The human soul has still greater need of the ideal than of the real. It is by the real that we exist; it is by the ideal that we live.Victor Hugo
Most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.Oscar Wilde
I used to say, 'There is a God-shaped hole in me.' For a long time I stressed the absence, the hole. Now I find it is the shape which has become more important.Salman Rushdie
I was a 'reverence for life' man - 'see life steadily and see it whole' - in my days as a lecturer in English lit. We are, I argued, if not exactly 'saved' by reading, at least partially 'repaired' by it: made the better morally and existentially.Howard Jacobson
My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, 'The Intoxication of Life,' 'The Purpose of Life,' 'The Real Cause of Man's Distress,' 'The Journey to the Goal in Life,' and, one of my favorites, 'The Heart of Man.' They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.Muhammad Ali
What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?F. Scott Fitzgerald
Riches have never fascinated me, unless combined with the greatest charm or distinction.F. Scott Fitzgerald
A man's work is nothing but this slow trek to rediscover, through the detours of art, those two or three great and simple images in whose presence his heart first opened.Albert Camus
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.Rabindranath Tagore
Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.Albert Camus
