Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one's life for his friends.

Life is a journey, but don't worry, you'll find a parking spot at the end.

Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.

Life can be magnificent and overwhelming — That is its whole tragedy. Without beauty, love, or danger it would almost be easy to live.

Life is far too important to be taken seriously.

God knows; I won't be an Oxford don anyhow. I'll be a poet, a writer, a dramatist. Somehow or other I'll be famous, and if not famous, I'll be notorious. Or perhaps I'll lead the life of pleasure for a time and then—who knows?—rest and do nothing. What does Plato say is the highest end that man can attain here below? To sit down and contemplate the good. Perhaps that will be the end of me too. Reply to his friend and contemporary David Hunter-Blair who asked him what his real ambition was, in about 1878.

Whenever you go out-of-doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of the head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in the sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and do not waste a minute thinking about your enemies. Try to fix firmly in your mind what you would like to do; and then, without veering off direction, you will move straight to the goal. Keep your mind on the great and splendid things you would like to do, and then, as the days go gliding away, you will find yourself unconsciously seizing upon the opportunities that are required for the fulfillment of your desire. Advice from Elbert Hubbard

Don't let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith, and in purity.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome.

Life isn't about finding yourself, it's about creating yourself.

Obsession with self... is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life.

It's not whether you win or lose, it's how good you looked while doing it.

You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.

For believe me! — the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

I am dying as I have lived: beyond my means. Wilde is supposed to have said this on his deathbed, while drinking a glass of champagne.

I hope you're not leading a double life, pretending to be wicked while being really good all the time. That would be hypocrisy.

The people who love only once in their lives are really the shallow people. What they call their loyalty, and their fidelity, I call either the lethargy of custom or their lack of imagination. Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellect - simply a confession of failure.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

As we advance in life we learn the limits of our abilities.

I adopted the theory of Reincarnation when I was twenty six. Religion offered nothing to the point. Even work could not give me complete satisfaction. Work is futile if we cannot utilise the experience we collect in one life in the next. When I discovered Reincarnation it was as if I had found a universal plan I realised that there was a chance to work out my ideas. Time was no longer limited. I was no longer a slave to the hands of the clock. Genius is experience. Some seem to think that it is a gift or talent, but it is the fruit of long experience in many lives. Some are older souls than others, and so they know more. The discovery of Reincarnation put my mind at ease. If you preserve a record of this conversation, write it so that it puts men’s minds at ease. I would like to communicate to others the calmness that the long view of life gives to us.

Some people say that life is a cesspool of darkness and despair. Well, we in Van Halen are sailing through it on a yacht.