Quotes about life

page 85

“Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

“This is love, to sit with someone you've known forever in a place you've been meaning to go, and watching as their life happens to them until you stand up and it's time to go.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

“In order to deal with reality successfully - to pursue and achieve the values which his life requires - man needs self-esteem; he needs to be confident of his efficacy and worth.”

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

“To feel the love of people whom we love is a fire that feeds our life.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

“So many years of preparation, for what was called adult life: was it for this?”

Hilary Mantel book An Experiment in Love

“Life goes on with fragile normalcy.”

Sara Gruen (1969) American writer

“Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope - a slight change, and all patterns alter.”

Sharon Salzberg (1952) American writer

“The real Tragedy is the tragedy of the man who never in his life braces himself for his one supreme effort-he never stretches to his full capacity, never stands up to his full stature.”

Arnold Bennett (1867–1931) English novelist

“I want to be free Michael, just for once in my whole life I want to be free"

"You are free. You just don't know it yet”

Francine Rivers (1947) American writer

“There was no real sense of life because she had nothing to contrast it with.”

Chuck Palahniuk Fight Club

“Having made the decision to love, had I chosen life instead of death?”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

“All through life there were distinctions - toilets for men, toilets for women; clothes for men, clothes for women - then, at the end, the graves are identical.”

Leila Aboulela (1964) writer, playwright

“Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

“Limit love and you limit life.”

Vera Stanley Alder (1898–1984) British artist

“we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

and death i think is no parenthesis”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

“In my opinion, there's no condition in life that can't be ameliorated by a dose of junk food.”

Sue Grafton (1940–2017) American writer

“There's always risk in life's most rewarding pursuits, isn't there?”

Ted Dekker (1962) American writer

“A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

“May we all be doomed to a happy life.”

Alethea Kontis (1976) American writer

“Maybe that is the best lesson I learned in my first semester at Yale, because if I had gone to a less-demanding school and continued to sail along on the top, I am sure I would never have attained the subsequent achievements in my life.”

Ben Carson (1951) 17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development; American neurosurgeon

“When you know that everything matters—that every move counts as much as any other—you will begin living a life of permanent purpose.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

“The power of death signifies that this real world can only have a neutral image of life, that life's intimacy does not reveal it's dazzling consumption until the moment it gives out.”

Georges Bataille (1897–1962) French intellectual and literary figure

“They had only ever discussed books but what, in this life, is more personal than books?”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”

Douglas Coupland book Shampoo Planet

“She was doing it because she had nothing to lose, because her life was one of constant, day to day frustration.”

Paulo Coelho book Eleven Minutes

“I have accepted fear as part of life – specifically the fear of change… I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back….”

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

“Life itself is a quotation.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

“The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

“Wildness had never been a part of her life. Home, work, home, work. That's all her life had consisted of, really. She'd told Maddox that she'd been glad for her solitude, bu the truth was, there were times she'd been starved for touch. Any touch.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

“if you find one true friend in your life, you're richer than most. If that one true friend is your husband, you're blessed."

She paused. "And if that one true friend is your sister, don't feel bad. At least, she can't divorce you.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

“Know that life can only be found in the present moment.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

“Poetry has been the longest pleasure of my life.”

Shirley Hazzard (1931–2016) Australian-Anglo-American novelist, short story writer, memoirist, non-fiction writer

“Every girl pretends she is a princess at one point, no matter how little her life is like that.”

Alex Flinn book Beastly

“That's the thing about human life--there is no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.”

Daniel Keyes book Flowers for Algernon

“It is perhaps the misfortune of my life that I am interested in far too much but not decisively in any one thing; all my interests are not subordinated in one but stand on an equal footing.”

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

“I knew I would hate my best memory because it would prove that people could fake love or that love could end or worst of all, love was not powerful enough to change a life.”

Mona Simpson (1957) American novelist

“Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

“She is no longer a person in his life; instead, she is a person that other people will remind him of.”

David Levithan book Are We There Yet?

“I will not try to run my own life or the lives of others; that is God's business.”

Eugene H. Peterson (1932–2018) American translator

“One of the biggest mistakes girls can make concerning their romantic life is sitting around waiting for their prince to find them, rather than getting out there and finding him themselves.”

Meg Cabot (1967) Novelist

“Life is just this way, broken, and I am crazy to hope for something else.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

“Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves.”

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

“War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.”

Sebastian Junger (1962) American author, journalist and documentarian

“The life of the dead is placed in the memory of the living.”
Vita enim mortuorum in memoria vivorum est posita.

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“Here's to alcohol, the rose colored glasses of life.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book The Beautiful and Damned

“My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing beauty of life once more. It's happened before, it will happen again, I'm sure. When someone leaves, it's because someone else is about to arrive--I'll find love again.”

Paulo Coelho book The Zahir

“The entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don’t you know anything about basic economics?”

Brandon Sanderson (1975) American fantasy writer

“Life is nothing without friendship.”

Marcus Tullius Cicero (-106–-43 BC) Roman philosopher and statesman

“It's a total lie to say there's only one person you're going to be with for the rest of your life. If you're lucky - and if you try really hard - there will always be more than one.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

“Be thou the rainbow to the storms of life,
The evening beam that smiles the clouds away,
And tints to-morrow with prophetic ray!”

George Gordon Byron book The Bride of Abydos

“What he loved in horses was what he loved in men, the blood and the heat of the blood that ran them. All his reverence and all his fondness and all the leanings of his life were for the ardenhearted and they would always be so and never be otherwise.”

Cormac McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses

“Just because things don't work out, it doesn't mean there aren't other people you can't love. Love is too big a thing for you to go without it in life.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

“The road is messy in the way that real life is messy. It leads us out of denial and into reality, out of theory and into practice, out of caution and into action, out of statistics and into stories—in short, out of our heads and into our hearts.”

Gloria Steinem (1934) American feminist and journalist

“Two tasks at the beginning of your life: to narrow your orbit more and more, and ever and again to check whether you are not in hiding somewhere outside your orbit.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“Life is about becoming more of who you really are….”

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

“Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.”

Borís Pasternak (1890–1960) Russian writer

“To be a child means to owe one's existence to another, and even in our adult life we never quite reach the point where we no longer have to give thanks for being the person we are.”

Hans Urs Von Balthasar (1905–1988) Swedish Catholic theologian

“I Fall upon the thorns of life….”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

“Progress is measured by the speed at which we destroy the conditions that sustain life.”

George Monbiot (1963) English writer and political activist

“My life looked good on paper - where, in fact, almost all of it was being lived.”

Martin Amis (1949) Welsh novelist

“Life is too hard, too much to handle. Nobody told me there’d be days like these. How could nobody tell me there’d be days like these? How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

“The truth about life was that nothing ever ended until you died, and even then you just left a whole bunch of unresolved narratives behind you.”

Nick Hornby book Juliet, Naked

“Now I'd like someone to tell me there is no drama in real life!”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

“Life, he realized, was much like a song.
In the beginning there is mystery, in the end there is confirmation, but it's in the middle where all the emotion resides to make the whole thing worthwhile.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

“There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.”

Alain de Botton (1969) Swiss writer

“My father insisted that the boys in my life were directly responsible for my juvenile-delinquent tendencies.
My mother, more accurately, assumed that I was the bad influence.”

Lisa Lutz (1970) US author

“I'm alive but I have no life. I'm alive but also dead. I'm dead and alive.”

Dean Koontz book Dead and Alive

“Humor and paradox are often the only ways to respond to life's sorrow with grace.”

Matthew Fox (1966) American actor

“She was astonished, and at the same time she knew. There were many things in life like that. You couldn’t imagine it, and then it happened and you couldn’t really imagine it hadn’t.”

Ann Brashares book The Last Summer

“The expectations of life depend upon diligence the mechanic that would perfect his work must first sharpen his tools.”

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

“If only she could be so oblivious again, to feel such love without knowing it, mistaking it for laughter and bread with only the scent of jam spread on top of it. It was the best time of her life.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

“Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

“To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble.”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

“As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn’t have.”

Susanna Kaysen book Girl, Interrupted

“Have a nice rest of your life.”

Nicole Richie (1981) American television personality, musician, actress, and author

“Life is wonderful, so revel in its beauty. Be all you can be, and let go of the past. It is nothing but shadows.”

David Clement-Davies book Fell

“The line between the public life and the private life has been erased, due to the rapid decline of manners and courtesy. There is a certain crudeness and crassness that has suddenly become accepted behavior, even desirable.”

Fannie Flagg (1944) American actress, comedian and author

“When the past has passed from you at last, let go. Then climb down and begin the rest of your life. With great joy.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

“Life is short, death is forever”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

“Whatever you focus upon, increases…… When you focus on the things you need, you'll find those needs increasing…… A grateful perspective brings happiness and abundance into a person's life.”

Andy Andrews (1959) author and corporate speaker

“All life stinks and you must embrace that with compassion.”

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

“Where is the Life we lost in living?”

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

“On my life, Magnus, I swear this is the truth: your father is a Norse god. Now, hurry. We're in a twenty- minute parking spot.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

“Now, I had been frightened on several different occasions in my life. The most frightening of these involved an elevator and a mime.”

Brandon Sanderson Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians

“The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.”

Florence Scovel Shinn (1871–1940) American writer

“Remember that there is meaning beyond absurdity. Know that every deed counts, that every word is power… Above all, remember that you must build your life as if it were a work of art.”

Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) Polish-American Conservative Judaism Rabbi

“There are times when it will go so wrong that you will barely be alive, and times when you realise that being barely alive, on your own terms, is better than living a bloated half-life on someone else's terms.”

Jeanette Winterson (1959) English writer

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author

“Your birth is a mistake you'll spend your whole life trying to correct.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Invisible Monsters

“Life is merely terrible; I feel it as few others do. Often — and in my inmost self perhaps all the time — I doubt whether I am a human being.”

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) author

“My life is like my shoes, worn out by service.”

Spencer W. Kimball (1895–1985) President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

“She was struggling, as she always had struggled, not to show what she could do but to hide what she couldn't do. A life made up of advances that were actually frantic retreats and victories that were concealed defeats.”

Bernhard Schlink book The Reader

“She had given birth to me and nursed me and brought me up. She had known me before I knew myself and now she had no say in the matter. Life started out one thing and then suddenly turned a corner and became something else.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book Middlesex

“I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto 'to live well you must live unseen”

René Descartes (1596–1650) French philosopher, mathematician, and scientist

“Even as a child she had lived her own small life within herself. At a very early period she had apprehended instinctively the dual life - that outward existence which conforms, the inward life which questions.”

Kate Chopin book The Awakening

“The Lord is in me, the Lord is in you, as life is in every seed, put false pride away and seek the Lord within..”

Kabir (1440–1518) Indian mystic poet

“You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence.”

Zadie Smith book White Teeth

“Life has a way of getting what it wants when it really knows what it wants.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist