Quotes about life
page 89

“The saddest people I've met in my life are the ones who don't care deeply about anything at all.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do so with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”

Og Mandino (1923–1996) American author

Understanding, Dead

“The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

Thoughts on Various Subjects from Miscellanies (1711-1726)

Parting, Falseness

“Everyone feels that void. Everyone who has the balls to look inside themselves, anyway. It's what life's all about.. A search.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: God-Shaped Hole

Feeling, Search

“They laugh at this, the idea that one might keep herds of friendly deer or elk that walk happily to their slaughter whenever it's time for the human to eat meat. Some ask openly if there aren't consequences of a life so easy to live.”

Joseph Boyden book The Orenda

Source: The Orenda

Idea, Time

“And the memories of all we have loved stay and come back to us in the evening of our life. They are not dead but sleep, and it is well to gather a treasure of them.”

Vincent Van Gogh book The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Source: The Letters of Vincent van Gogh

Love, Sleep, Memory, Dead

“Life is not meant to be an open-book test.”

Alyson Nöel (1965) writer

Source: Everlasting

Books

“the first quality of an honest man is contempt for religion, which would have us afraid of the most natural thing in the world, which is death; and would have us hate the one beautiful thing destiny has given us, which is life.”

Umberto Eco book The Island of the Day Before

Source: The Island of the Day Before

Death, Hate, World, Religion

“The key to a happy life is to have accomplishments to be proud of and purpose to look forward to, and at the moment I had both. How wonderful it was to be me.”

Jeff Lindsay book Dearly Devoted Dexter

Source: Dearly Devoted Dexter

Happiness

“The only two important things in life are real love and being at peace with yourself.”

Jonathan Carroll book Sleeping in Flame

Source: Sleeping in Flame

Love, Peace

“But that's how life is. You never know how it's going to turn out, and you can't plan for everything. You just have to do your best dealing with things as they come and hope people forgive you when you make a mistake.”

Janette Rallison (1966) American writer

Source: My Unfair Godmother

People, Hope, Forgiveness

“Though their life was modest, they believed in eating well.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

“Exercise improves your sex life.
Ranger to Stephanie”

Janet Evanovich Three to Get Deadly

Source: Three to Get Deadly

Sex, Exercises

“My purpose in life is to do right and to glorify God.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God

“Any man's life, told truly, is a novel…”

Ernest Hemingway book Death in the Afternoon

Source: Death in the Afternoon

“This Life is More than Just a read through.”

Anthony Kiedis (1962) American singer

Reading

“There are times in life to grow, and there are times in life to shine. One can't grow and shine at the same time; it just doesn't work that way. Now you're growing. Tomorrow you'll shine.”

Carol Plum-Ucci (1957) American writer

Source: What Happened to Lani Garver

Way, Time

“Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.”

Michel Houellebecq (1956) writer

Source: H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

Pain, Disappointment, Reality

“The analogy he is looking for is almost there. At this point, his life is seeming closest to that.”

Gabrielle Zevin (1977) American writer

Source: The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

“An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Beyond This Horizon

Source: Beyond This Horizon (1948; originally serialized in 1942), Chapter 15, “Probably a blind alley—”, p. 147
Context: Well, in the first place an armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. For me, politeness is a sine qua non of civilization. That’s a personal evaluation only. But gunfighting has a strong biological use. We do not have enough things to kill off the weak and the stupid these days. But to stay alive as an armed citizen a man has to be either quick with his wits or with his hands, preferably both. It’s a good thing.

“Sometimes, we are so attached to our way of life that we turn down wonderful opportunities simply because we don't know what to do with it.”

Paulo Coelho book Like the Flowing River

Source: Like the Flowing River

Way

“That's the thing about life. A lot of the time, it isn't easy at all. We just have to try to make the best of it.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Time

“You never get mad,” she said when their server left the table. “Except at me.”
“That’s not true,” he said tightly. “Torie can get me going.”
“Torie doesn’t count. You were obviously her mother in a previous life.”

Susan Elizabeth Phillips (1948) American writer

Source: Call Me Irresistible

Madness

“I get absolutely shitfaced. I am shitfaced and hyper and ten years old. I am having the time of my life.”

Marya Hornbacher (1974) American journalist

Source: Madness: A Bipolar Life

Time

“I have been treated better than I should have been---not by life in general nor by the machinery of things but by women.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Source: What Matters Most is How Well You Walk Through the Fire

Women

“If man be sensible and one fine morning, while he is lying in bed,
counts at the tips of his fingers how many things in this life truly will
give him enjoyment, invariably he will find food is the first one.”

Lin Yutang (1895–1976) Chinese writer

Food, Lying

“the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.”

Anna Quindlen (1952) journalist, Novelist

Source: How Reading Changed My Life

World, Joy

“In my great melancholy, I loved life, for I love my melancholy.”

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

Love

“Perhaps life is just that… a dream and a fear.”

Joseph Conrad book Under Western Eyes

Pt. IV, ch. 2
Under Western Eyes (1911)

Fear, Dreams

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life?
The world would split open.”

Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980) poet and political activist

Truth, World

“Artemis: Sometimes plans don't translate smoothly from paper to real life.”

Eoin Colfer book Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident

Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident (2002)

“You can't become a decent horseman until you fall off and get up again, a good number of times.
There's life in a nutshell.”

Bear Grylls (1974) Chief Scout, adventurer, author

Source: Mud, Sweat and Tears

Time

“Good wine is a necessity of life for me.”

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

As quoted in The Man from Monticello : An Intimate Life of Thomas Jefferson (1969) by Thomas J. Fleming, p. 250
Posthumous publications

Wine

“Novels tell us the most truth about life: what it is, how we live it, what it might be for, how we enjoy and value it, and how we lose it.”

Julian Barnes book The Sense of an Ending

Source: The Sense of an Ending

Truth

“I like the sky. It's rational to me in a way that life isn't.”

Maria Dahvana Headley (1977) American writer

Source: Magonia

Way

“Life sucks, then you die”

Stephen King book Pet Sematary

Source: Pet Sematary

“So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

“I came to realize that if people could make me angry they could could control me. Why should I give someone else such power over my life?”

Ben Carson book Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

Source: Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story

People

“Until the will and the affections are brought under the authority of Christ, we have not begun to understand, let alone accept, His Lordship. The Cross, as it enters the love life, will reveal the heart’s truth.”

Elisabeth Elliot (1926–2015) American missionary

Source: Passion and Purity: Learning to Bring Your Love Life Under Christ's Control

Love, Truth, Understanding, Heart

“Sleep with Seth Mortensen? Good grief. It was the most preposterous thing I'd ever heard. It was appalling. If I absorbed his life force, there was no telling how long it'd be until his next book came out.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus Blues

Books, Sleep

“Life's greatest comfort is being able to look over your shoulder and see people worse off, waiting in line behind you.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Rant

Source: Rant

People, Waiting

“Since when do we even play games?”

“Since when don’t we play games? Games of life, games of death. Games of love, of hope, of chance, of despair, and of all the myriad wonders in between.”

I rolled my eyes at the newcomer. “Hello, Carter.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Succubus on Top

Love, Death, Hope, Game

“A man spends his whole life trying to prove his worth to others. A woman spends her life trying to prove her worth to herself.”

Tawni O'Dell book Sister Mine

Source: Sister Mine

“This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

"Waiting for the Sun" on the album Morrison Hotel (1970)

“Poetry puts starch in your backbone so you can stand, so you can compose your life.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

“We trouble our life by thoughts about death, and our death by thoughts about life.”

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

Source: The Essays: A Selection

Death

“Just because i know how to change a guys oil doesn't mean i want to spend the rest of my life on my back, staring up his undercarriage.”

Janet Evanovich (1943) Novelist

Source: Metro Girl

Guy, Change

“Life's single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can ever admit to in a lifetime and stay sane.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V.

