quotations about life
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Notice: Undefined variable: id in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 37
"On Life", Essays and Letters
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped.
BERNARD BECKETT
Malcolm & Juliet
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Studies in Classic American Literature
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life is the flash in black heavens.
HENRI CAZALIS
"Always"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Remember that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
SUSAN ROSE BLAUNER
How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
This world is a vaporous jest at best,
Tossed off by the gods in laughter,
And a cruel attempt at wit were it,
If nothing better came after.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"A Gray Mood"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Everything happens as though I were only one of the particular existences of some great incomprehensible and central being.... Sometimes this great totality of life appears to me so dramatically beautiful that it plunges me into ecstasy. But more often it seems like a monstrous beast that penetrates and surpasses me and which is everywhere, within me and outside me.... And terror grips and envelops me more powerfully from moment to moment.... My only way out is to write, to make others aware of it, so as not to have to feel all of it alone, to get rid of however small a portion of it.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life -- a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Is Civilization Progress?", Reader's Digest, July 1964
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life ... is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. It's about perseverance, about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Thomas
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life is a theatre of alarms and contentions.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life like a shroud on men and women lies.
MAURICE BROWNE
"At Dusk"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life meaning is always a derivative phenomenon that materializes when we have transcended ourselves, when we have forgotten ourselves and become absorbed in someone (or something) outside ourselves.
IRVIN D. YALOM
The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Adonais
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
The greatest philosophy of life should be to live for the benefit of others as much as one lives for the benefit of self. And that is what philosophers call a footprint on the sands of time.
FEMI ABBAS
"A decade of royalty and faith", The Nation, September 2, 2016
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
A stream roars downward to a hidden sea
That slumbers moonless, starless, without bound,
Whence comes nor voice, nor form, nor any sound:
The stream is Life, the sea--Eternity.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Life"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Black river of torture, writhing senselessly, whirlpool of life, in vain I search thee for one moment's rest.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Let me leap naked through life's testing flame,
And bear to lose, and yet endure to win.
KENNETH RAND
"The World-Slave"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"A Psalm of Life"
Notice: Undefined index: bio in /hermes/walnacweb03/walnacweb03ak/b2149/pow.notablequote/htdocs/l/includes/quoter_subj.php on line 65