quotations about life
I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.
JOHN KEATS
letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, May 3, 1818
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
All that is born and destroyed is reborn in the sweep of the ages; Life like a decimal ever recurring repeats the old figure.
SRI AUROBINDO
Gems from Sri Aurobindo
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
Weeks passed, a whirl of lights and sound and laughter, a fever dream, vertiginous, roaring, mad, he quit his job, not caring what came after, and struck out blindly; money enough he had, and life, by Christ, would go now as he bade; he got it by the throat, he was its master; sing! went his whip, and life danced on the faster.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet
EMILY DICKINSON
"That it will never come again"
Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY
The Ghost in My Life
Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Life is too short to blend in.
PARIS HILTON
Confessions of an Heiress
Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy--well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
You have not lost all when you have life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
What is our life? A play of passion.
Our mirth the music of division.
Our mother's wombs the tyring houses be,
Where we are drest for this short Comedy.
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
"On the Life of Man"
To have found meaning in life is thus the only certain antidote to the deliberate seeking of death. But at the same time, in a strange dialectical way, it is death that endows life with its deepest, most unique meaning.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
Surviving the Holocaust
The whole world's a bottle,
And life's but a dram,
When the bottle gets empty,
It sure ain't worth a damn.
BOB DYLAN
"Moonshiner"
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Theologian's Tale", Tales of a Wayside Inn
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"
One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
Nothing was certain; there were many strange twists and devious turns as one hopped down the overgrown bunnytrail of life.
STEPHEN KING
"Big Driver", Full Dark, No Stars
Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
MARY OLIVER
"Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?", West Wind