quotations about life
Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
"Ashes of Life"
Some people fake their death, I'm faking my life.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
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
Our life is but a new form of the way men have lived from the beginning.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Life Thoughts
Life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.
GARRISON KEILLOR
A Prairie Home Companion, 2006
You have not lost all when you have life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Joyful Wisdom
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
Life is sweet.
ENGLISH PROVERB
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"
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
attributed, The Waking Dream
What is life but a series of inspired follies?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Pygmalion
The whole world's a bottle,
And life's but a dram,
When the bottle gets empty,
It sure ain't worth a damn.
BOB DYLAN
"Moonshiner"
It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
STEPHEN HAWKING
The Daily News
Rest not! Life is sweeping by;
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time!
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
"Haste Not--Rest Not"
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Collected Plays
About the time we have subdued the fires of youth that threaten to consume us, we find ourselves battling with the infirmities of age.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words