LIFE QUOTES XX

quotations about life

Life is a constant series of new and familiar challenges, adversities that wax and wane until the end.

ANDREW PASCHAL

"Singles Going Steady", PopMatters, September 1, 2016


Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

"Ashes of Life"

Tags: Edna St. Vincent Millay


Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

JACK LONDON

White Fang


In the chequered area of human experience the seasons are all mingled as in the golden age: fruit and blossom hang together; in the same moment the sickle is reaping and the seed is sprinkled; one tends the green cluster and another treads the wine-press. Nay, in each of our lives harvest and spring-time are continually one, until Death himself gathers us and sows us anew in his invisible fields.

GEORGE ELIOT

Daniel Deronda


I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Mosquitoes

Tags: William Faulkner


A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams

Tags: Alan Lightman


What mean the discipline and trial of life? What mean the dark shocks of disappointment, the breaking of hopes, the sundering of human ties, the terrible baptism of suffering and of fire, if there is not something beyond? If in every bath of sweat and tears, every drop of sorrow, every falling wave, there is something by which I am led more near to God, by which my soul is made stronger and purified, then I can understand life. But if I am hurled in the chaos of life--battered by sorrow today, and kicked by misfortune tomorrow--stricken by my fondest hopes, deluded and deceived, and all is to end in nothingness, I must confess that you present a problem I cannot solve.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: Doris Lessing


There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.

SAUL BELLOW

AGNI interview, 1997


My life is a tree,
Yoke-fellow of the earth;
Pledged,
By roots too deep for remembrance,
To stand hard against the storm,
To fill by Place.
(But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing:
Wind-free are the wings of my bird: she hath built no mortal nest.)

KARLE WILSON BAKER

The Tree

Tags: Karle Wilson Baker


Life was a storm to wander through.

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET

"The Quality of Courage"

Tags: Stephen Vincent Benet


Life is sweet.

ENGLISH PROVERB

Tags: English proverbs


Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.

ROBERT E. HOWARD

Kull: Exile of Atlantis

Tags: Robert E. Howard


Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.

JEAN ANOUILH

The Collected Plays

Tags: Jean Anouilh


Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.

SAUL ALINSKY

Rules for Radicals

Tags: Saul Alinsky


Life is a continual march towards the grave.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

FRANCIS BACON

Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon


If you always do the easy and comfortable thing, life ends up being difficult and uncomfortable. If you do the difficult and uncomfortable thing, however, life ends up being easy and comfortable.

ERNIE J. ZELINSKI

Look Ma, Life's Easy

Tags: Ernie J. Zelinski


Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"


To realize life as absolute is to be existentially emancipated from life itself in that very realization, which understands that life is not life. The same applies to death.

MASAO ABE

Zen and the Modern World

Tags: Masao Abe