LIFE QUOTES XVIII

quotations about life

Life is often like that, the best balancing on a knife edge with the worst.

LAURELL K. HAMILTON

Obsidian Butterfly

Tags: Laurell K. Hamilton


Life is a series of sudden disappearances, leave-takings without the proper goodbyes.

KELLY LINK

Stranger Things Happen

Tags: Kelly Link


If life is not always poetical, it is at least metrical. Periodicity rules over the mental experience of man, according to the path of the orbit of his thoughts. Distances are not gauged, ellipses not measured, velocities not ascertained, times not known. Nevertheless, the recurrence is sure. What the mind suffered last week, or last year, it does not suffer now; but it will suffer again next week or next year.

ALICE MEYNELL

"The Rhythm of Life", The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays


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

Tags: Lyman Abbott


Life, how sweet soever it seems, is a draught mingled with bitter ingredients; some drink deeper than others before they come at them: But, if they do not swim at the top for youth to taste them, it is ten to one but old age will find them thick at the bottom. And it is the employment of faith and patience, and the work of wisdom and virtue, to teach us to drink the sweet part down with pleasure and thankfulness, and to swallow the bitter without reluctance.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.

JOHN KEATS

"Sleep and Poetry"

Tags: John Keats


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

Tags: John Keats


That life is brief hath seemed a piteous thing
Since the first mortal watched it glide away.
And sad it is that flowers have but one day,
And sad that birds have little time to sing;
That joy is fleeting as the bloom of Spring;
That youth so soon is startled from its play,
And manhood from its labor, to essay
The old vain struggle with the shadowy King.
But sadder far it is that life is long;
Ay, long enough for bliss to turn to bale,
For innocence to lose the dread of wrong,
For hearts to harden, love itself to fail;
And faith be wearied out (O, sad and strange!)
Unless Death save us from the deathly change.

CAROLINE SPENCER

"Life"

Tags: Caroline Spencer


Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

"Life! I Know Not What Thou Art"

Tags: Anna Letitia Barbauld


Lives are snowflakes -- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.

NEIL GAIMAN

American Gods


When I consider Life, 'tis all a cheat;
Yet, fooled with hope, men favour the deceit;
Trust on, and think to-morrow will repay:
To-morrow's falser than the former day;
Lies worse; and while it says, we shall be blest
With some new joys, cuts off what we possessed.

JOHN DRYDEN

Aureng-Zebe

Tags: John Dryden


Where I come from in the Eastern Region, life is still -- well, things are changing very fast but if one is interested, one can still see signs of what life used to look like.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Conversations with Chinua Achebe

Tags: Chinua Achebe


I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.

SAUL BELLOW

Henderson the Rain King

Tags: Saul Bellow


Life is a charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Life is a continual march towards the grave.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


I used to dream about escaping my ordinary life, but my life was never ordinary. I had simply failed to notice how extraordinary it was.

RANSOM RIGGS

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Tags: Ransom Riggs


I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Mosquitoes

Tags: William Faulkner


The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

Tags: Aristotle


What is life but a series of inspired follies?

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Pygmalion

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

Tags: Simone de Beauvoir