LIFE QUOTES XXXI

quotations about life

One of my teachers in grammar school, a nun, used to say, "La vie, c'est bien complique." I'm not sure what that meant to me at the time, but it's become the guiding principle of my life, my writing, my interactions with others. Life is very complicated indeed, and that's what makes it both difficult and interesting. Stereotypes, racism, xenophobia -- most negativity in the world comes out of the natural human desire to oversimplify. Life isn't simple.

JEANNETTE ANGELL

"A talk with author Jeannette Angell: From college lecturer to callgirl and back", Souixland, Oct. 8, 2004

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Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Middlesex

Tags: Jeffrey Eugenides


Life was a storm to wander through.

STEPHEN VINCENT BENET

"The Quality of Courage"

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Life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

All the King's Men


Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

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Life is a warfare against the malice of others.

BALTASAR GRACIAN

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

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Life is nothing but a statement of what happens to be.

GLEN DUNCAN

The Last Werewolf

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Some things in life are out of your control. You can make it a party or a tragedy.

NORA ROBERTS

Vision in White

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Life is an arrow, therefore you must know
What mark to aim at, how to use the bow--
Then draw it to the head and let it go!

HENRY VAN DYKE

"Epigrams and Greetings"

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Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don't forget.

ROBERT FULGHUM

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten


Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which their so-called existence here is as nothing. Which is the truer life of Shakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the Odyssey, and of Jane Austen -- the life which palpitated with sensible warm motion within their own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are still palpitating in ours?

SAMUEL BUTLER

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


The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.

BRUCE LEE

Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

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Life appears in a vast variety and innumerable succession of individual forms, since the most salient character of the universe is just that it ceaselessly gives birth to living individuals.

JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON

Man and the Cosmos: An Introduction to Metaphysics

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I accept that life is uncertain--that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing--a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.

ELIZABETH LESSER

Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

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So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.

ALAN LIGHTMAN

Mr G: A Novel About the Creation

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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

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If life gives you rotten eggs, make a crepe.

ALI MARGO

"Princess: Life is a bowl of cherries -- so throw that into your crepe", Aspen Times, May 19, 2016


Every day is a careful balance fought between the despondency that threatens to swamp me and the incredible joy of living.

CHRIS ABANI

Kalakuta Republic

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To live is to war with trolls.

HENRIK IBSEN

dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt

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I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.

JOSH GROBAN

O Magazine, Jan. 2007

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