quotations about life
Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
The Ghost in My Life
Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.
JOHN KEATS
"Sleep and Poetry"
There is nothing men are so anxious to keep, and yet are so careless about, as life.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Where I come from in the Eastern Region, life is still -- well, things are changing very fast but if one is interested, one can still see signs of what life used to look like.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Conversations with Chinua Achebe
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
Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy--well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year.
ALICE MEYNELL
"The Rhythm of Life", The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays
If you are good life is good.
ROALD DAHL
Matilda
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
LIN YUTANG
The Literary Digest, 1938
It's only life. We all get through it.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Hours
Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life is the jailer of the soul in this filthy prison, and its only deliverer is death.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Life is, alas, one eternal combat.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
MARY OLIVER
"Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?", West Wind
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Coming of Age
Solve the problem of life? Live, and you solve it.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
The difficulties of life are intended to make us better--not bitter.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Thinking Big