quotations about life
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Theologian's Tale", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Philosophical Essays
The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER
"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science
Life is a process of modification and descent, rather than genesis. There was never a moment when an egg hatched a brand new thing called a chicken, or when a chicken produced, unexpectedly, something bizarre called an egg.
JOEL ACHENBACH
"The 4 biggest milestones in the history of life on Earth", Albuquerque Journal, September 1, 2016
Life is too short for aught but high endeavor.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"Life Is Too Short"
Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.
JORGE LUIS BORGES
"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"
Life is all about people leaving.
SUSAN HUBBARD
The Society of S
Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT
Table Talk
To have found meaning in life is thus the only certain antidote to the deliberate seeking of death. But at the same time, in a strange dialectical way, it is death that endows life with its deepest, most unique meaning.
BRUNO BETTELHEIM
Surviving the Holocaust
This life is a hospital where each patient is possessed by the desire to change his bed.
CHARLES BAUDELAIRE
"Anywhere Out of the World", Le Spleen de Paris
Nothing was certain; there were many strange twists and devious turns as one hopped down the overgrown bunnytrail of life.
STEPHEN KING
"Big Driver", Full Dark, No Stars
I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.
JOHN KEATS
letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, May 3, 1818
The art of life is the art of avoiding pain; and he is the best pilot, who steers clearest of the rocks and shoals with which it is beset.
THOMAS JEFFERSON
letter to Mrs. Cosway, Oct. 12, 1786
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life.
PRINCE
"Let's Go Crazy"
Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
JACK LONDON
White Fang
When man would make a rose with tools, he fashions petals and leaves of wax, colors them, manufactures a stalk by the same mechanical process -- and the rose is done. When God makes a rose, he lets a bird or a puff of wind drop a seed into the ground; out of the seed there emerges a stalk; and out of the stalk, branches; and on these branches, buds; and out of these buds roses unfold; and the rose is never done, for it goes on endlessly repeating itself. This is the difference between manufacture and growth. Man's method is the method of manufacture; God's method is the method of growth. What man makes is a finished product -- death. What God makes is an always finishing and never finished product -- life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
Life does turn on so many queer things ... ball bearings and banana skins.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Paris Review, fall 2000
Life is, alas, one eternal combat.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris