LIFE QUOTES XXVIII

quotations about life

Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

preface, Autobiography


Living is a hazardous profession.

TOBSHA LEARNER

The Witch of Cologne

Tags: Tobsha Learner


Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.

WALTER LIPPMANN

Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest

Tags: Walter Lippmann


One could not do without repetition in life, like the beating of the heart, but it was also true that the beating of the heart was not all there was to life.

KOBO ABE

The Woman in the Dunes

Tags: Kobo Abe


Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.

STEFAN ZWEIG

The World of Yesterday


Philosophers wrestling with the big questions of life are no longer alone. Now scientists are struggling to define life as they manipulate it, look for it on other planets, and even create it in test tubes.

SETH BORENSTEIN

USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007

Tags: Seth Borenstein


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

Tags: Julian Barnes


The loves and hours of the life of a man,
They are swift and sad, being born of the sea.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

The Triumph of Time


The understanding of human existence that sees life as having death as its inevitable end presumes that life is lived only in opposition to dying and seeks the conquest of death; that is, immortality, or eternal life. Here, death is always seen as alien to life, something to be overcome. In contrast to this, the understanding of human existence as a continuous living-and-dying does not view life and death as objects in mutual opposition but as two aspects of indivisible reality. Present life is understood as something that undergoes continuous living-and-dying.

MASAO ABE

Zen and the Modern World

Tags: Masao Abe


Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.

JOHN BARTH

The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

Tags: John Barth


To live is to war with trolls.

HENRIK IBSEN

dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt

Tags: Henrik Ibsen


Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.

THEODOR W. ADORNO

Minima Moralia

Tags: Theodor W. Adorno


All life is only a set of pictures in the brain, among which there is no difference betwixt those born of real things and those born of inward dreamings, and no cause to value the one above the other.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Silver Key"

Tags: H. P. Lovecraft


And life itself spoke this secret to me. "Behold," it said, "I am that which must ever overcome itself."

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Women in Love


Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour.

JACK LONDON

The Sea Wolf

Tags: Jack London


Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

Table-Talk


Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.

JAMES JOYCE

Ulysses

Tags: James Joyce


Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


Flirting with death is the spice of life.

MARGARET LOCK

Twice Dead

Tags: Margaret Lock