LIFE QUOTES XXXV

quotations about life

There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

NORMAN MAILER

The Deer Park

Tags: Norman Mailer


Living is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange.

JACK LONDON

Tales of the North

Tags: Jack London


If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Suttree

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of the Affections", Les Caractères


Life and death have been lacking in my life.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

prologue, Discussion

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.

SRI AUROBINDO

Ahana

Tags: Sri Aurobindo


It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


All of life is a foreign country.

JACK KEROUAC

letter, June 24, 1949

Tags: Jack Kerouac


Seek not life's jewels where the poppies grow,
Nor where Desire, all passion-poisoned, rears
Her luring domes, but in the heart of woe,
With shores far washed by sanctifying tears.

EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR

"Life's Jewels"

Tags: Edward Robeson Taylor


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"


Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"A Psalm of Life"


Life is not a mere exterior movement, the movement of the being in its relations to other beings, but it is also, and especially, an internal movement from the visible to the invisible, from the real to the ideal, from the finite to the infinite.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: Sabine Baring-Gould


Life is like a school; one can learn, one can graduate, one can skip a grade or stay behind.

ELIZABETH LESSER

The New American Spirituality: A Seeker's Guide

Tags: Elizabeth Lesser


The world is a grindstone and life is your nose.

FRED ALLEN

attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes

Tags: Fred Allen


Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Sons and Lovers

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments.

DON DELILLO

Point Omega

Tags: Don DeLillo


Life is magical. There is something wonderful in being alive, in having within one's self all sorts of possibilities.

ARTHUR LYNCH

Moods of Life


What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia


Short is life, but endless is the theme.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims