The concept of good life, and the principles that should guide a person, has always been a major question philosophers, spiritual leaders as well as individuals have tried to answer. For our and your inspiration, after posting some quotes by Zen Master Wu Bong on this subject, we decided to make a little, playful exercise and dive into the see of quotes you find online to fish some citations that highlight possible different directions.

Following is an excerpt:

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

Somebody should tell us, right at the start of our lives, that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day. Do it! I say. Whatever you want to do, do it now! There are only so many tomorrows.

Pope Paul VI 

There are four questions of value in life, Don Octavio. What is sacred? Of what is the spirit made? What is worth living for and what is worth dying for? The answer to each is the same. Only love.

Lord Byron

It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.

Guy de Maupassant

As rational beings, we should try to pursue pleasure as rationally and intelligently as possible.

Epicurus

Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end because once you get there, you can move mountains.

Steve Jobs

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

Lao Tzu

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.

Kahlil Gibran

We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.

Mother Teresa

Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson  

Eating, loving, singing and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool.

Gioacchino Rossini

Life must be lived as play.

Plato

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.

Albert Camus  

Your life is what your thoughts make it.

Marcus Aurelius  

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

Buddha

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.

Albert Einstein 

Our prime purpose in this life is to help others. And if you can’t help them, at least don’t hurt them.

Dalai Lama 

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

Mahatma Gandhi  

Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential.

Barack Obama

I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Michael Jordan  

There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.

Nelson Mandela  

Whatever your life’s work is, do it well. A man should do his job so well that the living, the dead, and the unborn could do it no better.

Martin Luther King Jr.

Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake up and live!

Bob Marley  

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

Kahlil Gibran  

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

Mark Twain  

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

Walt Disney

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

Aristotle

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

Friedrich Nietzsche

True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.

Socrates  

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

Confucius

Are you bored with life? Then throw yourself into some work you believe in with all your heart, live for it, die for it, and you will find happiness that you had thought could never be yours.

Dale Carnegie  

Life is like stepping onto a boat which is about to sail out to sea and sink.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi 

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard  

Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted.

Winston Churchill  

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life

Charles Darwin  

Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.

Buddha  

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein  

Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation – look – please try to understand before one of us dies.

John Cleese  

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius  

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Bertrand Russell  

Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.

Victor Hugo  

Conscience is the perfect interpreter of life.

Karl Barth  

The meaning I picked, the one that changed my life: Overcome fear, behold wonder.

Richard Bach  

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I have not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Life’s like a play; it’s not the length but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Seneca

Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.

Irving Berlin  

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Henry Miller  

Consideration for others is the basic of a good life, a good society.

Confucius

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

Seneca

Life’s most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?

Martin Luther King

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

Robert Frost