quotations about life
The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
JEROME K. JEROME
"The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway"
That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Paris Review, spring 2009
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Coming of Age
Living is a hazardous profession.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.
JEFF ABBOTT
Adrenaline
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
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"
Life is a series of abandonings.
JEFF ABBOTT
The Last Minute
Life doesn't do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Thinking Big
Life divine! O life eternal!
Man cannot translate the thought.
Strong the chain that God hath welded;
Link on link hath chain been wrought.
Fabric new each day is woven,
Woven it on God's own loom.
We the threads can ne'er unravel,
Hidden they in Nature's womb.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Dost Thou Know?"
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life at the greatest is but a froward child, that must be humor'd and coax'd a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
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 know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free; without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Miss Harriet"
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
Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.
MATTHEW ARNOLD
"A Question: To Fausta"
Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.
GEORGE MEREDITH
"Hard Weather"
And life itself spoke this secret to me. "Behold," it said, "I am that which must ever overcome itself."
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra