LIFE QUOTES XXVII

quotations about life

For some reason or the other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured--disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui--in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

HENRY MILLER

Tropic of Cancer

Tags: Henry Miller


Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk


As long as you were prepared to stay in it life found room for you. Life was like that, helplessly promiscuous, a doorman who let everyone in.

GLEN DUNCAN

Talulla Rising

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And life itself spoke this secret to me. "Behold," it said, "I am that which must ever overcome itself."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

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All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper, and the next -- who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.

SOPHOCLES

Philoctetes


You know your life needs more excitement when your greatest challenge all week is removing the lint from your dryer's lint-screen all in one piece!

TOM WILSON

Ziggy, Jan. 16, 1998

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To live is to war with trolls.

HENRIK IBSEN

dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt

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They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Dispossessed

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The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Blood Meridian


The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.

BRUCE LEE

Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

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The life of man on earth is, as a rule, a dangerous journey, over and through shoals and quicksands, beset on his way outwardly by snares, traps, and insinuating temptations of all sorts, and inwardly, he is besieged by contending emotions of good and evil, perpetually at war with each other; however watchful must he then be to steer clear of all the dangers that beset him, and how necessary for him to keep his eye on the chart and compass God has provided him with for his guidance, and to pray for wisdom to understand it correctly. As on he travels day by day, the scenes he often passes through are varied, strange, and wonderful: first the road may be said to be through a smooth and quiet valley, then there comes a hill to climb; if climbed successfully at once, he often tumbles headlong down again, and next time it is more difficult to get up again; on the other hand, should he continue slowly and gradually on his road, he will find the remainder of his journey for the most part uphill, with now and then level and barren spots to cross, every slip or false step, he takes he finds it harder and harder to regain his lost position, and if weak-minded and faint-hearted, he perishes by the way; but if he has the sterling stuff in him, that will ever make a brave, a great, and a good man, with increasing faith and never-dying hope, head erect and body upright, he calmly but with unyielding determination presses on and on, higher and higher, rarely pausing to look back, but gaining summit after summit and peak after peak, till at the close of his career, he has gained earth's highest pinnacles, and his vision made more bright by the glorified blaze of the setting sun of his life below, he raises his eyes aloft, and there, not far distant, in awe-inspiring and dazzling splendour, he beholds with spell-bound rapture the Land of Beulah, the Plains of Heaven, and the homes prepared from the foundation of the world for the faithful earthly servants of their Heavenly Master.

T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH

"On the Life of Man", Short Essays


Q: Is life a dream or a meditation? A: Life is a meditation when you know it is a dream.

BABA HARI DASS

Yoga Journal, May 1977

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Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.

RITA MAE BROWN

Hounded to Death

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Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Mankind", Les Caractères


Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?

JOSEPH HELLER

Catch-22

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Man's life is entirely in his operations, which may all be classed under three heads: he thinks, he feels, and he acts -- these three modes of activity exhaust his powers.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

The Doctrine of Life

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Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.

DONALD TRUMP

interview, Playboy, Mar. 1990

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Life is so complicated a game that the devices of skill are liable to be defeated at every turn by air-blown chances, incalculable as the descent of thistle-down.

GEORGE ELIOT

Romola

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Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must

BOB DYLAN

"Buckets of Rain"

Tags: Bob Dylan


Life is an arrow, therefore you must know
What mark to aim at, how to use the bow--
Then draw it to the head and let it go!

HENRY VAN DYKE

"Epigrams and Greetings"

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