quotations about life
Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
JAMES JOYCE
Ulysses
By the time you learn the rules of life, you're too old to play the game.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Arrowsmith
The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.
BRUCE LEE
Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living
Some moments in a life, and they needn't be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one's own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
My definition of life is a series of experiences, and the more you have the better off you are.
EMILY FEISTRITZER
"Former nun sees life as a series of experiences, including lucrative ones", Washington Post, August 21, 2016
Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms on other planets and far stars, forms that would seem bizarre to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life-forms.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Dark Brotherhood"
Life is a marathon. It takes time, patience and commitment to creating a comeback.
GREG M. DAVIS
"Donald Trump Does Not Know the Struggle of African Americans", Time, September 1, 2016
Life and death have been lacking in my life.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
prologue, Discussion
As long as you were prepared to stay in it life found room for you. Life was like that, helplessly promiscuous, a doorman who let everyone in.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper, and the next -- who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.
SOPHOCLES
Philoctetes
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Well yet, this life such as it is, yet we love it, and loath we are to end it; and if it be in hazard by the law, what running, riding, posting, suing, bribing, and if all will not serve, what breaking prison is there for it!
LANCELOT ANDREWES
Ninety-six Sermons
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
Tell someone you love them because life is short, but shout it in Klingon because life is also terrifying and confusing.
ANONYMOUS
Like water spilt upon the ground--alas,
Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass;
Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Epigrams and Greetings"
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
JOHN LENNON
"Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)", Double Fantasy
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
GARRISON KEILLOR
"Could I have been any more inept?", Salon, Oct. 26, 1999
In such a porcelain life one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one's hopes in a pile of broken crockery.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Bowles, Aug. 1858?