Quotes about life
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As quoted in Our Precarious Habitat (1973) by Melvin A. Benarde, p. v
Source: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“By being too sensitive I have wasted my life.”
Variant: Idle youth, enslaved to everything; by being too sensitive I have wasted my life.
Source: Selected Poems and Letters
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
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.
“The tragedy of life is what dies inside a man while he lives.”
Variant: The tragedy in a man’s life is what dies inside of him while he lives.
“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.”
Shared on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/MayaAngelou/posts/10150251846629796, July 4, 2011
'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
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
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.
“Life is hard but so very beautiful”
“I'd made it this far and refused to give up because all my life I had always finished the race.”
Source: Devil at My Heels
Dated 27 March 1942
Diary excerpts
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
Other
“Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out.”
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.
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."
On "eyeing" for Mars, IAC 2016 meeting, presentation on sustainable Mars colonization.
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
“Life is short, but the years are long.”
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)
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
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.
As quoted in O<sub>2</sub> : 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 <i> The White Rose </i> (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.
“It's my life and you know what? Nobody invited you so there's the door.”
On his relationship with Mary Austin, as quoted in "Rock On Freddie" (1985).
“You never know when a moment and a
few sincere words can have an impact on a life.”
Source: Letters and Papers from Prison
“In nature's economy the currency is not money, it is life.”
Source: Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace
Source: Think Big: Unleashing Your Potential for Excellence
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.
“Life—the way it really is—is a battle not between good and bad, but between bad and worse”
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”
“Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.”
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.
“The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
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.
“Be an example to your men in your duty and in private life.”
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.
Source: The Book of Disquiet
“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”
Quoted in Matthew M. Radmanesh, Cracking the Code of Our Physical Universe, p. 269.
“Where there's hope, there's life. It fills us with fresh courage and makes us strong again.”
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
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
Source: Meditations
Variant: Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.
Source: Love and Living
Source: Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary
Source: Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy
Source: Quoted in Melodrama after the tears, ed. Jörg Metelmann and Scott Loren (Amsterdam University Press, 2016), p. 178
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
Letter to his son Eduard (5 February 1930), as quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), p. 367
1930s
Variant: The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.
“A life without love is like a tree without fruit.”
Source: Doctor Sleep
“There are no regrets in life, just lessons.”
“Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted.”
Source: Life and How to Survive It
Source: The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
Time Enough for Love (1973)
“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”
“Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.”
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.”
Person to person: The problem of being human: A new trend in psychology (1967)
Source: page 187.
Source: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
“We must leave our mark on life while we have it in our power.”
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Variant: You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
“That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.”
Illusions : The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977)
Source: Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
“Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.”
“Don't get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
“Never say ‘no’ to adventures. Always say ‘yes’, otherwise you’ll lead a very dull life.”
Source: Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang (1964), Ch. 2
