I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life.
Theodore Roosevelt

I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Ayn Rand

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.
Ayn Rand

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death.
Ayn Rand

Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper's bell of an approaching looter.
Ayn Rand

Art is the proper task of life.
Friedrich Nietzsche

We love life, not because we are used to living but because we are used to loving.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Without music, life would be a mistake.
Friedrich Nietzsche

The lie is a condition of life.
Friedrich Nietzsche

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms - in themselves such judgments are stupidities.
Friedrich Nietzsche

There are people who want to make men's lives more difficult for no other reason than the chance it provides them afterwards to offer their prescription for alleviating life; their Christianity, for instance.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?
Friedrich Nietzsche

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Confucius

If we don't know life, how can we know death?
Confucius

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius

Death and life have their determined appointments; riches and honors depend upon heaven.
Confucius

The expectations of life depend upon diligence; the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.
Confucius