LIFE QUOTES XXXI

quotations about life

Life is the tamer of the wild beast of humanity.

EDWIN LEIBFREED

"Childhood", A Soliloquy of Life

Tags: Edwin Leibfreed


But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Women in Love


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


God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.

CHARLES LINDBERGH

Reader's Digest, July 1972


My theory is to enjoy life, but the practice is against it.

CHARLES LAMB

letter to William Wordsworth, Mar. 20, 1822

Tags: Charles Lamb


Man's life is entirely in his operations, which may all be classed under three heads: he thinks, he feels, and he acts -- these three modes of activity exhaust his powers.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

The Doctrine of Life

Tags: William Batchelder Greene


Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Feast of Stephen

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All our mortal lives are set in danger and perplexity: one day to prosper, and the next -- who knows? When all is well, then look for rocks ahead.

SOPHOCLES

Philoctetes


Life is strange and changeful, and the crystal is in the steel at the point of fracture, and the toad bears a jewel in its forehead, and the meaning of moments passes like the breeze that scarcely ruffles the leaf of the willow.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

All the King's Men


Life is a series of abandonings.

JEFF ABBOTT

The Last Minute

Tags: Jeff Abbott


Whether there is to be another world or not, it seems to me we ought to be deeply thankful for having been permitted to live, even though we see no prospect of living again. It is something to have had this wonderful gift of "life." Yesterday but a little dust, today alive, with life before us, and the powers of speech, observation, and thought--the capacity to understand something of the earth around and the heavens above; with bodily health, a properly trained mind, internal resources adequate to the inevitable difficulties that will have to be overcome; the culture of the understanding and taste, an object in life earnestly sought after; the happy time of courtship; the affection of wife and children, the interest in watching their progress forward up the hill that you are steadily going down--all indicate that we should so live that while we live "life must be worth living," and that it is possible to make life not only endurable, but something unquestionably good, happy, and desirable, by turning to their best uses our capabilities, and using wisely the immense resources in this world, of which we have the benefit, and for which we ought to be thankful.

JAMES PLATT

"Is Life Worth Living?", Platt's Essays


Every day is a careful balance fought between the despondency that threatens to swamp me and the incredible joy of living.

CHRIS ABANI

Kalakuta Republic

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Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary


What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES

Leisure

Tags: William Henry Davies


How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, "When I am a big boy." But what is that? The big boy says, "When I grow up." And then, grown up, he says, "When I get married." But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to "When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Feast of Stephen


Life is not a mere exterior movement, the movement of the being in its relations to other beings, but it is also, and especially, an internal movement from the visible to the invisible, from the real to the ideal, from the finite to the infinite.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: Sabine Baring-Gould


I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods

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Dreams dawn and fly: friends smile and die,
Like spring flowers.
Our vaunted life is one long funeral.
Men dig graves, with bitter tears,
For their dead hopes; and all,
Mazed with doubts, and sick with fears,
Count the hours.

MATTHEW ARNOLD

"A Question: To Fausta"

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Is all our Life, then but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?

LEWIS CARROLL

Sylvie and Bruno

Tags: Lewis Carroll


If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.

IRVIN D. YALOM

The Schopenhauer Cure

Tags: Irvin D. Yalom