Quotes about life
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“Everyone thinks and imagines that life is easier on the other side. Their minds swing like a pendulum.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“It is, therefore, upon you as the programmer of your life, to pay more attention if you truly wish to succeed at the end of your journey.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“My life has made me
Stronger.
I never knew that I had it inside me
to move up from the ashes.
My life is a victory…I am not a victim.
I have been through the worst situations
and
am still here.”

Stephie Pahlavi Zan

Victory

“It's my life and you know what, nobody invited you… so there's the door… see ya!”

Green Day

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

As quoted in Our Precarious Habitat (1973) by Melvin A. Benarde, p. v

Fear, Understanding, Time, Motivational

“I don’t care about losing people who don’t wanna be in my life anymore. I’ve lost people who meant the world to me and I’m still doing just fine.”

Karl May (1842–1912) German writer

People, World

“People whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. I find it interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God's will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.”

Maya Angelou book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

God, People, History, Future

“By being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

Variant: Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
Source: Selected Poems and Letters

“You can spend the entire second half of your life recovering from the mistakes of the first half.”

Saul Bellow book Seize the Day

Source: Seize the Day

“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”

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

Inspirational, Attitude, Hope, Life

“One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Variant: Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. If you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

Love, Star, Deep, Success

“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”

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

Variant: The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.

Sad

“I have loved books all my life. There is nothing more beautiful in our material world than the book.”

Patti Smith (1946) American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist

Love, Books, World, Beauty

“I am afraid because I can so clearly foresee my own life rotting away of itself, like a leaf that rots without falling, while I pursue my round of existence from day to day.”

Osamu Dazai book The Setting Sun

Source: The Setting Sun

“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

For women, Deep, Inspirational, Life

“Music is the heart of life." She speaks love; "without it, there is no possible good and with it everything is beautiful.”

Franz Liszt (1811–1886) Hungarian romantic composer and virtuoso pianist

Love, Beauty, Music, Heart

“I have spent all my life resisting the desire to end it.”

Franz Kafka book Letters to Milena

Source: Letters to Milena

“Mine has been a life of much shame. I can't even guess myself what it must be to live the life of a human being.”

Osamu Dazai book No Longer Human

Source: No Longer Human

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011

Passion, Motivational, Wise, For women

“Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

'La vie n’est facile pour aucun de nous. Mais quoi, il faut avoir de la persévérance, et surtout de la confiance en soi. Il faut croire que l’on est doué pour quelque chose, et que, cette chose, il faut l'atteindre coûte que coûte.'
As quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, Part 2, p. 116

Confidence, Perseverance, Courageous

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”

Marie Curie (1867–1934) French-Polish physicist and chemist

As quoted in Our Precarious Habitat (1973) by Melvin A. Benarde, p. v
Context: Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Fear, Motivational, Wise, Deep

“Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to "die before you die" --- and find that there is no death.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Death, Secret

“Rise to the challenges that life presents you. You can't develop genuine character and ability by sidestepping adversity and struggle.”

Daisaku Ikeda (1928) Japanese writer

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Death, Lie, Peace, Beauty

“Life is hard but so very beautiful”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Beauty

“I'd made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

“When we long for life without difficulty,
remind us that oaks grow strong under contrary winds
and diamonds are made under pressure.”

Peter Marshall (1902–1949) American preacher

Strong

“All I want to tell young people is that you're not going to be anything in life unless you learn to commit to a goal. You have to reach deep within yourself to see if you are willing to make the sacrifices.”

Louis Zamperini (1917–2014) Italian-American middle distance runner

Source: Devil at My Heels

People, Learning

“A judgment is being visited upon the Jews that, while barbaric, is fully deserved by them. The prophecy which the Führer made about them for having brought on a new world war is beginning to come true in a most terrible manner. One must not be sentimental in these matters. If we did not fight the Jews, they would destroy us. It's a life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Dated 27 March 1942
Diary excerpts

Death, War, World, Fight

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

Meryl Streep (1949) American actress

Misattributed to Meryl Streep (and widely disseminated on the Internet as of August/September 2014), this quote is allegedly a translation of a text by the author José Micard Teixeira, the original of which begins (in Portuguese): "Já não tenho paciência para algumas coisas, não porque me tenha tornado arrogante..."
Misattributed

Love, Hate, Friendship, People

“Life is suffering, and suffering can make you resentful, murderous, and then genocidal, if you take it far enough. So you need an antidote to suffering. And maybe you think that you can build walls of luxury around yourself, and that that will protect you from the suffering. Good luck with that. That isn't going to work. Maybe you think that you could build a delusion and live inside that. Well, that's going to fall apart. What is there, then, that's going to help you fight against suffering? That's easy: It's the Truth. The Truth is the antidote to suffering. The reason for that is because the Truth puts reality behind you, so that you can face the reality that's coming straight at you without becoming weak and degenerating and becoming resentful and wishing for the destruction of Being, because that's the final Hell. The final Hell is your soul wishing for the destruction of everything, because it's too painful, and you're too bitter. And that happens to people all the time.”

