quotations about life
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
JACK LONDON
White Fang
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"Nephelidia"
Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.
GEORGE MEREDITH
"Hard Weather"
Life is a song, rhythmic and sweet,
Love is its tune;
Treble and base blended in one,
Perfect as June.
ELIZA H. MORTON
"The Song of Life"
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral
To keep from dying is not the same as "to live."
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.
JOSÉ BERGAMÍN
Head in the Clouds
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions
From whatever point he starts, whatever path he follows, modern man comes to the same conclusion: behind its visible appearances, life hides a meaning that is eternally inaccessible to penetration by the spirit that seeks for its discovery, caught in the dilemma of being aware that it is impossible to find it, and yet also impossible to renounce the hopeless quest.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
"Le refus", L'Heure Nouvelle
Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Lila
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
The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
JEROME K. JEROME
"The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway"
He who loveth, knoweth the inner sun; he see'th Life's blaze.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.
FRANCIS BACON
Advancement of Learning
If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
In the chequered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the wine-press. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until Death himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda