Quotes about life
page 78

“There is, though, nothing that prepares us for the worst things in our life. There is nothing you can do to stop the shock, or buffer the pain.”

James Frey book The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible

Pain

“You see mother, you had no life of your own. They have no idea. One has only a life of one's own.”

Barbara Kingsolver The Poisonwood Bible

Source: The Poisonwood Bible

Idea

“The truth is, what I learned this year is that life is hard… Good people die for no reason. Little kids get sick. The people that are supposed to love you end up leaving.”

Jennifer Weiner (1970) American writer

Source: Certain Girls

Love, People, Truth, Learning

“Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Learning

“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

Fools, Question, Wise

“I reflected that for all the people you lost touch with or couldn't hold on to, life occasionally made up for it by giving you the right person at the right time.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Smooth Talking Stranger

People, Time, Personality

“If it weren't my life, I wouldn't have believed it.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“When you read to a child, when you put a book in a child's hands, you are bringing that child news of the infinitely varied nature of life. You are an awakener.”

Paula Fox (1923–2017) Amercian book author

Books, Nature, Reading

“911. Life is halfe spent before we know what it is.”

George Herbert (1593–1633) Welsh-born English poet, orator and Anglican priest

Jacula Prudentum (1651)

“I have lived my life according to this principle: If I'm afraid of it, then I must do it.”

Erica Jong (1942) Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic

“Life itself was hard enough without monosynaptic sociopaths preying on folks.”

Michael A. Stackpole book I, Jedi

Source: I, Jedi

“Create dangerously, for people who read dangerously…. Writing, knowing in part that no matter how trivial your words may seem, someday, somewhere, someone may risk his or her life to read them.”

Edwidge Danticat (1969) Novelist, short story writer, memoirist

People, Reading, Parting

“Love isn't how you feel. It's what you do. I've never had a feeling in my life. As a matter of fact, I matter only with earth people.”

Madeleine L'Engle A Wind in the Door

Source: A Wind in the Door

Love, People, Feeling

“"Poor Finnick. Is this the first time in your life you haven't looked pretty?" I say.
"It must be. The sensation's completely new. How have you managed it all these years?"”

Suzanne Collins book Catching Fire

Katniss and Finnick, p. 316
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Catching Fire (2009)

Time

“And yet he had loved her. A Bookish girl heedless of her beauty, unconscious of her effect. She'd been prepared to live her life alone but from the moment he'd known her he'd needed her.”

Jhumpa Lahiri book The Lowland

Source: The Lowland

Love, Beauty, Girl

“Why live? Life was its own answer. Life was the propagation of more life and the living of as good a life as possible.”

Ray Bradbury book The Martian Chronicles

Source: The Martian Chronicles

“And I said to myself that he was the first thing that I had ever missed in my life.”

Charles Bukowski book Hollywood

Source: Hollywood

“But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.”

Raymond Carver (1938–1988) American short story author and poet

Source: Distance and other stories

Tear

“Death is not the opposite of life, but the opposite of choice.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Errand

Source: Fool's Errand

Death

“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love. And how you misunderstand it! how you spoil it! You treat it as something solemn like a sacrament, or something to be bought, like a dress.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

"The Love of Long Ago"

Love

“So where do you start when you want to start your life again?”

Douglas Coupland Hey Nostradamus!

Source: Hey Nostradamus!

“he(Quinn)put his hand out to his friend. “I’ll lay my life down for you. With or Without that piece of paper”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Enshrined

“Places that are empty of you are empty of life.”

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) English poet, illustrator, painter and translator

“I doubt sometimes whether a quiet and unagitated life would have suited me - yet I sometimes long for it.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

“Bizarre! That's the only word I can use to describe life sometimes. Just freaking bizarre.”

James Patterson book Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

Source: Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas

“It has been said that life has treated me harshly; and sometimes I have complained in my heart because many pleasures of human experience have been withheld from me…if much has been denied me, much, very much, has been given me…”

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

Source: The Open Door

Pleasure, Heart

“This pool is a triumph of imagination. That's how you win at life, Gin. You have to imagine your way through. Never say something can't be done. There's always a solution, even if it's weird.”

Maureen Johnson (1973) writer from the USA

Source: The Last Little Blue Envelope

Way, Imagination

“Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“Each person is only given so many evenings and each wasted evening is a gross violation against the natural course of your only life.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Nature, Personality

“I believe that words are strong, that they can overwhelm what we fear when fear seems more awful than life is good.”

Andrew Solomon book The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Source: The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression

Fear, Strong, Depressing

“Excuse my mistakes, realize my limitations. Life is not easy as we know it on the earth.”

E.M. Forster book A Passage to India

Source: A Passage to India

“I grasped two things: I wasn't as happy as I could be, and my life wasnt going to change unless I made it change.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

Happiness, Change

“The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one's destiny to do, and then do it.”

Henry Ford (1863–1947) American industrialist

Secret, Success, Motivational, Deep

“If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, then all possibility of life is destroyed.”

Leo Tolstoy book War and Peace

Source: War and Peace

“I do not believe in any religion, I will have nothing to do with immortality. We are miserable enough in this life without speculating upon another.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Religion

“And maybe you should stop pitying yourself,” he said. “Most people are lucky to have even one great love in their life. You have found two.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

Love, People

“When you sleep, your dream world is as real to you as life, isn’t it?”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

Source: What Dreams May Come: A Novel

World, Dreams, Sleep

“A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?”

Alexander McCall Smith In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

Source: In the Company of Cheerful Ladies

People, Animals, Dead

“I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Source: Wuthering Heights

Soul

“Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.”

Luigi Pirandello Six Characters in Search of an Author

Source: Six Characters in Search of an Author

Appearance

“In a way fighting was just like using magic. You said the words, and they altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.”

Lev Grossman The Magicians

Source: The Magicians

Pain, People, Way, Feeling

“Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity...”

Václav Havel (1936–2011) playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and 1st President of the Czech Republic

Quoted in Amnesty International's essay "From Prisoner to President – A Tribute"

Hope, Birth, Sense

“This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.”

William James Is Life Worth Living?

"Is Life Worth Living?"
1890s, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)

“People take love's continuity for granted, just as they take their body's continuity for granted. They don't realize that the best thing about love is its regular presence. Once you can establish that, it's an added foundation to your life.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Love, People

“I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.”

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

“Everybody dies … The thing is, to have a life before we die.”

John Irving book The World According to Garp

Source: The World According to Garp

“The way to achieve happiness is to try for perfection that is impossible to achieve, and spend the rest of your life trying to achieve it.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Happiness, Way, Perfection

“It is a curious feature of our existance that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.”

Bill Bryson book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Source: A Short History of Nearly Everything

“I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit (1944)

Death, Thinking

“Life doesn't have to be so planned. Just roll with it and let it happen.”

Jenny Han book To All the Boys I've Loved Before

Source: To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“God seldom calls us for an easier life, but always calls us to know more of him and drink more deeply of His sustaining grace.”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God, Drink

“The secret of success is learning how to use pain and pleasure instead of having pain and pleasure use you. If you do that, you're in control of your life. If you don't, life controls you.”

Anthony Robbins (1960) Author, actor, professional speaker

Pain, Pleasure, Secret, Learning

“Cats aren't really friendly, they're just cozying up to the dominant life-form as a hedge against extinction.”

Jasper Fforde book The Last Dragonslayer

Source: The Last Dragonslayer

Cats

“It's life's illusions that I recall, I really don't know life at all”

Joni Mitchell (1943) Canadian musician

“You know, if my life was a horse, I’d shoot it. (Susan)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

Horse

“Intelligence is a harder gift. For this you must work, you must practice it, challenge it, and maybe toward the end of your life you will master it. Cleverness is the shadow, whereas intelligence is the substance.
-Doc”

Bryce Courtenay (1933–2012) Australian novelist

Intelligence

“When the missionaries came to Africa they had the Bible and we had the land. They said "Let us pray." We closed our eyes. When we opened them, we had the Bible and they had the land.
:This quote, often attributed to Jomo Kenyatta, was first written in a fiction play published by holocaust doubter Rolf Hochhuth, in his controversial The Deputy, a Christian tragedy (1964), Grove Press, p. 144. No reference to any historical or original source was given. Other citations are found in books written by critics of religion, such as Christos Tzanetakos's "The Life and Work of an Atheist Pioneer", iUniverse; and Jack Huberman's "Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound" (2008), 175. No references are given.
: In Desmond Tutu: A Biography (2004) by Steven Gish, p. 101; is clarified Tutu used it as a joke which was not of him.”

Desmond Tutu (1931) South African churchman, politician, archbishop, Nobel Prize winner

Misattributed

Books, Religion, Quotes, Hell

“So now I have started living my own life. Imperfect and clumsy as it may look, it is resembling me now, thoroughly.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

“You don't have to be a person of influence to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.”

Scott Adams (1957) cartoonist, writer

People, Personality

“… I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Imagination

“I don't believe in being serious about anything. I think life is too serious to be taken seriously."

[(Robert Jacobs,, February 1976)]”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Thinking

“Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.”

Matt Groening (1954) American cartoonist

People, Parting

“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

“Is it fair your life burns so short and bright? Death had asked.

"No such thing as fair," Frank told himself. "If I'm going to burn, it might as well be bright.”

Rick Riordan (1964) American writer

Death

“The witty woman is a tragic figure in American life. Wit destroys eroticism and eroticism destroys wit, so women must choose between taking lovers and taking no prisoners.”

Florence King (1936–2016) American writer

Women, Lovers

“Because, really, what was worse than lying wide-awake in the dark, watching your life drip away, one irreplaceable minute after another?”

Tom Perrotta The Abstinence Teacher

Source: The Abstinence Teacher

Lying

“There were many terrible things in my life and most of them never happened.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

“I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life.”

Johnny Cash (1932–2003) American singer-songwriter

CNN interview (2002)
Context: I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life. Life is — the way God has given it to me was just a platter — a golden platter of life laid out there for me. It's been beautiful.

Death

“In an earlier life, were you a pair of brakes?"
"Try a brick wall.”

Jessica Bird book Crave

Source: Crave

“The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.”

Rick Warren (1954) Christian religious leader

Love, Time, Wedding

“You wouldn't have taken Rose to such a place, would you?"

"Of course not, but she is a little girl, and I'm-"

"My life", he interrupted quietly. "You're my entire life. If anything ever happens to you, Holly, there is nothing left for me.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Where Dreams Begin

Girl

“There is only one solution if old age is not to be an absurd parody of our former life, and that is to go on pursuing ends that give our existence a meaning.”

Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist

Age

“In the end, the end of a life only matters to friends, family, and other folks you used to know. For everyone else, it's just another end.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Family

“My life will be the best illustration of all my work.”

Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875) Danish author, fairy tale writer, and poet

Source: The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography

“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”

Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor

Deep, Powerful

“Life's harder, the deeper you feel things, was all I could think as I put the books away. Feelings, who needs them? Sometimes they're like a gift, when you feel love or happiness. Sometimes they're a curse.”

John Marsden (1950) author

Source: The Dead of Night

Love, Happiness, Books, Feeling

“My choice early in life was either to be a piano-player in a whorehouse or a politician. And to tell the truth there's hardly any difference.”

Harry Truman (1884–1972) American politician, 33rd president of the United States (in office from 1945 to 1953)

As quoted in Esquire, Vol. 76 (1971), also in Truman's Crises : A Political Biography of Harry S. Truman (1980) by Harold Foote Gosnell, p. 9; sometimes paraphrased: Being a politician is like being a piano player in a whorehouse.

Truth

“There is no difference in quality between a life lived forward and a life lived backwards, she thinks. She had come to love this backward life. It was, after all, the only life she had.”

Gabrielle Zevin book Elsewhere

Source: Elsewhere

Love, Thinking

“Life doesn't come with an instruction manual.”

Scott Westerfeld book Extras

Source: Extras

“She's had so little love, Jesse thought, I will drown her in it for the rest of her life.”

LaVyrle Spencer (1943) American writer

Source: Hummingbird

Love

“Life cracked like ice!”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book This Side of Paradise

Source: This Side of Paradise

“Life doesn't work out the way we plan, but maybe it works out the way it's supposed to after all.”

Kristin Harmel (1979) American journalist

Source: The Sweetness of Forgetting

Way

“Profound hearts, wise minds, take life as God makes it; it is a long trial, and unintelligible preparation for the unknown destiny.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

God, Heart

“Now I understand one of the important reasons for going to college and getting an education is to learn that the things you've believed in all your life aren't true, and that nothing is what it appears to be.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

Source: Flowers for Algernon (1966)

Education, Understanding, Learning, Appearance

“Life must go on, even if it's no joke… just pretend to believe in the future.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book North

Source: North

Future

“The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.”

Paul Bowles (1910–1999) American composer, writer, translator

Source: The Spider's House

Perfection

“I have a theory that every time you make an important choice, the part of you left behind continues the other life you could have had.”

Jeanette Winterson book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Source: Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Time, Parting

“Determine to live life with flair and laughter.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Laughter

“To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great or rational whether in life or in science. Great achievement is assured, however, of subsequent recognition and grateful acceptance by public opinion, which in due course will make it one of its own prejudices”

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel book Elements of the Philosophy of Right

Sect. 318, as translated by T. M. Knox, (1952)
Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820/1821)

Science

“Sometimes I thought about nothing and sometimes I thought about my life. At least I made a living. What kind of living? A living. It wasn't easy. I found out how little is unbearable.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

“When one man, for whatever reason, has the opportunity to lead an extraordinary life, he has no right to keep it to himself”

Jacques-Yves Cousteau (1910–1997) French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and …

“What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.”

Joseph Campbell The Power of Myth

Source: The Power of Myth (book), p. 28
Context: Now, what is a myth? The dictionary definition of a myth would be stories about gods. So then you have to ask the next question: What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power or a value system that functions in human life and in the universe - the powers if your own body and of nature.

God, Motivation, Universe

“Rock 'n' roll is an attitude, it's not a musical form of a strict sort. It's a way of doing things, of approaching things. Writing can be rock 'n' roll, or a movie can be rock 'n' roll. It's a way of living your life.”

Lester Bangs (1948–1982) American music critic and journalist

Music, Way

“I am like the fish in the aquarium, thinking in a different language, adapting to a life that’s not my natural habitat. I am the people in the other cars, each with his or her own story, but passing too quickly to be noticed or understood.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

People, Cars, Nature, Thinking