quotations about life
Yes, life is but a waste,
A cheerless pathway, where
No healthy fruit allures the taste,
No flowerets balm the air,
If Love, the wild rose, ne'er luxuriates there.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"Love"
It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.
ANNE LAMOTT
Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith
Life is an illusion to be tailored to our needs.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Trifles make the sum of life.
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
It is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Life doesn't work that way. You can do everything perfectly. Do everything you think you're supposed to be doing. Fulfill every expectation that other people may have. And you still won't get the results you think you deserve. Life is crazy and maddening and often makes no sense.
DAVID BALDACCI
One Summer
We are buried when we're born. The world is a place of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what happens while we wait for our appointment with the mortician.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
Life, with the Soul predominant,
Is a noble mosaic, a bewitching arabesque.
EDWIN LEIBFREED
"The Song of the Soul"
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"
Life is not a bed of roses.
ENGLISH PROVERB
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
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"
Some moments in a life, and they needn't be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one's own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Life is like patchwork: every day there is a fresh bit to be put on. We must understand more correctly how to fit in better the bits needed day by day in repairing this patchwork life of ours. As it is, the three-cornered bits too often get put into the square places; but it is essential for man's happiness that he comprehends and unhesitatingly accepts as a truism that it rests with us to make this patchwork to our own liking; that we have the power to shape this life of ours more regularly, harmoniously, and blend it more perfectly; and that our life as it is, or as it might be, depends upon whether this be done in the right spirit.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Life is a series of abandonings.
JEFF ABBOTT
The Last Minute
Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.
JEFF ABBOTT
Adrenaline
The meaning of our lives is revealed through experiences that at first seem at odds with each other--moments we wish would never end and moments we wish had never begun.
JOHN ELDREDGE
Desire