Walter Kaufmann Quotes

I looked more widely around me, I studied the lives of the masses of humanity, and I saw that, not two or three, or ten, but hundreds, thousands, millions, had so understood the meaning of life that they were able both to live and to die. All these people were well acquainted with the meaning of life and death, quietly labored, endured privation and suffering, lived and died, and saw in all this, not a vain, but a good thing.

Basically, I feel fortunate to have realized what the goal is in life. There's no point in dying having gone through your life without knowing who you are, what you are, or what the purpose of life is. And that's all it is.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will.

~The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them ~

It always seems to me that so few people live - they just seem to exist and I don't see any reason why we shouldn't live always - til we die physically.

All lives are composed of two basic elements," the squirrel said, "purpose and poetry. By being ourselves, squirrel and raven, we fulfill the first requirement, you in flight and I in my tree. But there is poetry in the meanest of lives, and if we leave it unsought we leave ourselves unrealized. A life without food, without shelter, without love, a life lived in the rain—this is nothing beside a life without poetry.

Death isn't sad. The sad thing is: most people don't live at all.

Sensible people get the greater part of their own dying done during their own lifetime

For the secret of man's being is not only to live but to have something to live for. Without a stable conception of the object of life, man would not consent to go on living, and would rather destroy himself than remain on earth, though he had bread in abundance.

Everything has a purpose, even this, and it's up to you to find it.

It seems that it is impossible to live without discovering the purpose of your life. And the first thing which a person should do is to understand the meaning of life. But the majority of people who consider themselves to be educated are proud that they have reached such great height that they cease to care about the meaning of existence.

The meaning of life is that it is to be lived.

Not a soul takes thought how well he may live- only how long: yet a good life might be everybody's, a long one can be nobody's.

Since there is absolutely no logical reason to assume there is an afterlife, I decided to make the life I have now as much fun as possible.

As we reach midlife in the middle thirties or early forties, we are not prepared for the idea that time can run out on us, or for the startling truth that if we don't hurry to pursue our own definition of a meaningful existence, life can become a repetition of trivial maintenance duties.

I am going to die. But I am going to die in peace because I lived my life as intensely as I could.

Existence is not itself a good thing, that we should spend a lifetime securing its necessaries: a life spent, however victoriously, in securing the necessaries of life is no more than an elaborate furnishing and decoration of apartments for the reception of a guest who is never to come. Our business here is not to live, but to live happily.

I think it is better for all people to live on, to look forward to the next stage (after death), as if he had to spend centuries, then he lives properly... looking forward to the great adventure ahead, then he lives!

What is there in life if you do not work? There is only sensation, and there are only a few sensations— you cannot live on them. You can only live on work, by work, through work. How can you live with self-respect if you do not do things as well as lies in you?

People are not prepared or able to rejoice in suffering unless they experience a massive biblical revolution of how they think and feel about the meaning of life. Human nature and American culture make it impossible to rejoice in suffering. This is a miracle in the human soul wrought by God through His Word.

Your soul suffers if you live superficially.

There's not a drug on earth can make life meaningful

Life is long if it is full.

Life is everything, and you haven't lived it properly until you believe.