LIFE QUOTES XXXVIII

quotations about life

Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped.

BERNARD BECKETT

Malcolm & Juliet

Tags: Bernard Beckett


Life ... is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.

DEAN KOONTZ

Odd Thomas


You sit
Like a rain puddle in hell
Knitting the socks
Of your life.

CHARLES SIMIC

My Noiseless Entourage

Tags: Charles Simic


What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

UMBERTO ECO

Baudolino

Tags: Umberto Eco


The strange thing about life is that though the nature of it must have been apparent to every one for hundreds of years, no one has left any adequate account of it.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Jacob's Room


Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything -- all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure -- these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

STEVE JOBS

commencement address at Stanford University, Jun. 12, 2005

Tags: Steve Jobs


Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Summer Crossing

Tags: Truman Capote


Life
You have been good to me....
You have not made yourself too dear
to juggle with.

LOLA RIDGE

"Comrades"

Tags: Lola Ridge


It's a great time to be alive and talking about life. We just learned that geologists found what appear to be fossilized stromatolites in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks in Greenland. That suggests life popped up on Earth ridiculously soon after the planet formed. And last we learned about the discovery of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun. Meanwhile we now know planets are common. Maybe the universe is simply throbbing with life!

JOEL ACHENBACH

"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016


I realized that the ultimate joy in life comes from understanding that life is a process, the tapestry of threads bound together, where some fit in and some fall out of place: people come and go, events do not turn out as we would like to, we plan for the best, yet have to set for the worst. If we try to rush life, control it, get angry about it, it will run away from us. If we embrace life, breathe deeply into it and accept it as a wonder, we will be the richest people in the world in a split second.

MILENA MILICEVIC

"How I Overcame My Biggest Mistake in Life so Far", Huffington Post, June 14, 2016


I don't know why life isn't constructed to be seamless and safe, why we make such glaring mistakes, things fall so short of our expectations, and our hearts get broken and our kids do scary things and our parents get old and don't always remember to put pants on before they go out for a stroll. I don't know why it's not more like it is in the movies, why things don't come out neatly and lessons can't be learned when you're in the mood for learning them, why love and grace often come in such motley packaging.

ANNE LAMOTT

Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith


He whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales


Ah! this beautiful world ... Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly, and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hyperion


This is the strange contract between life and language: language keeps naming and life, like a woman seductively escaping her seducer's caress, keeps just a little beyond its names.

GLEN DUNCAN

By Blood We Live

Tags: Glen Duncan


Scorn ye not the little things,
For life is made from them.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

"Little Things"


Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.

GLEN DUNCAN

Talulla Rising


Life like a shroud on men and women lies.

MAURICE BROWNE

"At Dusk"


Life is an adventure of passion, risk, danger, laughter, beauty, love; a burning curiosity to go with the action to see what it is all about, to go search for a pattern of meaning, to burn one's bridges because you're never going to go back anyway, and to live to the end.

SAUL ALINSKY

Reveille for Radicals

Tags: Saul Alinsky


Life is a theatre of alarms and contentions.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

Human Nature and the Social Order

Tags: Charles Horton Cooley


Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.

IRVIN D. YALOM

The Schopenhauer Cure

Tags: Irvin D. Yalom