Quotes about life
page 45

Variant: She waved at all the people on the train & later, when she saw they didn't wave back, she started singing songs to herself & it went that way the whole day & she couldn't remember having a better time in her life.
Source: Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas

People, Way, Singing, Time

“I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Love, Death, World, Thinking

“Feeling lost, crazy and desperate belongs to a good life as much as optimism, certainty and reason.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Feeling, Optimism, Sad, Hurtful

“Son, if you really want something in this life, you have to work for it. Now quiet! They're about to announce the lottery numbers.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

Funny

“If we'd never met, I think I would have known my life wasn't complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn't know who I was looking for”

Nicholas Sparks book The Longest Ride

Variant: If we'd never met, I think I would have known my life wasn't complete. And I would have wandered the world in search of you, even if I didn't know who I was looking for.
Source: The Longest Ride

World, Search, Thinking, Romantic

“All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don't even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.”

Candace Bushnell book Sex and the City

Source: Sex and the City

Men, Disappointment, Feeling

“Things in life have no real beginning, though our stories about them always do.”

Colum McCann Zoli

Source: Zoli

“What greater wealth is there than to own your life and to spend it on growing? Every living thing must grow. It can't stand still. It must grow or perish.”

Ayn Rand book Atlas Shrugged

Source: Atlas Shrugged

Wealth

“Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation

Page 15

“That's the whole point of life, you know? To meet new people.”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

People

“Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Thinking, Loss

“One of the main reasons that we lose our enthusiasm in life is because we become ungrateful.. we let what was once a miracle become common to us. We get so accustomed to his goodness it becomes a routine..”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

“Reality continues to ruin my life.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat
Source: The Complete Calvin and Hobbes

Reality

“Being rich is an obstacle to loving. When you are rich, you want to continue to be rich, and so you end up devoting all your time, all your energy, in your daily life to stay rich.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart

Love, Time

“Three in the morning is never the time to try and sort out your life.”

Matt Haig book Reasons to Stay Alive

Source: Reasons to Stay Alive

Time

“You get towards the end of life - no, not life itself, but of something else: the end of any likelihood of change in that life. You are allowed a long moment of pause, time enough to ask the question: what else have I done wrong?”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Question, Change, Time

“One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid… One wants… But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?”

Tony Kushner Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes

Source: Angels in America

Time, Perfection

“At birth, we emerge from dream soup.
At death, we sink back into dream soup.
In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land.
Life is a portage.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

Death, Dreams, Birth

“Find your quiet center of life and write from that to the world.”

Sarah Orne Jewett (1849–1909) American novelist, short story writer and poet

World

“We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life.”

Nikos Kazantzakis book The Saviors of God

The Saviors of God (1923)
Context: We come from a dark abyss, we end in a dark abyss, and we call the luminous interval life. As soon as we are born the return begins, at once the setting forth and the coming back; we die in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of life is death! But as soon as we are born we begin the struggle to create, to compose, to turn matter into life; we are born in every moment. Because of this many have cried out: The goal of ephemeral life is immortality! In the temporary living organism these two streams collide … both opposing forces are holy. It is our duty, therefore, to grasp that vision which can embrace and harmonize these two enormous, timeless, and indestructible forces, and with this vision to modulate our thinking and our action.

“I realized that life is so short: Why waste one minute of it worrying what other people think or say about you, or what score you got on some test? Why not believe what you want to believe, and do what you love?”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

Love, People, Thinking

“The animals of the planet are in desperate peril… Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Animals

“any experiment of interest in life will be carried out at your own expense”

John Wilmot (1748–1815) English politician

“In books and in life, you need to read several pages before someone's true character is revealed.”

Gail Carson Levine (1947) American writer

Books, Reading

“Never underestimate the vital importance of finding early in life the work that for you is play. This turns possible underachievers into happy warriors.”

Ken Robinson (1950) UK writer

Source: The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything

Happiness

“You cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time…”

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

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Time

“To all my librarian friends, champions of books, true magicians in the House of Life. Without you, this writer would be lost in the Dust.”

Rick Riordan book The Red Pyramid

Source: The Red Pyramid

Books, Housing

“I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room.”

Raymond Chandler book Farewell, My Lovely

Source: Farewell, My Lovely (1940), chapter 34

Home, Drink, Country

“Nothing could have survived our life.”

Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948) Novelist, wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald

“Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Variant: Life moves very fast. It rushes us from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.
Source: Eleven Minutes (2003), p. 9.
Context: When we meet someone and fall in love, we have a sense that the whole universe is on our side. And yet if something goes wrong, there is nothing left! How is it possible for the beauty that was there only minutes before to vanish so quickly? Life moves very fast. It rushes from heaven to hell in a matter of seconds.

Hell

“Moth: I gave you my life.

Flame: I allowed you to kiss me.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Kiss

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss other people. Life's too short to worry about what other people do or don't do. Tend your own backyard, not theirs, because yours is the one you have to live in.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

People, Idea

“It was like something you have dreaded and feared and dodged for years until it seemed like all your life, then despite everything it happened to you and all it was was just pain, all it did was hurt and so it was all over, all finished, all right.”

William Faulkner book Intruder in the Dust

Source: Intruder in the Dust

Pain, Fear, Hurt

“They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.”

Daniel Wallace (1959) American author

Love, Time

“He was alone. He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

James Joyce book A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Happiness, Water, Heart

“Alas! how easily things go wrong!
A sigh too deep or a kiss too long,
And then comes a mist and a weeping rain,
And life is never the same again.”

George MacDonald book Phantastes

Source: Phantastes (1858)

Kiss

“Great griefs exhaust. They discourage us with life. The man into whom they enter feels something taken from him. In youth, their visit is sad; later on, it is ominous.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Youth, Sadness, Feeling

“I am conscious of a soul-sense that lifts me above the narrow, cramping circumstances of my life. My physical limitations are forgotten- my world lies upward, the length and the breadth and the sweep of the heavens are mine!”

Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist

Source: The Story of My Life: With Her Letters (1887 1901) and a Supplementary Account of Her Education Including Passages from the Reports and Letters of Her Teacher Anne Mansfield Sullivan by John Albert Macy

World, Soul, Sense