“I wanted for the moments in my life to follow each other and order themselves like those of a life remembered. It would be just as well to try to catch time by the tail.”

Jean Paul Sartre (1905–1980) French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and …

Nausea (1938)
Source: Nausea, The Wall and Other Stories

Time

“Life is like a stew, you have to stir it frequently, or all the scum rises to the top.”

Tom Robbins book Still Life with Woodpecker

Source: Still Life with Woodpecker

“An adult life… is a slowly emerging design, with shifting components, occasional dramatic disruptions, and fresh creative arrangements.”

Jill Ker Conway (1934–2018) American historian

“Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Love, Passion

“Life is like a box of Hand grenades, You never know what will blow you to kingdom come”

Mario Puzo book The Last Don

Source: The Last Don

Box

“There are two kinds of people,’ she’d said. ‘Those who coast through life like ducks in a row, following one after the other, and those who ride the waves.’” Tears spilled down my cheeks, and my voice cracked. “‘Ride the waves, baby, and live. Live.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

People, Tear, Baby

“The fear of becoming old is born of the recognition that one is not living now the life that one wishes.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Fear

“Most of us have two lives. The life we live, and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands Resistance.”

Steven Pressfield book The War of Art

Source: The War of Art (2002), p. 13

Courageous

“My thoughts went round and round and it occurred to me that if I ever wrote a novel it would be of the 'stream of consciousness' type and deal with an hour in the life of a woman at the sink.”

Barbara Pym book Excellent Women

Source: Excellent Women

“Your life story is a novel; and people, though they love novels wound between two yellow paper covers, are oddly suspicious of those which come to them in living vellum.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Love, People

“A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Writings on Civil Disobedience and Nonviolence (1886)

Food, Animals

“Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.”

Ian Fleming book The Spy Who Loved Me

Source: The Spy Who Loved Me

Love, Death

“Well, I live a double life. Tonight, I'll escort you to dinner. Then I have to rush home and finish my calculus homework.'
'You're not joking, are you?'
'I never joke about calculus homework.”

Rick Riordan book The Sword of Summer

Source: The Sword of Summer

Home

“This was her life. Not the life she had once dreamed of, not a life her younger self would ever have imagined or desired, but the life she was living, with all its complexities. This was her life, built with care and attention, and it was good.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Dreams, Imagination

“For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life." I called power into my blasting rod, and its tip glowed incandescent white. "The way I see it, there's nothing else worth fighting a war for.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

Love, War, Way, Soul

“Yet there be certain times in a young man’s life, when, through great sorrow or sin, all the boy in him is burnt and seared away so that he passes at one step to the more sorrowful state of manhood”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

Boy, Time

“Those were strange days, now that I look back at them. In the midst of life, everything revolved around death.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Death

“It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you can make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost….”

Richard Bach (1936) American spiritual writer

Happiness, Search, Thinking

“Nobody gets everything in this life. You decide your priorities and you make your choices. I'd decided long ago that any cake I had would be eaten.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Source: Two Much (1975), Ch. 21

“I have a black sense of humor. You try living my life, see what color yours turns.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Color, Sense

“Everything in life has its price.”

Paulo Coelho book The Alchemist

Source: The Alchemist

“Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life's artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

Chance

“I was of the “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade, then wonder why life didn’t give you freaking sugar so you could drink the stuff” school of thought.”

Cate Tiernan (1961) American novelist

Source: Eternally Yours

School, Drink

“All young people worry about things, it's a natural and inevitable part of growing up, and at the age of sixteen my greatest anxiety in life was that I'd never again achieve anything as good, or pure, or noble, or true, as my O-level results.”

David Nicholls book Starter for Ten

Source: Starter for Ten

People, Age, Nature, Parting

“Because on some level, even though it never turns out to be true, and even though I should know better, I still expect life to be like the movies.”

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 Boy Book: A Study of Habits and Behaviors, Plus Techniques for Taming Them

“Life is unjust and this is what makes it so beautiful. Every day is a gift. Be brave and take hold of it.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Beauty

“Life's not black-and-white. Sometimes the ends justifies the means.”

