quotations about life
And life itself spoke this secret to me. "Behold," it said, "I am that which must ever overcome itself."
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.
ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE
"Nephelidia"
Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES
Leisure
Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
My Day
To live is to war with trolls.
HENRIK IBSEN
dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt
I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.
TIM ALLEN
Reader's Digest, Oct. 2001
Each day is a branch of the Tree of Life laden heavily with fruit. If we lie down lazily beneath it, we may starve; but if we shake the branches, some of the fruit will fall for us.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
Life is a string of uncooked macaroni on a double strand of sewing thread. Not even spray painted gold. Some people have strings of expensive pearls for lives, but not me ... I have macaroni and sewing thread.
ANN WUEHLER
The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds
Life is a series of abandonings.
JEFF ABBOTT
The Last Minute
Life is futile unless it be directed towards a definite goal.
STEFAN ZWEIG
Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman
Philosophers wrestling with the big questions of life are no longer alone. Now scientists are struggling to define life as they manipulate it, look for it on other planets, and even create it in test tubes.
SETH BORENSTEIN
USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007
My life is one long blooper reel!
TOM WILSON
Ziggy, Jan. 12, 2000
The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
JEROME K. JEROME
"The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway"
Life is a song, rhythmic and sweet,
Love is its tune;
Treble and base blended in one,
Perfect as June.
ELIZA H. MORTON
"The Song of Life"
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
preface, Autobiography
The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn