Quotes about life
page 23

Sadhguru photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Albert Schweitzer photo

“I am life which wants to live admidst of lives that want to live.”

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

Ich bin Leben, das leben will, inmitten von Leben, das leben will.
Reverence for Life (1969)
Source: Die Ehrfurcht vor dem Leben http://books.google.pl/books?id=q7MCqUIN7hkC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, C.H.Beck, 2008, p. 111

Erich Maria Remarque photo
Terry Pratchett photo
Henry Miller photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo

“All we have, it seems to me, is the beauty of art and nature and life, and the love which that beauty inspires.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

“Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge”, p. 57
The Journey Home (1977)
Source: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

Oscar Wilde photo
Nick Carter photo
Les Brown photo

“There's a quality of legend about freaks.
Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle. Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats.”

Diane Arbus (1923–1971) American photographer and author

Schjeldahl, Peter. "Looking Back: Diane Arbus at the Met" http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/03/21/050321craw_artworld?currentPage=all, The New Yorker, March 21, 2005. Retrieved February 4, 2010. source: Sass, Louis A. "'Hyped on Clarity': Diane Arbus and the Postmodern Condition". Raritan, volume 25, number 1, pp. 1–37, Summer 2005.


Source: Kimmelman, Michael, The Profound Vision of Diane Arbus: Flaws in Beauty, Beauty in Flaws, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/11/arts/design/the-profound-vision-of-diane-arbus-flaws-in-beauty-beauty-in.html, 1 November 2018, The New York Times, 11 March 2005

Paulo Coelho photo

“When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready.”

Source: The Devil and Miss Prym‎ [O Demônio e a srta Prym] (2000), p. x; this has also been misquoted as "A moment is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny."
Context: When we least expect it, life sets us a challenge to test our courage and willingness to change; at such a moment, there is no point in pretending that nothing has happened or in saying that we are not ready. The challenge will not wait. Life does not look back. A week is more than enough time for us to decide whether or not to accept our destiny.

Charlie Chaplin photo

“You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

Lyrics to "Smile", written by John Turner and Geoffrey Claremont Parsons in 1954, the music of which was composed by Chaplin in 1936. - "Smile" music, as used in Modern Times (1936) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ps6ck1ejoAw - "Smile" tribute to Chaplin, as sung by Michael Jackson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iu-rLA4POkI
Misattributed
Context: Smile though your heart is aching
Smile even though its breaking
When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by
If you smile with your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You'll find that life is still worthwhile If you just
Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That's the time you must keep on trying
Smile, what's the use of crying?
You'll find that life is still worthwhile.

Oscar Wilde photo

“I've now realized for the first time in my life the vital Importance of Being Earnest.”

Jack, Act III
Source: The Importance of Being Earnest (1895)

Jonathan Safran Foer photo

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Lewis Carroll photo
T. Harv Eker photo
Eleanor Roosevelt photo

“All of life is a constant education.”

Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States

Source: The Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt

Theodore Roosevelt photo
Sylvia Plath photo

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid.”

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

Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Oscar Wilde photo
David Nicholls photo

“So - whatever happened to you?'
'Life. Life happened.”

Source: One Day

Samuel Butler photo

“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) novelist

Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895

Vladimir Nabokov photo

“Life is a message scribbled in the dark.”

Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Emil M. Cioran photo

“the deepest subjective experiences are also the most universal, because through them one reaches the universal source of life.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: On the Heights of Despair

Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
Zig Ziglar photo
Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Joseph Addison photo

“The greatest sweetener of human life is Friendship. To raise this to the highest pitch of enjoyment, is a secret which but few discover.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

As quoted in Hugs for Girlfriends : Stories, Sayings, and Scriptures to Encourage and Inspire (2001) by Philis Boultinghouse and LeAnn Weiss, p. 7; there seem to be no published sources available for this statement prior to 2001.
Disputed

Mark Twain photo
Joel Osteen photo
Stephen Chbosky photo

“Every person has to live his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.”

Variant: I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people.
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Rainer Maria Rilke photo
Pablo Picasso photo

“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Mark Twain photo
Anthony Robbins photo

“The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.”

Source: Unlimited Power (1986), p. 198

Anthony Bourdain photo

“To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.”

Kitchen Confidential (2000)
Source: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Context: Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn. To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living. Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, and an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold. Oh, I'll accommodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine. (p. 70).

William Shakespeare photo
George Eliot photo
Barbara Bush photo

“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”

Source: The Agony and the Ecstasy

Emil M. Cioran photo

“We are so lonely in life that we must ask ourselves if the loneliness of dying is not a symbol of our human existence.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)

Joseph Campbell photo

“The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Variant: The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.
Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Karl Marx photo

“In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.”

Preface to ' (1859).
Source: A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy
Context: In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society — the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life determines the social, political and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. [Es ist nicht das Bewußtsein der Menschen, das ihr Sein, sondern umgekehrt ihr gesellschaftliches Sein, das ihr Bewusstsein bestimmt. ] At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces in society come in conflict with the existing relations of production, or — what is but a legal expression for the same thing — with the property relations within which they have been at work before. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution. With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed. In considering such transformations a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophic — in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out. Just as our opinion of an individual is not based on what he thinks of himself, so we can not judge of such a period of transformation by its own consciousness; on the contrary, this consciousness must be explained rather from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflict between the social productive forces and the relations of production. No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore, mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, we will always find that the task itself arises only when the material conditions necessary for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. In broad outlines we can designate the Asiatic, the ancient, the feudal, and the modern bourgeois modes of production as so many progressive epochs in the economic formation of society. The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production — antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism, but of one arising from the social conditions of life of the individuals; at the same time the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This social formation constitutes, therefore, the closing chapter of the prehistoric stage of human society.

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Joyce Meyer photo
Cassandra Clare photo
Paramahansa Yogananda photo
Eckhart Tolle photo

“Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

Theodore Roosevelt photo

“The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.”

Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
André Breton photo
Bertrand Russell photo

“We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.”

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

Source: Sceptical Essays

George Carlin photo

“People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
Source: When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?

Virginia Woolf photo

“Our friends - how distant, how mute, how seldom visited and little known. And
I, too, am dim to my friends and unknown; a phantom, sometimes seen, often
not. Life is a dream surely.”

Bernard, section IX
Source: The Waves (1931)
Context: Our friends, how seldom visited, how little known — it is true; and yet, when I meet an unknown person, and try to break off, here at this table, what I call “my life”, it is not one life that I look back upon; I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am — Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs.

James Patterson photo
Sadhguru photo
Nicholas Sparks photo
Jimi Hendrix photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo
Bertrand Russell photo
Henry Miller photo
Rabindranath Tagore photo
Fernando Pessoa photo

“Blessed are those who never entrust their life to no one.”

Ibid.
Original: Benditos os que não confiam a vida a ninguém.
Source: The Book of Disquiet

John Wayne photo

“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.”

John Wayne (1907–1979) American film actor

Playboy interview, May 1971
Context: There's a lot of things great about life. But I think tomorrow is the most important thing. Comes in to us at midnight very clean, ya know. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Friedrich Nietzsche photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Vladimir Nabokov photo

“He broke my heart. You merely broke my life.”

Source: Lolita

Noam Chomsky photo
Sei Shonagon photo
John Ruskin photo

“The best thing in life aren't things.”

John Ruskin (1819–1900) English writer and art critic
Bertrand Russell photo

“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”

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

1920s, Marriage and Morals (1929)

Terry Pratchett photo
Bram Stoker photo

“The blood is the life!”

Bram Stoker (1847–1912) Irish novelist and short story writer, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula
C.G. Jung photo
Nancy Mitford photo
Oscar Wilde photo
Norman Mailer photo

“I don't think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Interview with Divina Infusino in American Way (15 June 1995)

Alain de Botton photo
Mark Twain photo
Daisaku Ikeda photo
Albert Einstein photo

“Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.”

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