50 Quotes to Help You Live Like You Were Dying

We so often fill our days with unnecessary stress and strife by focusing on the negative instead of the positive, taking part in mean-spirited and hurtful gossip, making mountains out of mole hills, or bickering over issues that in the larger scheme of things are inconsequential.

Here are a few quotes to help you bring things into better perspective, because truly, the time that we spend on such pettiness is too precious to waste.

♦ Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. ~Charles Richards

♦ Enjoy yourself. It's later than you think. ~Chinese Proverb

♦ Go for it now. The future is promised to no one. ~Wayne Dyer

♦ Every man dies. Not every man really lives. ~Braveheart

♦ Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today. ~James Dean

♦ The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and for deeds left undone. ~Harriet Beecher Stowe, Little Foxes, 1865

♦ Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways. ~Stephen Vincent Benét

♦ ... taking the long way home through the market I slow my pace down. It doesn't come naturally. My legs are programmed to trot briskly and my arms to pump up and down like pistons, but I force myself to stroll past the stalls and pavement cafes. To enjoy just being somewhere, rather than rushing from somewhere, to somewhere. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, instead of my usual shallow breaths. I take a moment to just stop and look around me. And smile to myself. For the first time in a long time, I can, quite literally, smell the coffee. ~Alexandra Potter, The Two Lives of Miss Charlotte Merryweather

♦ Do it now! can affect every phase of your life. It can help you do the things you should do but don't feel like doing. It can keep you from procrastinating when an unpleasant duty faces you. But it can also help you do those things that you want to do. It helps you seize those precious moments that, if lost, may never be retrieved. ~Napoleon Hill

♦As you grow older, you'll find the only things you regret are the things you didn't do. ~Zachary Scott

♦ And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years. ~Abraham Lincoln

♦ I'm less interested in why we're here. I'm wholly devoted to while we're here. ~Erika Harris

♦ To change one's life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly. No exceptions. ~William James

♦ A man that is young in years may be old in hours, if he has lost no time. ~Francis Bacon, Essays

♦ You will never find time for anything. If you want time you must make it. ~Charles Buxton

♦ Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live. ~Margaret Fuller

♦ Fear not that life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning. ~John Henry Cardinal Newman

♦ You live longer once you realize that any time spent being unhappy is wasted. ~Ruth E. Renkl

♦ You may delay, but time will not. ~Benjamin Franklin

♦ I wish I could stand on a busy corner, hat in hand, and beg people to throw me all their wasted hours. ~Bernard Berenson

♦ Many people die with their music still in them. Why is this so? Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it, time runs out. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

♦ I held a moment in my hand, brilliant as a star, fragile as a flower, a tiny sliver of one hour. I dropped it carelessly, Ah! I didn't know, I held opportunity. ~Hazel Lee

♦ If you wait, all that happens is that you get older. ~Larry McMurtry, Some Can Whistle

♦ Minutes are worth more than money. Spend them wisely. ~Thomas P. Murphy

♦ Begin doing what you want to do now. We have only this moment, sparkling like a star in our hand, and melting like a snowflake. ~Marie Ray

♦ The more side roads you stop to explore, the less likely that life will pass you by. ~Robert Brault

♦ Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

♦ Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time we've got. ~Art Buchwald

♦ If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You have another chance. ~Andrea Boydston

♦ Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture. ~Russell Baker

♦ I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. ~Diane Ackerman

♦ If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting? ~Stephen Levine

♦ Why be saddled with this thing called life expectancy? Of what relevance to an individual is such a statistic? Am I to concern myself with an allotment of days I never had and was never promised? Must I check off each day of my life as if I am subtracting from this imaginary hoard? No, on the contrary, I will add each day of my life to my treasure of days lived. And with each day, my treasure will grow, not diminish. ~Robert Brault

♦ The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time. ~Mark Twain

♦ Who knows whether the gods will add tomorrow to the present hour? ~Horace

♦ I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth—I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace. ~Henry James

♦ Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. ~Author Unknown

♦ Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent. ~Samuel Johnson

♦ Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. ~Allen Saunders, 1957

♦ Lost time is never found again. ~Benjamin Franklin

♦ I wasted time, and now doth time waste me. ~William Shakespeare

♦ Only that day dawns to which we are awake. ~Henry David Thoreau

♦ Every second is of infinite value. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

♦ We are always getting ready to live but never living. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

♦ Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable. ~Sydney J. Harris

♦ You only live once; but if you live it right, once is enough. ~Adam Marshall

♦ When one has a great deal to put into it a day has a hundred pockets. ~Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human

♦ Each day comes bearing its own gifts. Untie the ribbons. ~Ruth Ann Schabacker

♦ The moment when you first wake up in the morning is the most wonderful of the twenty-four hours. No matter how weary or dreary you may feel, you possess the certainty that, during the day that lies before you, absolutely anything may happen. And the fact that it practically always doesn't, matters not a jot. The possibility is always there. ~Monica Baldwin

♦ Don't ever save anything for a special occasion. Being alive is the special occasion. ~Author Unknown

© 2012 Sherrie Bourg Carter, All Rights Reserved

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