodin)
• Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
• The first breath you take when you are born you are alive...from the second breath on you are dying...live life proud, it will be over before you know it!" (April Lillie)
• For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin - real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. (Fr. Alfred D'Souza)
• The grand essentials of happiness are: something to do, something to love, and something to hope for. (Allan K. Chalmers)
• Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can't, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it. (Robert Frost)
• The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn. (David Russell)
• Have you noticed that since everyone has a camcorder no one talks about seeing UFOs like they used to?
• He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. (Friedrich Nietzsche)
• He who hesitates is sometimes saved. (James Thurber)
• Humility is such an elusive thing. Just when you think you've got it, you've lost it.
• I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. (E. B. White)
• I can please only one person per day.
  Today is not your day.
  Tomorrow's not looking good either.
• I can't figure out if life is passing me by or trying to run me over.
• I chose the road less traveled - now where the heck am I?
• I don't mind going nowhere as long as it's an interesting path.
• I have seen the future and it's like the present, only longer. (Dan Quisenberry)
• I have seen the truth and it makes no sense. (G.K. Chesterton)
• I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far. (Neil Simon)
• I realize that there are other people who have days stranger than mine. I don't know them. I don't know anyone who knows them. But I'm sure they're out there. Somewhere. (Sarah Hoffman)
• I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it. (Charles Schulz)
• I used to get high on life, but I've built up a tolerance.
• I used to have a handle on life; then it broke!
• If all the world is a stage, where is the audience sitting?
• If two wrongs don't make a right, try three.
• If we are ever in doubt about what to do, it is a good rule to ask ourselves what we shall wish on the morrow that we had done. (John Lubbock)
• If you always do what you have always done, you will always get what you have always got. (Dr. Phil)
• If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live. (Lin Yutang)
• If you see a snake, just kill it. Don't appoint a committee on snakes. (H. Ross Perot)
• If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?
• If you're going through hell, keep going. (Winston Churchill)
• If you're headed in the wrong direction, God allows U-turns.
• In many cases the person who gives advice hasn't tried it himself and wishes to see it tested to see if it really works.
• In the bigger scheme of things, the universe is not asking us to do something, the universe is asking us to be something. And that's a whole different thing. (Lucille Clifton)
• It's a pity, but owing to the pull of gravity, it takes less energy to open the mouth than to close it.
• It's a small world. So you gotta use your elbows a lot.
• It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see. (Henry David Thoreau)
• It's your life. Live it with people who are alive. It tends to be contagious. (Peter McWilliams)
• I've done so much, with so little, for so long, that I can do almost anything, with nothing, in no time flat.
• I'm not breaking the rules...I'm just testing their elasticity.
• Learn to ask for what you want...The worst people can do is not give you what you ask for - which is precisely where you were before you asked. (Peter McWilliams)
• Life doesn't necessarily happen in chronological order. (Douglas Adams)
• Life expands or contracts in direct proportion to one's courage. (Anais Nin)
• Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it. (Philip Larkin)
• Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
• Life is 10% what happens to you, and 90% how you respond to it.
• Life is a cement trampoline. (Howard Nordberg)
• Life is a continuous exercise in creative problem solving.
• Life is a cup to be filled not drained.
• Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. (Danny Kaye)
• Life is a grindstone; whether it grinds you down or polishes you up depends on what you are made of!
• Life is fragile. Handle it with awe.
• Life is a heredity disease.
• Life is a journey and it helps to have a map.
• Life is a journey, not a destination.
• Life is like a ten-speed bike; most of us have gears we never use.
• Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as you go along.
• Life is not a "brief candle." It is a splendid torch that I want to make burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. (George Bernard Shaw)
• Life is not a dress rehearsal.
• Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving all pretty and preserved, but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming..."WOW! What a ride!"
• Life is not advancement. It is growth. It does not move upward, but expands outward, in all directions. (Russell G. Alexander)
• Life is sexually transmitted.
• Life is terribly time consuming.
• Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. (Samuel Butler)
• Life is the first gift, love is the second, and understanding is the third. (Marge Piercy)
• Life is a sum of all your choices.
• Life is what happens to you while you are making other plans.
• Life is wonderful. Without it we'd all be dead!
• Live now...procrastinate tomorrow!
• Lives...Get One!
• "Living is not enough," said the butterfly, "One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower".(Hans Christian Andersen)
• Look at life through the windshield, not the rear-view mirror.
• The man who insists upon seeing with perfect clearness before he decides, never decides. Accept life, and you must accept regret. (Henri-Frédéric Amiel)
• My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. (Ashleigh Brilliant)
• My life isn't like a box of chocolates...it's more like a jar of jalapenos.
• My life may be strange, but at least it's not boring.
• Never do anything that you wouldn't want to explain to the paramedics.
• No matter how far you have gone on the wrong road, turn back. (Turkish proverb)
• No matter how long you've been walking south, in just a single step you can be walking north.
• No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head. (Terry Josephson)
• No one can go back and make a brand new start, but anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending.
• No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made known silently. (Agnes De Mille)
• Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better.
• Not all who wander are lost. (JRR Tolkien)
• Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious.
• Nothing endures but change. (Heraclitus)
• On the keyboard of life, always keep one finger on the escape key.
• Only with winter-patience can we bring The deep-desired, long-awaited spring. (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
• People are peculiar - they want the front of the bus, the back of the church, and the middle of the road.
• People change when they hurt enough that they have to,
  when they learn enough that they want to,
  and when they receive enough that they are able to. (John Maxwell)
• People who invited trouble always complain when it accepts. (Lane Olinghouse)
• A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it. (Jean de La Fontaine)
• The place where you lose the trail is not necessarily the place where it ends. (Tom Brown, Jr.)
• The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. (Henry David Thoreau)
• The purpose of life is to live a life of purpose (Richard Leider)
• Real elation is when you feel you could touch a star without standing on tiptoe. (Doug Larson)
• Repeal Murphy's Law!
• Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of man you are. (Thomas Carlyle)
• Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you. (John De Paola)
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. (Oscar Wilde)
• Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once.
• Some of us are like wheelbarrows...only useful when pushed, and very easily upset. (Jack Herbert)
• Some people are working backstage, some are playing in the orchestra, some are on stage singing, some are in the audience as critics and some are there to applaud. Know who and where you are.
• Some stories are true that never happened. (Elie Wiesel)
• Sometimes you have to get to know someone really well to realize you're really strangers. (Mary Tyler Moore)
• Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate. (J. R. R. Tolkein)
• There are many things in life that will catch your eye, but only a few will catch your heart...pursue those.
• There are whole years for which I hope I'll never be cross-examined, for I could not give an alibi.
• They say it's not good to put all your eggs in one basket... but suppose you've only got one basket!
• This would be really funny if it weren't happening to me!
• To find new things, take the path you took yesterday. (John Burroughs)
• To me, every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle. (Walt Whitman)
• Today is the last day of your life, so far.
• Unbeing dead isn't being alive. (e. e. cummings)
• The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
• Was today really necessary?
• We all live under the same sky, but we don't all have the same horizon. (Konrad Adenauer)
• We keep passing unseen through little moments of other people's lives. (Robert M. Pirsig)
• We learn the rope of life by untying it's knots.
• We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give. (Winston Churchill)
• We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey. (Kenji Miyazawa)
• What we do today, will be echoed in eternities to come.
• Whatever happens to you, it will previously have happened to everyone you know, only more so.
• When I hear somebody sigh, Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?
• When someone says, "do you want my opinion"? - it's always a negative one.
• Why is it that most nudists are people you don't want to see naked?
• Yield to temptation, it may not pass your way again.
• You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave. (Quentin Crisp)
• You have not converted a man because you have silenced him. (John Morley)
• You only live once - but if you work it right, once is enough. (Joe E. Lewis)
• You show your character in nothing more clearly that by what you think laughable. (Goethe)
• You'll never leave where you are, until you decide where you'd rather be. (Robert Brockman)

