quotations about life
If you are good life is good.
ROALD DAHL
Matilda
Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Life is like a cocktail, made up for the most part of sweet things, and tinged with a dash of bitters. We must drain it to the dregs to get at the cherry, just as we must live a full and rounded life to know all its pleasures.
EDGAR GUEST
Home Rhymes
Between a gasp and a sigh, a life can change forever.
TIM LEBBON
Face
Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.
DAVID GERROLD
Alternate Gerrolds
Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.
JEFF ABBOTT
Adrenaline
Life, how sweet soever it seems, is a draught mingled with bitter ingredients; some drink deeper than others before they come at them: But, if they do not swim at the top for youth to taste them, it is ten to one but old age will find them thick at the bottom. And it is the employment of faith and patience, and the work of wisdom and virtue, to teach us to drink the sweet part down with pleasure and thankfulness, and to swallow the bitter without reluctance.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
Life! Don't talk to me about life.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Life at the greatest is but a froward child, that must be humor'd and coax'd a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
Life is a constant series of new and familiar challenges, adversities that wax and wane until the end.
ANDREW PASCHAL
"Singles Going Steady", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration
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
Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
If you always do the easy and comfortable thing, life ends up being difficult and uncomfortable. If you do the difficult and uncomfortable thing, however, life ends up being easy and comfortable.
ERNIE J. ZELINSKI
Look Ma, Life's Easy
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
GEORGE ELIOT
Janet's Repentance
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions