'I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot ... The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.'

'All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.'

- "The Lord of the Rings" author JRR Tolkien (1892-1973)

'I honestly think it is better to be a failure at something you love than to be a success at something you hate.'

-Comedian George Burns (1896-1996)

'And I knew that it was better to live out one's absurdity than to die for that of others.'

-Ralph Ellison, from "Invisible Man" (1913-1994)

'Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead.'

Meyer Wolfsheim in F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby"

'The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.'

- Boxing champion Muhammad Ali (1942-2016)

Friedrich Nietzsche theorized that we will live our lives over and over again: the myth of eternal recurrence

Rather than a theory of physics, the idea is designed as a moral argument. While Nietzsche famously eschewed the Christian afterlife, he wanted to avoid the nihilism that results from no longer having such an ultimate horizon. In a mystical moment, the philosopher came to believe that the fleeting moments of our lives would be repeated, presenting a test: would you want to relive this moment? If not, he would argue, you're not living well.

'You don't get to choose how you're going to die or when. You can only decide how you're going to live. Now.'

- Musician and activist Joan Baez (1941-present)

'The man who can drive himself further once the effort gets painful is the man who will win.'

- Roger Bannister (1929-2018)

A quote by scientist Nikola Tesla

"The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result ... His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way."

A quote by Herman Melville

"Whoever is not in the possession of leisure can hardly be said to possess independence."

'Art is the human disposition of sensible or intelligible matter for an aesthetic end.'

- Author James Joyce (1882 -1941)

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

'Don’t try to be young. Just open your mind. Stay interested in stuff. There are so many things I won’t live long enough to find out about, but I’m still curious about them.'

- Actress Betty White (1922-2021)

Beats emphasized the importance of 'spontaneous prose'

Beat writer Jack Kerouac believed literature should aim to be more like jazz, using improvisation to burrow down to the root of the subconscious. In this video from the University of Pennsylvania’s Modern and Contemporary Poetry course, Professor Al Filreis directs a conversation of Kerouac’s manifesto, “Essential of Spontaneous Prose.”

'Men and nature must work hand in hand. The throwing out of balance of the resources of nature throws out of balance also the lives of men.'

- President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)

'I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning ... Every day I find something creative to do with my life.'

- Miles Davis (1926-1991)

'Unfortunately, many people do not consider fun an important item on their daily agenda. For me, that was always a high priority in whatever I was doing.'

-Chuck Yeager, the first pilot to break the sound barrier (1923-2020)

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote ‘The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ in three days, then burned it

Stevenson woke from a dream and instantly got to writing the “fine bogey tale” he’d witnessed in his sleep. He finished a draft three days later and read it to his wife, who suggested it needed revising. Stevenson eventually agreed and threw the manuscript into the fireplace. He got back to work and emerged three more days later with another draft.

'The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire.'

- Astronaut Buzz Aldrin (1930-present)

'Fahrenheit 451' is a perennially banned dystopian story

This late-in-life interview with Ray Bradbury, author of “Fahrenheit 451,” details the book’s origins, providing background for one of the most popular titles in dystopian literature. As a book lover, Bradbury was horrified by the book burnings of Nazi Germany and imagined a version of the United States where firemen were censors, protecting their fellow citizens from literature’s harmful ideas. “We are a democracy of readers,” Bradbury explains. “And we should keep it that way.”

Fifteen answers to 'what is the meaning of life?'

Writer James Bailey repeated philosopher Will Durant's 1932 project soliciting opinions on the meaning of life from a variety of luminaries. In this article, read the fascinating responses people gave to the all-important question, from renowned author Hilary Mantel to a seasoned palliative care supporter who had witnessed dozens of deaths.

Walt Whitman's lost novel

In 2016, a long-forgotten piece of Walt Whitman's earliest work was uncovered. First published anonymously in 1852, "Life and Adventures of Jack Engle" is a serialized story that predates "Leaves of Grass." It offers a rare look at Whitman's early writing, before he became one of the most influential poets in US history.

Writer DH Lawrence argued that the novel is the height of literature

DH Lawrence was a 20th-century writer, known for his novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover.” In his essay “Why the Novel Matters,” written in 1925, Lawrence argues that the novel, more than any other literary form, allows readers to experience the whole of human experience, writing that “only in the novel are all things given full play.”

Learn how your body is, scientifically, like a firework with its own slow, controlled burn.

Despite his sometimes caustic satire, Dickens was ultimately an optimist

Michael Slater, a professor of Victorian literature at Birkbeck College, notes that Dickens' anger at Parliament and social injustice never got in the way of his optimism. "There is a constant allegiance to the lives of ordinary people and their pleasures," he said in a 2001 interview with "In Our Time."

David Foster Wallace's iconic commencement speech

David Foster Wallace’s remarkable 2005 commencement speech, This is Water, is a timeless trove of wisdom for living a meaningful life. Here is a full transcript along with audio.

Larry Harvey wanted an authentic, creative community when he founded Burning Man

Larry Harvey, the co-founder of Burning Man, wanted to create a bohemian retreat from everyday society by offering a break from commercialization while providing time to focus on autonomy, shared experience, and "transcendence."

Existentialist writer Jean-Paul Sartre coined the famous phrase 'Hell is—other people' in his play 'No Exit'

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

SpongeBob exemplifies Aristotle's philosophy for living well because he understands that happiness doesn't come from external factors like money, recognition, or power.

In 1939, baseball star Lou Gehrig delivered his inspirational 'Luckiest Man' speech after retiring due to the health condition that now bears his name.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

Explore a list of the 100 best novels of all time, compiled by some of the world's best living writers, including Salman Rushdie, Stephen King, and Jennifer Egan.

See the most iconic photos from four decades of LIFE magazine

Studies suggest when you sleep is as important as how much you get, and syncing with your circadian rhythms may lead to less fatigue and improved long-term health outcomes

American short story writer Flannery O'Connor raised 40 peacocks, which became potent symbols for her fiction's elegant violence

The first robot in literature may have been a 'mechanical man' in 1907's 'Ozma of Oz,' a book in L Frank Baum's 'Wizard of Oz' series.

Salvador Dalí believed he was his own dead brother, who had died nine months before he was born

Apeirophobia is an overwhelming fear of living forever, perhaps stemming from the brain's inability to conceptualize an infinite life.

A Yale student wrote a profound essay about the consulting industry's influence on elite college students that was published in a book of her writing after she died in a post-graduation car accident.

Warren Buffett's former professor Benjamin Graham is known as the 'father of value investing,' a strategy in which investors seek to buy stocks trading below their intrinsic worth.

In 2018, 26-year-old missionary John Allen Chau was killed by tribesmen after attempting to reach and evangelize on India's isolated North Sentinel Island

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Volcanoes 'die' when their supply of magma runs out, if they are shifted away from their underlying magma reservoir, or if they get clogged by collapsing or their magma cooling back into rock.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

How Amazon operates a 'flywheel' business model, a self-reinforcing cycle that drives continuous growth

The word 'jazz' evolved from 'jasm,' 19th-century American slang for 'energy'

This site reaches millions of visitors who are tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. Pretend to be an AI chatbot and ask questions, provide answers, and draw for people in real time.

Graffiti dates back to at least ancient Pompeii, where citizens scrawled messages to one another on public walls

The US Constitution is widely regarded as the longest-standing written national constitution still in force—see how it has influenced rights worldwide.