quotations about life
I sat in amazement, the translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there--life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them.
SUE MONK KIDD
The Mermaid Chair
How much more interesting life would be if only more people had the courage and skill to act themselves, instead of abjectly understudying some one else!
RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
"The Dramatic Art of Life", Prose Fancies
Our life is what we make it. An insignificant game or a noble trial; a dream or a reality; a play of the senses worn out in selfish use, and flying "swifter than a weaver's shuttle," or an ascension of the soul, by daily duties and unfaltering faith, to more spiritual relations and to loftier toils.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Let us pounce
upon this red prey,
let us tear life
that passes throbbing
and lift together
our wild flight.
PABLO NERUDA
"The Condor"
Though not a participant in the Business of life; I am, like the character of Addison and Steele, an impartial (or more or less impartial) Spectator, who finds not a little recreation in watching the antics of those strange and puny puppets called men.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
letter to Kleiner, Cole, and Moe, October 1916
Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others.
ERIC BERNE
What Do You Say After You Say Hello?
Life is measured by the rapidity of change, the succession of influences that modify the being.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Life is not lost by dying! Life is lost
Minute by minute, day by dragging day,
In all the thousand, small, uncaring ways,
The smooth appeasing compromises of time.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
A Child is Born
The whole art of living consists in giving up existence in order to exist.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
Life is a constant education.
JESSICA REES
"It's vital that we rebuild local jazz...", Bridport & Lyme Regis News, September 1, 2016
The heart is like an instrument whose strings
Steal magic music from Life's mystic frets.
GERALD MASSEY
"Wedded Love"
What would life be if these few years
Of thankless toil and bitter tears
Were all and naught beyond?
An utter failure void of hope,
A sunless maze of narrow scope
Where phantoms of despair would grope
Throughout its narrow bound.
MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN
"Life's Fruition"
Do not take life too seriously--you will never get out of it alive.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
I remembered my days and nights of sunshine and starshine, where life was all a wild sweet wonder, a spiritual paradise of unselfish adventure and ethical romance. And I saw before me, ever blazing and burning, the Holy Grail.
JACK LONDON
"What Life Means to Me", Revolution and Other Essays
A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life.
WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
Woman's Day Magazine, Jun. 1, 2007
The shock, the power of an ordinary life. It is a thing you could not invent with banks of computers in a dust-free room.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Tomorrow Is Now
To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, winter 1871
A truce to philosophy! -- Life is before me and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread.
MARY SHELLEY
The Last Man
Life is full of amusement to an amusing man.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit