Death borders upon our birth, and our cradle stands in the grave.
–Joseph Hall

But if you do not find an intelligent companion, a wise and well-behaved person going the same way as yourself, then go on your way alone, like a king abandoning a conquered kingdom, or like a great elephant in the deep forest. 
–Buddha

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
–Helen Keller

There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

— Carl Jung

"Art is never finished, only abandoned."
— Leonardo da Vinci

If I would make a wish, it would not be for power or riches but for the eye of possibility, the eye that forever burns with passion to see opportunities in mere nothingness.
—Søren Kierkegaard

For art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity to exist, a certain physiological precondition is indispensable: intoxication.
–Friedrich Nietzsche

"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. ... Stay hungry. Stay foolish."
–Steve Jobs

Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
— Buddha

Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.
–J. Robert Oppenheimer

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.
–Franz Kafka

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium. 
—Henri Matisse

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive.  And then go and do that.  Because what the world needs is people who are alive.

— Howard Thurman