Quotessence
Home / Books / A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

Book by Stephen Levine · 8 quotes · Pain, Believe, Feels

Filter quotes by topic

A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last Quotes

“I have seen many die, surrounded by loved ones, and their last words were ‘I love you.’ There were some who could no longer speak yet with their eyes and soft smile left behind that same healing message. I have been in rooms where those who were dying made it feel like sacred ground. (26)”

“Clearly, all fear has an element of resistance and a leaning away from the moment. Its dynamic is not unlike that of strong desire except that fear leans backward into the last safe moment while desire leans forward toward the next possibility of satisfaction. Each lacks presence. (29)”

“We are motivated more by aversion to the unpleasant than by a will toward truth, freedom, or healing. We are constantly attempting to escape our life, to avoid rather than enter our pain we, and we wonder why it is so difficult to be fully alive. (43)”

“There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true. (124)”

“Until we find out who was born this time around, it seems irrelevant to seek earlier identities. I have heard many people speak of who they believe they were in previous incarnations, but they seem to have very little idea of who they are in this one. . . . Let’s take one life at a time. Perhaps the best way to do that is to live as though there were no afterlife or reincarnation. To live as though this moment was all that was allotted. (132)”

“Gratitude is the state of mind of thankfulness. As it is cultivated, we experience an increase in our "sympathetic joy," our happiness at another's happiness. Just as in the cultivation of compassion, we may feel the pain of others, so we may begin to feel their joy as well. And it doesn't stop there.”

“Few I have met have actually had a ‘last year.’ Most had only a ‘last’ month or two, a few weeks or days, or a few seconds. To have a whole year to examine one’s life consciously in the context of approaching death is almost unique in the human experience. And it gives a person the power to heal that which remains unloved and unloving. But why wait for a terminal diagnosis before opening to the potential grace and wonder of this living moment. No one can afford to put this work off any longer, because almost no one knows the day on which the last year begins.”