Will To Live Quotes

“work. play. passion.”
― Jim Clark, Making Friends with Candy

“There was a reason these boys were still alive, though. Something made them stronger than the other kids, the ones who had died in the early days, who had simply lain down and given up, unable to cope with the terrible things that were happening in the world. These boys were survivors. The will to live was stronger than any other feelings.”
― Charlie Higson, The Enemy

“To combat death you don't need much of a life, just one that isn't yet finished.”
― Herta Müller, The Hunger Angel

“I had seen these transformations, people who had lost their will to live, coming back from their zombie states and radiating a new life force from their eyes.”
― Anthony Kiedis, Scar Tissue

“People gave us a purpose. Something to do all day, every day. At the end, I suppose, you spend a lot of time thinking about that. It's harder to get by when getting by is all there is.”
― C. Robert Cargill, Sea of Rust

“It will generally be found that, as soon as the terrors of life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life. But the terrors of death offer considerable resistance; they stand like a sentinel at the gate leading out of this world. Perhaps there is no man alive who would not have already put an end to his life, if this end had been of a purely negative character, a sudden stoppage of existence. There is something positive about it; it is the destruction of the body; and a man shrinks from that, because his body is the manifestation of the will to live.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer

“Life is will-to-live, will is a lack, lack is pain, all life is pain.”
― Carlo Michelstaedter, La melodia del giovane divino: Pensieri, racconti, critiche

“[...] what's the use of lying down to die as long as we can stand up and walk.”
― Dean King, Skeletons on the Zahara: A True Story of Survival

“I just... you are the most beautiful and wonderful and strangest person I have ever met. You are the most amazing person in the world. And you just have to live long enough to make the rest of the world understand that, okay? You have to stay alive.”
― Kevin Wilson, Now Is Not the Time to Panic: A Novel

“Reproduction is the ultimate purpose of every organism, and its strongest instinct; for only so can the will conquer death.

And to ensure this conquest of death, the will to reproduce is placed almost entirely beyond control of knowledge or reflection: even a philosopher, occasionally, has children.”
― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“And suddenly I was seized with a desire, a craving, something more furious and more imperious than I had ever felt before—to live! I want to live! I will live. I clenched my teeth, my hands, concentrated my whole being in this wild, grief-stricken endeavour towards existence.”
― André Gide, The Immoralist

“Suicide is the last attempt of re-emergence of the will of life. - On Suicide”
― Lamine Pearlheart

“Morality as it has hitherto been understood- and formulated by Schopenhauer, lastly, as 'denial of the will to life' is the decadence instinct itself making an imperative out of itself: it says 'perish!' - it is the judgement of the condemned...”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

“I think a lot about the word tenacity. What it takes to survive in a world that is sometimes beautiful and sometimes hostile. I’m always amazed at the body’s willingness to continue, to keep going. The heart that keeps pumping, the lungs that keep breathing, the way the will to live can outsmart those other dark voices inside.”
― Ada Limon

“As discussed earlier, humans who lack the reflective self-awareness of normal adults, such as those with particular forms of amnesia or very young children or those with certain mental disabilities, still are self-aware and still have an interest in continuing to live. There may, of course, be a difference between the self-awareness of normal adult humans and that of other animals. But even if that is the case, it does not mean that the latter have no interest in continuing to live, and it does not justify treating the latter as commodities.”
― Gary L. Francione

“That boy is a wonder. He's my autumn rain, my last picture of the sun before it sets. Daytime is not possible without Trevor. Not even sure the sun come out without Trevor.”
― Leila Mottley, Nightcrawling

“You’re still in love with her. She makes you want to live life. Personally, and this is just me, man, if I ever met a woman who saved me that way, I’d devote some temples to her or something. That’s how the Taj Mahal got started, I’m sure.”
― Karina Halle, And With Madness Comes the Light

“Our will to live is often much greater than the difficulties of life!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“. . . for whatever the will and energy of a man may be, human strength has a limit, and this limit had been reached.”
― Alfred Dreyfus, Five Years of My Life: The Diary of Captain Alfred Dreyfus (Select Bibliographies Reprint)

“Why me? Why would you want me?” she asked in bewildered frustration.

“You–you make everything else so unimportant… I’ve never had much direction in my life, nothing I wanted to devote myself to until you held my hand and sat with me when I prayed I would die. Just wanting to hear your voice made me fight to get through the hell of each day. I loved you before I even saw your face.”
― Dana Ransom, Rebel Vixen

“This was something our makers hadn’t calculated when they put fear into our programs. The horror had unleashed something that lurked in amongst those precise, complex equations. Something they call the will to live.”
― Ahmed Salah Al-Mahdi

“On the other hand, Enid in her twenties had been almost recessive, at least in the character she revealed to others. Keese could well remember how chagrining it had been for him to hear her evade a hostess' inquiry as to what she would like to drink. It had taken him years to understand that this was not indecisiveness but rather a purposeful means to establish her existence as one that could not be disposed of by the mere provision of refreshment.”
― Thomas Berger, Neighbors