Quotes about life
page 58

“I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately I've realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts.”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Source: Microserfs

People

“When life doesn't meet your expectations, it was important to take it with grace.”

Patricia Briggs (1965) American writer

Source: When Demons Walk

“College is the best time of your life. When else are your parents going to spend several thousand dollars a year just for you to go to a strange town and get drunk every night?”

David Wood (1946) British philosopher, born 1946

Parent, Time, Night

“I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Art

“Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Happy, Goodbye

“She was forced to consider the startling fact that the love of her life might not actually be someone with whom she could spend a lifetime.”

Jodi Picoult book The Tenth Circle

Source: The Tenth Circle

Love

“Friends are the fruitcake of life - some nutty, some soaked in alcohol, some sweet.”

Jon Ronson (1967) British journalist, documentary filmmaker, radio presenter and nonfiction author

Alcohol

“Life, it turns out, is infinitely more clever and adaptable than anyone had ever supposed.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

“Maybe the best thing to do with favorite books is to leave them be: to achieve such exalted position means that they entered your life at exactly the right time, in precisely the right place, and those conditions can never be recreated.”

Nick Hornby (1957) English novelist

Books, Time

“I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.”

Lee Child book The Affair

Source: The Affair

“Whats not to love is hardly a reason to love. And the catch of your life is not the same thing as the love of your life. Be careful of that subtle but rather crucial distinction.”

Emily Giffin book Where We Belong

Source: Where We Belong

Love

“Psychologically, the choice "to think or not" is the choice "to focus or not." Existentially, the choice "to focus or not" is the choice "to be conscious or not." Metaphysically, the choice "to be conscious or not" is the choice of life or death.”

Ayn Rand (1905–1982) Russian-American novelist and philosopher

Source: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

Death, Thinking

“Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.”

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

"Einstein's Reply to Criticisms" (1949), The World As I See It (1949)
Context: A man's value to the community depends primarily on how far his feelings, thoughts, and actions are directed towards promoting the good of his fellows. We call him good or bad according to how he stands in this matter. It looks at first sight as if our estimate of a man depended entirely on his social qualities.
And yet such an attitude would be wrong. It is clear that all the valuable things, material, spiritual, and moral, which we receive from society can be traced back through countless generations to certain creative individuals. The use of fire, the cultivation of edible plants, the steam engine — each was discovered by one man.
Only the individual can think, and thereby create new values for society — nay, even set up new moral standards to which the life of the community conforms. Without creative, independently thinking and judging personalities the upward development of society is as unthinkable as the development of the individual personality without the nourishing soil of the community.
The health of society thus depends quite as much on the independence of the individuals composing it as on their close political cohesion.

Health, Communication, Thinking, Dependency

“I knew my dad was a good man, a kind man, and though he'd led a wounded life, he'd done the best he could in raising me.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Best of Me

John Tyree, Chapter 16, p. 198
2000s, Dear John (2006)
Source: The Best of Me

“One of the most effective ways to learn about oneself is by taking seriously the cultures of others. It forces you to pay attention to those details of life which differentiate them from you.”

Edward T. Hall book The Silent Language

Source: The Silent Language

Way, Learning

“A library book lasts as long as a house, for hundreds of years. It is not an article for mere consumption, but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Men, Books, Housing

“Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Joy

“Oh, I could spend my life having this conversation - look - please try to understand before one of us dies”

John Cleese (1939) actor from England

Understanding

“Life shouldn't be about the either/or. We're capable of more than that, you know?”

Sarah Dessen book Along for the Ride

Source: Along for the Ride

“It was important for him to believe that he'd spent his life among people who kept missing the point.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise (1984)

People

“What can I say about life? Do I praise it for letting you live, or damn it for allowing the rest?”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

“Love is the essence of a full and wonderful life.”

Nicholas Sparks book Nights in Rodanthe

Source: Nights in Rodanthe

Love

“Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.”

James Hillman (1926–2011) American psychologist

Star, Light

“I think my life would be easier, she said,
if I could just get my selves to agree on something.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Source: Still Mostly True

Thinking

“Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write”

Dani Shapiro (1962) Author

Source: Still Writing: The Perils and Pleasures of a Creative Life

Learning

“Most people fail to realize that in life, it’s not how much money you make, it’s how much money you keep.”

Robert T. Kiyosaki book Rich Dad Poor Dad

Source: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Money, People

“It is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984), Part Two: Soul and Body, p. 50

Beauty

“Life is gamble, It's harsh and painful most of the time, and it's not for the timid. Spoils go to the victor, not to the one who doesn't even show up for the battle."

-Acheron”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Night Play

Pain, Time

“A life spent writing has taught me to be wary of words. Those that seem clearest are often the most treacherous.”

Amin Maalouf book In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Source: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

“Life's harder, the deeper you feel things.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: The Dead of Night

Feeling

“And in that one grey hair I saw my whole life and I said "I think I need a hair.”

Tim Burton (1958) American filmmaker

Source: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Thinking

“If I don't have time to live my life well the first time, when am I going to find the time to go back and live it over?”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: Uh-Oh

Time

“When your own romantic life is falling apart, everyone else's looks fabulous.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

“This life is a test-it is only a test.
If it had been an actual life, you would have received further
instructions on where to go and what to do.
Remember, this life is only a test.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Source: A Path with Heart: A Guide Through the Perils and Promises of Spiritual Life

“Remorse is a terrible thing to bear, Pam, one of the worst of all punishments in this life. To wish undone something you have done, to wish you could look back on kindness to someone you love, instead of on unkindness - that is a very terrible thing.”

Enid Blyton (1897–1968) author

Source: House at the Corner

Love

“Life is an awful, ugly place to not have a best friend.”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Variant: This world is an awful/ugly place not to have a best friend.
Source: Someone Like You (1998)

Friendship, For Friend, For Bestfriend

“The question, O me! so sad, recurring -
What good amid these, O me, O life?
That you are here - that life
exists and identity,
that the powerful play goes on,
and you may contribute a verse.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Source: The Leaves of Grass

Sadness, Question

“The real wonders of life lie in the depths. Exploring the depths for truths is the real wonder which the child and the artist know: magic and power lie in truth.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947

Truth, Lie

“Our own life has to be our message.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Source: The World We Have: A Buddhist Approach to Peace and Ecology

“I lived with the terrible knowledge that one day I would be an old man still waiting for my real life to start. Already, I pitied that old man.”

Pat Conroy book The Prince of Tides

Source: The Prince of Tides

Knowledge, Waiting

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

D. H. Lawrence : An Unprofessional Study (1932); also quoted in The Mirror and the Garden : Realism and Reality in the Writings of Anais Nin (1971) by Evelyn J. Hinz, p. 40

Death, People

“Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn”

John Berryman book The Dream Songs

Source: The Dream Songs

Sea

“She kept her face to the floor, moving in her personal oblivion, her sunflower eyes fixed on the predicament of her life we would never understand.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Understanding, Personality

“And to tell the truth I don't want to let go of the wrists of idleness, I don't want to sell my life for money, I don't even want to come in out of the rain.”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Blue Iris: Poems and Essays

Money, Truth

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Love, Dreams, Country

“In life's most significant moments we are always alone.”

Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra

Source: Manuscript Found in Accra

“AND what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Perfection

“Life forgets me but will not let me forget
Holds me down and tells me that I'm free.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: See A Grown Man Cry/Now Watch Him Die

Forgetting

“Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Love, Star, Chance, Beauty

“The freedom of affluence opposes and contradicts the freedom of community life.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays

Communication, Freedom

“Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose honest arrogance and have seen no occasion to change.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

As quoted in The World's Best Thoughts on Life & Living (1981) compiled by Eugene Raudsepp; also quoted in The Michigan Daily http://www.pub.umich.edu/daily/1998/nov/11-10-98/arts/arts2.html (10 November 1998)

Change

“There comes a time in a man's life when to get where he has to – if there are no doors or windows – he walks through a wall.”

Bernard Malamud (1914–1986) American author

"The Man in the Drawer", in Rembrandt's Hat (1973); cited from Selected Stories (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985) p. 225

Time

“Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

Reading

“your life can change in an instant. that instant can last forever.”

Laura Kasischke (1961) American writer

Source: The Life Before Her Eyes

Change

“Imagineminus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

“No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change”

Barbara De Angelis (1951) American psychologist

Happiness, Change, Happy

“Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil-they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 30, Colonel Sanders

Love, Faith, Justice, Universe

“You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen.”

Paulo Coelho book By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

By The River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept (1994)
Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept
Context: You have to take risks … We will only understand the miracle of life fully when we allow the unexpected to happen. Every day, God gives us the sun — and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven't perceived that moment, that it doesn't exist — that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as tomorrow. But if people really pay attention to their everyday lives, they will discover that magic moment. It may arrive in the instant when we are doing something mundane, like putting our front-door key in the lock; it may lie hidden in the quiet that follows the lunch hour or in the thousand and one things that all seem the same to us. But that moment exists — a moment when all the power of the stars becomes a part of us and enables us to perform miracles.

Understanding

“She had an immense curiosity about life, and was constantly staring and wondering.”

Henry James book The Portrait of a Lady

Source: The Portrait of a Lady

“She decided she'd rather die in some less memorable way- maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at the age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy. Yes, that sounded good.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Age, Way, Sleep

“Perhaps the way to succeed is to think of life on Earth as a colossal joke, a creation of such immense stupidity that the only way to live is to laugh until you think your heart will break.”

Meg Rosoff (1956) American-British children's writer

Source: There Is No Dog

Stupidity, Way, Thinking, Heart

“Poetry is life distilled.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

"Song of Winnie"
Winnie (1988)
Variant: My Poem is life, and not finished.
Context: My Poem is life, and not finished.
It shall never be finished.
My Poem is life, and can grow.

Wherever life can grow, it will.
It will sprout out,
and do the best it can.
I give you what I have.
You don’t get all your questions answered in this world.
How many answers shall be found
in the developing world of my Poem?
I don’t know. Nevertheless I put my Poem,
which is my life, into your hands, where it will do the best it can.