LIFE QUOTES XXVII

quotations about life

Life is an incurable disease.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

To Dr. Scarborough

Tags: Abraham Cowley


Life doesn't do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit.

JOHN C. MAXWELL

The Power of Thinking Big

Tags: John C. Maxwell


Life ... is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.

PHILIP K. DICK

A Scanner Darkly

Tags: Philip K. Dick


Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.

JOHN KEATS

letter to Charles Brown, Sep. 30, 1820


If we could live for a million years, then maybe it would be worthwhile to create some problems. But our life is short. Now you see, we are guests here on this planet, visitors who have come for a short time, so we need to use our days wisely, to make our world a little better for everyone.

DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS

The Book of Joy

Tags: Douglas Carlton Abrams


I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.

TIM ALLEN

Reader's Digest, Oct. 2001


I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy -- who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity -- only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart -- does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.

SAUL BELLOW

Herzog


I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.

ROBERT BROWNING

In a Balcony

Tags: Robert Browning


Flirting with death is the spice of life.

MARGARET LOCK

Twice Dead

Tags: Margaret Lock


Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales

Tags: Seneca


A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Lady Chatterley's Lover


We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others.

RONALD REAGAN

"Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation"

Tags: Ronald Reagan


To live is to war with trolls.

HENRIK IBSEN

dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt

Tags: Henrik Ibsen


They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


The understanding of human existence that sees life as having death as its inevitable end presumes that life is lived only in opposition to dying and seeks the conquest of death; that is, immortality, or eternal life. Here, death is always seen as alien to life, something to be overcome. In contrast to this, the understanding of human existence as a continuous living-and-dying does not view life and death as objects in mutual opposition but as two aspects of indivisible reality. Present life is understood as something that undergoes continuous living-and-dying.

MASAO ABE

Zen and the Modern World

Tags: Masao Abe


The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

The Triumph of Time


The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.

WALTER MOSLEY

Black Genius

Tags: Walter Mosley


The bright side of life's unpredictability is that it's not over until it's over. As dark as the passages and confusing as the cul-de-sacs that you find yourself in are, progress is nevertheless being made. Something is unfolding. You are becoming.

MARION WINIK

Ladies Home Journal, Dec. 2008


Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

JULIAN BARNES

The Sense of an Ending

Tags: Julian Barnes