LIFE QUOTES VIII
quotations about life
A man gathers a life around him like a hedgehog collecting leaves on its spines; what sticks to you defines you, and without them you're bare, defenseless, a yolk without a shell.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
Our life is in the loom; it rolls up and is hidden as fast as it is woven. It is to be taken out of the loom only when we leave this world; then only shall we see the pattern.
HENRY WARD BEECHER
Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
The great river-courses which have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and those other streams, the life-currents that ebb and flow in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the same great loves and terrors. As our thought follows close in the slow wake of the dawn, we are impressed with the broad sameness of the human lot, which never alters in the main headings of its history--hunger and labour, seed-time and harvest, love and death.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
But how could you live and have no story to tell?
FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY
White Nights
No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
Tomorrow Is Now
A truce to philosophy! -- Life is before me and I rush into possession. Hope, glory, love, and blameless ambition are my guides, and my soul knows no dread.
MARY SHELLEY
The Last Man
Store well Life's sheaves, the grains of thought--
Your harvest will be good,
If sheaves are bound by ties of love,
And evil you've withstood.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Gathering of the Sheaves"
To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to T. W. Higginson, winter 1871
Meeting each other and leaving each other. Leaving and meeting. That's what life is!
AUGUST STRINDBERG
A Dream Play
Live to the point of tears.
ALBERT CAMUS
Notebooks
If you haven't fought for your life for something you want, you don't know what's life all about.
ROBERT STONE
Dog Soldiers
I suspect most of life takes place in the interstices of what's already been articulated.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Rain Taxi, winter 2000/2001
We are meant to taste of life ... and drink the cup of it to the dregs, bitter and sweet alike.
JACQUELINE CAREY
Kushiel's Dart
What misery to live in this world! We are like men whose enemies are at the door, who must not lay aside their arms, even while sleeping or eating, and are always in dread lest the foe should enter the fortress by some breach in the walls. O my Lord and my all! How canst thou wish us to prize such a wretched existence?
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
Each new epoch in life seems an encounter. There is a tussle and a cloud of dust, and we come out of it triumphant or crest-fallen, according as we have borne ourselves.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Reasonable Life
Life is more sweet than I
Knew: the shifted scene
Less wavered, more trimmed with light,
Than the years before.
Look down. People pass over the ice
As a file of thin ghosts creep,
And fade beyond the hill.
You, and you, and you--
Small souls, shrinking away.
MARK TURBYFILL
"Journey"
I think we can all agree life is a lot better when a dog chasing bears is one of the biggest news stories of the day.
JOHN HALTIWANGER
"This Savage Dog Chased Bears Out Of Its Neighborhood Like A Total Boss", Elite Daily, September 1, 2016
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Rainy Day"
That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.
FREDERIK POHL
Gateway