Quotes about life
page 81

“There is no life I know to compare with pure imagination. Living there, you'll be free if you truly wish to be.”

Roald Dahl (1916–1990) British novelist, short story writer, poet, fighter pilot and screenwriter

“If you love someone, you're not supposed to want them to come back. Better a peaceful sleep in the earth than the life of a zombie--not really dead but not really alive, either.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: Zombies Vs. Unicorns

Love, Peace, Sleep, Dead

“One of the oddest things in life, as we all know, is the way that when you have heard a thing mentioned, within twenty-four hours you nearly always come across it again.”

Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Way

“No one measures a life in weeks and days. You measure life in years and by the things that happen to you.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: How to Save a Life

“This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Five People You Meet in Heaven - Meniti Bianglala

God, Peace, Search, Understanding

“Love like rain, can nourish from above, drenching couples with a soaking joy. But sometimes under the angry heat of life, love dries on the surface and must nourish from below, tending to its roots keeping itself alive.”

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

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Love, Joy

“I will not waste my life! I will finish my course and finish it well. I will display the Gospel of the grace of God in all I do. I will run my race to the end.” - Paul”

John Piper (1946) American writer

Source: Don't Waste Your Life

God

“We used to build temples, and museums are about as close as secular society dares to go in facing up to the idea that a good building can change your life (and a bad one ruin it).”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

Idea, Change

“I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free”

Angelina Jolie (1975) American actress, film director, and screenwriter

Variant: I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free...

People, Thinking, Hurt, Personality

“We are all life trying to live, among other life trying to live.”

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

“Do not take the agenda that someone else has mapped out for your life.”

John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor

“Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.”

Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer

Source: Uh-oh - Some Observations From Both Sides Of The Refrigerator Door

Learning

“I am sustained by the certainty that life has meaning… as does death.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Death

“Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches.”

Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God

C. 2, p. 10.
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Tree, Suffering

“"You're not leaving me here alone," I say. Because if he dies, I'll never go home, not really. I'll spend the rest of my life in this arena trying to think my way out.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Katniss Everdeen, p. 343
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, The Hunger Games (2008)

Way, Home, Thinking

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
With your one wild and precious life?”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

“The soul is like an uninhabited world
that comes to life only when
God lays His head
against us.”

Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) Italian Dominican scholastic philosopher of the Roman Catholic Church

God, World, Soul

“I wanted so much to have a life. Even just once, even for a second.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

“If our life is poured out in useless words, we will never hear anything, never become anything, and in the end, because we have said everything before we had anything to say, we shall be left speechless at the moment of our greatest decision.”

Thomas Merton (1915–1968) Priest and author

Source: Thoughts in Solitude

Decision

“Life is opinion.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Source: Meditations

“It is curious how sometimes the memory of death lives on for so much longer than the memory of the life that is purloined.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Death, Memory

“But, in her life, nothing was going to happen. Such was the will of God! The future was a dark corridor, and at the far end the door was bolted.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

God, Future

“Your Dark-Huntress, Danger, called for Acheron and since he’s busy, I was sent to check things out and report back to him on what’s happening. So here I am. Joy, oh joy of my life. (Alexion)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Sins of the Night

Business, Joy

“I feel like a lot of life is distasteful and embarrassing. And you just push through it. You fix what you can, and you let time pass.”

Curtis Sittenfeld (1975) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Man of My Dreams

Feeling, Time

“Every life, no matter how isolated, touches hundred of others. It's up to us to decide if those micro connections are positive or negative. But whichever we decide, it does impact the ones we deal with.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infamous

“You have someone in your life whom you honor and revere so much that every hurt on them is inflicted on you as well. And the closer they are to you, the greater the pain.”

Masashi Kishimoto (1974) Japanese manga artist

Pain, Hurt

“Everything man does today to be efficient, to fill the hour? It does not satisfy. It only makes him hungry to do more. Man wants to own his existence. But no one owns time. When you are measuring life, you are not living it.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: The Time Keeper

Time

“If aught must be lost, ‘twill be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, ‘twill be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, ‘twill be my life for yours. I am Given.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Kiss of the Highlander

Death, Soul

“Everything you want in life has teeth.”

Jonathan Carroll book From the Teeth of Angels

Source: From the Teeth of Angels

“And what constitutes evil, real evil, is the taking of a single human life. Whether a man would die tomorrow or the day after or eventually… it doesn't matter. Because if God does not exist, then life… every second of it… Is all we have.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

God, Evil

“And this is my life, getting dumped with no warning. Or liking people who don't like me back, or who don't like me enough, or not as much as they like someone else.”

E. Lockhart (1967) American writer of novels as E. Lockhart (mainly for teenage girls) and of picture books under real name Emily J…

Source: The Boyfriend List: 15 Guys, 11 Shrink Appointments, 4 Ceramic Frogs and Me, Ruby Oliver

People

“I have always liked people who can't adapt themselves to life pragmatically.”

Andrei Tarkovsky book Sculpting in Time

Source: Sculpting in Time

People

“Fear is a part of life. It's a warning mechanism. That's all. It tells you when there's danger around. Its job is to help you survive. Not cripple you into being unable to do it.”

Jim Butcher Dead Beat

Source: Dead Beat

Fear, Help, Parting

“Life is wasted on the living.”

Douglas Adams book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Source: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

“Doesn't our knowledge of death make life more precious?'

What good is a preciousness based on fear and anxiety? It's an anxious quivering thing”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Death, Fear, Knowledge

“Live all you can — it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?”

Henry James book The Ambassadors

Source: The Ambassadors (1903), book V, ch. II.
Context: Live all you can — it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?.. What one loses one loses; make no mistake about that... The right time is any time that one is still so lucky as to have.. Live!

“The more the drive toward life is thwarted, the stronger is the drive toward destruction; the more life is realized, the less is the strength of destructiveness. Destructiveness is the outcome of unlived life.”

Erich Fromm book Escape from Freedom

Source: Escape from Freedom

“You have succeeded in life when all you really WANT is only what you really NEED.”

Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer

Life

“There comes a time in a man's life when he hears the call of the sea. If the man has a brain in his head, he will hang up the phone immediately.”

Dave Barry (1947) American writer

Time, Sea

“I LOVE living, I have some problems with my LIFE, but living is the best thing they've come up with so far.”

Neil Simon (1927–2018) playwright, writer, academic

Love, Problem

“I can awaken things inside you that have been sleeping all your life. You're strong enough to live in the dark, to glory in it. You can become a queen of the shadows. Why not take that power, Elena? Let me help you take it.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: The Awakening / The Struggle

Sleep, Strong, Help

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure much.”

William Hazlitt (1778–1830) English writer

"Common Places," No. 1, The Literary Examiner (September - December 1823), reprinted in The Collected Works of William Hazlitt (1902-1904)

Art, Life

“Your life is your art.”

Keri Smith Canadian writer

Art

“She smiled. “Life is full of stories. Or maybe life is only stories. Good night, my dear Nao.”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Smile, Night

“A bit of advice
Given to a young Native American
At the time of his initiation:
As you go the way of life,
You will see a great chasm. Jump.
It is not as wide as you think.”

Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer

Way, Thinking, Time

“It's not what you will get out of the books that is so enriching - it is what the books will get out of you that will ultimately change your life”

Robin S. Sharma (1965) Canadian self help writer

Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: A Fable About Fulfilling Your Dreams Reaching Your Destiny

Books, Change

“There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.”

Charles Bukowski book Pulp

Source: Pulp

“My books promised me that life wasn’t just made up of workday tasks and prosaic things. The world is bigger and more colorful and more important than that.”

Laura Amy Schlitz (1955) children's author

Books, World, Color

“See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be”

Joyce Carol Oates book After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

Source: After the Wreck, I Picked Myself Up, Spread My Wings, and Flew Away

People

“But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.”

Banana Yoshimoto book The Lake

Source: The Lake

“I've dreamt in my life dreams that have stayed with me ever after, and changed my ideas; they've gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the colour of my mind.”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Catherine Earnshaw (Ch. IX).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)

Dreams, Idea, Water, Wine

“There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them”

Denis Waitley (1933) American writer

Change, Back To Work

“Rule of life. If you bother to ask someone’s advice, then bother to listen to it.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

“Ready for a new life”

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

“Touch me again, and it will be your last act in life - Blue Eyes.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Jealousy

“People go on marrying because they can't resist natural forces, although many of them may know perfectly well that they are possibly buying a month's pleasure with a life's discomfort.”

Thomas Hardy book Jude the Obscure

Source: Jude the Obscure

People, Pleasure, Nature

“The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot.”

Flannery O’Connor (1925–1964) American novelist, short story writer

Childhood

“I don't know anything!' Tim(Caleb) wailed.
He'd never spoken a truer word in his life.”

Anthony Horowitz (1955) English novelist and screenwriter

Source: Three of Diamonds

“You're gonna miss each and every shot you can't be bothered to take. That's not living life--that's just being a tourist. Take every shot, Kate. If it's worth caring about, no matter how impossible you think it is--you take the shot.”

