Quotes about life
page 17

“Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

“There is in every madman a misunderstood genius whose idea, shining in his head, frightened people, and for whom delirium was the only solution to the strangulation that life had prepared for him.”

Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) French-Occitanian poet, playwright, actor and theatre director

Van Gogh, the Man Suicided by Society (1947)

People, Idea

“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States

Decision

“A nomad I will remain for life,
in love with distant and uncharted places.”

Isabelle Eberhardt (1877–1904) Swiss explorer and author

Love, Distant

“life without love, is no life at all”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

Love, Good Morning, Heart Touching

“I long to hear the story of your life, which must captivate the ear strangely.”

William Shakespeare The Tempest

Source: The Tempest

“I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times, in life after life, in age after age forever.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Love, Age, Time, Cute

“Leonard asks me if there's anything I need to know before he dies, I think about it for a minute, turn to him, say what's the meaning of life, Leonard? He laughs, says that's an easy one, my son, it's whatever you want it to be.”

James Frey My Friend Leonard

Source: My Friend Leonard

Thinking

“It occurred to me that I was unhappy. And it didn’t feel so very terrible. No urgency, nothing. I could slip out of my life on a slow wave like this—it didn’t matter. I don’t have to be happy. All I have to do is hold on to something and wait.”

Helen Oyeyemi (1984) British author

Source: Mr. Fox

Happiness, Feeling, Waiting

“Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once.”

Paulo Coelho book The Winner Stands Alone

Source: The Winner Stands Alone

Way, Personality, Motivational, Deep

“Without stories we would go mad. Life would lose its moorings or lose its orientations. even in silence we are living our stories”

Ben Okri (1959) Nigerian writer

Source: Birds of Heaven

Silence, Madness

“All my life I used to wonder what I would become when I grew up. Then, about seven years ago, I realized that I was never going to grow up--that growing is an ever ongoing process.”

M. Scott Peck (1936–2005) American psychiatrist

“The point is, you have family and friends who love you. You have a world out there just waiting for you to conquer it. You have a life that will be anything you make it. That's the point.”

Malorie Blackman book Boys Don't Cry

Source: Boys Don't Cry

Love, World, Family, Waiting

“Life is a lot like jazz - it's best when you improvise.”

George Gershwin (1898–1937) American composer and pianist

Life

“Events in life mean nothing if you do not reflect on them in a deep way, and ideas from books are pointless if they have no application to life as you live it.”

Robert Greene The 33 Strategies of War

Source: The 33 Strategies of War

Books, Way, Idea

“I place this day, my life, my loved ones, my work in the Lord's hands. There is no harm in the Lord's hands, only good. Whatever happens, whatever results, if I am in the Lord's hands it is the Lord's will and it is good.”

Norman Vincent Peale book The Power of Positive Thinking

Source: The Power of Positive Thinking

Love

“Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting my friends”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

Time, Fight

“cause when there's life there's still hope”

Michael Morpurgo book War Horse

Source: War Horse

Hope

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Love, Understanding, Learning, Despair

“The essence of what I desire is simply this: to sleep away life.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Sleep

“Every intelligent being, whether it breathes or not, coughs nervously at some time in its life.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Color of Magic

Intelligence, Time

“In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Guardian [UK] (28 July 1989)

Affliction

“To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.”

Robert M. Pirsig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Variant: To live only for some future goal is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top.
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974), Ch. 17
Context: Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless, speed up. If you become winded, slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then, when you are no longer thinking ahead, each footstep isn't just a means to an an end but a unique event in itself. This leaf has jagged edges. This rock looks loose. From this place the snow is less visible, even though closer. These are things you should notice anyway. To live only for some future goal is shallow. It’s the sides of the mountain that sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow. <!-- p. 205

Mountain, Future

“A parent gives life, but as parent, gives no more. A murderer takes life, but his deed stops there. A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”

Henry Adams book The Education of Henry Adams

Source: The Education of Henry Adams

Parent, Teachers

“If you and I are to live religious lives, it mustn't be that we talk a lot about religion, but that our manner of life is different. It is my belief that only if you try to be helpful to other people will you in the end find your way to God.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

God, People, Religion, Way

“Life had already given him sufficient reasons for knowing that no defeat was the final one.”

Gabriel García Márquez book The General in His Labyrinth

Source: The General in His Labyrinth

“The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.”

Frank Zappa (1940–1993) American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer

In response to Joe Walsh on The Howard Stern Show (1987).

“I became quietly seized with that nostalgia that overcomes you when you have reached the middle of your life and your father has recently died and it dawns on you that when he went he took some of you with him.”

Bill Bryson (1951) American author

Source: The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America

Nostalgia

“A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live.”

Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness

Source: The Conquest of Happiness

Happiness, Joy

“Tatiana: "Alexander, were you looking for me?"
Alexander: "All my life.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Variant: Alexander, were you looking for me?"
"All my life.
Source: The Bronze Horseman

“Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

1960s, The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (1967-1969)
Context: Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

Love, Search, Knowledge, Strong

“True philosophy must start from the most immediate and comprehensive fact of consciousness: "I am life that wants to live, in the midst of life that wants to live."”

Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) French-German physician, theologian, musician and philosopher

Source: Kulturphilosophie (1923), Vol. 2 : Civilization and Ethics, Chapter 26 "The Civilizing Power of the Ethics of Reverence for Life"

“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 book Servant of the Bones

Source: Servant of the Bones

World, Beauty, Understanding

“It's up to you how you waste your time and money. I'm staying here to read: life's too short.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Money, Time, Reading

“And our lady friend, she thinks life works like a fairy tale.'
Well, that’s harmless, isn’t it?'
Yeah, but in fairy tales, when someone dies… it’s just a word.”

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) English author

Source: The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents

Thinking

“Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.”

Virginia Woolf The Common Reader

"Modern Fiction"
The Common Reader (1925)
Context: Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind receives a myriad impressions — trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but there; so that, if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig-lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it.

“The secret to life is to enjoy the pleasure of being terribly, terribly deceived.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Pleasure, Secret

“Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Pleasure

“She was wearing the same clothes, but now she looked haggard and dirty. The delicate illusions that get us through life can only stand so much strain.”

Hunter S. Thompson The Rum Diary

Source: The Rum Diary

Clothes

“Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.”

Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) British Conservative politician, writer, aristocrat and Prime Minister

Part 1, Chapter 23.
Books, Coningsby (1844), Contarini Fleming (1832)

History, Reading

“The whole of life is just like watching a film. Only it's as though you always get in ten minutes after the big picture has started, and no-one will tell you the plot, so you have to work it out all yourself from the clues.”

Terry Pratchett book Moving Pictures

Source: Moving Pictures

“Somethings in life are out of your control. you can make it a party or a tragedy. Or, you could refuse to take the next step. You could refuse to take what you wanted most because you're afraid some day you might lose it.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

“Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

“For a small reward, a man will hurry away on a long journey; while for eternal life, many will hardly take a single step.”

Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) German canon regular

“If standard of living is your major objective, quality of life almost never improves, but if quality of life is your number one objective, your standard of living almost always improves.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

“On every level of life, from housework to heights of prayer, in all judgment and efforts to get things done, hurry and impatience are sure marks of the amateur.”

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) British saint, poet, novelist

Effort

“I wouldn't waste a day, not an hour, not a moment. Take what you want and damn caution. Live, enjoy. Feed ravenously. Or the biggest regret you'll have at the end of your life is wasted time.”

Nora Roberts (1950) American romance writer

Source: Genuine Lies

Time

“Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Variant: Then she kissed him. Her kiss was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering.
Source: The History of Love (2005), P. 11

Love, Girl, Boy, Question

“Don't you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you're not taking advantage of it? Do you realize you've lived nearly half the time you have to live already?”

Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises

Source: The Sun Also Rises

Feeling, Time

“Actions are the first tragedy in life, words are the second. Words are perhaps the worst. Words are merciless…”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Lady Windermere's Fan / A Woman of No Importance / An Ideal Husband / The Importance of Being Earnest / Salomé

“You cannot, sir, take from me any thing that I will more willingly part withal: except my life, except my life, except my life.”

William Shakespeare Hamlet

Source: Hamlet

Parting

“Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.”

Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) American poet, novelist and short story writer

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Beauty, Question, Hurt

“It's the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Source: Miscellaneous Aphorisms; The Soul of Man

Art

“There are two stories for every life; the one you live & the one others tell”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The First Phone Call from Heaven

“One gets on better in life if one is not over modest.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Every secret of a writer's soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind is written large in his works.”

Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer

Secret, Soul

“It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.”

Terry Pratchett book Pyramids

Source: Pyramids

Death

“Modesty and conscientiousness receive their reward only in novels. In life they are exploited and then shoved aside.”

Erich Maria Remarque book Three Comrades

Source: Three Comrades

“Tell them I've had a wonderful life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Last words, to his doctor's wife (28 April 1951)–as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 100
1930s-1951

“Everything I sought in life I abandoned for the sake of the search. I'm like one who absentmindedly looks for he doesn't know what, having forgotten it in his dreaming as the search got under way.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Dreams, Way, Search

“Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Love, Happiness

“To those who have given up on love: I say, "Trust life a little bit.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love

“Life is God's novel. Let him write it.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

Quoted in Voices for Life (1975) edited by Dom Moraes

God

“You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

Parting

“Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream.”

Hugh Hefner (1926–2017) American businessman and magazine publisher

Dreams

“Some people say great God come from the sky take away everything and make everybody feel high, but if you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

Get Up, Stand Up (cowritten with Peter Tosh), from the album Burnin (1973)
Song lyrics

God, People, Feeling

“We are not men, to have need of another, an eternal life; we are women, and for us one moment with man we love is everlasting Paradise, one moment far from the man we love is everlasting hell. It is here on earth that we women love out eternity”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Last Temptation of Christ

Source: The Last Temptation of Christ

Love, Women, Men, Hell

“I've learned two things in my life. One that love is the beginning and end of all meaning. And two that it is the same thing whatever shape our souls have taken on this journey. Love is love. Is love.”

Clive Barker (1952) author, film director and visual artist

Love, Soul, Learning

“He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and malice.”

Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter

Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“[N]othing is as surprising as life. Except for writing. Except for writing. Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Black Book

Source: The Black Book

“If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”

Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker

Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 10; Here Lee paraphrases a much older English proverb: If you care for life, don't waste your time; for time is what life is made of. (as quoted in Bordighera and the Western Riviera (1883) by Frederick Fitzroy Hamilton, p. 189).
Context: Time means a lot to me because, you see, I, too, am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing and simplifying. If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

Love, Time

“To laugh often and much; To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; To earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Widely attributed to Emerson on the internet, this actually originates with "What is Success?” http://www.cas.sc.edu/engl/emerson/Ephemera/Success.html by Bessie Anderson Stanley in Heart Throbs Volume Two (1911) edited by Joseph Mitchell Chapple. <br class="br">Misattributed

Children, People, World, Beauty