quotations about life
Life and death have been lacking in my life.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
prologue, Discussion
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
Is all our Life, then but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?
LEWIS CARROLL
Sylvie and Bruno
Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process!
ANTHONY ROBBINS
Awaken the Giant Within
The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.
JACK LONDON
John Barleycorn
A stream roars downward to a hidden sea
That slumbers moonless, starless, without bound,
Whence comes nor voice, nor form, nor any sound:
The stream is Life, the sea--Eternity.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Life"
Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings,
And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill
Some shallow notes from its great music brings.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
"Dolores"
Life consists in molting our illusions. We form creeds today only to throw them away tomorrow. The eagle molts a feather because he is growing a better one.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Life is a parade of metamorphoses.
KATIE LESLIE
"How Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson's rough start in North Texas prepared her for tough job", Dallas Morning News, September 1, 2016
The greatest philosophy of life should be to live for the benefit of others as much as one lives for the benefit of self. And that is what philosophers call a footprint on the sands of time.
FEMI ABBAS
"A decade of royalty and faith", The Nation, September 2, 2016
I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.
JOSH GROBAN
O Magazine, Jan. 2007
Short is life, but endless is the theme.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments.
ANAIS NIN
diary, winter, 1931-32
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 consists of nothing but exceptions.
SERGEI LUKYANENKO
Night Watch
In such a porcelain life one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bowles, Aug. 1858?
As regards the present life, it would seem that it is really possible for it, at least, to be made into something very satisfactory, since it is a simple matter of fact that some men, no matter what their condition in life, do contrive to get enjoyment and happiness out of it. To secure success in our vocation, we need a knowledge of its technicalities; to free the mind from doubt, to keep a man superior to temptation, we must give him good moral principles and habits. A purposeless life is deprived of much that is enjoyable in this world. Contrast the life of those who go through the world as if they were here but to eat, sleep, and die--no aim, purpose, or object before them--with that of those who daily work onward with an object before them, the determination to enjoy life, to make the best of life, to do their duty themselves, their fellow-men, and their God; obedient from the pleasure of doing God's will, and virtuous without everlastingly thinking of what virtue is to do for them; the desire to please God, to be living in harmony with Him, developing the highest aspirations of the soul, the moral tastes purified and exalted by daily communion with God, and the wish to live a life in obedience to His authority, compelling yon to be good, feeling yourself under a law whose voice is clear, resolute, and uniform--a law which tells you to adhere to the right, and avoid the expedient--which enables you to act upon principle, and not be led by the impulse of passion, or the plausibility of appearance.
JAMES PLATT
"Is Life Worth Living?", Platt's Essays
My definition of life is a series of experiences, and the more you have the better off you are.
EMILY FEISTRITZER
"Former nun sees life as a series of experiences, including lucrative ones", Washington Post, August 21, 2016
It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Life has possibilities; death has none.
REUEN THOMAS
Thoughts for the Thoughtful