“A parent who acknowledges the fragility of life understands that every moment with their child is a gift not to be wasted. A wise parent looks at the world, harsh as it is, and says, ‘I see what you’re capable of, what you might do to my family tomorrow, but today, you’ve spared us. I will not take that for granted.’ That is how we must live—not just with our children, but with our wealth, our health, the peace in our country, the clear skies above.”
Ryan Holiday
“When you live with the understanding that each moment might be your last, everything changes. You begin loving the people in your life harder. You begin sacrificing your body and soul to make good work. You begin living with an insatiable appetite to devour the moment you’re living in now. It will feel foreign but it will ignite your being. Death will no longer scare you as you come to the profound realization that the only death you truly face is not living fully now. So, please. I beg you. Devour this moment whole, my friend.”
Cole Schafer (January Black), One Minute, Please? (Page 122)
“Our biggest desire is to live forever. But when we are freed from this body, we will not wish to come back. Is there such a child who, once born, would like to return to the womb of his mother? Is there a man who, freed from prison, would like to return to it? In the same way, a person would not be afraid about the future liberation from his body, if he is not connected too closely with this material life.”
Tables Of The Babids, via A Calendar of Wisdom (Page 212)
“Most of us are afraid of dying. But sometimes this fear begs the question: To protect what exactly? For a lot of people the answer is: hours of television, gossiping, gorging, wasting potential, reporting to a boring job, and on and on and on. Except, in the strictest sense, is this actually a life? Is this worth gripping so tightly and being afraid of losing? It doesn’t sound like it.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 379)
“If death is truly the end, then what is there exactly to fear? For everything from your fears to your pain receptors to your worries and your remaining wishes, they will perish with you. As frightening as death might seem, remember: it contains within it the end of fear.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 376)
“We have an irrational fear of acknowledging our own mortality. We avoid thinking about it because we think it will be depressing. In fact, reflecting on mortality often has the opposite effect—invigorating us more than saddening us. Why? Because it gives us clarity.”
Ryan Holiday, The Daily Stoic (Page 361)
“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.”
Seneca, Moral Letters, via The Daily Stoic (Page 349)
“We are all terminal patients on this earth—the mystery is not ‘if’ but ‘when’ death appears in the plotline.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 119)
Between Two Kingdoms [Book]
![Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad [Book]](https://movemequotes.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kingdoms.jpeg)
Book Overview: A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.
Post(s) Inspired by this Book:
“Every day matters. The awareness of our mortality can help us pursue a goal. We all have a limited amount of time on earth. Those who live in active awareness of this reality are more likely to identify goals and make progress toward them. Or to put it another way: Everyone dies, but not everyone truly lives.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 268)
“All of us will someday die. Yet not all of us live in a state of active awareness of this reality. In the words of a great Bob Dylan song, ‘He not busy being born is busy dying,’ and perhaps some of us are busier than others.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 58)
“Every day matters. The emotional awareness of mortality can help us pursue a goal.”
Chris Guillebeau, The Happiness of Pursuit (Page 54)
“Were you to live three thousand years, or even a countless multiple of that, keep in mind that no one ever loses a life other than the one they are living, and no one ever lives a life other than the one they are losing. The longest and the shortest life, then, amount to the same, for the present moment lasts the same for all and is all anyone possesses. No one can lose either the past or the future, for how can someone be deprived of what’s not theirs?”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, via The Daily Stoic (Page 85)