Instructions for Life

• Give people more than they expect and do it cheerfully.
• Memorize your favorite poem.
• Don't believe all you hear, spend all you have or sleep all you want.
• When you say, "I love you", mean it.
• When you say, "I'm sorry", look the person in the eye.
• Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a stroke of luck.
• Believe in love at first sight.
• Never laugh at anyone's dreams.
• Love deeply and passionately.
  You might get hurt but it's the only way to live life completely.
• In disagreements, fight fairly. No name-calling.
• Don't judge people by their relatives.
• Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard.
  Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
• Talk slow but think quick.
• Once a year, go someplace you've never been before.
• Remember that great love and great achievements involve great risk.
• Mind your own business
• Say "bless you" when you hear someone sneeze.
• Never give yourself a haircut after three margaritas.
• When you lose, don't lose the lesson.
• Remember the three R's:
  Respect for self; Respect for others; Responsibility for all your actions.
• Don't let a little dispute injure a great friendship.
• When you realize you've made a mistake, take immediate steps to correct it.
• Smile when picking up the phone. The caller will hear it in your voice.
• Approach love and cooking with reckless abandon.
• In disagreements with loved ones, deal with the current situation.
  Don't bring up the past.
• Spend some time alone.
• Open your arms to change, but don't let go of your values.
• Remember that silence is sometimes the best answer.
• Read more books and watch less TV.
• Keep your words soft and sweet, just in case you have to eat them.
• Live a good, honorable life.
  Then when you get older and think back, you'll get to enjoy it a second time.
• Trust in God but lock your car.
• Never pass up an opportunity to pee.
• Be gentle with the earth.
• Read between the lines.
• Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality.

We Learned it All in Kindergarten

(adapted from the book by Robert Fulgum)

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don't hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don't take things that aren't yours.
Say you're sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Live a balanced life.
Learn some and think some, and draw and sing and dance
and play and work every day some.
Take a nap in the afternoon.
When you go out into the world, watch for traffic, hold
hands and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere.
The golden rule and love and basic sanitation.
Ecology and politics and sane living.

Comes the Dawn

(Veronica A. Shoffstall)

After a while you learn the subtle difference
Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't mean security,
And you begin to understand that kisses aren't contracts
And presents aren't promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats with your head held high and eyes opened,
With the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child.

You learn to build your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

After a while you learn that even sunshine burns if you get too much,
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers,
And you learn that you really can endure,
That you really are strong.
And you really do have worth.

And you learn and learn...
With every goodbye comes the dawn.

The Society of Childlike Grownups

The bearer of this certificate is a lifetime member in good standing of
THE SOCIETY OF CHILDLIKE GROWNUPS and is hereby entitled to:

FURTHERMORE: the above named member is officially authorized to frequent amusement parks, beaches, meadows, mountain tops, swimming pools, forests, playgrounds, picnic areas, summer areas, summer camps, birthday parties, circuses, bakeries, ice cream parlors, theaters, aquariums, zoos, museums, planetariums, toy stores, festivals and other places where children of all ages gather to play AND is encouraged to always remember the motto of THE SOCIETY OF CHILDLIKE GROWNUPS: it's never too late to have a happy childhood, and to make sure that others do, too!