quotations about life
Life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves.
IRVIN D. YALOM
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime
My definition of life is a series of experiences, and the more you have the better off you are.
EMILY FEISTRITZER
"Former nun sees life as a series of experiences, including lucrative ones", Washington Post, August 21, 2016
Life is but a field which we soon travel over, and the vale of eternity presents itself.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Living is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Resort
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"
That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Shaw Memorial Ode"
No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
No lifetime is long enough for those ... who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.
DAN SIMMONS
The Rise of Endymion
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
What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which their so-called existence here is as nothing. Which is the truer life of Shakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the Odyssey, and of Jane Austen -- the life which palpitated with sensible warm motion within their own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are still palpitating in ours?
SAMUEL BUTLER
"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science
Life is like sex. It's not always good, but it's always worth trying.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Star
I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.
JOSH GROBAN
O Magazine, Jan. 2007
Our lives fade behind us before we die.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange.
JACK LONDON
Tales of the North
By the time you learn the rules of life, you're too old to play the game.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Could I have been any more inept?", Salon, Oct. 26, 1999
This world is a vaporous jest at best,
Tossed off by the gods in laughter,
And a cruel attempt at wit were it,
If nothing better came after.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"A Gray Mood"