"And the purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience. You can do that only if you have curiosity, and unquenchable spirit of adventure."
–– Eleanor Roosevelt (1884-1962), American author, activist, diplomat, political figure, and First Lady. Quote from: You Learn by Living. 1960.
via: Commonplace Book 2024, 2025, p. 48.
"All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits."
–– William James (1842-1910), American psychologist and philosopher
via: Commonplace Book 2013-2014, 2013, p. 11.
"Because of the routines we follow, we often forget that life is an ongoing adventure ... and the sooner we realize that, the quicker we will be able to treat life as art: to bring all our energies to each encounter, to remain flexible enough to notice and admit when what we expected to happen did not happen. We need to remember that we are created creative and can invent new scenarios as frequently as they are needed."
–– Maya Angelou (1928-2014), American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist
Source: Nitch on Instagram, Friday July 5, 2024
"Life isn't as long as you think it is. You have a choice: You can go and try to live a playful life, or you can go and live a life which excludes playfulness. And it doesn't get you anywhere. Playfulness gets you somewhere."
–– Hans Zimmer (b. 1957), German-born American film score composer and music producer
Source: Austin Kleon newsletter Friday April 19, 2024.
via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook L 2024, p. 12.
"I hope people take away the fact that it is possible to have a different sort of life."
–– Jane Goodall (b. 1934), English primatologist and anthropologist
Source: Nitch, Instagram, March 6, 2024.
"Do not act as if you had ten thousand years to live."
–– Marcus Aurelius (121-180 AD), Roman Emperor and Stoic Philosopher
Source: Marcus Aurelius. Meditations.
via: Day In & Day Out Notebook, 2020, p. 38.
"Live your life and forget your age."
–– Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993), American writer and minister
via: Sketchbook 33, 2023, p. 6.
"I will not die an unlived life.
I will not live in fear
of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,
to make me less afraid,
more accessible;
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing,
a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance,
to live so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit."
–– Dawna Markova, American author, teacher, psychotherapist
via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook 2019 g, 2019, p. 17.
"I heard a good anecdote: You have five buckets – life, fitness, sleep, work and friends – and at any given moment you can only really be juggling three of those five buckets."
–– Tatiana Read, founder of public relation agency The Knot Group, currently Senior Lead, Partnerships and Communications, General Assembly Pizza, Toronto, Ontario
Source: Odessa Paloma Parker. 'Going their own way.' The Globe and Mail, Saturday June 10, 2017, p. 9 (Style Section).
via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook, 2017 a, p. 24.
"All life worth living is difficult. ... It is a by-product of brave living, and it never comes in the form we expect, or at the season we hoped for, or as the result of our planning for it."
–– Katherine Anne Porter (1890-1980), American writer and political activist
Source: Natalie Jenner. Bloomsbury Girls. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2022, unpaginated.
via: Commonplace Book, 2022, p. 70.
"Life begins on the other side of despair."
–– Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), French philosopher and writer
via: Sketchbook 26, 2022, p. 145.
"Most of life is a play of energy. Of transmuting all that could drown you, into fuel to reach heights one can only dream of."
–– Suhaib Rumi (b. 1988), United Arab Emirates-born Canadian poet and entrepreneur
via: Farah M. Siddiq on Instagram, August 26, 2022
"There's more to life than increasing its speed."
–– Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), Indian lawyer, writer, and social activist
via Sketchbook 11, 2010, p. 146.
"Beauty is the mystery of life."
–– Agnes Martin (1912-2004), Canadian-born American abstract painter
via Sketchbook #26, p. 28
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| Front porch cicada; Photo © Karen Thiessen, 2016 |
