LIFE QUOTES XXI

quotations about life

The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

The Joyful Wisdom

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


Life, like the boring drunk at the office party, keeps seeking you out, leaning on you, killing you with pointless yarns and laughing bad-breathed in your face at its own unfunny jokes.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf


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


Solve the problem of life? Live, and you solve it.

IVAN PANIN

Thoughts

Tags: Ivan Panin


To realize life as absolute is to be existentially emancipated from life itself in that very realization, which understands that life is not life. The same applies to death.

MASAO ABE

Zen and the Modern World

Tags: Masao Abe


Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.

ALFRED AUSTIN

"A Woman's Apology"

Tags: Alfred Austin


That life is brief hath seemed a piteous thing
Since the first mortal watched it glide away.
And sad it is that flowers have but one day,
And sad that birds have little time to sing;
That joy is fleeting as the bloom of Spring;
That youth so soon is startled from its play,
And manhood from its labor, to essay
The old vain struggle with the shadowy King.
But sadder far it is that life is long;
Ay, long enough for bliss to turn to bale,
For innocence to lose the dread of wrong,
For hearts to harden, love itself to fail;
And faith be wearied out (O, sad and strange!)
Unless Death save us from the deathly change.

CAROLINE SPENCER

"Life"

Tags: Caroline Spencer


Life was a storm to wander through.

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET

"The Quality of Courage"

Tags: Stephen Vincent Benet


Life ... is only heavy and none else; there is only the one trip, all heavy. Heavy that leads to the grave. For everyone and everything.

PHILIP K. DICK

A Scanner Darkly

Tags: Philip K. Dick


Life consists of nothing more than the happiness we can get out of it.

JEAN ANOUILH

Antigone

Tags: Jean Anouilh


If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death
Perhaps the world can teach us
as when everything seems dead
but later proves to be alive.

PABLO NERUDA

Extravagaria

Tags: Pablo Neruda


Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

V. S. NAIPAUL

Half a Life

Tags: V. S. Naipaul


The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

GEORGE ELIOT

Janet's Repentance

Tags: George Eliot


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

ROBERT E. HOWARD

Kull: Exile of Atlantis

Tags: Robert E. Howard


Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of the Affections", Les Caractères


Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


If life is often so hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get through it.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT

Little Women

Tags: Louisa May Alcott


Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

ARISTOPHANES

Lysistrata

Tags: Aristophanes


I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

RANSOM RIGGS

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Tags: Ransom Riggs