Matt Fraction (1975) American comic book writer

Source: Hawkeye, Volume 1: My Life as a Weapon

Thinking

“Memory is never pure. And recollection is always coloured by the life lived since”

Josephine Hart (1942–2011) Irish writer

Memory

“You can see a person's whole life in the cancer they get.”

Haruki Murakami book Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Source: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman

Personality

“Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.”

Michel Houellebecq book Platform

Source: Platform

Reading

“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.”

Willie Nelson (1933) American country music singer-songwriter.

[The Tao of Willie: A Guide to the Happiness in Your Heart, XII, Nelson, Willie; Pipkin, Turk, 159240197X, 2006, Gotham]

“All my life they had made choices for me, and I had resented it. Now the choice was mine, and once it was made, I would have no right to blame anyone else for the consequences. Loss of that privilege, to blame others, unexpectedly stung.”

Megan Whalen Turner book A Conspiracy of Kings

Source: A Conspiracy of Kings

Loss

“Life's biggest rewards come from the biggest challenges”

Greg Behrendt (1963) American comedian

Source: It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken: The Smart Girl's Break-Up Buddy

“Everybody deserves to have something good in their life. At least once”

Morris Gleitzman book Once

Source: Once

“The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

“There is no perfection only life”

Milan Kundera book The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Source: The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Perfection

“The poor dog, in life the firmest friend,
The first to welcome, foremost to defend.”

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

Inscription on the monument of a Newfoundland dog (1808).

Dogs

“Regret is useless in life. It's in the past. All we have is now.”

Marlon Brando (1924–2004) American screen and stage actor

Past

“Do whatever you do intensely. The artist is the man who leaves the crowd and goes pioneering. With him there is an idea which is his life.”

Robert Henri (1865–1929) American painter

Source: The Art Spirit: Notes, Articles, Fragments of Letters and Talks to Students, Bearing on the Concept and Technique of Picture Making, the Study of Art

Idea

“How you start your day is how you live your day. How you live your day is how you live your life.”

Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer

Source: Heal Your Body A-Z

“Life is always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

Waiting

“The shoddy work of despair, the pointless work of pride, equally betray Creation. They are wastes of life.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Source: What Are People For?

Despair

“If God were suddenly condemned to live the life which He has inflicted upon men, He would kill Himself.”

Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) French writer and dramatist, father of the homonym writer and dramatist

Men, God

“Conrad placed on the title page an epigraph taken from Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene:

"Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Ease after warre, death after life, does greatly please"

This also became Conrad's epitaph.”

Joseph Conrad book The Rover

Source: The Rover

Death, Sleep, Sea

“The great challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.”

Edward O. Wilson (1929) American biologist

People

“Be an encourager. Scatter sunshine. Who knows whose life you might touch with something as simple as a kind word.”

Debbie Macomber (1948) American writer

“It's a bit embarrassing… to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'Try to be a little kinder.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

As quoted in Huston Smith, "Aldous Huxley--A Tribute," The Psychedelic Review, (1964) Vol I, No.3, (Aldous Huxley Memorial Issue), p. 264-5
Source: Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics & the Visionary Experience

Way, Problem

“The entire ball game, in terms of both the exam and life, was what you gave attention to vs. what you willed yourself to not.”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King

Game

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”

Studs Terkel (1912–2008) American author, historian and broadcaster

“If America leads a blessed life, then why did God put all of our oil under people who hate us?”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

God, Hate, People

“To spend a life in dreams, that sounded too lovely.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

Love, Dreams

“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to watch potential die untapped.”

Myles Munroe (1954–2014) Bahamian Evangelical Christian minister

“You mustn't be so afraid of life - it's all we've got. Don't let it hurt you so much.”

Anna Kavan (1901–1968) British artist

Hurt

“I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep my expectations.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“When you are able to shift your inner awareness to how you can serve others, and when you make this the central focus of your life, you will then be in a position to know true miracles in your progress toward prosperity.”

Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer

“Sometimes Hen… I think I would give my life just for one of your smiles.”

Julia Quinn (1970) American novelist

Source: Minx

Smile, Thinking

“Simon sighed. "People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but It's the way you live your life that matters.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Variant: People aren't born good or bad. Maybe they're born with tendencies either way, but its the way you live your life that matters.
Source: City of Glass

People, Way

“Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

Marian Wright Edelman (1939) American children's rights activist

Time, Business

“It is perfectly true, as the philosophers say, that life must be understood backwards. But they forget the other proposition, that it must be lived forwards.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Journals IV A 164 (1843)
See Phenomenology: Critical Concepts in Philosophy, by Dermot Moran (2002)
Variants:
We live forward, but we understand backward.
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
1840s, The Journals of Søren Kierkegaard, 1840s

Forgetting