The art of life...is to show your hand. There is no diplomacy like candour. You may lose by it now and then, but it will be a loss well gained if you do. Nothing is so boring as having to keep up a deception.

The art of life is not controlling what happens to us, but using what happens to us

[T]he art of life is more like navigation than warfare, for what is important is to understand the winds, the tides, the currents, the seasons, and the principles of growth and decay, so that one's actions may use them and not fight them.

The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.

The art of life...is to be thought odd. Everything will then be permitted to you.

Life may as properly be called an art as any other.

The art of being a warrior is to balance the wonder and the terror of being alive.

The art of life is to stay wide open and be vulnerable, yet at the same time to sit with the mystery and the awe and with the unbearable pain — to just be with it all.

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.

The art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.

Following Foucault, we may define the art of life as a practice of suicide, of giving oneself to death, of depsychologizing oneself, of playing.

The one thing to say about art and life is that art is art and life is life, that art is not life and life is not art. A 'slice-of-life' art is no better or worse than a 'slice-of-art' life. Fine art is not a 'means of making a living' or a 'way of living a life', and a artist who dedicates his life to his art or his art to his life burdens his art with his life and his life with his art. Art that is a matter of life and death is neither fine nor free.

Better is art, than evil strength; for with art men may hold what strength may not obtain.

The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.