quotations about life
The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Arrowsmith
There is nothing at all in life, except what we put there.
MADAME SWETCHINE
"Airelles", The Writings of Madame Swetchine
To live is to war with trolls.
HENRIK IBSEN
dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt
Each life creates endless ripples.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
In such a porcelain life one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bowles, Aug. 1858?
But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Women in Love
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
BONG R. OSORIO
"The purpose of life is a life of purpose", The Philippine Star, June 20, 2016
Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Resort
He is dead already who doth not feel
Life is worth living still.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Is Life Worth Living?", Lyrical Poems
Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
He whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Life is reduced to a bunch of fights over territory.
KOBO ABE
The Ark Sakura
We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.
JOSEPHINE HART
Damage
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
JOHN LENNON
"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)", Double Fantasy
Some moments in a life, and they needn't be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one's own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.
IRVIN D. YALOM
The Schopenhauer Cure
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms on other planets and far stars, forms that would seem bizarre to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life-forms.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Dark Brotherhood"
Life is not a bed of roses.
ENGLISH PROVERB
My definition of life is a series of experiences, and the more you have the better off you are.
EMILY FEISTRITZER
"Former nun sees life as a series of experiences, including lucrative ones", Washington Post, August 21, 2016