LIFE QUOTES IX

quotations about life

Life is a banquet of unexpected flavors. Sometimes you like the taste, sometimes you don't.

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

The Butlerian Jihad


What misery to live in this world! We are like men whose enemies are at the door, who must not lay aside their arms, even while sleeping or eating, and are always in dread lest the foe should enter the fortress by some breach in the walls. O my Lord and my all! How canst thou wish us to prize such a wretched existence?

TERESA OF AVILA

The Interior Castle

Tags: Teresa of Avila


Life is made up of marble and mud.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

The House of the Seven Gables

Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne


To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you.

ANAIS NIN

diary, Mar. 6, 1936


Life compulsively dangled the possibility of life. Life, the dramatist on speed. Life, that couldn't stop with its foreshadows and ironies and symbols and clues, its wretched jokes and false endings and twists. Life with its hopeless addiction to plot.

GLEN DUNCAN

Talulla Rising


I have ever had the conviction, resistant to all rational considerations, that at some unspecified future moment the continuous rehearsal which is my life, with its so many misreadings, is slips and fluffs, will be done with and that the real drama for which I have ever and with earnestness been preparing will at last begin. It is a common delusion.

JOHN BANVILLE

The Sea

Tags: John Banville


But frankly, take life as it is--life, I mean, regarded by itself--life on this earth, without a thought of the hereafter, your life, my life, human life in general, considered under its purely earthly aspects and relationships; let us look at it as a whole, and we must admit that it is not all darkness; it has its crimson dawns, its rosy sunsets. It is not all clouds, it is not all winter; but it has its summer days in which "it is a luxury to breathe the breath of life."

JAMES PLATT

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


You can buy life only with life.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


I think we can all agree life is a lot better when a dog chasing bears is one of the biggest news stories of the day.

JOHN HALTIWANGER

"This Savage Dog Chased Bears Out Of Its Neighborhood Like A Total Boss", Elite Daily, September 1, 2016


Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face

ALANIS MORISSETTE

"Ironic"

Tags: Alanis Morissette


Life is more sweet than I
Knew: the shifted scene
Less wavered, more trimmed with light,
Than the years before.
Look down. People pass over the ice
As a file of thin ghosts creep,
And fade beyond the hill.
You, and you, and you--
Small souls, shrinking away.

MARK TURBYFILL

"Journey"


If you haven't fought for your life for something you want, you don't know what's life all about.

ROBERT STONE

Dog Soldiers

Tags: Robert Stone


I just can't get used to life.

EUGENE IONESCO

Rhinoceros

Tags: Eugene Ionesco


We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done and attained.

JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE

The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe


Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain.

EMIL CIORAN

A Short History of Decay

Tags: Emile Cioran


Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

"Modern Fiction", The Common Reader

Tags: Virginia Woolf


If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.

ARNOLD BENNETT

The Reasonable Life

Tags: Arnold Bennett


The life you think you should want ... is always the life that looks safest.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.

FREDERIK POHL

Gateway


So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.

GEORGE ELIOT

Felix Holt