165 Quotes About Life-advice

Paul's decision to look death in the eye was a testament not just to who he was in the final hours of his life but who he had always been.

Paul faced each stage of his illness with grace - not with bravado or a misguided faith that he would 'overcome' or 'beat' cancer but with an authenticity that allowed him to grieve the loss of the future he had planned and forge a new one... Paul was fully alive; despite physical collapse, he remained vigorous, open, full of hope not for an unlikely cure but for days that were full of purpose and meaning.

Paul's decision not to avert his eyes from death epitomizes a fortitude we don't celebrate enough in our death-avoidant culture. His strength was defined by ambition and effort, but also by softness, the opposite of bitterness. He spent much of his life wrestling with the question of how to live a meaningful life, and his book explores that essential territory.

...your family will fall apart, but they'll pull it back together because of the example of bravery you set.

When you come to one of the many moments in life where you must give an account of yourself, provide a ledger of what you have seen, and done, and meant to the world, do not, I pray, discount that you filled a dying man's days with a sated joy, a joy unknown to me in all my prior years, a joy that does not hunger for more and more but rests, satisfied. In this time, right now, that is an enormous thing.

I knew not to...ask "Why me?" (Answer: Why not me?)

The pain of failure had led me to understand that technical excellence was a moral requirement. Good intentions were not enough, not when so much depended on my skills, when the difference between tragedy and triumph was defined by one or two millimeters.

Literature...provide[s] the richest material for moral reflection.

Oh, I buried my head in my handsI buried my heart there in the sandI was cocked, blocked, cured and charmedI was ferociously put upon until it was clearI should not keep on, I'll just creep on creepin' onYes I will, I'll not keep on, I'll just creep on creepin' on