Quotes about life
page 60

“How wrong to have been so negative, how wrong to have been so gloomy, how wrong to have run away from life, how wrong to have said no, again and again, instead of yes.”

Jonathan Franzen (1959) novelist

“Life isn't only about the big moments whether they be good or bad. Maybe it’s about the small things that stretch out to strengthen the most tenuous bound.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“Life, a beauty chased by tragic laughter.”

John Masefield (1878–1967) English poet and writer

Source: King Cole

Beauty, Laughter

“I mean, is there a chance for me? To have another life after this, a better one?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Chance

“To know you're going to die, and to be prepared for it at any time.
That's better. That way you can actually be more involved in your life
while you're living.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Way, Time

“If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

“… the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

“I want to be with one person in my life. I want to know that the guy I spend the rest of my life with is the first person I share something so intimate and exciting with.”

Randa Abdel-Fattah (1979) contemporary Australian writer of novels for young adults

Source: Does My Head Look Big In This?

Guy, Personality

“To be angry once in a while is really good fun, because it makes others so miserable. But to be angry morning, noon and night, as I am, grows monotonous and prevents my gaining any other pleasure in life.”

L. Frank Baum book The Emerald City of Oz

Source: The Emerald City of Oz

Pleasure, Night

“Kahlan guide me. Kahlan teach me. Kahlan protect me. In your light I thrive. In your mercy I am sheltered. In your wisdom I am humbled. I live only to love you. My life is yours.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

Love, Wisdom, Light

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

People

“I cannot live with you,
It would be life,
And life is over there
Behind the shelf”

Emily Dickinson book The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

Source: The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson

“The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all.”

Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher

Dreams, Success

“You've always lived a life of pretense, not a real life-- a simulated existence, not a genuine existence. Everything about you, everything you are, has always been pretense, never genuine, never real.”

Thomas Bernhard book Woodcutters

Source: Woodcutters

“Because Father said clocks slay time. He said time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Variant: Clocks slay time... time is dead as long as it is being clicked off by little wheels; only when the clock stops does time come to life.
Source: The Sound and the Fury (1929)

Time, Dead

“We’re Nephilim. Every one of our life’s passages has some mystical component — our births, our deaths, our, marriages, everything has a ceremony and a rune. There is one as well if you wish to become someone’s parabatai. It’s no small commitment.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

Death, Marriage, Birth

“If you know that this life is all that you have, wouldn't you make the most of it?”

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

“Life is a preparation for the future; and the best preparation for the future is to live as if there were none.”

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

Future

“for her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Heart

“The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.”

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) writer

Wealth

“You can live your whole life not realizing that what you're looking for is right in front of you.”

David Nicholls book One Day

Variant: You can live your whole life not realising that what you're looking for is right in front of you.
Source: One Day

“It's about taking everything you thought was true and throwing it out the window. It's about embracing life's unpredictability, letting go of boundaries, and starting over”

Sara Shepard (1973) Author

Source: Pretty Little Liars #4: Unbelievable

“[No] matter what a waste one has made of one's life, it is ever possible to find some path to redemption, however partial.”

Charles Frazier book Cold Mountain

Source: Cold Mountain

“The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after the hell is over.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Hell, Suicide

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Introduction, p. xi.
Source: The Alchemist (1988)
Context: I ask myself: are defeats necessary?
Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for a dream, we have no experience and make mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

Secret, Time, Wise

“The four most over-rated things in life are champagne, lobster, anal sex, and picnics.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2006/10/16/he-knew-he-was-right-2 note: Our Short National Nightmare note: The New Yorker note: In The New Yorker, October 16, 2006 note: 2000s, 2006

Sex

“If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

Wise, Deep, Life, Heart Touching

“A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself. You have a chance to select from pretty elegant furnishings.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Home, Chance

“And after a while… I mean, how do you choose? Who gets to live? Part of life is that… well, some people have to die. My powers aren't a prescription you can get filled as needed.”

Richelle Mead Shadow Kiss

Source: Shadow Kiss

People, Parting

“Life is nasty, brutish, and short”

Thomas Hobbes book Leviathan

The First Part, Chapter 13, p. 62.
Leviathan (1651)
Variant: And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.
Context: Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of Warre, where every man is Enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withall. In such condition, there is no place for Industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no Culture of the Earth; no Navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by Sea; no commodious Building; no Instruments of moving, and removing things as require much force; no Knowledge of the face of the Earth; no account of Time; no Arts; no Letters; no Society; and which is worst of all, continuall feare, and danger of violent death; And the life of man solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short.

“What's crazy is living your life according to some book written by someone who couldn't imagine what your life would be like.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Books, Imagination

“But I was still alive, and in my book, where there's life, there's hope.”

Bryce Courtenay The Power of One

Source: The Power of One

Books, Hope

“No matter how qualified or deserving we are, we will never reach a better life until we can imagine it for ourselves and allow ourselves to have it.”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Imagination

“For he was aware of the great secret of life: Women don't look for handsome men. Women look for men who have had beautiful women. Having an ugly mistress is therefore a fatal mistake.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Source: The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Women, Men, Secret, Beauty

“In the end, coming to faith remains for all a sense of homecoming, of picking up the threads of a lost life, of responding to a bell that had long been ringing, of taking a place at a table that had long been vacant.”

Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist

Faith, Sense

“But if we are talking in terms of making progress in life, we must understand that "good enough" is very different from "best.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

Source: Eleven Minutes

Understanding

“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.”

Kakuzo Okakura book The Book of Tea

Source: The Book of Tea

Art

“I was originally supposed to become an engineer but the thought of having to expend my creative energy on things that make practical everyday life even more refined, with a loathsome capital gain as the goal, was unbearable to me.”

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

Source: The Ultimate Quotable Einstein

“Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to fill the roles given you by good people, by people who love you.”

Orson Scott Card (1951) American science fiction novelist

Love, People

“Life can't ever really defeat a writer who is in love with writing, for life itself is a writer's lover until death – fascinating, cruel, lavish, warm, cold, treacherous, constant.”

Edna Ferber (1885–1968) Novelist, playwright

Love, Death, Lovers

“Calvin: History is the fiction we invent to persuade ourselves that events are knowable and that life has order and direction. That's why events are always reinterpreted when values change. We need new versions of history to allow for our current prejudices.
p152”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Homicidal Psycho Jungle Cat

History, Change

“He was so excessively polite that Wallendar suspected he had endured many humiliations in his life.”

Henning Mankell book The Dogs of Riga

Source: The Dogs of Riga

“She was not a slowpoke grownup. She was a girl who could not wait. Life was so interesting she had to find out what happened next.”

Beverly Cleary book Ramona the Pest

Source: Ramona the Pest

Girl, Waiting

“I was blinded by stupidity for a brief moment in our life, for a flicker in the eternity in which you and I live, and I stumbled.”

Paullina Simons book The Summer Garden

Source: The Summer Garden

Stupidity

“No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived.”

Alistair MacLeod (1936–2014) Canadian author and professor of English

Source: Island: Collected Stories

“What do you want from me?” – Nick
“Normally, it’d be your life and your soul. Unfortunately, I can’t take either right now. Sucks to be me today.” – Death”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Death, Soul

“One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical, decisive hour. Write it on your hear that every day is the best day of the year.”

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

Decision

“Life is the art of being well-deceived; and in order that the deception may succeed it must be habitual and uninterrupted.”

William Hazlitt book The Round Table

Source: The Round Table

Art

“A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.”

Emily Giffin (1972) American writer

Source: Love the One You're With

Daughters

“It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.”

Cheryl Strayed book Torch

Source: Torch

Time

“No matter how good somebody's life looks from the outside, you can be sure there's something about it you wouldn't want to have in your life.”

Jean Ferris (1939–2015) American children's writer

Source: Twice Upon a Marigold

“In the end, it wasn't death that surprised her but the stubbornness of life.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Death

“How slow life is, how violent hope is.”

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918) French poet

Hope

“There are times in your life when, despite the steel weight of your memories and the sadness that seems to lie at your feet like a shadow, you suddenly and strangely feel perfectly okay.”

Kevin Brockmeier book The View from the Seventh Layer

Source: The View from the Seventh Layer

Lie, Sadness, Feeling, Memory

“To learn one must be humble. But life is the great teacher.”

James Joyce Ulysses

Source: Ulysses

Learning, Teachers

“I am about life. I’m gonna live as hard as i can and as full as i can until i die. And i’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born.”

Assata Shakur (1947) American activist who was a member of the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army

Source: Assata: An Autobiography

Children, Swine

“So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Love, Death

“There was no justice, there was only life. And life she had.”

Marilyn French book The Women's Room

Source: The Women's Room

Justice

“Some things you know all your life. They are so simple and true they must be said without elegance, meter and rhyme… they must be naked and alone, they must stand for themselves.”

Philip Levine (1928–2015) Poet

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”

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

Source: The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

Books, Personality

“All my life I've felt like there was something wrong with me. Something missing or damaged."
"Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Variant: Every teenager in the world feels like that, feels broken or out of place, different somehow, royalty mistakenly born into a family of peasants. The difference in your case is that it's true.
Source: City of Bones

World, Family, Feeling

“I don't think I could love you so much if you had nothing to complain of and nothing to regret. I don't like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and of little value. Life hasn't revealed its beauty to them.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Love, People, Beauty, Thinking

“Life is not a matter of creating a special name for ourselves, but of uncovering the name we have always had.”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

Source: Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self

“Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.'

That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.”

Alexander McCall Smith In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Source: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

“Some things don’t mix. Some things don’t mix at all, but sometimes in life you have to take the risk.”

Pat Conroy The Lords of Discipline

Source: The Lords of Discipline

“We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.”

George Santayana (1863–1952) 20th-century Spanish-American philosopher associated with Pragmatism

Solitude, Holiday

“Life loves the liver of it.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Love

“Life goes quickly, doesn't it?”