Emily Giffin Something Borrowed

Source: Something Borrowed

“Writing is like the life of a glacier; one eternal grind.”

John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author

“Life is much more successfully looked at from a single window.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

“There was the woman I was before my mom died and the one I was now, my old life sitting on the surface of me like a bruise.”

Cheryl Strayed book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Source: Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Moms

“He who every morning plans the transactions of that day and follows that plan carries a thread that will guide him through the labyrinth of the most busy life.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Business

“Because i've suffered. Because many times in my life i have tried to love with all my heart, and my love has wound up being trampled or betrayed.”

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

Source: By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept

Love, Suffering, Time, Heart

“Life would be a lot easier if conversations were rewindable and erasable, like videos. Or if you could instruct people to disregard what you just said, like in a courtroom.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

People

“To bow to the fact of our life's sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”

Jack Kornfield (1945) American writer

Imagination, Freedom, Learning, Betrayal

“I don't forgive him," I said.
"Hell, no, you don't. And why should you? So he can feel better? Get on with his life? And what's he done to help you get on with yours?”

Kelley Armstrong book Frostbitten

Source: Frostbitten

Feeling, Forgiveness, Hell, Help

“We're making it up. The world, the universe, life, reality. Especially reality.”

Tom Robbins (1932) American writer

World, Reality, Universe

“But it is important to know this, to know your roots. To know where you started as a person. If not, your own life seems unreal to you.”

Khaled Hosseini book And the Mountains Echoed

Source: And the Mountains Echoed

Personality

“For I have known them all already, known them all—
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.”

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

Source: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others

Coffee

“There is no greater evil than killing. I don't care whether they call it war or justice. Life is precious.”

Brian Jacques book Mossflower

Source: Mossflower

War, Justice, Evil

“There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

Beauty, Angels, Singing

“About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all.”

Rita Mae Brown (1944) Novelist, poet, screenwriter, activist

Love, People

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

Jeannette Walls book The Glass Castle

Source: The Glass Castle

Parent

“Fine, just don’t eat my mom, okay? She’s had a bad enough life without becoming the Bride of Dracula.” – Nick”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Invincible

Moms

“People don't like being around despair. Our tolerance for the truly hopeless, for those who are irredeemably broken by life is strictly limited. The sob stories we like are the ones that end before we're bored.”

Salman Rushdie The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Source: The Ground Beneath Her Feet

People, Despair

“Mara, that's the life I want to give you. That's what I'm offering you. I want to fill you life with color and warmth. I want to fill it with light. Give me a chance”

Francine Rivers (1947) American writer

Source: Redeeming Love

Color, Light, Chance

“… wanting things for the wrong reasons can turn anyone's life into a marshmallow on a stick over a hot fire: impossibly messy and eventually consumed, one way or another.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Queen of Everything

Way

“You know how sometimes, your life is so perfect you’re afraid for the next moment, because it couldn’t possibly be quite as good? That’s what it felt like.”

Jodi Picoult book Handle With Care

Source: Handle with Care

Perfection

“Why should we live with such hurry and waste of life?”

Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist

“Nobody wanted your dance,
Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering
Drowning life and your effort to save yourself,
Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,
Looking for something to give.”

Ted Hughes Birthday Letters

Source: Birthday Letters

Effort, Water, Dance

“Don't fear death, fear the un-lived life”

Natalie Babbitt book Tuck Everlasting

Variant: dont be afraid of death, be afraid of the unlived life.
Source: Tuck Everlasting

Death, Fear

“I love her because she has become something more to me. She become my life.”

Melissa de la Cruz (1971) American writer

Love

“For a split second I felt as though she was nobody special in the larger scheme of my life. She was just some girl who had tied me to her leg to help her sink when she jumped off the bridge. Then I blinked and was in love with her again.”

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

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Love, Girl, Help

Quotes about life page 89

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Quotes about life
page 89