quotations about life
Life divine! O life eternal!
Man cannot translate the thought.
Strong the chain that God hath welded;
Link on link hath chain been wrought.
Fabric new each day is woven,
Woven it on God's own loom.
We the threads can ne'er unravel,
Hidden they in Nature's womb.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Dost Thou Know?"
Life is good, be it stubbornly long or suddenly
A mortal splendor: meteors are not needed less than mountains.
ROBINSON JEFFERS
"Shine, Perishing Republic"
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"
All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Silver Key"
Life is no way to treat an animal.
KURT VONNEGUT
A Man Without a Country
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy -- who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity -- only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart -- does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
No man ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over before him; every man who starts on the ocean of life arches his sails to an untried breeze.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.
RITA MAE BROWN
Hounded to Death
Our daily lives have a kaleidoscopic quality, a feeling of walking down a breakfast buffet and spooning out things onto your plate. And there's a lot to eat at this brunch of experience. Too many pineapple rings, too many sausages, too much syrup.
NICHOLSON BAKER
interview, Interview Magazine, September 16, 2013
The life of man on earth is, as a rule, a dangerous journey, over and through shoals and quicksands, beset on his way outwardly by snares, traps, and insinuating temptations of all sorts, and inwardly, he is besieged by contending emotions of good and evil, perpetually at war with each other; however watchful must he then be to steer clear of all the dangers that beset him, and how necessary for him to keep his eye on the chart and compass God has provided him with for his guidance, and to pray for wisdom to understand it correctly. As on he travels day by day, the scenes he often passes through are varied, strange, and wonderful: first the road may be said to be through a smooth and quiet valley, then there comes a hill to climb; if climbed successfully at once, he often tumbles headlong down again, and next time it is more difficult to get up again; on the other hand, should he continue slowly and gradually on his road, he will find the remainder of his journey for the most part uphill, with now and then level and barren spots to cross, every slip or false step, he takes he finds it harder and harder to regain his lost position, and if weak-minded and faint-hearted, he perishes by the way; but if he has the sterling stuff in him, that will ever make a brave, a great, and a good man, with increasing faith and never-dying hope, head erect and body upright, he calmly but with unyielding determination presses on and on, higher and higher, rarely pausing to look back, but gaining summit after summit and peak after peak, till at the close of his career, he has gained earth's highest pinnacles, and his vision made more bright by the glorified blaze of the setting sun of his life below, he raises his eyes aloft, and there, not far distant, in awe-inspiring and dazzling splendour, he beholds with spell-bound rapture the Land of Beulah, the Plains of Heaven, and the homes prepared from the foundation of the world for the faithful earthly servants of their Heavenly Master.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Life of Man", Short Essays
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.
JOHN BARTH
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor
Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
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
Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
He who loveth, knoweth the inner sun; he see'th Life's blaze.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream? There must be, we cannot be created for this sort of suffering.
JOHN KEATS
letter to Charles Brown, Sep. 30, 1820
We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others.
RONALD REAGAN
"Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation"