quotations about life
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
Life consists of burning up questions.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Life is often like that, the best balancing on a knife edge with the worst.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
Life is a continual march towards the grave.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Life is a charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.
SAUL BELLOW
Henderson the Rain King
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
When I consider Life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possessed.
JOHN DRYDEN
Aureng-Zebe
Once introduced into this world, life would never leave--there was no end to the explosive, consuming, voracious lust of long chain molecules to link and match and make of themselves yet more and more and again more.
GREGORY BENFORD
Against Infinity
Life was a storm to wander through.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Quality of Courage"
How good is man's life, the mere living!
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!
ROBERT BROWNING
"Saul"
Life is a series of obstacles. It's not supposed to be easy. It is how you deal with these obstacles that define you as a person.
RAUL CARRANZA
"UC San Diego grad with muscular dystrophy shows incredible strength to achieve his dreams", University of California, June 16, 2016
Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
My life is a tree,
Yoke-fellow of the earth;
Pledged,
By roots too deep for remembrance,
To stand hard against the storm,
To fill by Place.
(But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing:
Wind-free are the wings of my bird: she hath built no mortal nest.)
KARLE WILSON BAKER
The Tree
Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.
MARK TWAIN
The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson
What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.
ANNE LAMOTT
"Time Lost and Found", Sunset
The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Men do not escape from life because life is dull, but life escapes from men because men are little.
THOMAS WOLFE
Look Homeward, Angel