quotations about life
That life is brief hath seemed a piteous thing
Since the first mortal watched it glide away.
And sad it is that flowers have but one day,
And sad that birds have little time to sing;
That joy is fleeting as the bloom of Spring;
That youth so soon is startled from its play,
And manhood from its labor, to essay
The old vain struggle with the shadowy King.
But sadder far it is that life is long;
Ay, long enough for bliss to turn to bale,
For innocence to lose the dread of wrong,
For hearts to harden, love itself to fail;
And faith be wearied out (O, sad and strange!)
Unless Death save us from the deathly change.
CAROLINE SPENCER
"Life"
The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.
SAUL BELLOW
AGNI interview, 1997
Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
ROBERT BROWNING
In a Balcony
I know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free; without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Miss Harriet"
If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year.
ALICE MEYNELL
"The Rhythm of Life", The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays
It's only life. We all get through it.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Hours
Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Life doesn't do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit.
JOHN C. MAXWELL
The Power of Thinking Big
Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.
V. S. NAIPAUL
Half a Life
Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
"The Procession of Life"
Life is what you put into it and how much you take out of it. You put in more than is expected, and you take out less than you want.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Life is, alas, one eternal combat.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
Life, like the boring drunk at the office party, keeps seeking you out, leaning on you, killing you with pointless yarns and laughing bad-breathed in your face at its own unfunny jokes.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration
Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
The best life is that which makes the best of life.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts