LIFE-ALTERING QUOTES: Quotes that have Influenced My Life

The unexamined life is not worth living. (attributed to Socrates, Plato’s Apology, 400 BC)

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. (Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

I sped through heaven and saw god at work.  I suffered holy pains.  I dropped all my defences and was afraid of nothing in the world.     I accepted all things and to all things I gave up my heart. (Hesse, Steppenwolf, 1927)

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!". (Kerouac, On The Road, 1957)

He seemed so certain about everything, didn't he? And yet none of his certainties was worth one hair of a woman's head. He wasn't even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man.   (Camus, The Stranger, 1942)

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference. (Frost, Road Not Taken, 1916)

She watched Remedios the Beauty waving good-bye in the midst of the flapping sheets that rose up with her, abandoning with her the environment of beetles and dahlias and passing through the air with her as four o'clock in the afternoon came to an end, and they were lost forever with her in the upper atmosphere where not even the highest-flying birds of memory could reach her. (Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude, 1967)

How it happened he did not know. But all at once something seemed to seize him and fling him at her feet. He wept and threw his arms round her knees. For the first instant she was terribly frightened and she turned pale. She jumped up and looked at him trembling. But at the same moment she understood, and a light of infinite happiness came into her eyes. She knew and had no doubt that he loved her beyond everything and that at last the moment had come... (Dostoevsky, Crime & Punishment, 1866)

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. (Thoreau, Walden, 1854)

"How, O how could I stay silent, how, O how could I keep quiet?
My friend whom I love has turned to clay:
Enkidu my friend whom I love has turned to clay.
Am I not like him? Must I lie down too, never to rise again?"  (Anonymous, Epic of Gilgamesh, 1800 BC)

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.  (Old Testament, Proverbs 23:17, 900 BC)

Vengeance is mine; I will repay. (Tolstoy, Anna Karenina, 1877)

Six feet of land was all that he needed. (Tolstoy, How Much Land Does a Man Need?, 1886)