Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams. ››Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover ››A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. ››You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ››The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen. ››It is very important that you only do what you love to do. you may be poor, you may go hungry, you may lose your car, you may have to move into a shabby place to live, but you will totally live. And at the end of your days you will bless your life because you have done what you came here to do. Otherwise, you will live your life as a prostitute, you will do things only for a reason, to please other people, and you will never have lived. And you will not have a pleasant death. ››Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose. ››It's only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth - and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up - that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had. ››I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation. ››Simple people with less education, sophistication, social ties, and professional obligations seem in general to have somewhat less difficulty in facing this final crisis than people of affluence who lose a great deal more in terms of material luxuries, comfort, and number of interpersonal relationships. It appears that people who have gone through a life of suffering, hard work, and labor, who have raised their children and been gratified in their work, have shown greater ease in accepting death with peace and dignity compared to those who have been ambitiously controlling their environment, accumulating material goods, and a great number of social relationships but few meaningful interpersonal relationships which would have been available at the end of life. ››Those who have the strength and the love to sit with a dying patient in the silence that goes beyond words will know that this moment is neither frightening nor painful, but a peaceful cessation of the functioning of the body. Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in a vast sky that flares up for a brief moment. ››It is perfectly true, as philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards. ››Life is a gamble. You can get hurt, but people die in plane crashes, lose their arms and legs in car accidents; people die every day. Same with fighters: some die, some get hurt, some go on. You just don't let yourself believe it will happen to you. ››You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. ››Why do we want to live for ever? Because we hope that tomorrow will bring us someone we can love. Because we want to live another day with the person we love beside us. Because we want to find someone who deserves our Love and who, in turn, will know how to love us as we deserve to be loved. That is why, when a man has no one to love him, he feels a great desire to die. As long as he has friends, people who love him and whom he loves too, he will live. Because to live is to love. ››No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. ››Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter. ››Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. ››There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life. ››About the New Life Meher Baba wrote:Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. ››I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. ››Miracles, in the sense of phenomena we cannot explain, surround us on every hand: life itself is the miracle of miracles. ››Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. ››Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself. ››How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. ››Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it. ››Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a laborer's hand. ››Choose life! Only that and always! At whatever risk. To let life leak out, to let it wear away by the mere passage of time, to withhold giving and spending it... is to choose nothing. ››Life is in the here and now, not in the there and afterwards. This day, with all the travail and joy that it brings to our doorstep, is the expression of eternal life. Either we meet it, we live it - or we miss it. ››I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ››The trouble with life is you're half way through it before you realize it's a 'do it yourself' thing. ››The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man. ››"What's wrong with being number 2?"The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in. Let it come in. We think we don’t deserve love, we think if we let it in we’ll become too soft. But a wise man named Levin said it right. He said, "Love is the only rational act." ››'Everyone knows they're going to die,' he said again, 'but nobody believes it. If we did, we would do things differently.' ››As you grow, you learn more. If you stayed as ignorant as you were at twenty-two, you'd always be twenty-two. Aging is not just decay, you know. It's growth. It's more than the negative that you're going to die, it's the positive that you understand you're going to die, and that you live a better life because of it. ››Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. ››You know what that reflects? Unsatisfied lives. Unfulfilled lives. Lives that haven't found meaning . Because if you've found meaning in your life, you don't want to go back. You want to go forward. You want to see more, do more. You can't wait until sixty-five. ››But I can say that life is good to me. Has been and is good. So I think my task is to be good to it. So how do you be good to life? You live it. ››Life doesn't offer you promises whatsoever so it's very easy to become, 'Whatever happened to… ?' It's great to be wanted. I spent a few years not being wanted and this is better. ››As you create a home, don't get distracted with a lot of things that have no meaning for you or your family. Don't dwell on your failures, but think of your successes. Have joy in your home. Have joy in your children. Have joy in your husband. Be grateful for the journey. ››Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour. Take that man I had aloft. He held on as if he were a precious thing, a treasure beyond diamonds of rubies. To you? No. To me? Not at all. To himself? Yes. But I do not accept his estimate. He sadly overrates himself. There is plenty more life demanding to be born. Had he fallen and dripped his brains upon the deck like honey from the comb, there would have been no loss to the world. The supply is too large. ››The pitch to which he was aroused was tremendous. All the fighting blood of his breed was up in him and surging through him. This was living, though he did not know it. He was realizing his own meaning in the world; he was doing that for which he was made - killing meat and battling to kill it. He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do. ››The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny. ››The emotionally mature individual should completely accept the fact that we live in a world of probability and chance, where there are not, nor probably ever will be, any absolute certainties, and should realize that it is not at all horrible, indeed - such a probabilistic, uncertain world. ››Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor. ››The expense of making yourself panicked, enraged, and self-pitying is enormous. In time and money lost. In needless effort spent. In uncalled-for mental anguish. In sabotaging others' happiness. In foolishly frittering away potential joy during the one life - yes, the one life - you’ll probably ever have. ››Life is like a camera. Focus on what's important. Capture the good times. And if things don't work out, just take another shot. ››Live! Live the wonderful life that is in you! Let nothing be lost upon you. Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing. ››
