LIFE QUOTES XXXV

quotations about life

Life is but a field which we soon travel over, and the vale of eternity presents itself.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Could I have been any more inept?", Salon, Oct. 26, 1999

Tags: Garrison Keillor


Is all our Life, then but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?

LEWIS CARROLL

Sylvie and Bruno

Tags: Lewis Carroll


And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid growth, produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration; this, in part pleasurable, in part a motion of self-defense, was the primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to the substance. This was the Fall.

THOMAS MANN

The Magic Mountain

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A stream roars downward to a hidden sea
That slumbers moonless, starless, without bound,
Whence comes nor voice, nor form, nor any sound:
The stream is Life, the sea--Eternity.

WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN

"Life"

Tags: William Wilsey Martin


Life is a parade of metamorphoses.

KATIE LESLIE

"How Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson's rough start in North Texas prepared her for tough job", Dallas Morning News, September 1, 2016


Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange.

JACK LONDON

Tales of the North

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Life consists in molting our illusions. We form creeds today only to throw them away tomorrow. The eagle molts a feather because he is growing a better one.

ELBERT HUBBARD

The American Bible


The greatest philosophy of life should be to live for the benefit of others as much as one lives for the benefit of self. And that is what philosophers call a footprint on the sands of time.

FEMI ABBAS

"A decade of royalty and faith", The Nation, September 2, 2016


Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings,
And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill
Some shallow notes from its great music brings.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY

"Dolores"

Tags: John Boyle O'Reilly


Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"A Psalm of Life"


In such a porcelain life one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.

EMILY DICKINSON

letter to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bowles, Aug. 1858?

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Short is life, but endless is the theme.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Life consists of nothing but exceptions.

SERGEI LUKYANENKO

Night Watch

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I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.

JOSH GROBAN

O Magazine, Jan. 2007

Tags: Josh Groban


As regards the present life, it would seem that it is really possible for it, at least, to be made into something very satisfactory, since it is a simple matter of fact that some men, no matter what their condition in life, do contrive to get enjoyment and happiness out of it. To secure success in our vocation, we need a knowledge of its technicalities; to free the mind from doubt, to keep a man superior to temptation, we must give him good moral principles and habits. A purposeless life is deprived of much that is enjoyable in this world. Contrast the life of those who go through the world as if they were here but to eat, sleep, and die--no aim, purpose, or object before them--with that of those who daily work onward with an object before them, the determination to enjoy life, to make the best of life, to do their duty themselves, their fellow-men, and their God; obedient from the pleasure of doing God's will, and virtuous without everlastingly thinking of what virtue is to do for them; the desire to please God, to be living in harmony with Him, developing the highest aspirations of the soul, the moral tastes purified and exalted by daily communion with God, and the wish to live a life in obedience to His authority, compelling yon to be good, feeling yourself under a law whose voice is clear, resolute, and uniform--a law which tells you to adhere to the right, and avoid the expedient--which enables you to act upon principle, and not be led by the impulse of passion, or the plausibility of appearance.

JAMES PLATT

"Is Life Worth Living?", Platt's Essays


Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments.

ANAIS NIN

diary, winter, 1931-32


Man's life is like the morning dew.

JAPANESE PROVERB


A life is a life. The unbearable pain of losing someone you love is identical no matter how differently it is expressed. And yet the varying shades of the global reaction to tragedy based on location, nationality, ethnicity, culture and religion belie our humanity, a harsh reminder that our "global community" is an illusion, despite our seemingly desperate desire to cling to that notion.

ARWA DAMON

"A life is a life, wherever you are", CNN, March 29, 2016


Remember that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

SUSAN ROSE BLAUNER

How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me