quotations about life
All of life is a foreign country.
JACK KEROUAC
letter, June 24, 1949
It's a great time to be alive and talking about life. We just learned that geologists found what appear to be fossilized stromatolites in 3.7-billion-year-old rocks in Greenland. That suggests life popped up on Earth ridiculously soon after the planet formed. And last we learned about the discovery of a planet orbiting Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun. Meanwhile we now know planets are common. Maybe the universe is simply throbbing with life!
JOEL ACHENBACH
"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016
Life is a mixed bag of success and failure.
NAWAZUDDIN SIDDIQUI
The Times of India, May 25, 2016
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Life", Essays and Letters
He is dead already who doth not feel
Life is worth living still.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Is Life Worth Living?", Lyrical Poems
Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped.
BERNARD BECKETT
Malcolm & Juliet
Who fears death does not enjoy life.
SPANISH PROVERB
Work, whiskey, and cards were life.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
ROBERT BROWNING
A Death in the Desert
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
By the time you learn the rules of life, you're too old to play the game.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Life is the flash in black heavens.
HENRI CAZALIS
"Always"
We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
We humans seem disastrously in love with this thing
(whatever it is) that glitters on the earth--
we call it life.
ANNE CARSON
Grief Lessons: Four Plays
When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.
HENRIK IBSEN
When We Dead Awaken
Life is a theatre of alarms and contentions.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
Life is magical. There is something wonderful in being alive, in having within one's self all sorts of possibilities.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
BONG R. OSORIO
"The purpose of life is a life of purpose", The Philippine Star, June 20, 2016
Human life is a pilgrimage from the unknown to the unknown. No one knows whence he emanated or whither he is bound.
FEMI ABBAS
"A decade of royalty and faith", The Nation, September 2, 2016
Tell someone you love them because life is short, but shout it in Klingon because life is also terrifying and confusing.
ANONYMOUS