Jordan Peterson (1962) Canadian clinical psychologist, cultural critic, and professor of psychology

Other

Pain, People, Truth, Soul

“Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out.”

W. C. Handy (1873–1958) American blues composer and musician

Music Preservation Society biography http://www.wchandymusicfestival.org/downloads/HandyBiography.pdf Variant: Life is like a trumpet - if you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out of it.

“Whatever situation you are facing, don’t let it overwhelm you. Stay focused because there is something far more important than that situation – your dream and your goals in life.”

T. B. Joshua (1963) Nigerian Christian leader

Dreams

“As touching the gods, I do not know whether they exist or not, nor how they are featured; for there is much to prevent our knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life.”

Protagoras (-486–-411 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

Opening lines of Concerning the Gods (DK 80 B4).
Variant translation: "As to the Gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist, or if they do, what they are like."

God

“It would be an incredible adventure. And life needs to be more than just solving every day problems. You need to wake up and be excited about the future”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

On "eyeing" for Mars, IAC 2016 meeting, presentation on sustainable Mars colonization.

Problem, Future

“The people's community must not be a mere phrase, but a revolutionary achievement following from the radical carrying out of the basic life needs of the working class. A ruthless battle against corruption! A war against exploitation, freedom for the workers! The elimination of all economic-capitalist influences on national policy. Maintaining a rotten economic system has nothing to do with nationalism, which is an affirmation of the Fatherland. The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/haken32.htm “Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists?”

Written by Joseph Goebbels and Mjölnir, Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (Munich: Verlag Frz. Eher (1932). “Those Damned Nazis,” (Nazi propaganda pamphlet).
1930s

War, People, Communication, Freedom

“Life is short, but the years are long.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Methuselah's Children

Part of the secret "call and response" codewords by which members of the long-lived Howard Families can identify others:
: Life is short.
But the years are long.
Not while the evil days come not.
Methuselah's Children (1958)

Mother's Day

“I pity people who can't find laughter or at least some bit of amusement in the little doings of the day. I believe I could find something ridiculous even in the saddest moment, if necessary. It has nothing to do with being superficial. It's a matter of joy in life.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in Christian Jazz Artists Newsletter (February/March 2005) http://www.songsofdavid.com/CJAFebMarch2005.htm; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. Disputed

People, Laughter, Joy

“Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky (1949)
Context: Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

Thinking, Time

“It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe.”

Sophie Scholl (1921–1943) White Rose member

As quoted in O2 : Breathing New Life Into Faith (2008) by Richard Dahlstrom, Ch. 4 : Artisans of Hope: Stepping into God's Kingdom Story, p. 63; this source is disputed as it does not cite an original document for the quote. It is also used in The White Rose (1991) by Lillian Garrett-Groag, a monologue during Sophie's interrogation.
Disputed
Context: The real damage is done by those millions who want to "survive." The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don't want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won't take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don't like to make waves — or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honor, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It's the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you'll keep it under control. If you don't make any noise, the bogeyman won't find you. But it's all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. I choose my own way to burn.

People

“Life isn't about how popular you are… What girl or boy you are dating or who you know.Life is about always being true to who you are or what you believe in. Never let anyone convince you that their way is better than your way. In the end all we have is our hearts… and our minds. This is the reason we sing… this is the reason we cry… this is why we live.”

Andrew Biersack (1990) American singer-songwriter

Way, Girl, Boy, Singing

“Once you know what it is in life that you want to do, then the world basically becomes your library. Everything you view, you can view from that perspective, which makes everything a learning asset for you.”

Kobe Bryant (1978–2020) American basketball player

World, Making love, Learning

“It's my life and you know what? Nobody invited you so there's the door.”

Billie Joe Armstrong (1972) American singer and guitarist

“Our love affair ended in tears but a deep bond grew out of it, and that's something nobody can take away from us. It's unreachable … All my lovers ask me why they can't replace her, but it's simply impossible.
I don't feel jealous of her lovers because. of course, she has a life to lead, and so do I. Basically, I try to make sure she's happy with whoever she's with and she tries to do the same for me.
We look after each other and that's a wonderful form of love. I might have all the problems in the world, but I have Mary and that gets me through.”

