Hampton Sides Quotes

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

Turning 30 changed me in ways I didn't expect. For the very first time, I felt like my life is valuable. Not my life because I'm putting something good into the world or I'm well-respected in my field, but my life as a human being on this planet for a limited amount of time.

I learned the significance of my own insignificant life.

What is life about? Two things: love and death.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result.

We are caught in the contradiction of finding life a rather perplexing puzzle which causes us a lot of misery, and at the same time being dimly aware of the boundless, limitless nature of life. So we begin looking for an answer to the puzzle.

For the meaning of life differs from man to man, from day to day and from hour to hour. What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.

After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.

Mortal experiences give us the opportunity to assess what we are doing with our lives.

Basically, I feel fortunate to have realized what the goal is in life. There's no point in dying having gone through your life without knowing who you are, what you are, or what the purpose of life is. And that's all it is.

If you do not know your place in the world and the meaning of your life, you should know there is something to blame; and it is not the social system, or your intellect, but the way in which you have directed your intellect.

The aim of life is to be fully born, though its tragedy is that most of us die before we are thus born.

I've come to believe that whoever I am didn't start on December 14, 1946, and isn't going to end on whatever that mysterious date is in the future.

We all have a cradle-to-the-grave journey to make and, in between, what do you do? There's got to be something hereafter.

The existence is a tremendous curiosity, with in the course of the years, the discovery of yourself in your inmost evolutions. With the age you feel better than you are, what you represent. Which means a little at the planet's scale.

I can't judge any of you. I have no malice against you and no ribbons for you. But I think that it is high time that you all start looking at yourselves, and judging the lie that you live in.

I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result. I think it's kinda the process and I think that if you can find happiness in the process then maybe that's it.

Style, I think, is panache. Who are you? What did you do today? And what are you worth to me? What do you have to offer the world? How did you spend your time today on this planet? How are you spending your time every second? What are you doing now? Are you alive, or are you somnambulant?

If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

Learning what you don't want to do is pretty valuable, it may be as valuable as figuring out what it is you do want to do.

Like my mother, I was always saying, 'I'll fix my life one day.' It became clear when I saw her die without fulfilling her dreams that my time was now or maybe never.

I'm not on the run from anything and I'm not at all clear about what I'm running towards. But as some great writer put it, I want to be certain that when I arrive at death, I'm totally exhausted.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.