LIFE QUOTES XXXVII

quotations about life

There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.

NORMAN MAILER

The Deer Park

Tags: Norman Mailer


And life? Life itself? Was it perhaps only an infection, a sickening of matter? Was that which one might call the original procreation of matter only a disease, a growth produced by morbid stimulation of the immaterial? The first step toward evil, toward desire and death, was taken precisely then, when there took place that first increase in the density of the spiritual, that pathologically luxuriant morbid growth, produced by the irritant of some unknown infiltration; this, in part pleasurable, in part a motion of self-defense, was the primeval stage of matter, the transition from the insubstantial to the substance. This was the Fall.

THOMAS MANN

The Magic Mountain

Tags: Thomas Mann


Life like a shroud on men and women lies.

MAURICE BROWNE

"At Dusk"


It is astonishing how much more anxious people are to lengthen life than to improve it; and as misers often lose large sums of money in attempting to make more, so do hypochondriacs squander large sums of time in search of nostrums by which they vainly hope they may get more time to squander.

CHARLES CALEB COLTON

Lacon


Life is magical. There is something wonderful in being alive, in having within one's self all sorts of possibilities.

ARTHUR LYNCH

Moods of Life


Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings,
And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill
Some shallow notes from its great music brings.

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY

"Dolores"

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Life is the flash in black heavens.

HENRI CAZALIS

"Always"

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He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: James Baldwin


A life is a life. The unbearable pain of losing someone you love is identical no matter how differently it is expressed. And yet the varying shades of the global reaction to tragedy based on location, nationality, ethnicity, culture and religion belie our humanity, a harsh reminder that our "global community" is an illusion, despite our seemingly desperate desire to cling to that notion.

ARWA DAMON

"A life is a life, wherever you are", CNN, March 29, 2016


Let me leap naked through life's testing flame,
And bear to lose, and yet endure to win.

KENNETH RAND

"The World-Slave"

Tags: Kenneth Rand


For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear (believe the aged friend),
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love--
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.

ROBERT BROWNING

A Death in the Desert


What is life if not the shadow of a fleeting dream?

UMBERTO ECO

Baudolino

Tags: Umberto Eco


The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments.

DON DELILLO

Point Omega

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Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY

Adonais

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Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.

HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW

"A Psalm of Life"


Will our life not be a tunnel between two vague clarities? Or will it not be a clarity between two dark triangles?

PABLO NERUDA

The Book of Questions


Life is a theatre of alarms and contentions.

CHARLES HORTON COOLEY

Human Nature and the Social Order

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Life is reduced to a bunch of fights over territory.

KOBO ABE

The Ark Sakura

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Life is a parade of metamorphoses.

KATIE LESLIE

"How Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson's rough start in North Texas prepared her for tough job", Dallas Morning News, September 1, 2016


Human life is a pilgrimage from the unknown to the unknown. No one knows whence he emanated or whither he is bound.

FEMI ABBAS

"A decade of royalty and faith", The Nation, September 2, 2016