quotations about life
All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper, and the next -- who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your arrival is already recorded.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
Every day is a careful balance fought between the despondency that threatens to swamp me and the incredible joy of living.
CHRIS ABANI
Kalakuta Republic
Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
If life gives you rotten eggs, make a crepe.
ALI MARGO
"Princess: Life is a bowl of cherries -- so throw that into your crepe", Aspen Times, May 19, 2016
It's only life. We all get through it.
DEAN KOONTZ
Dark Rivers of the Heart
Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Life doesn't do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Thinking Big
Life is a movement outward, an unfolding.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.
AMY LOWELL
"Petals", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.
WALT DISNEY
"Deeds Rather Than Words"
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.
DONALD TRUMP
interview, Playboy, Mar. 1990
Life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Reveries over Childhood and Youth
Life was not fair. If you wanted something you had to take it. Before someone else took it from you. Neatly dissected down to its essence, life was one long series of lily pad hoppings. The quick and the resourceful were able to adapt and survive; all others were simply crushed as a more nimble creature landed on the lily pad they had occupied for too long.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Winner
Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
My life is one long blooper reel!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Jan. 12, 2000
Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.
RITA MAE BROWN
Hounded to Death