quotations about life
Life inspires more dread than death -- it is life which is the great unknown.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, Apr. 1873
Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears,
A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"In the Wood of Finvara"
The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Glory of Clementina
[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
If life be wretched, it is hard to bear it; if it be happy, it is horrible to lose it ; both come to the same thing.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
A man's life is like a well, not like a snake--it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
With only one example of life -- the stuff we see on Earth -- we don't really have a good, universally accepted definition of life. NASA some years ago defined life as "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." Not bad, but technically a single rabbit hopping around your garden is not alive, because by itself it can't reproduce.
JOEL ACHENBACH
"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016
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"
Life is a pressure cooker and whether you remain serene or become stressed-out depends on how you handle that pressure.
KEVIN LEMAN
Stopping Stress before It Stops You: A Game Plan for Every Mom
When life is cheap death is rich.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Mrs. Martha Washington, Jun. 18, 1775
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
Life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Each life is one short word slowly uttered.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Blue Jay's Dance
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
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
Life is like our game of whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
ROBERT FULGHUM
Uh-Oh