quotations about life
Life is too short to blend in.
PARIS HILTON
Confessions of an Heiress
Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral
Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.
MARY OLIVER
"Sometimes", Red Bird
For drinking Life there are two cups:
The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy --
Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
Life is wasted on the living.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life is being, not having.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Life has an--an irony all its own. What you wish for, you get, but you discover that it's not what you want.
JOHN AUSTIN CONNOLLY
The Boys from Siam
It is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
A nation of unimpressible philosophers would not care at all how the externals of life were managed. Who is the showman is not material unless you care about the show.
WALTER BAGEHOT
The English Constitution
The days of life are consumed, one by one, without an object beyond the present moment; ever flying from the ennui of that, yet carrying it with us; eternally in pursuit of happiness, which keeps eternally before us. If death or bankruptcy happen to trip us out of the circle, it is matter for the buzz of the evening, and is completely forgotten by the next morning.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Mrs. Bingham, Feb. 7, 1787
Life should be touched, not strangled.
RAY BRADBURY
Farewell Summer
Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map.
JULIAN BARNES
Talking It Over
Yes! live life with every fibre of one's being, surrender oneself to it, with no thoughts of rebellion, without deluding oneself that one can improve it and render it painless.
EMILE ZOLA
Le Docteur Pascal
Where I come from in the Eastern Region, life is still -- well, things are changing very fast but if one is interested, one can still see signs of what life used to look like.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Conversations with Chinua Achebe
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Theologian's Tale", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Nothing was certain; there were many strange twists and devious turns as one hopped down the overgrown bunnytrail of life.
STEPHEN KING
"Big Driver", Full Dark, No Stars
Most of us have the good or bad fortune of seeing our lives fall apart so slowly we barely notice.
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Shadow of the Wind
Life is too short for aught but high endeavor.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Life Is Too Short"
Life is often like that, the best balancing on a knife edge with the worst.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly
Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis