Quotes about life
page 23
“I am life which wants to live admidst of lives that want to live.”
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
Source: Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God
“Fire Lookout: Numa Ridge”, p. 57
The Journey Home (1977)
Source: The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West
“I think life too complex a thing to be settled by these hard and fast rules.”
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan
Source: Let Me be a Woman
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
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.
“You'll find that life is still worthwhile, if you just smile.”
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.
“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)
“All of life is a constant education.”
Source: The Wisdom of Eleanor Roosevelt
“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid.”
Source: The Journals of Sylvia Plath
Source: The Slumber of Christianity: Awakening a Passion for Heaven on Earth
“Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.”
“Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.”
Speech at the Somerville Club, February 27, 1895
“Life is a message scribbled in the dark.”
“The whole point of life is learning to live with the consequences of the bad decision we've made.”
Source: Infamous
“Life is heavier than the weight of all things.”
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
“Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.”
Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential
“The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.”
“The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.”
Source: Unlimited Power (1986), p. 198
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).
Source: Reflections: Life After the White House
“Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.”
Source: The Agony and the Ecstasy
Source: On the Heights of Despair (1934)
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
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.
“Death is more universal than life. Everyone dies, but not everyone lives.”
“Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.”
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
“The joy in life is his who has the heart to demand it.”
“We love our habits more than our income, often more than our life.”
Source: Sceptical Essays
“People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.”
Books, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops? (2004)
Source: When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops?
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.
“To be without love is to be without grace, what matters most in life.
We is so much better than I.”
Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas
Source: Through the Zombie Glass
Source: Red Bird
“Into every empty corner, into all forgotten things and nooks, Nature struggles to pour life.”
“It's hard to make strangers care about the good things in your life.”
Source: The Body
“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
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.
“To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.”
1920s, Marriage and Morals (1929)
Interview with Divina Infusino in American Way (15 June 1995)
Source: The Secrets of Peaches
“Life isn't worth living, unless it is lived for someone else.”