quotations about life
Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
You get born and you try this and you don't know why only you keep on trying and you are born at the same time with a lot of other people, all mixed up with them, like trying to, having to, move your arms and legs with strings only the same strings are hitched to all the other arms and legs and the others all trying they don't know why either except that the strings are all in one another's way like five or six people all trying to make a rug on the same loom only each one wants to weave his own pattern into the rug; and it can't matter, you know that, or the Ones that set up the loom would have arranged things a little better, and yet it must matter because you keep on trying or having to keep on trying and then all of a sudden it's all over and all you have left is a block of stone with scratches on it provided there was someone to remember to have the marble scratched and set up or had time to, and it rains on it and the sun shines on it and after a while they don't even remember the name and what the scratchers were trying to tell, and it doesn't matter.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Absalom, Absalom!
I wear the chain I forged in life....I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it.
CHARLES DICKENS
A Christmas Carol
Life is too short for aught but high endeavor.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Life Is Too Short"
Life is being, not having.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Life isn't always a butcher's game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they're precious.
STEPHEN KING
Joyland
I warmed both hands before the fire of Life;
It sinks, and I am ready to depart.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
I Strove with None, for None was Worth My Strife
Life was like a batch of biscuits without the baking powder: flat, flat, flat.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Big Sky
Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet
EMILY DICKINSON
"That it will never come again"
Some people fake their death, I'm faking my life.
DON DELILLO
Underworld
Like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
For drinking Life there are two cups:
The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy --
Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?
MARGARET ATWOOD
The Year of the Flood
One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste--
The Stars are Setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing -- Oh, make haste!
EDWARD FITZGERALD
Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and goddamn it, you refuse to let it get to you. you fight. you cry. You curse. Then you go about your business of living. That's how I've done it. There's no other way.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Nothing was certain; there were many strange twists and devious turns as one hopped down the overgrown bunnytrail of life.
STEPHEN KING
"Big Driver", Full Dark, No Stars
Life should be touched, not strangled.
RAY BRADBURY
Farewell Summer
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune