quotations about life
Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.
JOHN BARTH
The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor
Life is a string of uncooked macaroni on a double strand of sewing thread. Not even spray painted gold. Some people have strings of expensive pearls for lives, but not me ... I have macaroni and sewing thread.
ANN WUEHLER
The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds
As long as you were prepared to stay in it life found room for you. Life was like that, helplessly promiscuous, a doorman who let everyone in.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
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
The life of man on earth is, as a rule, a dangerous journey, over and through shoals and quicksands, beset on his way outwardly by snares, traps, and insinuating temptations of all sorts, and inwardly, he is besieged by contending emotions of good and evil, perpetually at war with each other; however watchful must he then be to steer clear of all the dangers that beset him, and how necessary for him to keep his eye on the chart and compass God has provided him with for his guidance, and to pray for wisdom to understand it correctly. As on he travels day by day, the scenes he often passes through are varied, strange, and wonderful: first the road may be said to be through a smooth and quiet valley, then there comes a hill to climb; if climbed successfully at once, he often tumbles headlong down again, and next time it is more difficult to get up again; on the other hand, should he continue slowly and gradually on his road, he will find the remainder of his journey for the most part uphill, with now and then level and barren spots to cross, every slip or false step, he takes he finds it harder and harder to regain his lost position, and if weak-minded and faint-hearted, he perishes by the way; but if he has the sterling stuff in him, that will ever make a brave, a great, and a good man, with increasing faith and never-dying hope, head erect and body upright, he calmly but with unyielding determination presses on and on, higher and higher, rarely pausing to look back, but gaining summit after summit and peak after peak, till at the close of his career, he has gained earth's highest pinnacles, and his vision made more bright by the glorified blaze of the setting sun of his life below, he raises his eyes aloft, and there, not far distant, in awe-inspiring and dazzling splendour, he beholds with spell-bound rapture the Land of Beulah, the Plains of Heaven, and the homes prepared from the foundation of the world for the faithful earthly servants of their Heavenly Master.
T. AUGUSTUS FORBES LEITH
"On the Life of Man", Short Essays
All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper, and the next -- who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me -- and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
introduction, Journal Intime
Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.
RITA MAE BROWN
Hounded to Death
In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.
ISAAC ASIMOV
Fantastic Voyage II
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
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"
Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must
BOB DYLAN
"Buckets of Rain"
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"Nephelidia"
My life is one long blooper reel!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Jan. 12, 2000
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.
JACK LONDON
The Turtles of Tasman
That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Paris Review, spring 2009
The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Fellowship of the Ring
I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.
TIM ALLEN
Reader's Digest, Oct. 2001