Life

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. - Henry Miller

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth. - Evan Esar

There are three modes of bearing the ills of life, by indifference, by philosophy, and by religion. - Charles Colton

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one. - Bruce Lee 

Into each life some rain must fall, Some days must be dark and dreary. - Henry Wadworth Longfellow 

If you would live long, live well; for folly and wickedness shorten life. - Benjamin Franklin

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. - Benjamin Franklin

No life is so hard that you can’t make it easier by the way you take it. - Ellen Glasgow

When I hear somebody sigh, "Life is hard," I am always tempted to ask, "Compared to what?" - Sydney J. Harris

Life’s values originate in circumstance over which the individual has no control. - Charles A. Lindbergh

No matter what we want of life we have to give up something in order to get it. - Raymond Holliwell 

Animals - Quotes

An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language. - Martin Buber

Animals are like little angels sent to earth to teach us how to love. They don’t get angry or play silly games. They are always there for us. - Whitney Mandel

Animals are like little children a bit. They’re simple. They don’t have politics driving them. - Annabelle Sabloff

Animals are like people because people are animals. - Barbara T. Gates

Animals are more than ever a test of our character, of mankind's capacity for empathy and for decent, honourable conduct and faithful stewardship. We are called to treat them with kindness, not because they have rights or power or some claim to equality, but in a sense because they don't; because they all stand unequal and powerless before us. Animals are so easily overlooked, their interests so easily brushed aside. Whenever we humans enter their world, from our farms to the local animal shelter to the African savanna, we enter as lords of the earth bearing strange powers of terror and mercy alike. - Matthew Scully

Animals are neither gods nor fiends, but men in their way without the lust and greed of man. - Robert E. Howard

Animals are not humans with reduced capacities. They have their own capacities, their own spectrum of aptitudes and behaviours. - Jean Kazez

Animals are not property or "things" but rather living organisms, subjects of a life, who are worthy of our compassion, respect, friendship, and support. - Marc Bekoff

Animals are reliable, many full of love, true in their affections, predictable in their actions, grateful and loyal. Difficult standards for people to live up to. - Alfred A. Montapert

Animals are, like all living things, self-building, self-maintaining, and self-protecting embodiments of their genetic designs, and they are therefore in human eyes objects of their own operations. - A.Van Ginkel

Animals are, like us, endangered species on an endangered planet, and we are the ones who are endangering them, it, and ourselves. They are innocent sufferers in a hell of our making. - Jeffrey Moussaieff

Animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them. - Ivan Klima

Animals in their generation are wiser than the sons of men; but their wisdom is confined to a few particulars, and lies in a very narrow compass. - Joseph Addison

Animals, whom we have made our slaves, we do not like to consider our equal. - Charles Darwin

Ask experimenters why they experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are like us." Ask experimenters why it is morally okay to experiment on animals, and the answer is: "Because the animals are not like us." Animal experimentation rests on a logical contradiction. - Charles R. Magel

Even as we try to think objectively about what animals are like, we are burdened with the need to justify our moral relations with them. We kill animals for food; we use them as experimental subjects in laboratories; we exploit them as sources of raw materials such as leather and wool; we keep them as work animals--the list goes on and on. These practices are to our advantage, and we intend to continue them. Thus, when we think about what the animals are like, we are motivated to conceive of them in ways that are compatible with treating them in these ways. If animals are conceived as intelligent, sensitive beings, these ways of treating them might seem monstrous. So humans have reason to resist thinking of them as intelligent or sensitive. - David Inglis, John Bone & Rhoda Wilkie

I have been studying the traits and dispositions of the "lower animals" (so called) and contrasting them with the traits and dispositions of man. I find the result humiliating to me. - Mark Twain

I have no doubt that it is a part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with the more civilized. - Henry David Thoreau

I think having an animal in your life makes you a better human. - Rachel Ray

If a man aspires towards a righteous life, his first act of abstinence is from injury to animals. - Leo Tolsoy

If all the beasts were gone, men would die from a great loneliness of spirit, for whatever happens to the beasts also happens to the man. All things are connected. - Chief Seattle of the Suwamish Tribe

It is also a very remarkable fact that although many animals show more skill than we do in some of their actions, yet the same animals show none at all in many others; so what they do better does not prove that they have any intelligence, for if it did then they would have more intelligence than any of us and would excel us in everything. It proves rather that they have no intelligence at all, and that it is nature which acts in them according to the disposition of their organs. In the same way a clock, consisting only of wheels and springs, can count the hours and measure time more accurately than we can with all our wisdom. - Rene Descartes

Our intuitions on animals are incoherent; the same people who condemn branding of cattle may dock the ears and tails of their dogs. The law is of no help--in the eyes of the law animals are property, either private property or community property. The Animal Welfare Act, reflecting irrational social prejudice, does not consider rats, mice, or domestic farm animals to be animals; for the purposes of the act, a dead dog used in research is an animal, a live mouse is not. And traditional moral philosophy is of no help either, since for most of its history it was virtually mute on the subject of our obligations to other creatures. More has been written on this subject, in fact, in the past ten years than in the previous three thousand. - Richard Sherlock & John D. Morrey

Society grants animals rights not because animals are like us or because animals would demand them, but because we humans feel empathy with animals. We attribute to them that they can suffer and that they deserve as living creatures not to suffer. - Armin Krishnan

Such short little lives our pets have to spend with us, and they spend most of it waiting for us to come home each day. It is amazing how much love and laughter they bring into our lives and even how much closer we become with each other because of them. - John Grogan

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men. - Alice Walker

The fact that the lower animals are excited by the same emotions as ourselves is so well established, that it will not be necessary to weary the reader by many details. Terror acts in the same manner on them as on us, causing the muscles to tremble, the heart to palpitate, the sphincters to be relaxed, and the hair to stand on end. Suspicion, the offspring of fear, is eminently characteristic of most wild animals. Courage and timidity are extremely variable qualities in the individuals of the same species, as is plainly seen in our dogs. Some dogs and horses are ill-tempered, and easily turn sulky; others are good-tempered; and these qualities are certainly inherited. Everyone knows how liable animals are to furious rage, and how plainly they show it. - Charles Darwin

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. - Mahatma Gandhi

Unlike some people who have experienced the loss of an animal, I did not believe, even for a moment, that I would never get another.... I did know full well that there were just too many animals out there in need of homes for me to take what I have always regarded as the self-indulgent road of saying the heartbreak of the loss of an animal was too much ever to want to go through with it again. To me, such an admission brought up the far more powerful admission that all the wonderful times you had with your animal were not worth the unhappiness at the end. - Cleveland Amory

Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawaken. - Anatole France

We can't change the world for animals without changing our ideas about animals. We have to move from the idea that animals are things, tools, machines, commodities, resources here for our use to the idea that as sentient beings they have their own inherent value and dignity. - Andrew Linzey

We’re animals. We’re born like every other mammal and we live our whole lives around disguised animal thoughts. - Barbara Kingsolver

When animals are no longer colonized and appropriated by us, we can reach out to our evolutionary cousins. Perhaps then the ancient hope for a deeper emotional connection across the species barrier, for closeness and participation in a realm of feelings now beyond our imagination, will be realized. - Jeffrey Moussaieef Masson & Susan McCarthy

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself. - James Anthony Froude

Love

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Romantic love is an illusion. Most of us discover this truth at the end of a love affair or else when the sweet emotions of love lead us into marriage and then turn down their flames. - Thomas Moore

Loving someone is not about keeping things from them, or protecting them or controlling what they feel, it’s about letting them be free. - A. W. Cass

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. - Vincent Van Gogh

There isn’t any formula or method. You learn to love by loving – by paying attention and doing what one thereby discovers has to be done. - Aldous Huxley 

If you have it [love], you do not need to have anything else, and if you do not have it, it does not matter much what else you have. - Sir James M. Barrie

You learn to speak by speaking, to study by studying, to run by running, to work by working; in just the same way, you learn to love by loving. - Anatole France

Never say goodbye when you still want to try – never give up when you still feel you can take it – never say you do not love that person anymore when you cannot let go. - Unknown

Let love blossom in your heart! Let love grab your heart, shake it with passion and vigour, and infuse it with all the zest and joy for life, that love has to give. - Unknown

There are things you want to hear but you would never hear it from the person whom you would like to hear it from, but do not be deaf to hear it from the person who says it with his heart. - Unknown

Anxiety - Quotes

All too frequently, anxiety crushes not only your spirit and your potential, but your ability to take care of your mind and body. - Jonathan Davidson & Henry Dreher

Although anxiety is part of life, never let it control you. - Unknown

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength. - Charles Haddon Spurgeon

Anxiety is a thin stream of fear trickling through the mind. If encouraged, it cuts a channel into which all other thoughts are drained. - Unknown

Anxiety is the rust of life, destroying its brightness and weakening its power. A childlike and abiding trust in Providence is its best preventive and remedy. - Tryon Edwards

Anxiety is the space between the ‘now’ and the ‘then’. - Richard Abell

Don’t let your difficulties fill you with anxiety, after all it is only in the darkest nights that stars shine more brightly. - Unknown

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety. - Plato

The components of anxiety, stress, fear, and anger do not exist independently of you in the world. They simply do not exist in the physical world, even though we talk about them as if they do. - Wayne Dyer

Apathy - Quotes

Apathy – not hate – is the opposite of love. It is this apathy that leads first to the death of the psyche, and in its extreme form to the death of the body. - Jane G. Goldberg

Apathy adds up, in the long run, to cowardice. - Rollo May

Apathy and evil. The two work hand in hand. They are the same, really. Evil wills it. Apathy allows it. Evil hates the innocent and the defenceless most of all. Apathy doesn't care as long as it's not personally inconvenienced.  - Jake Thoene

Apathy borders upon folly. - Publilius Syrus

Apathy goes to the root of our moral and spiritual crisis today. Apathy is the loss of ability to feel indignant at the work of evil in our lives and in the lives of others. It is the absence of outrage against injustice. It is the erosion of ability to commit oneself to important causes, to care deeply about other people, and to take risks in the struggle against every form of human bondage. - Daniel Migliore

Apathy is a risk-aversion strategy. - Joost van Loon

Apathy is never positive, and rarely harmless. To be apathetic is to be dispirited, empty of feeling. In its more extreme forms, it is a living death. - Donald Cappys

Apathy is one of the characteristic responses of any living organism when it is subjected to stimuli too intense or too complicated to cope with. The cure for apathy is comprehension. - John Dos Passos

Apathy is the capitulation of personhood, the refusal to grow, to become who we really are. It is the ultimate cop-out – the insistence that things will never change, so why should we. - Albert J. Lachance

Apathy is the glove in which evil slips its hand. - Unknown

Apathy is the great requisite for the station; for woe betide the wretch who fancies any modicum of zeal. - James Fenimore

Apathy is the outgrowth of their inability to change the world. - George David Miller & Conrad P. Pritscher

Apathy is the overrated protection of that rock you're hiding under. - Laura J. W. Ryan

Apathy is the self-defence of the powerless. - Letty Pogrebin

Apathy. A sort of living oblivion. - Horace Greeley

I didn't care about anything. And there's a freedom in apathy, a wild, dizzying liberation on which you can almost get drunk. - Lionel Shriver

In sullen apathy neither true wisdom nor true happiness can be found. - Hume

It is ... far more important to resist apathy than anarchy or despotism for apathy can give rise, almost indifferently, to either one. - Alexis de Tocqueville

It was not apathy. It was an intelligent disinterest in those things that could have no bearing on one's existence. - Tanith Lee

Mental apathy is stoicism, a calmness of mind incapable of being ruffled by pleasure, pain, or passion. - N. Webster

Political apathy is the luxury of an affluent society where the majority does not feel threatened and people's basic needs are met. Under such circumstances, apathy is understandable, predictable, and perhaps even rational. - Thomas Magstadt

Presumably, apathy is the greatest danger to truly representative political systems; without the vote, with blind choice, or with one choice, the representative character of democracy is lost. - Herbert I. London

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings. - Helen Keller

Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium. - Cyril Connolly

The apathy of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its pedestal, and to hasten the resurrection of the dead. - William Lloyd Garrison

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity. - George Bernard Shaw

Thoughtlessness or apathy is the only obstacle to success. - Charles Turner Thackrah

What is called "apathy" is, I believe, a feeling of helplessness on the part of the ordinary citizen, a feeling of impotence in the face of enormous power. It's not that people are apathetic; they do care about what is going on, but don't know what to do about it, so they do nothing, and appear to be indifferent. - Howard Zinn

Appearance - Quotes

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens. - Dean Koontz

Appearance is a type of power. - Patrick Rothfuss 

Appearance matters a great deal because you can often tell a lot about people by looking at how they present themselves. - Lemony Snicket 

Appearance rules the world. - Johann Friedrich Von Schiller

Appearances often are deceiving. - Aesop

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task. - Epictetus

Do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat. - Scottish Proverb

In all aspects of life, we take on a part and an appearance to seem to be what we wish to be – and thus the world is merely composed of actors. - Francois la Rochefoucauld

Judge nothing by the appearance. The more beautiful the serpent, the more fatal its sting. - William Scott Downey

Our reason is always disappointed by the inconstancy of appearances. - Blaise Pascal

The appearances of things are deceptive. There is no trusting appearances. - Richard B. Sheridan

The impossible could not have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances. - Agatha Christie

To apply the concept of illusion to all appearances, on the basis that some appearances are illusions, is an unjustified generalization. - Avi Sion

To judge the appearances we receive of things, we should need a judicatory instrument; to verify this instrument, we should need a demonstration; to rectify this demonstration, we should need an instrument: so here we are arguing in a circle. Seeing the senses cannot decide our dispute, being themselves full of uncertainty, we must have recourse to Reason; there is no reason but must be built upon another reason, so here we are retreating backwards to all eternity. - Michel de Montaigne

When we are able to look beyond appearances and to behold that which we truly are, we recognize that our essence is interwoven with the divine and that we exist as one of its expressions. - Alexandra Katehakis

Appreciation - Quotes

A person who feels appreciated will always do more than what is expected. - Unknown

Always appreciate what you have. There is always someone out there who wishes that he had what you have. - Unknown

Always express appreciation first, before discussing a problem or bringing up a complaint. - Unknown

Appreciate what you have, before it turns into what you had. - Unknown

Appreciate what you have while you still have it because one day you won’t. - Robert Tew

Appreciation can change a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary. - Margaret Cousins

Appreciation is the memory of the heart. - Bill Beattie 

Appreciation is a wonderful thing. It makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well. - Voltaire

Appreciation is an expensive gift which should be given freely. - Unknown

Appreciation, not possession, makes a thing ours. - Marty Rubin

Be verbal in acknowledging your appreciation. - Catherine Pulsifer

If you don’t appreciate it, you don’t deserve it. - Terry Josephson

Everyone wants to be appreciated, so if you appreciate someone, don’t keep it a secret. - Mary Kay Ash

Feeling appreciated is one of the most important needs that people have. When you share with someone your appreciation and gratitude, they will not forget you. Appreciation will return to you many times. - Steve Brunkhorst

Show appreciation to those who deserve it or need it while you have the time and the chance. They do not live forever and neither do you! - Unknown

Sometimes we don’t appreciate what we already have because we’re too focused on what we want. - Unknown

Truly appreciate those around you, and you’ll soon find many others around you. Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it. - Ralph Marston

The deepest principle in human nature is the craving to be appreciated. -William James

We are so often caught up in our destination that we forget to appreciate the journey, especially the goodness of the people we meet on the way. Appreciation is a wonderful feeling. Don’t overlook it. - Unknown

We can only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise if we have waited in the darkness. - Unknown

Quote Worthy

There are people who make things happen, and there are those who watch things happen. And there are those who wonder what happened. - Hannah Whitall Smith 

Do not save your loving speeches for your friends till they are dead; Do not write them on their tombstones; Speak them rather now instead. - Anna Cummins 

For when two beings who are not friends are near each other there is no meeting, and when friends are far apart there is no separation. - Simone Weil

Invincibility lies in the defense; the possibility of victory in the attack. One defends when his strength is inadequate; he attacks when it is abundant. - Sun Tzu

Men who have excessive faith in their theories or ideas are not only ill-prepared for making discoveries; they also make poor observations. - Claude Bernard

A thought which does not result in an action is nothing much, and an action which does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all. - Georges Bernanos

Most of the things we decide are not what we know to be the best. We say yes, merely because we are driven into a corner and must say something. - Frank Crane

Each handicap is like a hurdle in a steeplechase, and when you ride up to it, if you throw your heart over, the horse will go along, too. - Lawrence Bixby

I never knew an early-rising, hard-working, prudent man, careful of his earnings, and strictly honest who complained of bad luck. - Henry Ward Beecher

The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one. - Wilhelm Stekel

Jog or Brisk Walk

It really does not matter, health-wise, whether you pick jogging or brisk walking as your exercise of choice.

It is how often and for how long you do the exercise that count in the long run, said exercise experts here.

True, pounding the pavement and treadmill burn off more calories than walking with quick steps and give faster results for those who want to look good.

But if you are looking at cutting down the risk of diseases such as colon and breast cancer, heart problems, diabetes or depression and anxiety, either would do equally well.

Ms Cheng Bijun, a senior physiotherapist from the Sports Medicine Centre at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, said: “Whether a person jogs or does brisk walking is not important. The important thing is his exercise volume - how frequently he exercises and at what intensity and duration.”

To feel fitter and healthier, a person needs to jog or brisk walk at low to moderate intensity for about 20 to 30 minutes three to five times a week, she says.

The greater his exercise volume, the more the health benefits, hence, a person who exercises 30 minutes five times a week will gain more health benefits compared to one who exercises 30 minutes three times a week.

At low to moderate intensity, a person’s breathing or heart rate goes up to about 60 to 80 percent of his maximum heart rate, but he can still carry on a conversation in short phrases with lots of breathing pauses in between, said Ms Cheng.

The maximum heart rate of a healthy adult is estimated to be 220 minutes minus his age.

Studies have shown that exercising in bouts is as effective as exercising continuously at the same intensity, said Ms Cheng.

This means that someone who exercises at low intensity for 15 minutes four times a day will achieve the same health benefits as someone who exercises at the same intensity for 60 minutes once a day.

Although jogging and brisk walking share similar health benefits, jogging burns more calories as more energy is needed to lift the body off the ground.

Dr Darren Leong, the resident sports medicine physician at Changi General Hospital, said: “In brisk walking, one foot is always in contact with the ground but in jogging, there are brief moments when both feet are off the ground.”

Hence, jogging may be more helpful for those who want to lose weight as they need to lose more calories than they eat.

But this is only if they do not suffer from any injuries or degeneration of the lower limb or back joints, said Ms Cheng.

She added: “As many overweight people do suffer from some degree of knee or ankle pain, brisk walking may be better than jogging for them due to the lower impact on their knees and ankles.”

During a jog, the impact to the knee is about four times that of the person’s body weight.

In contrast, when walking on level ground, the impact to the knee is only about 2.6 times that of the body weight.

Brisk walking may also be better for people who have not exercised in a long time.

Ms Cheng said: “It allows the body to slowly adapt to the demands of exercise and reduce the risk of injury.”

Once a person’s body adapts to the exercise and his fitness improves, he cant hen gradually increase the intensity of the exercise, she said. 

But whether a person jogs or brisk walks, it is important that he enjoys what he does.

Dr Leong said: “People are more likely to continue what they do if they enjoy them.”

- Lea Wee 

Food For Thought

The most agreeable of all companions is a simple, frank person, without any high pretensions to an oppressive greatness – one who loves life and understands the use of it; obliging at all hours; above all, of a golden temper and steadfast as an anchor. For such a one we gladly exchange the greatest genius, the most brilliant wit, the profoundest thinker. - Unknown

Sometimes when you are feeling jaded or blasé, you can revive your sense of wonder by merely saying to yourself; “Suppose this were the only time. Suppose this sunset, this moonrise, this symphony, this buttered toast, this sleeping child, this flag against the sky….” Suppose you would never experience these things again! - Unknown

Once you establish your willingness to move in new direction the next step is to have a sense of purpose and destination based on your motivation and your new decisions. Only action can take you on the journey toward the life you aspire to. Do something appropriate and constructive, and do it every day. - Unknown