quotations about life
Life is a skeleton-land over which are hovering reflections, past and future fulfillments, clinging raiments of old desires, spread in full blaze upon the bones of the dead.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.
JOAN DIDION
The Year of Magical Thinking
Life is an immense dream. Why toil?
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended--
What troubled my soul?--I remember not.
LI BAI
"Awakening From Sleep on a Spring Day"
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.
ANNE RICE
Servant of the Bones
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
ANONYMOUS
When life is cheap death is rich.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, Apr. 1873
[A] carefully constructed life is a meticulous diversion from living.
J.R. KINNARD
"'Completely Unknown' Deals in Ambiguity and Subtle Charms", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
Each life is one short word slowly uttered.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Blue Jay's Dance
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear, -- believe the aged friend --
Is just a chance o' the prize of learning love.
ROBERT BROWNING
A Death in the Desert
Life is half delicious yogurt, half crap, and your job is to keep the plastic spoon in the yogurt.
SCOTT ADAMS
Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!
Life inspires more dread than death -- it is life which is the great unknown.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Life is like our game of whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Into each life some rain must fall.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Rainy Day"
Life must be lived with courage, with climbing and risks, else there is no happiness, no hope, no true success, no future.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
With only one example of life -- the stuff we see on Earth -- we don't really have a good, universally accepted definition of life. NASA some years ago defined life as "a self-sustaining chemical system capable of Darwinian evolution." Not bad, but technically a single rabbit hopping around your garden is not alive, because by itself it can't reproduce.
JOEL ACHENBACH
"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016
Life is a pressure cooker and whether you remain serene or become stressed-out depends on how you handle that pressure.
KEVIN LEMAN
Stopping Stress before It Stops You: A Game Plan for Every Mom
Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
ROBERT FULGHUM
Uh-Oh