quotations about life
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
Life is a series of abandonings.
JEFF ABBOTT
The Last Minute
I have not wasted life, but life hath wasted me.
BHARTRHARI
"Against the Desire of Worldly Things"
Living is a hazardous profession.
TOBSHA LEARNER
The Witch of Cologne
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
MARK TWAIN
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.
JOSH GROBAN
O Magazine, Jan. 2007
So life discloses--
Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
In changing splendor night or day;
New joys that drive old griefs away.
ANDREW DOWNING
"Among the Roses"
Life is a movement outward, an unfolding.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
preface, Autobiography
Life was a storm to wander through.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Quality of Courage"
Life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Reveries over Childhood and Youth
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.
FRED ALLEN
Fred Allen's Letters
Life appears in a vast variety and innumerable succession of individual forms, since the most salient character of the universe is just that it ceaselessly gives birth to living individuals.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
Man and the Cosmos: An Introduction to Metaphysics
There is no normal life. There is only life.
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.
KOBO ABE
The Woman in the Dunes
To realize life as absolute is to be existentially emancipated from life itself in that very realization, which understands that life is not life. The same applies to death.
MASAO ABE
Zen and the Modern World
I think you've got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there's no possibility of achieving the life you want.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
And if sometimes, commingled with life's wine,
We find the wormwood, and rebel and shrink,
Be sure a wiser hand than yours or mine
Pours out this potion for our lips to drink.
MAY RILEY SMITH
"Sometime"