quotations about life
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to his son Eduard, Feb. 5, 1930
The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Glory of Clementina
The truth about the world ... is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
When life is cheap death is rich.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
Life inspires more dread than death -- it is life which is the great unknown.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Life is not about having a good time. We're told you do certain things. You behave a certain way and happiness will come your way. Which isn't true. I don't think we're put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we're put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.
JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1992
To what can one compare our life on earth?
To a flock of geese
Waddling about in the snow
Leaving a faint trace of their passage.
SU SHI
"Remembrance"
We've been told there's a certain way to live ... that this is living ... and we ... we never really questioned it. We just sort of went along. But what if it's not the best way? What if there's another way that's better? What if there's something more?!
WALTER WYKES
The Profession
[A] carefully constructed life is a meticulous diversion from living.
J.R. KINNARD
"'Completely Unknown' Deals in Ambiguity and Subtle Charms", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore
Of a great sea beyond.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Roman Sentinel"
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.
ANNE RICE
Servant of the Bones
Well, you live your life the way you want, I live mine the way I want. We see who makes it farther.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Simple Truth
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
ANONYMOUS
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, Apr. 1873
There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order