quotations about life
We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment.
IMMANUEL KANT
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
attributed, Woman's Day Magazine, Jun. 1, 2007
Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.
HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN
A Visit to Funen with Hans Christian Andersen
Living is one constant and perpetual instant when the arras-veil before what-is-to-be hangs docile and even glad to the lightest naked thrust if we had dared, were brave enough (not wise enough: no wisdom needed here) to make the rending gash.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
That's the problem with being alive ... You've got to keep thinking of what to do.
GLEN DUNCAN
Death of an Ordinary Man
Each one of us must live the life God gives him; it cannot be shirked.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth, we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
How small a porton of our life it is that we really enjoy. In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age, we are looking backwards to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day, when we have time.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Life is a moment stolen from eternity.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Life is laughter amid a rosary of death.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Only Mystery: Federico García Lorca's Poetry in Word and Image
Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit.
ELIZA COOK
Diamond Dust
Success makes life easier. It doesn't make living easier.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
Q, August, 1992
The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"Seeds", The Triumph of the Egg
Every second of my regular, boring life is a beautiful gift.
MOLLY JO ROSE
"Life is fullest before the 25th hour", U.S. Catholic, September 1, 2016
For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
DOUG LARSON
attributed, Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored
Life is a system of recurrent pairs, the poison and the antidote being eternally packaged together by some considerate heavenly druggist.
MARY MCCARTHY
The Hounds of Summer and Other Stories
Life is not meant to be hard: if it is, we make it so.
IVAN PANIN
Thoughts
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE
Macbeth
But all they are all there scraping along to sneeze out a likelihood that will solve and salve life's robulous rebus.
JAMES JOYCE
Finnegan's Wake
Football is a team game. So is life.
JOE NAMATH
attributed, Where Football Is King