quotations about life
That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Paris Review, spring 2009
No man ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over before him; every man who starts on the ocean of life arches his sails to an untried breeze.
WILLIAM MATHEWS
Hints on Success in Life
Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
Life is one long struggle in the dark.
LUCRETIUS
De Rerum Natura
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
Life is like checkers. When you reach the top, you can move wherever you want.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
Life is a Shylock; always it demands
The fullest userer's interest for each pleasure.
Gifts are not freely scattered by its hands;
We make returns for every borrowed treasure.
ELLA WHEELER WILCOX
"The Law"
Just because life's meaningless doesn't mean we can't experience it meaningfully.
GLEN DUNCAN
The Last Werewolf
If you turned the fabric of our lives over, I imagined the design on the backside would be woven in the bleak grays of doubt and fear.
STEPHENIE MEYER
Breaking Dawn
If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?
EDWARD ALBEE
The Play About the Baby
If we could live for a million years, then maybe it would be worthwhile to create some problems. But our life is short. Now you see, we are guests here on this planet, visitors who have come for a short time, so we need to use our days wisely, to make our world a little better for everyone.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Book of Joy
If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.
JEFFREY EUGENIDES
Middlesex
I look at it this way: How much of the day are you awake? You think, "I've gotta get that dry cleaning, I gotta get this going, and this, and this, and this." And all of a sudden it's dinnertime. And then there's a moment of connection with your spouse or your friends. Then you read and go to bed. Wake up and then it's the same all over. You're not awake, you're not living, you're not experiencing. We start early medicating ourselves. We start kids early, on TV and video games and so on.
TIM ALLEN
Reader's Digest, Oct. 2001
I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.
ROBERT BROWNING
In a Balcony
Trifles make the sum of life.
CHARLES DICKENS
David Copperfield
To live is to war with trolls.
HENRIK IBSEN
dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt
There is no normal life. There is only life.
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
The understanding of human existence that sees life as having death as its inevitable end presumes that life is lived only in opposition to dying and seeks the conquest of death; that is, immortality, or eternal life. Here, death is always seen as alien to life, something to be overcome. In contrast to this, the understanding of human existence as a continuous living-and-dying does not view life and death as objects in mutual opposition but as two aspects of indivisible reality. Present life is understood as something that undergoes continuous living-and-dying.
MASAO ABE
Zen and the Modern World