quotations about life
If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Reasonable Life
When life is cheap death is rich.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
[A] carefully constructed life is a meticulous diversion from living.
J.R. KINNARD
"'Completely Unknown' Deals in Ambiguity and Subtle Charms", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
The only remedy against the malady of life is life itself. The bane is its own antidote.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Glory of Clementina
What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
How is it that one day life is orderly and you are content, a little cynical perhaps but on the whole just so, and then without warning you find the solid floor is a trapdoor and you are now in another place whose geography is uncertain and whose customs are strange?
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Passion
We bring into the world a poor, needy, uncertain life, short at the best; all the imaginations of the wise have been busied to find out the ways how to revive it with pleasure, or relieve it with counsel; how to compose it with ease, and settle it with safety; to some of these ends have been employed the instructions of Lawgivers, the reasonings of Philosophers, the inventions of Poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagancies of the Voluptuous; all the world is at work perpetually about nothing else, but only that our poor mortal lives should pass the easier and the happier that little time we possess them; or else end the better when we lose them.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear, -- believe the aged friend --
Is just a chance o' the prize of learning love.
ROBERT BROWNING
A Death in the Desert
Life is a muddle. It seems a brilliant muddle, if you are an optimist; a dull one, if you aren't; but in neither case can you deny that it is the muddlers who keep it going.
MAX BEERBOHM
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm
The only certainty in life is uncertainty, and I who did not choose to be born and you dear reader, who did not choose that either, have been given the most precious present: the life, without even asking for it. And yet we squander it too many times every day: when we complain over the things we cannot change such as weather or other people; or when we worry about the future instead of setting out with determination that we will give our 100% best and that we will leave the rest to Fortune.
MILENA MILICEVIC
"How I Overcame My Biggest Mistake in Life so Far", Huffington Post, June 14, 2016
A good life keeps off wrinkles.
SPANISH PROVERB
Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt.
SCOTT ADAMS
Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day.
RAY BRADBURY
A Graveyard for Lunatics
Life in itself Is nothing,
An empty cup,
a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY
"Spring"
A man's life from birth to death was a series of transition rites which brought him nearer and nearer to his ancestors.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Things Fall Apart
Life is a journey we are always travelling; but, unlike most others, seldom care we to reach the end.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore
Of a great sea beyond.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Roman Sentinel"
Life is an immense dream. Why toil?
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended--
What troubled my soul?--I remember not.
LI BAI
"Awakening From Sleep on a Spring Day"
Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
ROBERT FULGHUM
Uh-Oh
Life is like our game of whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt