quotations about life
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Mrs. Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Theologian's Tale", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the beach.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
Life inspires more dread than death -- it is life which is the great unknown.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Life has an--an irony all its own. What you wish for, you get, but you discover that it's not what you want.
JOHN AUSTIN CONNOLLY
The Boys from Siam
As you speed along the highway of life ... you might pause and consider. When everything's coming your way, maybe you're driving in the wrong lane.
JOSEPH FINDER
Paranoia
You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and goddamn it, you refuse to let it get to you. you fight. you cry. You curse. Then you go about your business of living. That's how I've done it. There's no other way.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
Well, you live your life the way you want, I live mine the way I want. We see who makes it farther.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Simple Truth
The difficulties of life are intended to make us better--not bitter.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Thinking Big
Life is made up of three kinds of people -- those who live it, those afraid to, those in between.
LOUISE ERDRICH
Love Medicine
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
Life does turn on so many queer things ... ball bearings and banana skins.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Paris Review, fall 2000
It's your life -- but only if you make it so.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
You Learn by Living
In a dream thou mayst live a lifetime, and all be forgotten in the morning:
Even such is life, and so soon perisheth its memory.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
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"
All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages; Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway