quotations about life
Weeks passed, a whirl of lights and sound and laughter, a fever dream, vertiginous, roaring, mad, he quit his job, not caring what came after, and struck out blindly; money enough he had, and life, by Christ, would go now as he bade; he got it by the throat, he was its master; sing! went his whip, and life danced on the faster.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Life is an uncertain flower--oft by the tempest o'erthrown.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet
EMILY DICKINSON
"That it will never come again"
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
There is nothing men are so anxious to keep, and yet are so careless about, as life.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Rest not! Life is sweeping by;
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time!
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"Haste Not--Rest Not"
Life should be touched, not strangled.
RAY BRADBURY
Farewell Summer
Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Ethics of Ambiguity
Life should be a fruitful garden,
Fair in blossom, and rich in seed;
Conscience, the sharp and faithful warden,
Watchful against the frost and weed.
Study should its labyrinths trace
Where wisdom's pleasant waters flow;
And industry the garden grace
With plants that choicest gifts bestow.
C. B. LANGSTON
"What Should Life Be?"
It's your life -- but only if you make it so.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
You Learn by Living
Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.
JEFF ABBOTT
Adrenaline
The difficulties of life are intended to make us better--not bitter.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Thinking Big
Life calls the tune, we dance.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Five Tales
Life is often like that, the best balancing on a knife edge with the worst.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.
SAUL ALINSKY
Rules for Radicals
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Coming of Age
I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Mosquitoes
If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year.
ALICE MEYNELL
"The Rhythm of Life", The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays
Life is indeed either a rich possession or a poor, according as it is made subservient to noble aims or ignoble pleasures.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life is a continual march towards the grave.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims