quotations about life
To keep from dying is not the same as "to live."
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Life", Essays and Letters
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
You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
In a dream thou mayst live a lifetime, and all be forgotten in the morning:
Even such is life, and so soon perisheth its memory.
MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER
Proverbial Philosophy
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
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
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
attributed, The Waking Dream
Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
About the time we have subdued the fires of youth that threaten to consume us, we find ourselves battling with the infirmities of age.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
Life is the thing--the song of life--
The eager plow, the thirsty knife!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Imperturbable"
He who loveth, knoweth the inner sun; he see'th Life's blaze.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
The rich pearl of life,
Soon moulders in its blackened urn, the tomb.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.
GEORGE MEREDITH
"Hard Weather"
Life is a song, rhythmic and sweet,
Love is its tune;
Treble and base blended in one,
Perfect as June.
ELIZA H. MORTON
"The Song of Life"
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral