LIFE QUOTES XX

quotations about life

Life seems so vulgar, so easily content with the commonplace things of every day, and yet it always nurses and cherishes certain higher claims in secret, and looks about for the means of satisfying them.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe

Tags: Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

JACK LONDON

White Fang


There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.

SAUL BELLOW

AGNI interview, 1997


Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"


Life was a storm to wander through.

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET

"The Quality of Courage"

Tags: Stephen Vincent Benet


It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

FRANCIS BACON

Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon


To keep from dying is not the same as "to live."

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Harkonnen

Tags: Brian Herbert


A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams

Tags: Alan Lightman


Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.

ROBERT E. HOWARD

Kull: Exile of Atlantis

Tags: Robert E. Howard


What mean the discipline and trial of life? What mean the dark shocks of disappointment, the breaking of hopes, the sundering of human ties, the terrible baptism of suffering and of fire, if there is not something beyond? If in every bath of sweat and tears, every drop of sorrow, every falling wave, there is something by which I am led more near to God, by which my soul is made stronger and purified, then I can understand life. But if I am hurled in the chaos of life--battered by sorrow today, and kicked by misfortune tomorrow--stricken by my fondest hopes, deluded and deceived, and all is to end in nothingness, I must confess that you present a problem I cannot solve.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Life is a continual march towards the grave.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

SAUL ALINSKY

Rules for Radicals

Tags: Saul Alinsky


Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.

JEAN ANOUILH

The Collected Plays

Tags: Jean Anouilh


What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: Doris Lessing


Life is a pilgrimage and if you don't play by the rules you don't find the Road to Damascus, you find the Crown of Thorns.

ANITA BROOKNER

The Paris Review, fall 1987

Tags: Anita Brookner


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

Tags: Karle Wilson Baker


So life discloses--
Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
In changing splendor night or day;
New joys that drive old griefs away.

ANDREW DOWNING

"Among the Roses"

Tags: Andrew Downing


Life is sweet.

ENGLISH PROVERB

Tags: English proverbs


Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.

JEFF ABBOTT

Adrenaline

Tags: Jeff Abbott


Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.

DAVID GERROLD

Alternate Gerrolds

Tags: David Gerrold