Quotes about life page 5
“What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.”
Gabriel García Márquez book Living to Tell the Tale
Living to Tell the Tale (2002)
Variant: Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it.
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Source: The Open Door (1957) This quotation is often contracted into: Security is mostly a superstition... Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. or paraphrased: Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
“Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said.”
Virginia Woolf book Mrs Dalloway
Part III, Ch. 3
To the Lighthouse (1927)
Source: Mrs. Dalloway
Context: "Like a work of art," she repeated, looking from her canvas to the drawing-room steps and back again. She must rest for a moment. And, resting, looking from one to the other vaguely, the old question which transversed the sky of the soul perpetually, the vast, the general question which was apt to particularise itself at such moments as these, when she released faculties that had been on the strain, stood over her, paused over her, darkened over her. What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one. This, that, and the other; herself and Charles Tansley and the breaking wave; Mrs. Ramsay bringing them together; Mrs. Ramsay saying, "Life stand still here"; Mrs. Ramsay making of the moment something permanent (as in another sphere Lily herself tried to make of the moment something permanent) — this was of the nature of a revelation. In the midst of chaos there was shape; this eternal passing and flowing (she looked at the cloud going and the leaves shaking) was struck into stability. Life stand still here, Mrs. Ramsay said. "Mrs. Ramsay! Mrs. Ramsay!" she repeated. She owed it all to her.
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.”
Vladimir Nabokov book Lolita
Opening lines.
Source: Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita. Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, an initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for fancy prose style. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.
Ram Dass (1931–2019) American contemporary spiritual teacher and the author of the 1971 book Be Here Now
“Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician
“Between our two lives
there is also the life of
the cherry blossom.”
Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet
“the purpose of life is the life of purpose”
Robin S. Sharma book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Dian Fossey (1932–1985) American zoologist, gorilla researcher
“There is no such thing as 'too late' in life.”
Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie
Source: Tuesdays with Morrie
“Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer
Source: A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
"Security" (1951); excerpted in Outlaw Journalist: The Life & Times of Hunter S. Thompson (2008), page 15
1950s
“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy childhood.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006) http://english.people.com.cn/200606/14/eng20060614_273839.html
“Let all of life be an unfettered howl.”
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
T.S. Eliot book The Hollow Men
Variant: Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
Source: The Hollow Men (1925)
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Quoted in: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=9EgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9, Vol. 57, nr. 11 (11 September 1964). p. 9. <br class="br">1960s
“I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Glass
Jace to Clary, pg. 331
Variant: There is no pretending, I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Glass (2009)
Nikki Sixx (1958) American musician
Source: The Heroin Diaries: A Year In The Life Of A Shattered Rock Star
“There's no coming to consciousness without pain.”
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
“Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.”
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
“All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.”
Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter
Henry James (1843–1916) American novelist, short story author, and literary critic
Overheard by his nephew, Billy James, in 1902; quoted in Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, vol V: The Master 1901-1916 (1972).
“Nothing should be out of the reach of hope. Life is a hope.”
Oscar Wilde A Woman of No Importance
Source: A Woman of No Importance
Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author
Source: Carlos Castaneda (1971) Separate Reality: Conversations With Don Juan. p. 85; As cited in: Eugene Dupuis (2001) Time Shift: Managing Time to Create a Life You Love. Ch. 5: Self Management
William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads
Stanza 2.
Source: Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800), Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey (1798)
Context: These beauteous forms,
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
And passing even into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration:—feelings too
Of unremembered pleasure: such, perhaps,
As have no slight or trivial influence
On that best portion of a good man's life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust,
To them I may have owed another gift,
Of aspect more sublime; that blessed mood,
In which the burthen of the mystery,
In which the heavy and the weary weight
Of all this unintelligible world
Is lighten'd:—that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul:
While with an eye made quiet by the power
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy,
We see into the life of things.
“I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.”
Orhan Pamuk book The New Life
Source: The New Life
John Wooden (1910–2010) American basketball coach
Source: Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
“If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”
René Magritte (1898–1967) Belgian surrealist artist
Victor Hugo book Les Misérables
Variant: The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved -- loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Source: Les Misérables
“I can't stand it to think my life is going so fast and I'm not really living it.”
Ernest Hemingway book The Sun Also Rises
Source: The Sun Also Rises
“Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
“I meant to write about death, only life came breaking in as usual”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) English writer
“The point is not what we expect from life, but rather what life expects from us.”
Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor
Jimmy Carter (1924) American politician, 39th president of the United States (in office from 1977 to 1981)
“To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.”
Reba McEntire (1955) American country music artist and actress
“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur? ([http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/cicero/orator.shtml#120 120])
Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman
Variant translation: To be ignorant of the past is to be forever a child.
Chapter XXXIV, section 120
Orator Ad M. Brutum (46 BC)
Variant: Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?
“I wish to go on living even after my death.”
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
“The most important thing you do in your life is to die.”
Timothy Leary (1920–1996) American psychologist
“The truth is, honey, I've enjoyed my life. I've had a hell of a good time.”
Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress
Patrick Süskind (1949) German writer and screenwriter
Source: Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
John Von Neumann (1903–1957) Hungarian-American mathematician and polymath
Remark made by von Neumann as keynote speaker at the first national meeting of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1947, as mentioned by Franz L. Alt at the end of "Archaeology of computers: Reminiscences, 1945--1947", Communications of the ACM, volume 15, issue 7, July 1972, special issue: Twenty-fifth anniversary of the Association for Computing Machinery, p. 694.
Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer
Variant: You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
Source: True Love (1998)
Aleister Crowley (1875–1947) poet, mountaineer, occultist
Source: The Confessions of Aleister Crowley: An Autohagiography
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author
Speech at Macworld Expo in Boston, as quoted in The Daily News (4 August 1994) http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=bD8PAAAAIBAJ&sjid=IoYDAAAAIBAJ&pg=4837%2C5338590. A nearly identical quote can be found at the end of the second paragraph of his lecture Life in the Universe http://hawking.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=65 (1996).
“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”
Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist
Bob Schieffer (1937) Journalist, Anchor for CBS News
Source: This Just in: What I Couldn't Tell You on TV
Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman
As quoted in Nike Culture : The Sign of the Swoosh (1998), by Robert Goldman and Stephen Papson, p. 49
“You have only one life, make the most of it.”
Louis Sachar book Holes
Source: Holes, page 57.
Context: "You don't know that," said Mr. Pendanski. "I'm not saying it's going to be easy. Nothing in life is easy. But that's no reason to give up. You'll be surprised what you can accomplish if you set your mind to it. After all, you only have one life, so you should try to make the most of it."
“We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.”
William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…
Vol. I, ch. 14.
The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)
“In real life it is always the anvil that breaks the hammer…”
George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist
Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor
Source: Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer
"The Summer Day"
New and Selected Poems (1992)
Variant: What will you do with your one precious, wild life?
Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 1
“The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live.”
Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist
