Let's go to the Far East to find Buddha and his famous accomplices: He said "Life is pain".for Lao Tzu "Hardness and rigidity are the companions of death, suppleness and flexibility are the companions of life." Rumi, on the other hand, suggests: "Live life as if everything were rigged in your favor". As for Confucius, he tells us: "Life is what I want, meaning is what I gain".

And now to Ancient Greece: Sophocles "Not to be born is best". Pliny the Wise "Life's joys are not equal to its misfortunes". Seneca "Life is a small thing, but contempt for life is an immense thing". Seneca also said "TOTA VITA NIHIL ALIUD QUAM AD MORTEM ITER EST", The time of life is nothing but a journey towards death. Plato in studying the life and legacy of Alexander the Great. "The unexpressed life is not worth living
Rome, too, has its own words of wisdom, and here's one from Marcus Aurelius: "You must live your life as if you were ready to say goodbye at any moment, as if the time you are granted were some pleasant surprise".

In the aftermath of the Middle Ages, Voltaire's Candide announced: "I wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but I still loved life".
The industrial revolution has given us many minds. Oscar Wilde warned: "Life is too important to be taken seriously", while Byron said: "Life between two worlds, hovers like a star between night and day". On the other hand, according to Bernard Shaw, "Life is not about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. The same Shaw adds: "A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable, but also more useful, than a life spent in doing nothing".

I've always been impressed by one of Charles Darwin's wonderful words: "A man who dares to waste an hour of time has not discovered the value of life. Ruth Benedict seems to have answered all the questions, saying: "The problem with life is not that there are no answers, it's that there are so many answers.

Everyone complains that life is short, and Germaine Stael is here to remind us that "Man's life, so short in itself, lasts even longer than the judgments and affections of his contemporaries". As for finding some conclusions to our lives, Thomas Carlyle announces that: "We have come to some strange conclusions in the world. We say that we live in society, but at the same time, we lead isolated lives.

Having found this little reminder: "In the midst of life, there is always death", Tolstoy came to mind after telling us: "Remember, you don't live in this world, you're just passing through. Emerson, on the other hand, said it his way: "Life is nothing but what a man thinks all day long.

In modern times, we're spoilt for choice with several quotes, all of which have their merits. We learn from Vaclav Havel that: "The tragic thing about modern man is not that he doesn't know the meaning of life, it's that it bothers him less and less." J.R. Van Der Plaesten gives us precise advice: Life is not just about consuming, chaining pleasures and laughing at everything; it's also about the spirit's aspiration to rise. I think this author learned this from Nicolas Gogol: "Life is given to us not only for pleasure".

Albert Camus, who for me was a prophet in his own time, left us with these words: "You will never be happy if you keep looking for what happiness consists in. You'll never live if you keep looking for the meaning of life." I have to admit that Camus has just touched on something all too familiar to me, as it's my life he's talking about. Perhaps I should listen to Romain Gary, who in "The Promise of Dawn" tells us that "Life is young. As it ages, it becomes duration, it becomes time, it becomes farewell. It has taken everything from us and has nothing left to give you. "For Jean Paul Sartre, "Life is not a valley of tears".

I was recently reading Alain Finkelkraut's "L'identité malheureuse" (Unhappy Identity), which retains Pascal's thoughts, and I discovered that: "Human life is not all of a piece. Nor is it torn between the two parts of Heaven and Earth, as classical metaphysics maintains. It is deposited on three registers: the order of the flesh, the order of the spirit, the order of charity" .

"Ordinary life is lived on a commercial and selfish basis, whereas in war, you realize an ideal that you very rarely realize in ordinary life", said Lieutenant Henry Jones of the British Army before his death in a letter to his brother on the Western Front of the First World War (reported by Yuval HARARI in HOMO DEUS).

"In the beginning, we want life to be romantic, later, to be bearable, and finally, to be understandable. "Poet Louise Bogan, found in The Week, Nov 15/2919. "A life is only as important as its impact on other lives". This is the epitaph on Jackie Robinson's tombstone. "My cousin, Mike HARRAR, surprised me when he told me that for him, "Life is simple when you have no choice". However, my friends Linda and Jeff Church showed me their latest book "Thirst for change" where I found that "In life, you have to know how to raise your hand to move forward".

Winston Churchill teaches us that: "We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. Whereas for Sholom Aleichem "Life is a dream for the wise, a play for the foolish, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor". John Irving had his way to say it : »If you are lucky enough to find a way of life you love, you have to find the courage to live it.

"Life is a force that runs through us. Wherever we turn our attention, our life force flows. Every moment is an opportunity to turn our attention to ideas that inspire us". This is from The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, by Deepak Chopra. Einstein, for his part, believes that "Life is all vibrations". But for Helen Keller, "Life is a daring adventure or nothing". What are we to think of Hobbes, who tells us that "Man's life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short"?
There's so much to say about life that everyone has paid tribute to it. For Victor Frankl, "Life can be driven by purpose as surely as it can be driven by impulse". Philosopher William James is more practical. "The best use of life is to devote it to something that will outlive it". Indeed, I very much agree with him, as well as with Albert Einstein, who reminds us to be careful, for "The man who regards life as meaningless is not only unhappy, but almost disqualified for life.

This same Einstein, together with Schopenhauer, both used a very common article to tell us about life. For the former, "Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you have to keep moving. For the second, "A man's life, in all its events great and small, is as necessarily predetermined as the movements of a clock. I contend that Martin Luther King had the magic word for a definition out of the ordinary. He said: "Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter. Who can say it better?

As someone who usually stops writing after ten paragraphs, I've just realized that I've written about twenty. Should I stop and let the reader breathe, or continue? You see, there's still so much to say. So I'm going to break my self-imposed rule and keep going, because who knows if any more wise words will come along.
So here we are.

Paolo Coelho, in his book "Adultery", reminds us that we don't choose our life, it chooses us, and that it has brought us joys and sorrows beyond our comprehension. So he suggests we accept it and move on.

A few years ago, I discovered Jean D'Ormesson and read several of his books. In "Histoire du Juif errant", he talks a lot about life and death, and I found several quotations. Among them: "For there is no life that is dominated by the shadow of death. And every effort of life is to repel the idea of death by the gush (I love that word), by the abundance and accumulation of life" D'Ormesson adds another word worth its weight in gold: "Everything we do in life is if no importance but it is given to us to do unimportant things with passion," he adds. Life is a useful passion. We must treat the world with passionate indifference. War, the horse, music and love serve to charm life as one charms a snake, and to camouflage indifference.m

Our wise men of yesteryear, like our wise men of today, used the same words to talk to us about life: for Aristophanes, "We live, not as we wish, but as we can". Einstein taught us: "Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop asking questions. This reminds me that, from a very early age, I taught my children to always ask why. Gandhi was more practical: "Live as if you were going to die tomorrow". The world doesn't like to talk about death when it's part of our daily lives. Vladimir Nabokov said it before me:
"Life is a great surprise. Why shouldn't death be a bigger one?

In conclusion, Learn as if you were to live forever. In other words: live now and procrastinate. Rather than spending your time earning a living, let's just talk about living. John Irving put it so well: "Deciding how we want to live our lives is an important first step, but we must also find the strength within ourselves to make that ideal life a reality. A psychotherapist by the name of Irving Yalom warns us;" If we live a life full of regrets, full of things we haven't done, if we've lived an unfulfilled life, when death comes, it's much worse. He adds, "People have an intrinsic impulse to want to survive, to live."

And to finish, though there is still more to say, I remember a most interesting paragraph written by Helene Zrihen Dvir that moved me: " Life is but a solitary journey, said the philosopher... Wrong. Life is a theater, an adventure, a mission, above all a duty... We don't live for ourselves, we live for others, and these others are our descendants, our next generations. We prepare the way for them, instructing them with our knowledge, our experiences, our love of life and, above all, our admiration and devotion to the Creator. This is what our parents did, and this is what we do too, because we must perpetuate life, we must arm it adequately so that it can resist, so that it can reach those heights that were insurmountable yesterday and are no longer so today. Man was created for great things, but it's hard to believe that he's often unaware of them.

I'll just mention two little proverbs, one Persian: "Life is a dream whose death awakens us", the other Jewish: "A book gives knowledge, but it's life that gives understanding. And a last reminder, just in case: "In the midst of life, there is always death."