Freddie Mercury (1946–1991) British singer, songwriter and record producer

On his relationship with Mary Austin, as quoted in "Rock On Freddie" (1985).

Love, Happiness, World, Making love

“Just as every vessel is not the same, therefore, enlightenment will also vary according to your patience, heart, mind, and body whenever it comes to endure challenges in life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Heart, Patience

“Those who hate to be socially involved, they are in love with their loneliness and those who feel alone in their company are the true lovers of social acceptance. Either way, life must be balanced between love and hate.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

Love, Hate, Way, Feeling

“You must be willing to pay the price of being called an “adult”. Stop and reflect upon your life.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author

“I never really got nightmares for movies. I was much more terrified by my own family and real life, you know?”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Family

“You never know when a moment and a
few sincere words can have an impact on a life.”

Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker

Sincerity, Inspirational

“In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Letters and Papers from Prison

Help, Gratitude

“In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life.”

Vandana Shiva (1952) Indian philosopher

Source: Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace

Money, Nature

“Do not pursue what is illusory - property and position: all that is gained at the expense of your nerves decade after decade and can be confiscated in one fell night. Live with a steady superiority over life - don't be afraid of misfortune, and do not yearn after happiness; it is after all, all the same: the bitter doesn't last forever, and the sweet never fills the cup to overflowing.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Happiness, Night

“Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don't have to worry three months down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won't have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence

Truth, Time

“We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”

Henry Beston (1888–1968) American writer

Source: The Outermost House, 1928, p. 25: Ch 2
Source: The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod
Context: We need another and a wiser and perhaps a more mystical concept of animals. Remote from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a feather magnified and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they moved finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.

Fate, World, Sense, Time

“There is so much to love and to admire in this life that it is an act of ingratitude not to be happy and content in this existence.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Source: Pleasures of a Nonconformist

Love, Happiness

“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”

Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996) Russian and American poet and Nobel Prize for Literature laureate

Way

“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

Happiness, Wise, Happy

“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

In answer to a question asked by the editors of Youth, a journal of Young Israel of Williamsburg, NY. Quoted in the New York Times, June 20, 1932, pg. 17 http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40617F83B5A13738DDDA90A94DE405B828FF1D3 Unsourced variant: Only a life in the service of others is worth living. 1930s Variant: I believe in one thing—that only a life lived for others is a life worth living.

Wise, Life

“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

The Note Book of Elbert Hubbard (1927)
Variant: The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.

Fear, Wise, Deep, Courageous

“Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing.”

Paulo Coelho Maktub

Source: Maktub

Love

“Be an example to your men in your duty and in private life.”

Erwin Rommel (1891–1944) German field marshal of World War II

Address as Director of the Military School in Weiner Neustadt at the passing out parade of the 1938 class of cadets.
A note by General Bayerlein in the Rommel Papers (1953), edited by Basil Henry Liddell Hart. p. 241.[[War without Hate ]]
Context: Be an example to your men in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't, in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be tactful and well-mannered and teach your subordinates to be the same. Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide.

Men

“To write is to forget. Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life. Music soothes, the visual arts exhilarates, the performing arts (such as acting and dance) entertain. Literature, however, retreats from life by turning in into slumber. The other arts make no such retreat— some because they use visible and hence vital formulas, others because they live from human life itself.
This isn't the case with literature. Literature simulates life. A novel is a story of what never was, a play is a novel without narration. A poem is the expression of ideas or feelings a language no one uses, because no one talks in verse.”

Fernando Pessoa book The Book of Disquiet

Source: The Book of Disquiet

Art, Music, Way, Feeling

“Clouds come floating into my life from other days no longer to shed rain or usher storm but to give colour to my sunset sky.”

Rabindranath Tagore Stray Birds

292
Source: Stray Birds (1916)

“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”

John W. Gardner (1912–2002) American politician

Quoted in Matthew M. Radmanesh, Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe, p. 269.

Art, Drawing, Wise

“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”

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

Source: The Diary of a Young Girl

Hope, Courage, Strong

“All through my life, I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.”

Muhammad Ali book The Soul of a Butterfly

The Soul of a Butterfly, 2004
Variant: All through my life I have been tested. My will has been tested, my courage has been tested, my strength has been tested. Now my patience and endurance are being tested.
Source: The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey

Courage, Patience