LIFE QUOTES XIX

quotations about life

The difficulties of life are intended to make us better--not bitter.

JOHN C. MAXWELL

The Power of Thinking Big


When I consider Life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possessed.

JOHN DRYDEN

Aureng-Zebe

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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"

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Lives are snowflakes -- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods


I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

RANSOM RIGGS

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

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One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

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Life was a storm to wander through.

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET

"The Quality of Courage"

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You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Life is like a cocktail, made up for the most part of sweet things, and tinged with a dash of bitters. We must drain it to the dregs to get at the cherry, just as we must live a full and rounded life to know all its pleasures.

EDGAR GUEST

Home Rhymes

Tags: Edgar Guest


Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

HOMER

The Iliad

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Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

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Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.

JEAN ANOUILH

The Collected Plays

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Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"


My life is a tree,
Yoke-fellow of the earth;
Pledged,
By roots too deep for remembrance,
To stand hard against the storm,
To fill by Place.
(But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing:
Wind-free are the wings of my bird: she hath built no mortal nest.)

KARLE WILSON BAKER

The Tree

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Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's


Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

MARK TWAIN

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Tags: Mark Twain


Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?

MARY OLIVER

"Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982", Dream Work


How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

PHILIP ROTH

The Professor of Desire

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You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.

PHILIP ROTH

The Dying Animal


Life is a series of obstacles. It's not supposed to be easy. It is how you deal with these obstacles that define you as a person.

RAUL CARRANZA

"UC San Diego grad with muscular dystrophy shows incredible strength to achieve his dreams", University of California, June 16, 2016