quotations about life
Life is a muddle. It seems a brilliant muddle, if you are an optimist; a dull one, if you aren't; but in neither case can you deny that it is the muddlers who keep it going.
MAX BEERBOHM
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Glory of Clementina
Life in itself Is nothing,
An empty cup,
a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
"Spring"
The only certainty in life is uncertainty, and I who did not choose to be born and you dear reader, who did not choose that either, have been given the most precious present: the life, without even asking for it. And yet we squander it too many times every day: when we complain over the things we cannot change such as weather or other people; or when we worry about the future instead of setting out with determination that we will give our 100% best and that we will leave the rest to Fortune.
MILENA MILICEVIC
"How I Overcame My Biggest Mistake in Life so Far", Huffington Post, June 14, 2016
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
If life be wretched, it is hard to bear it; if it be happy, it is horrible to lose it ; both come to the same thing.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Life is not about having a good time. We're told you do certain things. You behave a certain way and happiness will come your way. Which isn't true. I don't think we're put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we're put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.
JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1992
How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
A long life is a life well spent.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore
Of a great sea beyond.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Roman Sentinel"
Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day.
RAY BRADBURY
A Graveyard for Lunatics
Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
We've been told there's a certain way to live ... that this is living ... and we ... we never really questioned it. We just sort of went along. But what if it's not the best way? What if there's another way that's better? What if there's something more?!
WALTER WYKES
The Profession
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
CHRISTOPHER MORLEY
Thunder on the Left
Life is an immense dream. Why toil?
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended--
What troubled my soul?--I remember not.
LI BAI
"Awakening From Sleep on a Spring Day"
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
If we look at life in its various stages, has it been worth living at each period? It is rarely doubted as regards the youth. Life is to them a joyous thing--all is fresh and new; and life to their minds seems plastic and pliable; they have the experiment of living their life before them. Putting aside the fact that men do not start in the world with the desire for, or properly trained to make the "best of this life," we will consider if "life lived as it is" by the majority, life as realized in ordinary life, is worth living. And the reply must be, "Yes." Man has a body fitted and adapted for the purposes of life; and although, because of his own disobedience or the faults of his predecessors, he may not enjoy good health, yet the majority have a bodily structure that, if carefully attended to, will enable them successfully to do their work and feel it is a privilege to live, and be able to earn sufficient to live upon; and I think it must be admitted that to the majority, by the use of their brains, by industry, and by thrift, there is the possibility of securing sufficient to supply all with the ways and means of life. Wealth, no doubt, is power; it gives great influence, secures its possessor from many annoyances, gives facilities for attempting and effecting what others might dream of in vain; but it is a mistake to think that "life is more worth living" to the rich man than to the poor. Wealth can only belong to the few, and it would be impossible to imagine that the Creator had done His work so badly that only the "idle rich" were able to enjoy this life. The morning can find you without anxiety; the day may find you equal to the fulfilment of your duties; you may do your work willingly and cheerfully; you may retain the bright cloudlessness of your early days--"the child's heart within the man's"--and, day by day, enjoy life, and retire to rest without its bringing to you sleeplessness or morbid terrors, if you be a machanic, perhaps more so than if you were a Rothschild. Each and every condition of life has its duties and anxieties, its troubles and drawbacks, as well as its pleasures. I have implicit faith in the Creator's law of compensation. My belief is, that God wills, and has so arranged that in all ranks of life, let the difference of condition or capability be what it may, each one has it within him to make his life beautiful and happy. To every living being life is preferable to death; life to each and every one of us "is worth living."
JAMES PLATT
"Is Life Worth Living?", Platt's Essays
We bring into the world a poor, needy, uncertain life, short at the best; all the imaginations of the wise have been busied to find out the ways how to revive it with pleasure, or relieve it with counsel; how to compose it with ease, and settle it with safety; to some of these ends have been employed the instructions of Lawgivers, the reasonings of Philosophers, the inventions of Poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagancies of the Voluptuous; all the world is at work perpetually about nothing else, but only that our poor mortal lives should pass the easier and the happier that little time we possess them; or else end the better when we lose them.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine