LIFE QUOTES XXII

quotations about life

In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Fantastic Voyage II

Tags: Isaac Asimov


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

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


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

Tags: Homer


For some reason or the other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured--disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui--in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

HENRY MILLER

Tropic of Cancer

Tags: Henry Miller


Life is nothing but a statement of what happens to be.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

Tags: Glen Duncan


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"


What mean the discipline and trial of life? What mean the dark shocks of disappointment, the breaking of hopes, the sundering of human ties, the terrible baptism of suffering and of fire, if there is not something beyond? If in every bath of sweat and tears, every drop of sorrow, every falling wave, there is something by which I am led more near to God, by which my soul is made stronger and purified, then I can understand life. But if I am hurled in the chaos of life--battered by sorrow today, and kicked by misfortune tomorrow--stricken by my fondest hopes, deluded and deceived, and all is to end in nothingness, I must confess that you present a problem I cannot solve.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


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


Life asks for a preparation as complete as we can afford; the great contest should be fought with spirit but with good temper always; we should never think the game lost while it is still going; and finally we should have the satisfaction of quitting the field able to say: I did my best.

ARTHUR LYNCH

Moods of Life

Tags: Arthur Lynch


Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

Thoughts


It's over before you know it. It all goes by so fast. Yeah the bad nights take forever, and the good nights don't ever seem to last.

TOM PETTY

The Best of Everything

Tags: Tom Petty


Between a gasp and a sigh, a life can change forever.

TIM LEBBON

Face

Tags: Tim Lebbon


A life is such a strange object, at one moment translucent, at another utterly opaque, an object I make with my own hands, an object imposed on me, an object for which the world provides the raw material and then steals it from me again, pulverized by events, scattered, broken, scored yet retaining its unity; how heavy it is and how inconsistent: this contradiction breeds many misunderstandings.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

After the War


As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales

Tags: Seneca


Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?

MARY OLIVER

"Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982", Dream Work


Why, what in the world should we care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time?

MARCEL PROUST

Swann's Way

Tags: Marcel Proust


Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

JOSÉ BERGAMÍN

Head in the Clouds

Tags: José Bergamín


Life consists of nothing more than the happiness we can get out of it.

JEAN ANOUILH

Antigone

Tags: Jean Anouilh


Where they were not alive with rottenness, quick with unclean life, there were merely the unburied dead -- clean and noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive.

JACK LONDON

"What Life Means to Me", Revolution and Other Essays

Tags: Jack London


Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk