LIFE QUOTES XXXVI

quotations about life

It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


A stream roars downward to a hidden sea
That slumbers moonless, starless, without bound,
Whence comes nor voice, nor form, nor any sound:
The stream is Life, the sea--Eternity.

WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN

"Life"

Tags: William Wilsey Martin


In a life without obstacles he would doubtless have abandoned himself to chance and to the voluptuous sauntering of adolescence. As he could be free only for an hour or two a day, his strength flowed into that space of time like a river between walls of rock. It is a good discipline for art for a man to confine his efforts between unshakable bounds. In that sense it may be said that misery is a master, not only of thought, but of style; it teaches sobriety to the mind as to the body. When time is doled out and thoughts measured, a man says no word too much, and grows accustomed to thinking only what is essential; so he lives at double pressure, having less time for living.

ROMAIN ROLLAND

Jean-Christophe

Tags: Romain Rolland


Whatever you live is Life.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

All the King's Men


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

Tags: Josephine Hart


Life is a horizontal fall.

JEAN COCTEAU

Opium

Tags: Jean Cocteau


Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Sons and Lovers

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


Life has possibilities; death has none.

REUEN THOMAS

Thoughts for the Thoughtful

Tags: Thomas Reuen


Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

"On Life", Essays and Letters

Tags: Percy Bysshe Shelley


Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.

JOHN LENNON

"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)", Double Fantasy

Tags: John Lennon


A human life the treasure of the world cannot buy; nor can it redeem one which is misspent; nor can it make full and complete and beautiful a life which is dwarfed and warped and ugly.

JACK LONDON

The Cruise of the Dazzler


The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.

JACK LONDON

John Barleycorn

Tags: Jack London


All of life is a foreign country.

JACK KEROUAC

letter, June 24, 1949

Tags: Jack Kerouac


Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped.

BERNARD BECKETT

Malcolm & Juliet

Tags: Bernard Beckett


Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments.

ANAIS NIN

diary, winter, 1931-32


He is dead already who doth not feel
Life is worth living still.

ALFRED AUSTIN

"Is Life Worth Living?", Lyrical Poems

Tags: Alfred Austin


Remember that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

SUSAN ROSE BLAUNER

How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me


Our lives fade behind us before we die.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich

Tags: John Updike


Ah! this beautiful world ... Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly, and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Hyperion


Life is magical. There is something wonderful in being alive, in having within one's self all sorts of possibilities.

ARTHUR LYNCH

Moods of Life