A Literary Prescription for

Zest for Life

For the wish to reach for life with both hands, and taste it while you still can.

Somewhere in the long routine of duty and caution, it is easy to stop truly living and simply start getting through. Zest for life is the antidote: that bright, greedy appetite for experience, that wish to taste each day rather than merely survive it. It is not about grand adventures, though it can be. Mostly it is a decision, made again and again, to reach for life with both hands. These books and poems are for reawakening that hunger, and for remembering that you are here to live, not just to cope.

Books Poetry Quotes & Prose

Books

Prescribed reading

Some of these are joyful novels of people shaking off caution and reaching, at last, for life, and some are clarifying reminders that the time to live fully is now. Fiction and non-fiction together, they share one rousing conviction: that aliveness is largely a choice, and that it is never too late to begin making it.

Auntie Mame

Patrick Dennis · 1955

Dennis’s riotous, beloved novel introduces the irrepressible Mame, who sweeps through life declaring that it is a banquet and refusing to let anyone go hungry. Wildly funny and utterly life-affirming, it is a masterclass in reaching for joy. The perfect tonic for anyone who has been living a little too carefully.

A Room with a View

E. M. Forster · 1908

Forster’s sunlit novel follows a young woman torn between the safe, respectable life expected of her and the passionate, awakened one she glimpses in Italy. Gorgeous and warm, it is a hymn to choosing life and love over caution. A joyful read about the courage it takes to reach for the fuller, braver version of your life.

Shirley Valentine

Willy Russell · 1988

Russell’s wonderful heroine, a bored Liverpool housewife, runs away to Greece and rediscovers the vivid, funny, hopeful woman she used to be. Warm and hilarious, it is a rousing celebration of reclaiming your own aliveness at any age. A joyful, cheering read for anyone who suspects there is far more living left to do.

The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

Jonas Jonasson · 2009

Jonasson’s madcap romp follows a centenarian who escapes his nursing home and stumbles into one absurd adventure after another. Endlessly funny and gloriously irreverent, it is a joyful argument that it is never too late for life. A delightful read for anyone who needs reminding that adventure has no age limit.

The Top Five Regrets of the Dying

Bronnie Ware · 2011

A palliative nurse shares the regrets she heard most often from the dying, chief among them the wish to have lived more truly and joyfully. Moving and clarifying rather than morbid, it is a gentle, powerful nudge to live before it is too late. A book that quietly changes how you spend your days.

Awaken the Giant Within

Tony Robbins · 1991

Robbins’s high-energy classic is a rousing call to take charge of your life and reach for far more of it. Practical and relentlessly motivating, it lights a fire under anyone who has been coasting. A galvanising read for those moments when you know you are capable of living bigger, and just need the push to begin.

Poems about zest for life

For the fully alive

from “Life”

Henry Van Dyke, 1904

Let me but live my life from year to year,
With forward face and unreluctant soul;
Not hurrying to, nor turning from, the goal;
…But with a whole and happy heart, that pays
Its tribute to the days.

Van Dyke sets out the whole art of living well: face forward, want what comes, and meet each day with a whole and happy heart. It is zest not as frenzy but as glad, wholehearted attention. A steadying, uplifting poem for anyone who wants to live their years fully rather than merely spend them.

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from “A Vagabond Song”

Bliss Carman, 1894

There is something in the autumn that is native to my blood—
Touch of manner, hint of mood;
And my heart is like a rhyme,
With the yellow and the purple and the crimson keeping time.
…And my lonely spirit thrills
To see the frosty asters like a smoke upon the hills.

Carman’s poem thrums with the pure, physical joy of being alive to the world, of feeling the turning year in your very blood. It is zest as a kind of animal delight in existence. A gorgeous, tingling poem for anyone who wants to feel the seasons and the days in their bones again.

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from “A Song of Living”

Amelia Josephine Burr, 1915

Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
…I have run and leaped with the rain, I have taken the wind to my breast.
I have kissed young Love on the lips, I have heard his song to the end.
I have struck my hand in the fire, and drawn back my hand full of gold.

Burr’s exultant poem is the perfect answer to the fear of death: love life fully enough, taste it deeply enough, and there is no bitterness left at the end, only gratitude. It is zest carried all the way to its triumphant conclusion. A magnificent, heart-lifting poem for anyone determined to truly live.

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Quotes & Prose

Quotes about zest for life to keep

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Helen Keller

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I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain.

Sylvia Plath

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Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

Maya Angelou

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You are not here to get life right. You are here to get it lived. Reach for it with both hands while you still can.

Georgia Clare

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From Georgia

Waking up to life

A grateful practice for waking up to the sheer aliveness of an ordinary day, and an essay on how a simple gratitude habit sharpens the taste of your hours.

A Gratitude Meditation

Guided meditation by Georgia Clare

A warm guided practice for waking up to everything there already is to be grateful for, and meeting your one life with fresh appetite and joy.

Listen Now For Free

How a Gratitude Journal Changed My Life

Personal essay by Georgia Clare · The Library

On the simple practice of noticing what is good, and how paying real attention to your days makes them taste more vivid and alive.

Read the Essay →

The Inner Peace Toolkit

Digital Self-Care Toolkit · Georgia Clare

2 guided meditations, an Inner Peace Journal, an affirmations eBook, 10 printable affirmation prints and 10 calming phone wallpapers — small daily practices to come back to whenever you need to slow down and reconnect with yourself.

Explore the Toolkit →

Questions people ask

Reading for Zest for Life

Where should I start?

Start with Auntie Mame by Patrick Dennis, a gloriously funny novel whose heroine believes life is a banquet and most poor fools are starving to death. And for the real-world case, The Top Five Regrets of the Dying is a moving, clarifying reminder to live before it is too late. The poems below are pure celebrations of being alive.

What can I read to feel more alive?

Books that reawaken your appetite for life. A Room with a View and Shirley Valentine follow people shaking off caution and finally reaching for joy, while The Hundred-Year-Old Man is a romp of pure, irrepressible aliveness. For a rousing nudge, Awaken the Giant Within lights a fire under you. Or begin with the poems and the lines to keep further down the page.

Which quotes about zest for life are worth keeping?

Quotes worth keeping include “The purpose of life is to live it, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” (Eleanor Roosevelt), “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” (Helen Keller) and “I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain.” (Sylvia Plath). You will find these and more in the quotes section above.

Can reading really give me more zest for life?

It genuinely can. When life has gone grey and dutiful, a book bursting with vitality can remind you, almost physically, what it feels like to be fully alive, and light the wish to live that way again. And the wise books on regret and mortality do something bracing: they wake you up to the fact that the time to reach for life is now. Aliveness, it turns out, is partly a decision.

Zest for Life

Prescribed reading

For the fully alive

Quotes about zest for life to keep

Waking up to life

Reading for Zest for Life

Where should I start?

What can I read to feel more alive?

Which quotes about zest for life are worth keeping?

Can reading really give me more zest for life?

More prescriptions await.