LIFE QUOTES XXIX

quotations about life

Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.

FRED ALLEN

Fred Allen's Letters

Tags: Fred Allen


One must live as he can.

MAXWELL ANDERSON

Winterset

Tags: Maxwell Anderson


While there's life, there's hope.

ENGLISH PROVERB


Life appears in a vast variety and innumerable succession of individual forms, since the most salient character of the universe is just that it ceaselessly gives birth to living individuals.

JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON

Man and the Cosmos: An Introduction to Metaphysics

Tags: Joseph Alexander Leighton


One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.

KOBO ABE

The Woman in the Dunes

Tags: Kobo Abe


Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


I think you've got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there's no possibility of achieving the life you want.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


I have not wasted life, but life hath wasted me.

BHARTRHARI

"Against the Desire of Worldly Things"

Tags: Bhartrhari


So life discloses--
Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
In changing splendor night or day;
New joys that drive old griefs away.

ANDREW DOWNING

"Among the Roses"

Tags: Andrew Downing


Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up--and we are gone.

EDWARD YOUNG

Busiris, King of Egypt: A Tragedy

Tags: Edward Young


Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.

JAMES JOYCE

Ulysses

Tags: James Joyce


Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

FRANK HERBERT

Chapterhouse: Dune


Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.

FRANK HERBERT

Heretics of Dune


Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Middlesex

Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides


How strange a checker-work of Providence is the life of man!

DANIEL DEFOE

Robinson Crusoe

Tags: Daniel Defoe


Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

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Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.

JOHN BARTH

The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

Tags: John Barth


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"

Tags: Henry Van Dyke


Whether there is to be another world or not, it seems to me we ought to be deeply thankful for having been permitted to live, even though we see no prospect of living again. It is something to have had this wonderful gift of "life." Yesterday but a little dust, today alive, with life before us, and the powers of speech, observation, and thought--the capacity to understand something of the earth around and the heavens above; with bodily health, a properly trained mind, internal resources adequate to the inevitable difficulties that will have to be overcome; the culture of the understanding and taste, an object in life earnestly sought after; the happy time of courtship; the affection of wife and children, the interest in watching their progress forward up the hill that you are steadily going down--all indicate that we should so live that while we live "life must be worth living," and that it is possible to make life not only endurable, but something unquestionably good, happy, and desirable, by turning to their best uses our capabilities, and using wisely the immense resources in this world, of which we have the benefit, and for which we ought to be thankful.

JAMES PLATT

"Is Life Worth Living?", Platt's Essays