Mitch Albom For One More Day

Source: For One More Day

“Fear is the greatest form of oppression.
The best way to rise up in protest is to live your life to
its fullest!”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Second Helpings

Fear, Way

“His life rushes onward in such torrential rhythm that… only angels and devils can catch the tempo of it.”

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

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Angels

“What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hades' underwear?”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

“It is solely by risking life that freedom is obtained;… the individual who has not staked his or her life may, no doubt, be recognized as a Person; but he or she has not attained the truth of this recognition as an independent self-consciousness.”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) German philosopher

Source: Phenomenology of Spirit

Truth, Freedom, Personality

“She sowed in my mind the idea that reality is not only what we see on the surface; it has a magical dimension as well and, if we so desire, it is legitimate to enhance it and color it to make our journey through life less trying.”

Isabel Allende book Eva Luna

Source: Eva Luna

Color, Idea, Reality

“There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Death, Funny

“This is not some silly game… This is life and death Angels and demons.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Death, Angels, Game

“The real poetry and beauty in life comes from an intense relationship with reality in all its aspects. Realism is in fact the ideal we must aspire to, the highest point of human rationality.”

Robert Greene book The 50th Law

Source: The 50th Law

Beauty, Reality

“I think it was Milosz, the Polish poet, who when he lay in a doorway and watched the bullets lifting the cobbles out of the street beside him realised that most poetry is not equipped for life in a world where people actually die. But some is.”

Ted Hughes (1930–1998) English poet and children's writer

Source: Winter Pollen: Occasional Prose

People, World, Thinking

“The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions — the little soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) English poet, literary critic and philosopher

"The Friend. The Improvisatore" (1828)

Happiness, Pleasure, Smile, Feeling

“If you resist change, you resist life.”

Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian

Change

“I hate the moon. I hate tides and earthquakes and volcanoes. I hate a world where things that have absolutely nothing to do with me can destroy my life and the lives of people I love.”

Susan Beth Pfeffer book Life As We Knew It

Source: Life As We Knew It

Love, Hate, People, World

“But to mean it when I say that I want my life to count for His glory is to drive a stake through the heart of self - a painful and determined dying to me that must be a part of every day I live.”

Louie Giglio (1958) American clergy

Pain, Heart, Parting

“The truth is, some relationships are supposed to last forever, and some are only supposed to last a few days. That’s the way life is.”

Sophie Kinsella book Can You Keep a Secret?

Source: Can You Keep a Secret?

Truth, Way

“Life is rarely about what happened; it's mostly about what we think happened.”

Chuck Klosterman book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Source: Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Thinking

“The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.”

Douglas Adams book Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

Source: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)

Way, Distant

“If I had learned anything in my life about love, it was that they were tenous things that could end at any moment. Caution was essential-but not at the cost of risking your life”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Love, Learning

“I don't suppose it would help if I told you that is the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Variant: Pointless, needless suffering and pain? I don’t suppose it would help if I told you that was the way life is. The good suffer, the evil flourish, and all that is mortal passes away.
Source: Clockwork Princess

Way, Suffering, Evil, Help

“How far I've come! I'm the same girl and yet not the same. I wonder if it's always like that? Folks keep growing from one person into another all their lives, and life is just a lot of everyday adventures. Well, whatever life is, I like it.”

Carol Ryrie Brink book Caddie Woodlawn

Source: Caddie Woodlawn

Girl, Personality

“Happiness comes from the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.”

Storm Jameson (1891–1986) British writer

Happiness, Feeling, Thinking

“What is there to forgive?… Ignore forgive and concentrate on living. Life for you is short; far too short to allow small jealousies to infringe on the happiness which can be yours only for the briefest of times.”

Jasper Fforde book The Eyre Affair

Source: The Eyre Affair

Happiness, Jealousy, Forgiveness, Time

“You'll learn, honey. Love can be the best thing in life. And it can be the worst. The absolute worst.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

Love, Learning

“But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default.”

Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia

Way

“I believe that every single event in life happens in an opportunity to choose love over fear.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

As quoted in Oprah, in Her Words : Our American Princess (2008) by Tuchy Palmieri, p. 71

Love, Fear

“What do you want meaning for? Life is desire, not meaning.”

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

Source: My Life In Pictures

Wise, Life

“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don't notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly."
"I want to be a soldier. A hero."
"You'll grow out of it.”

Steven Erikson book Gardens of the Moon

Prologue (p. 5)
Source: Gardens of the Moon (1999)
Context: “Heed the lesson there, son.”
“What lesson?”
“Every decision you make can change the world. The best life is the one the gods don’t notice. You want to live free, boy, live quietly.”
“I want to be a soldier. A hero.”
“You’ll grow out of it.”

God, World, Boy, Decision

“She didn't need to understand the meaning of life; it was enough to find someone who did, and then fall asleep in his arms and sleep as a child sleeps, knowing that someone stronger than you is protecting you from all evil and all danger”

Paulo Coelho book Brida

Source: Brida

Understanding, Sleep, Evil