LIFE QUOTES XXXVIII

quotations about life

Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Studies in Classic American Literature

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped.

BERNARD BECKETT

Malcolm & Juliet

Tags: Bernard Beckett


Life
You have been good to me....
You have not made yourself too dear
to juggle with.

LOLA RIDGE

"Comrades"

Tags: Lola Ridge


Ah! this beautiful world ... Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly, and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hyperion


Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

STEVE JOBS

commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005

Tags: Steve Jobs


Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Summer Crossing

Tags: Truman Capote


What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

UMBERTO ECO

Baudolino

Tags: Umberto Eco


You sit
Like a rain puddle in hell
Knitting the socks
Of your life.

CHARLES SIMIC

My Noiseless Entourage

Tags: Charles Simic


The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Jacob's Room


I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things and our parents get old and don't always remember to put pants on before they go out for a stroll. I don't know why it's not more like it is in the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.

ANNE LAMOTT

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith


I realized that the ultimate joy in life comes from understanding that life is a process, the tapestry of threads bound together, where some fit in and some fall out of place: people come and go, events do not turn out as we would like to, we plan for the best, yet have to set for the worst. If we try to rush life, control it, get angry about it, it will run away from us. If we embrace life, breathe deeply into it and accept it as a wonder, we will be the richest people in the world in a split second.

MILENA MILICEVIC

"How I Overcame My Biggest Mistake in Life so Far", Huffington Post, June 14, 2016


It's a great time to be alive and talking about life. We just learned that geologists found what appear to be fossilized stromatolites in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks in Greenland. That suggests life popped up on Earth ridiculously soon after the planet formed. And last we learned about the discovery of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun. Meanwhile we now know planets are common. Maybe the universe is simply throbbing with life!

JOEL ACHENBACH

"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016


Scorn ye not the little things,
For life is made from them.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

"Little Things"


Life is a crucible. We are thrown into it, and tried.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Life is a theatre of alarms and contentions.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

Human Nature and the Social Order

Tags: Charles Horton Cooley


Life like a shroud on men and women lies.

MAURICE BROWNE

"At Dusk"


Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.

IRVIN D. YALOM

The Schopenhauer Cure

Tags: Irvin D. Yalom


Activity does not necessarily mean life.

PHILIP K. DICK

A Scanner Darkly


For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.

ROBERT BROWNING

A Death in the Desert


He whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales