quotations about life
This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Anywhere Out of the World", Le Spleen de Paris
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
I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.
SAUL BELLOW
Henderson the Rain King
Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.
JOHN KEATS
"Sleep and Poetry"
What is our life? A play of passion.
Our mirth the music of division.
Our mother's wombs the tyring houses be,
Where we are drest for this short Comedy.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
"On the Life of Man"
Weeks passed, a whirl of lights and sound and laughter, a fever dream, vertiginous, roaring, mad, he quit his job, not caring what came after, and struck out blindly; money enough he had, and life, by Christ, would go now as he bade; he got it by the throat, he was its master; sing! went his whip, and life danced on the faster.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
journal, Mar. 1859
Life, how sweet soever it seems, is a draught mingled with bitter ingredients; some drink deeper than others before they come at them: But, if they do not swim at the top for youth to taste them, it is ten to one but old age will find them thick at the bottom. And it is the employment of faith and patience, and the work of wisdom and virtue, to teach us to drink the sweet part down with pleasure and thankfulness, and to swallow the bitter without reluctance.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
The life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents.
JACK LONDON
The Sea-Wolf
Life is nothing but a statement of what happens to be.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
HOMER
The Iliad
Life is, alas, one eternal combat.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
What is life but a series of inspired follies?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Pygmalion
Life is a constant series of new and familiar challenges, adversities that wax and wane until the end.
ANDREW PASCHAL
"Singles Going Steady", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
My Day
If you always do the easy and comfortable thing, life ends up being difficult and uncomfortable. If you do the difficult and uncomfortable thing, however, life ends up being easy and comfortable.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
Look Ma, Life's Easy
Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Your responsibility is to be an explorer, not a tourist in this adventure that is your life.
MARY ANNE RADMACHER
Honey In Your Heart
Life is not life unless we can feel it.
SAMUEL BUTLER
"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science