quotations about life
One must live as he can.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?
MARY OLIVER
"Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982", Dream Work
Why, what in the world should we care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time?
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah
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
Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life! Don't talk to me about life.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A Free Man's Worship
Real life ... it was an ambiguous world, where actions sometimes had no meaning, where chaos reigned and no one was allowed to see the big picture, only their small portion of it.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Policy
Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"Life! I Know Not What Thou Art"
The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.
ALBERT CAMUS
attributed, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd
Life is an incurable disease.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
To Dr. Scarborough
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES
Leisure
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.
SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR
The Coming of Age
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
How good is man's life, the mere living!
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!
ROBERT BROWNING
"Saul"