LIFE QUOTES XX

quotations about life

Life asks for a preparation as complete as we can afford; the great contest should be fought with spirit but with good temper always; we should never think the game lost while it is still going; and finally we should have the satisfaction of quitting the field able to say: I did my best.

ARTHUR LYNCH

Moods of Life

Tags: Arthur Lynch


Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's


Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.

WILLIAM JAMES

The Varieties of Religious Experience

Tags: William James


I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.

SAUL BELLOW

Henderson the Rain King

Tags: Saul Bellow


A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Einstein's Dreams

Tags: Alan Lightman


You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

MARK TWAIN

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Tags: Mark Twain


This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.

CHARLES BAUDELAIRE

"Anywhere Out of the World", Le Spleen de Paris

Tags: Charles Baudelaire


The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: Aristotle


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


Lives are snowflakes -- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods


Life is, alas, one eternal combat.

SARAH BERNHARDT

The Idol of Paris

Tags: Sarah Bernhardt


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


Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.

WOODY ALLEN

Husbands and Wives

Tags: Woody Allen


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

Tags: Ernie J. Zelinski


If a man knew how to live he would never die.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

All the King's Men

Tags: Robert Penn Warren


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


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


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


Where they were not alive with rottenness, quick with unclean life, there were merely the unburied dead -- clean and noble, like well-preserved mummies, but not alive.

JACK LONDON

"What Life Means to Me", Revolution and Other Essays

Tags: Jack London