quotations about life
Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world's wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly ever wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.
JACK LONDON
The Turtles of Tasman
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
My life is one long blooper reel!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Jan. 12, 2000
Life divine! O life eternal!
Man cannot translate the thought.
Strong the chain that God hath welded;
Link on link hath chain been wrought.
Fabric new each day is woven,
Woven it on God's own loom.
We the threads can ne'er unravel,
Hidden they in Nature's womb.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Dost Thou Know?"
Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your arrival is already recorded.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
In bowling and in life, if a person made the spares, the strikes would take care of themselves.
STEPHEN KING (as Richard Bachman)
Blaze
Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
FRANK HERBERT
Chapterhouse: Dune
Funny. You talk of life as if it were a train you have to catch up with. How long have you been trying, three days? And not got a glimpse of it yet, in spite of caviar and champagne?
VICKI BAUM
Grand Hotel
Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.
SRI AUROBINDO
attributed, Humanimal
Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.
DONALD TRUMP
interview, Playboy, Mar. 1990
They say there is nothing new under any sun. But if each life is not new, each single life, then why are we born?
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Dispossessed
Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
We cross the stream of life at different places. Some wade through the shallows in a drought, others have to swim across deep waters in a storm.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?
EDWARD ALBEE
The Play About the Baby
Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
Study more how to die than how to live; if you would live till you were old, live as if you were to die when you are young.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Q: Is life a dream or a meditation? A: Life is a meditation when you know it is a dream.
BABA HARI DASS
Yoga Journal, May 1977
Life is a gift horse in my opinion.
J. D. SALINGER
"Teddy"