quotations about life
Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life is a struggle, and if you should feel really happy, be patient: this will pass.
GARRISON KEILLOR
A Prairie Home Companion, 2006
What is life but a series of inspired follies?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Pygmalion
His dangerous, overwhelming lust for life had failed to involve him in anything deeper than perhaps half a dozen extremely casual acquaintanceships in about as many bars.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.
JEFF ABBOTT
Adrenaline
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"
Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes.
KELLY LINK
Stranger Things Happen
Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
journal, Mar. 1859
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
Life is not life unless we can feel it.
SAMUEL BUTLER
"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science
Life is all about people leaving.
SUSAN HUBBARD
The Society of S
I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.
WILLIAM FAULKNER
Mosquitoes
Life is a charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Life is a continual march towards the grave.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
Once introduced into this world, life would never leave--there was no end to the explosive, consuming, voracious lust of long chain molecules to link and match and make of themselves yet more and more and again more.
GREGORY BENFORD
Against Infinity
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
HOMER
The Iliad
When I consider Life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possessed.
JOHN DRYDEN
Aureng-Zebe
Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Life is often like that, the best balancing on a knife edge with the worst.
LAURELL K. HAMILTON
Obsidian Butterfly