A Quote by Paul Bowles

Life is lived only once. And the less seriously the better.

Paul Bowles

Quote Topics

Better Less Life Life Is Lived Once Only Seriously

Quote Author

Paul Bowles
American - Composer
December 30, 1910 - November 18, 1999

Life is better lived than conceptualized. — This writing can be less demanding should I allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I’ve come to understand that life is best to be lived — not to be conceptualized. If you have to think, you still do not understand.

Bruce Lee

It's so important that we take auditions less seriously, take your work seriously, but take the industry a whole lot less seriously because it is so fickle.

Sian Clifford

Religious moderation is the direct result of taking scripture less and less seriously. So why not take it less seriously still? Why not admit the the Bible is merely a collection of imperfect books written by highly fallible human beings.

Sam Harris

Many who think that they are taking life seriously are actually only taking themselves seriously. Who takes himself seriously is over conscious of his rights; who takes life seriously is fully conscious of his obligations.

Joseph T. O'Callahan

Only a life lived in a certain spirit is worth living. It is a remarkable fact that a life lived entirely from the ego is dull not only for the person himself but for all concerned.

Carl Jung

Just because you’ve only been alive for fifteen years doesn’t mean you’re less anything except old. That’s all it means. It doesn’t mean you’re less experienced. It doesn’t mean you’re less intelligent. It doesn’t mean you’re less sensitive. It doesn’t mean you take things less seriously. It’s like, these are younger human beings, meaning don’t, because they’re only ten, start thinking that they don’t know what you’re talking about -because they do. Don’t leave people out in the cold, and don’t talk down to people -don’t. It never works out.

Judd Nelson

The law is only one of several imperfect and more or less external ways of defending what is better in life against what is worse. By itself, the law can never create anything better. Establishing respect for the law does not automatically ensure a better life for that, after all, is a job for people and not for laws and institutions.

Vaclav Havel

The key to a better life: Complain less, appreciate more. Whine less, laugh more. Talk less, listen more. Want less, give more. Hate less, love more. Scold less, praise more. Fear less, hope more.

Michael Josephson

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

Archibald MacLeish

The less seriously you take yourself, the better work you're going to do.

James Van Der Beek

I've liked life well enough, but I reckon I'll like death even better as soon as I've gotten used to the feel of it. ... I shouldn't be amazed to find it less lonely than life after I'm once safely settled.

Ellen Glasgow

You have this comet trail of your own lived life, sparks from which arrive in the head all the time, whether you want them or not - life has been lived but it is still all going on, in the mind for better and for worse.

Penelope Lively

If death were the end, then there is no God, and there are no realised masters - it is all a pack of lies. The great ones wouldn't urge you to became better, for what would be the use if, good or bad, we are all junked at the end of life? What would be the value of the scriptures? There would be no justice whatsoever if this present existence is all there is to each individual life. What of those souls who lived only a few years, or lived in blind or crippled bodies?

Paramahansa Yogananda

You're alive only once, as far as we know, and what could be worse than getting to the end of your life and realizing you hadn't lived it?

Edward Albee

Only yesterday mankind lived in fear of the scourges of smallpox, cholera and plague that once swept nations before them. Now our major concern is no longer with the disease organisms that once were omnipresent; sanitation, better living conditions, and new drugs have given us a high degree of control over infectious disease. Today we are concerned with a different kind of hazard that lurks in our environment-a hazard we ourselves have introduced into our world as our modern way of life has evolved.