quotations about life
While there's life, there's hope.
ENGLISH PROVERB
My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.
CHARLES LAMB
letter to William Wordsworth, Mar. 20, 1822
Life is the tamer of the wild beast of humanity.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"Childhood", A Soliloquy of Life
I think you've got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there's no possibility of achieving the life you want.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
I accept that life is uncertain--that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing--a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.
ELIZABETH LESSER
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
Life was a sorrowful throb of this Matter teaching it anguish,
Teaching it hope and desire trod out too soon in the mire,
Life the frail joy that regrets its briefness, life the long sorrow.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
Our daily lives have a kaleidoscopic quality, a feeling of walking down a breakfast buffet and spooning out things onto your plate. And there's a lot to eat at this brunch of experience. Too many pineapple rings, too many sausages, too much syrup.
NICHOLSON BAKER
interview, Interview Magazine, September 16, 2013
Life is real, life should be earnest. To be enjoyed, we must have an aim, an object in life; and to be happy, to enjoy life, the object must be one worthy the highest, purest, best part of our nature.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Life is as the current spark on the miner's wheel of flints;
While it spinneth, there is light; stop it, all is darkness.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Reader's Digest, July 1972
Life is a movement outward, an unfolding.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Life is a warfare against the malice of others.
BALTASAR GRACIAN
The Art of Worldly Wisdom
Life is a string of uncooked macaroni on a double strand of sewing thread. Not even spray painted gold. Some people have strings of expensive pearls for lives, but not me ... I have macaroni and sewing thread.
ANN WUEHLER
The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
Life! Don't talk to me about life.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
You had to take life as it came. It gave no quarter, spared no feelings. Limited no pain. Put no ceiling on happiness.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Innocent
Thus will we deal with life, my little help-meet. Will we not, eh? What though it blink at us like an owl that is blinded by the sun, we will yet force it to smile.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
We cross the stream of life at different places. Some wade through the shallows in a drought, others have to swim across deep waters in a storm.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke