quotations about life
Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Into the void of silence, into the empty space of nothing, the joy of life is unfurled.
C. S. LEWIS
The Magician's Nephew
Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
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
As long as you were prepared to stay in it life found room for you. Life was like that, helplessly promiscuous, a doorman who let everyone in.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
To live is to war with trolls.
HENRIK IBSEN
dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt
Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
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
Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Funny. You talk of life as if it were a train you have to catch up with. How long have you been trying, three days? And not got a glimpse of it yet, in spite of caviar and champagne?
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
Anything in life is possible if you make it happen.
JACK LALANNE
Fiscal Fitness: 8 Steps to Wealth & Health from America's Leaders of Fitness
In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Fantastic Voyage II
It's only life. We all get through it.
DEAN KOONTZ
Dark Rivers of the Heart
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
WALTER MOSLEY
Black Genius
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
preface, Autobiography
Life is no way to treat an animal.
KURT VONNEGUT
A Man Without a Country
Life is an arrow, therefore you must know
What mark to aim at, how to use the bow--
Then draw it to the head and let it go!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Epigrams and Greetings"
Life is a Shylock; always it demands
The fullest userer's interest for each pleasure.
Gifts are not freely scattered by its hands;
We make returns for every borrowed treasure.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"The Law"