LIFE QUOTES XVI

quotations about life

You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and goddamn it, you refuse to let it get to you. you fight. you cry. You curse. Then you go about your business of living. That's how I've done it. There's no other way.

MARILYN MONROE

My Story

Tags: Marilyn Monroe


The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

GEOFFREY CHAUCER

"Parliament of Fowls"

Tags: Geoffrey Chaucer


Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

SAMUEL BUTLER

"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science


Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

Philosophical Essays

Tags: Bertrand Russell


Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Poor Richard's Almanac

Tags: Benjamin Franklin


Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY

The Ghost in My Life

Tags: Susan B. Anthony


The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.

FRANK HERBERT

Children of Dune


The whole world's a bottle,
And life's but a dram,
When the bottle gets empty,
It sure ain't worth a damn.

BOB DYLAN

"Moonshiner"


All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages; Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure.

SRI AUROBINDO

Gems from Sri Aurobindo


There is nothing men are so anxious to keep, and yet are so careless about, as life.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Mankind", Les Caractères

Tags: Jean de La Bruyere


Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.

JOHN BANVILLE

The Sea

Tags: John Banville


Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map.

JULIAN BARNES

Talking It Over

Tags: Julian Barnes


Life should be touched, not strangled.

RAY BRADBURY

Farewell Summer

Tags: Ray Bradbury


Life calls the tune, we dance.

JOHN GALSWORTHY

Five Tales

Tags: John Galsworthy


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


One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk

Tags: Amos Bronson Alcott


Life is made up of three kinds of people -- those who live it, those afraid to, those in between.

LOUISE ERDRICH

Love Medicine


Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Ethics of Ambiguity


That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet

EMILY DICKINSON

"That it will never come again"


Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?

MARY OLIVER

"Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?", West Wind

Tags: Mary Oliver