quotations about life
The lives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being choked by climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted by dead men.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
"Seeds", The Triumph of the Egg
A somewhat depressing lesson that we learn from life is that there is no guaranteed sure-fire formula for happiness.
MICHAEL W. EYSENCK
Happiness: Facts and Myths
Football is a team game. So is life.
JOE NAMATH
attributed, Where Football Is King
This is one of those days which I am obliged to record as almost a blank in my existence.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS
diary, November 23, 1837
You should live everyday like it's your birthday.
PARIS HILTON
attributed, The Ultimate Book of Quotations
The worst of all fears is the fear of living.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
Theodore Roosevelt: An Autobiography
Most people can't imagine a life that is any different from the one they are actually living. They can dream about it, they can even go into the streets and demonstrate for it, but they still can't imagine what it would be like.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
The one thing life has taught me is that most people spend their lives bottled up inside their houses doing the things they hate.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
Yerma
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
MARY OLIVER
"The Summer Day", New and Selected Poems
Life, just as we first thought, is playing grownup.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Come on, Marge, I want to shake off the dust of this one-horse town. I want to explore the world. I want to watch TV in a different time zone. I want to visit strange, exotic malls. I'm sick of eating hoagies. I want a grinder, a sub, a foot-long hero. I want to live, Marge! Won't you let me live? Won't you, please?!
HOMER SIMPSON
"Fear of Flying", The Simpsons
Life is a riddle we die in guessing.
CLARA MARCELLE FARRAR GREENE
"Before the Wedding"
Life is what you celebrate. All of it. Even its end.
JOANNE HARRIS
Chocolat
There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.
GEORGE SANTAYANA
"War Shrines", Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies
Life is but a prelude.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Life is a spark between two identical voids, the darkness before birth and the one after death.
IRVIN D. YALOM
When Nietzsche Wept
Life is not an illogicality; yet it is a trap for logicians. It looks just a little more mathematical and regular than it is; its exactitude is obvious, but its inexactitude is hidden; its wildness lies in wait.
G. K. CHESTERTON
Orthodoxy
If it is true ... that no one has a life worth thinking about whose life story cannot be told, does it not then follow that life could be, even ought to be, lived as a story, that what one has to do in life is to make the story come true?
HANNAH ARENDT
Men in Dark Times
There is no reason to assume that the universe has the slightest interest in intelligence -- or even in life. Both may be random accidental by-products of its operations like the beautiful patterns on a butterfly's wings. The insect would fly just as well without them.
ARTHUR C. CLARKE
The Lost Worlds of 2001
So it is with all life. A tedium that includes the expectation of nothing but more tedium; a regret, right now, for the regret I'll have tomorrow for having felt regret today.
FERNANDO PESSOA
The Book of Disquiet