LIFE QUOTES XIX

quotations about life

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave

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Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Life is not life unless we can feel it.

SAMUEL BUTLER

"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science


Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

"Life! I Know Not What Thou Art"

Tags: Anna Letitia Barbauld


Life, how sweet soever it seems, is a draught mingled with bitter ingredients; some drink deeper than others before they come at them: But, if they do not swim at the top for youth to taste them, it is ten to one but old age will find them thick at the bottom. And it is the employment of faith and patience, and the work of wisdom and virtue, to teach us to drink the sweet part down with pleasure and thankfulness, and to swallow the bitter without reluctance.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Life, with the Soul predominant,
Is a noble mosaic, a bewitching arabesque.

EDWIN LEIBFREED

"The Song of the Soul"

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Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

HOMER

The Iliad

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Some people fake their death, I'm faking my life.

DON DELILLO

Underworld

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Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.

JOHN KEATS

"Sleep and Poetry"

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The best life is that which makes the best of life.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts

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The life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents.

JACK LONDON

The Sea-Wolf


What is life but a series of inspired follies?

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Pygmalion

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


When man would make a rose with tools, he fashions petals and leaves of wax, colors them, manufactures a stalk by the same mechanical process -- and the rose is done. When God makes a rose, he lets a bird or a puff of wind drop a seed into the ground; out of the seed there emerges a stalk; and out of the stalk, branches; and on these branches, buds; and out of these buds roses unfold; and the rose is never done, for it goes on endlessly repeating itself. This is the difference between manufacture and growth. Man's method is the method of manufacture; God's method is the method of growth. What man makes is a finished product -- death. What God makes is an always finishing and never finished product -- life.

LYMAN ABBOTT

The Theology of an Evolutionist

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Where I come from in the Eastern Region, life is still -- well, things are changing very fast but if one is interested, one can still see signs of what life used to look like.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Conversations with Chinua Achebe

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As yet we know nothing of what goes to create or evoke the active spark of life.

BRAM STOKER

"The Jewel of the Seven Stars"

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Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

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I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Babbitt

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If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.

LIN YUTANG

The Literary Digest, 1938

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Life consists of burning up questions.

ANTONIN ARTAUD

Selected Writings

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Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes.

KELLY LINK

Stranger Things Happen

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