LIFE QUOTES XV

quotations about life

Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to Mrs. Martha Washington, Jun. 18, 1775

Tags: George Washington


Life is like invading Russia. A blitz start, massed shakos, plumes dancing like a flustered henhouse; a period of svelte progress recorded in ebullient despatches as the enemy falls back; then the beginning of a long, morale-sapping trudge with rations getting shorter and the first snowflakes upon your face. The enemy burns Moscow and you yield to General January, whose fingernails are very icicles. Bitter retreat. Harrying Cossacks. Eventually you fall beneath a boy-gunner's grapeshot while crossing some Polish river not even marked on your general's map.

JULIAN BARNES

Talking It Over

Tags: Julian Barnes


Life is often like that, the best balancing on a knife edge with the worst.

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

Obsidian Butterfly

Tags: Laurell K. Hamilton


Life is short and tedious, and is wholly spent in wishing; we trust to find rest and enjoyment at some future time, often at an age when our best blessings, youth and health, have already left us. When at last I that time has arrived, it surprises us in the midst of fresh desires; we have got no farther when we are attacked by a fever which kills us; if we had been cured, it would only have been to give us more time for other desires.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Mankind", Les Caractères


Life is too short for aught but high endeavor.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"Life Is Too Short"


Our lives teach us who we are.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

London Independent, Feb. 4, 1990

Tags: Salman Rushdie


I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Mosquitoes

Tags: William Faulkner


Life is a continual march towards the grave.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Life is an uncertain flower--oft by the tempest o'erthrown.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Life should be a fruitful garden,
Fair in blossom, and rich in seed;
Conscience, the sharp and faithful warden,
Watchful against the frost and weed.
Study should its labyrinths trace
Where wisdom's pleasant waters flow;
And industry the garden grace
With plants that choicest gifts bestow.

C. B. LANGSTON

"What Should Life Be?"


Rest not! Life is sweeping by;
Go and dare before you die.
Something mighty and sublime
Leave behind to conquer time!

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

"Haste Not--Rest Not"


When man would make a rose with tools, he fashions petals and leaves of wax, colors them, manufactures a stalk by the same mechanical process -- and the rose is done. When God makes a rose, he lets a bird or a puff of wind drop a seed into the ground; out of the seed there emerges a stalk; and out of the stalk, branches; and on these branches, buds; and out of these buds roses unfold; and the rose is never done, for it goes on endlessly repeating itself. This is the difference between manufacture and growth. Man's method is the method of manufacture; God's method is the method of growth. What man makes is a finished product -- death. What God makes is an always finishing and never finished product -- life.

LYMAN ABBOTT

The Theology of an Evolutionist

Tags: Lyman Abbott


You have not lost all when you have life.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and goddamn it, you refuse to let it get to you. you fight. you cry. You curse. Then you go about your business of living. That's how I've done it. There's no other way.

MARILYN MONROE

My Story

Tags: Marilyn Monroe


Ah, what is life!
'T is but a passing touch upon the world;
A print upon the beaches of the earth
Next flowing wave will wash away.

ANNA KATHERINE GREEN

"Life"

Tags: Anna Katherine Green


Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"


For drinking Life there are two cups:
The No Cup is bitter, the Yes Cup is yummy --
Now, which one would you rather have in your tummy?

MARGARET ATWOOD

The Year of the Flood

Tags: Margaret Atwood


Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk.

CYRIL CONNOLLY

The Unquiet Grave

Tags: Cyril Connolly


Life must be lived with courage, with climbing and risks, else there is no happiness, no hope, no true success, no future.

JENNETTE LEE

The Ibsen Secret

Tags: Jennette Lee


One Moment in Annihilation's Waste,
One Moment, of the Well of Life to taste--
The Stars are Setting and the Caravan
Starts for the Dawn of Nothing -- Oh, make haste!

EDWARD FITZGERALD

Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Tags: Edward Fitzgerald