Quotessence
Home / Topics / Living Quotes

Living Quotes

Browse 3317 quotes about Living.

Living Quotes

“I have often wondered before, and now particularly I wonder: What, after all, is the highest price one should pay for life? How much should one pay, how much is too much? As they teach in schools nowadays: "The dearest thing a man has is life, he lives but once." That means cling to life at any cost. The camps helped many of us to reach the conclusion that betrayal, the ruin of good and helpless people, is too high a price. Life isn't worth it. But as for the fawning, the flattery, the lies, people in the camp differed. Some said these were an acceptable price, and perhaps they were right. But what about this price - to save one's life at the cost of surrendering everything that gives it color, flavor, and sparkle? To get a life of digestion, breathing, muscular and mental activity, and nothing more? To become a walking husk of a man - isn't that an exuberant price? It would be a mockery. Should I pay it? (chapter 22)”

“But it ain't having a weak heart that lets you live as long as I have. It ain't even living that makes you live as long as me. All that shit about living a "full life" and all that. You can make love to all the women you want, make millions or dollars or eat out of a Campbell's soup can most of your life like I have. It doesn't matter for shit. What matters is outliving. Choose something, or someone, to outlive and there ain't a thing that can kill you.”