quotations about life
A whole lifetime was too short to bring out, the full flavour; to extract every ounce of pleasure, every shade of meaning.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
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
To what can one compare our life on earth?
To a flock of geese
Waddling about in the snow
Leaving a faint trace of their passage.
SU SHI
"Remembrance"
Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore
Of a great sea beyond.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Roman Sentinel"
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.
ANNE RICE
Servant of the Bones
Life is not about having a good time. We're told you do certain things. You behave a certain way and happiness will come your way. Which isn't true. I don't think we're put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we're put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.
JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1992
We've been told there's a certain way to live ... that this is living ... and we ... we never really questioned it. We just sort of went along. But what if it's not the best way? What if there's another way that's better? What if there's something more?!
WALTER WYKES
The Profession
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, Apr. 1873
The truth about the world ... is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
Life is a pressure cooker and whether you remain serene or become stressed-out depends on how you handle that pressure.
KEVIN LEMAN
Stopping Stress before It Stops You: A Game Plan for Every Mom
Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears,
A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.
ARTHUR SYMONS
"In the Wood of Finvara"
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Well, you live your life the way you want, I live mine the way I want. We see who makes it farther.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Simple Truth
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
Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Mrs. Martha Washington, Jun. 18, 1775
There is no way to penetrate the surface of life but by attacking it earnestly at a particular point.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order