LIFE QUOTES XXII

quotations about life

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


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


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

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Harkonnen

Tags: Brian Herbert


Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

RICHARD BACH

Illusions

Tags: Richard Bach


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


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


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

ARISTOPHANES

Lysistrata

Tags: Aristophanes


Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

Madness & Civilization

Tags: Michel Foucault


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


Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy--well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.

DEAN KOONTZ

Odd Apocalypse

Tags: Dean Koontz


Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration

Tags: James Russell Lowell


Real life ... it was an ambiguous world, where actions sometimes had no meaning, where chaos reigned and no one was allowed to see the big picture, only their small portion of it.

BENTLEY LITTLE

The Policy

Tags: Bentley Little


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


Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!

STELLA BENSON

This Is the End

Tags: Stella Benson


Life, how sweet soever it seems, is a draught mingled with bitter ingredients; some drink deeper than others before they come at them: But, if they do not swim at the top for youth to taste them, it is ten to one but old age will find them thick at the bottom. And it is the employment of faith and patience, and the work of wisdom and virtue, to teach us to drink the sweet part down with pleasure and thankfulness, and to swallow the bitter without reluctance.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


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"

Tags: Robert Browning


Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Beyond the Wall of Sleep"


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

JEFF ABBOTT

Adrenaline

Tags: Jeff Abbott


Life is a process of modification and descent, rather than genesis. There was never a moment when an egg hatched a brand new thing called a chicken, or when a chicken produced, unexpectedly, something bizarre called an egg.

JOEL ACHENBACH

"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016


I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Babbitt

Tags: Sinclair Lewis