Life's Balance Quotes

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness.

There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.

Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud.

Fishing is a constant reminder of the democracy of life, of humility, and of human frailty. The forces of nature discriminate for no man.

Just as courage is the danger of life, so is fear its safeguard.

I think the interesting aspect of life is that you're always sort of in the middle. You're never the youngest and you're never the oldest.

Unless you have bad times, you can't appreciate the good times.

For Death who takes what man would keep, Leaves what man would lose.

Roast Beef, Medium, is not only a food. It is a philosophy. Seated at Life's Dining Table, with the menu of Morals before you, your eye wanders a bit over the entrees, the hors d'oeuvres, and the things a la though you know that Roast Beef, Medium, is safe and sane, and sure.

The sweetest joys of life grow in the very jaws of its perils.

None of us can know what tomorrow will hold, because each day has its good and its bad moments.

She gazed toward the marsh that grew thicker, deeper, greener with approaching summer. Mosquitoes whined in there, breeding in the dark water. Alligators slid through it, silent death. It was a place where snakes could slither and bogs could suck the shoe right off your foot. And it was a place, she thought, that went bright and beautiful with the twinkling of fireflies, where wildflowers thrived in the shade and the stingy light. Where an eagle could soar like a king. There was no beauty without risk. No life without it.

But pain seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

Happy the man who sees a God employed in all the good and ills that checker life.

This is for you,' he (the Alchemist) said, holding one of the parts (of gold) out to the monk. 'It's for your generosity to the pilgrims.' 'But this payment goes well beyond my generosity,' the monk responded. 'Don't say that again. Life might be listening, and give you less the next time.

Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself... The problem is not to blame or explain but to handle the life that arises... If you say no to a single factor in your life, you have unraveled the whole thing... The demon that you swallow gives you its power, and the greater life's pain, the greater life's reply.

The shortness of life cannot dissuade us from its pleasures, nor console us for its pains.

God, the Master Weaver. He stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the velvet strings, the pains with the pleasures. Nothing escapes his reach.

But dying's part of the wheel, right there next to being born. You can't pick out the pieces you like and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that's the blessing.

Life is never all one thing. It bounces around. Certainly, my own life has.

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it....In this way our life should be understood. Then there is no problem.

The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in theinfringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.

On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough.