LIFE QUOTES XIX

quotations about life

Life should be a fruitful garden,
Fair in blossom, and rich in seed;
Conscience, the sharp and faithful warden,
Watchful against the frost and weed.
Study should its labyrinths trace
Where wisdom's pleasant waters flow;
And industry the garden grace
With plants that choicest gifts bestow.

C. B. LANGSTON

"What Should Life Be?"


Life is like a cocktail, made up for the most part of sweet things, and tinged with a dash of bitters. We must drain it to the dregs to get at the cherry, just as we must live a full and rounded life to know all its pleasures.

EDGAR GUEST

Home Rhymes

Tags: Edgar Guest


I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

JOHN KEATS

letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, May 3, 1818

Tags: John Keats


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 charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

Thoughts


Life is all about people leaving.

SUSAN HUBBARD

The Society of S

Tags: Susan Hubbard


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


Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.

JOHN KEATS

"Sleep and Poetry"

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Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

Tags: Honoré de Balzac


Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.

JEFF ABBOTT

Adrenaline

Tags: Jeff Abbott


I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

Babbitt

Tags: Sinclair Lewis


What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.

ANNE LAMOTT

"Time Lost and Found", Sunset

Tags: Anne Lamott


You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.

PHILIP ROTH

The Dying Animal


How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.

PHILIP ROTH

The Professor of Desire

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Your responsibility is to be an explorer, not a tourist in this adventure that is your life.

MARY ANNE RADMACHER

Honey In Your Heart

Tags: Mary Anne Radmacher


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"

Tags: Robert Browning


Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.

HOMER

The Iliad

Tags: Homer


I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

RANSOM RIGGS

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Tags: Ransom Riggs


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

Tags: Cormac McCarthy