LIFE QUOTES XXXIV

quotations about life

Life is not a bed of roses.

ENGLISH PROVERB


If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.

IRVIN D. YALOM

The Schopenhauer Cure

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I have not wasted life, but life hath wasted me.

BHARTRHARI

"Against the Desire of Worldly Things"

Tags: Bhartrhari


Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

RICHARD BACH

Illusions

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All of life is a foreign country.

JACK KEROUAC

letter, June 24, 1949

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The world ... is full of people who never knew what hit 'em, their lives are over before they wake up.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich

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Remember that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.

SUSAN ROSE BLAUNER

How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me


Man's life is entirely in his operations, which may all be classed under three heads: he thinks, he feels, and he acts -- these three modes of activity exhaust his powers.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

The Doctrine of Life

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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

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.

JACK LONDON

The Sea-Wolf


Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of the Affections", Les Caractères


Life is often wasted in a search after unattainable advantages, and generally, through the scruples of pride and vanity, our happiness is delayed from day to day, by a rejection of those pleasures and benefits which are within our reach.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

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Life is a Shylock; always it demands
The fullest userer's interest for each pleasure.
Gifts are not freely scattered by its hands;
We make returns for every borrowed treasure.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"The Law"


Life and death have been lacking in my life.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

prologue, Discussion

Tags: Jorge Luis Borges


It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


Human life [is] ... a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.

ERIC BERNE

Games People Play

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He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

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Every day is the same thing out the door
Feel further away then ever before
Some things in life, it gets too late to learn
Well, I'm lost somewhere
I must have made a few bad turns

BOB DYLAN

"Highlands"


When life looks like it's falling apart, it may just be falling in place.

BEVERLY SOLOMON

Good Housekeeping, Aug. 2009

Tags: Beverly Solomon


We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.

JOSEPHINE HART

Damage

Tags: Josephine Hart