Quotes about life
page 9

“Life is pain… anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something”

Source: Eragon

“The object in life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

Misattributed Source: The first citation appears in a translation of Leo Tolstoy's Bethink Yourselves! http://www.nonresistance.org/docs_htm/Tolstoy/~Bethink_Yourselves/BY_chapter08.html by NONRESISTANCE.ORG. The claim made that it is from Marcus Aurelius. Nothing closely resembling it appears in Meditations, nor does it appear in a 1904 translation of Bethink Yourselves http://www.online-literature.com/tolstoy/bethink-yourselves/8/. The 1904 translation may be abridged, whereas the NONRESISTANCE.ORG translation claims to be unabridged.

“Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.”

Michel Houellebecq book Platform

Source: Platform

“Endymion, you are my first love, my only love… even if we're reborn, in another life, we'll find each other… and then… We'll fall in love again… - Princess Serenity”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

Love, Princess

“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”

Virginia Woolf book Moments of Being

Source: Moments of Being

“Don’t just accept whatever comes your way in life. You were born to win; you were born for greatness; you were created to be a champion in life.”

Joel Osteen (1963) American televangelist and author

Source: Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential

Way

“You are where you are in life because of what you believe is possible for yourself.”

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

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology

Fate

“I suppose I have found it easier to identify with the characters who verge upon hysteria, who were frightened of life, who were desperate to reach out to another person. But these seemingly fragile people are the strong people really.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

People, Strong, Personality

“Spending time with God is the key to our strength and success in all areas of life. Be sure that you never try to work God into your schedule, but always work your schedule around Him.”

Joyce Meyer (1943) American author and speaker

God, Time, Success, Faith

“Making money isn't hard in itself… What's hard is to earn it doing something worth devoting one's life to.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Shadow of the Wind

Source: The Shadow of the Wind

Money

“Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.”

Gregory Peck (1916–2003) American actor

Faith, Sense, Faith

“There is much you can learn from books and scrolls. These books are my friends, my companions. They make me laugh and cry and find meaning in life.”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Books, Learning, Cry

“Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.”

Louis Aragon (1897–1982) French poet, novelist and editor

Source: Paris Peasant

People, Truth, Error, Light

“What is demanded of man is not, as some existential philosophers teach, to endure the meaninglessness of life, but rather to bear his incapacity to grasp its unconditional meaningfulness in rational terms.”

Viktor E. Frankl book Man's Search for Meaning

Source: Man's Search for Meaning

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.”

Rachel Carson (1907–1964) American marine biologist and conservationist

Source: The Sense of Wonder (1965)
Context: Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life. Whatever the vexations or concerns of their personal lives, their thoughts can find paths that lead to inner contentment and to renewed excitement in living. Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts.

Beauty, Beauty, Hope, Peaceful

“A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Source: All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

Lying

“If man is to survive, he will have learned to take a delight in the essential differences between men and between cultures. He will learn that differences in ideas and attitudes are a delight, part of life's exciting variety, not something to fear.”

Gene Roddenberry (1921–1991) American television screenwriter and producer

Men, Fear, Idea, Learning

“All I ask of life, he says, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

Books, Dreams

“Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.”

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

As quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126
Variant: Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

Courage, Motivational

“Nevertheless, life and death are mysterious states, and we know little of the resources of either.”

J. Sheridan Le Fanu book Carmilla

Source: Carmilla

Death

“I don't get high, but sometimes I wish I did. That way, when I messed up in life I would have an excuse. But right now there's no rehab for stupidity.”

Chris Rock (1965) American comedian, actor, screenwriter, television producer, film producer, and director

Stupidity, Way

“Life doesn't just happen to you; you
receive everything in your life based on what you've given.”

Rhonda Byrne (1951) Australian writer and producer

“Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these.”

Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) American women's rights activist

Dogs, Birthday, Wedding, Memory

“If you set yourself to it, you can live the same life, rich or poor. You can keep on with your books and your ideas. You just got to say to yourself, "I'm a free man in here" - he tapped his forehead - "and you're all right.”

George Orwell book Down and Out in Paris and London

Source: Down and Out in Paris and London

Books, Idea

“Let everyone know, I lived a very happy life.”

Orhan Pamuk book The Museum of Innocence

Source: The Museum of Innocence

Happiness

“A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”

Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright

“Life is not primarily a quest for pleasure, as Freud believed, or a quest for power, as Alfred Adler taught, but a quest for meaning.”

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

Source: Man's Search For Meaning: The classic tribute to hope from the Holocaust

Pleasure

“As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see. But a hard life improves vision.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn book Cancer Ward

Source: Cancer Ward

“Change is the essence of life; be willing to surrender what you are for what you could become.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

Change

“If you are brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new Hello.

Paulo Coehlo”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Variant: If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.

Goodbye, Moving On, New Year

“True life is elsewhere”

Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891) French Decadent and Symbolist poet

“Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.”

Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902–1991) Polish-born Jewish-American author

“Life is a planetary level phenomonon and the Earth has been alive for at least 3000 million years. To me the human move to take responsibility for the living Earth is laughable - the rhethoric of the powerless. The planet takes care of us, not we of it. Our self inflated moral imperative to guide a wayward Earth or heal a sick planet is evidence of our immense capacity for self-delusion. Rather, we need to protect us from ourselves.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Symbiotic Planet: A New Look at Evolution

“The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another's heart.”

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

Love, People, Memory, Time

“You find peace not by rearranging the circumstances of your life, but by realizing who you are at the deepest level.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Peace, Peaceful

“And then many things became very clear… we learned perfectly that the life of a single human being is worth millions of times more than all the property of the richest man on earth.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

Learning, Time

“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

Oscar Wilde An Ideal Husband

Lord Goring, Act III
Source: An Ideal Husband (1895)

Love, Cute, Valentine's Day, love

“Life did not take over the world by combat,
but by networking.”

Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) American evolutionary biologist

Source: Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution

World

“The Most difficult thing but an essential one – is to love Life, to love it even while one suffers, because Life is all, Life is God, and to love Life means to love God.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Love, God, Suffering

“You must not let your life run in the ordinary way; do something that nobody else has done, something that will dazzle the world. Show that God's creative principle works in you.”

Paramahansa Yogananda (1893–1952) Yogi, a guru of Kriya Yoga and founder of Self-Realization Fellowship

God, World, Way

“I'd rather live a hard life of fact than a sweet life of lies.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

“You are -- your life, and nothing else.”

Jean Paul Sartre No Exit

Source: No Exit

Hurtful, Relationship, Cute, Heart Touching

“Sadness isn't sadness. It's happiness in a black jacket. Tears are not tears. They're balls of laughter dipped in salt. Death is not death. It's life that's jumped off a tall cliff.”

Paul McCartney (1942) English singer-songwriter and composer

Source: Blackbird Singing: Poems and Lyrics, 1965-1999

Death, Happiness, Sadness, Tear

“I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.”

Malcolm X (1925–1965) American human rights activist

The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1965) Context: I told the Englishman that my alma mater was books, a good library. Every time I catch a plane, I have with me a book that I want to read—and that’s a lot of books these days. If I weren’t out here every day battling the white man, I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity—because you can hardly mention anything I’m not curious about. Chapter 11, paragraph 59 http://www.uri.edu/library/inscriptions/almamater.html

Reading

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service is joy.”

Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath

Quoted often without citation http://www.tagorefoundationinternational.com http://rupkatha.com/V2/n4/11Tagorephilosohy.pdf Compare this verse verse written by Ellen Sturgis Hooper: ::"I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty." Disputed

Joy, Life

“He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream and he sometimes wondered whose it was and whether they were enjoying it.”

Douglas Adams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy pentalogy

Source: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Dreams

“There is love of course. And then there's life, its enemy.”

Jean Anouilh (1910–1987) French playwright

Love

“The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.”

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

Fools, Funny

“Of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man's life upon this earth — and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer

Wisdom, Truth, Books, Flowers

“Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

“I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Learning

“Why couldn't she be part of that family? rent a room in someone else's life.”

Kiran Desai (1971) Indian author

Source: Inheritance of Loss

Family, Parting

“There is a life behind the personality that uses personalities as masks. There are times when life puts off the mask and deep answers unto deep.”

Dion Fortune (1890–1946) British occultist and author

Source: The Goat-Foot God

Time, Personality

“We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Also quoted in "Stephen Hawking warns over making contact with aliens" http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8642558.stm at BBC News (25 April 2010). Into The Universe with Stephen Hawking (2010) Context: If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. … We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldn't want to meet.

Intelligence

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Death

“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Imagination

“The two most important days in your life are the day you were born and the day you find out why.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

This appears on the opening placard of the film The Equalizer, attributing it to Twain, but there is no evidence that Twain wrote it. A precursor is found in Taylor Hartman's self-help book The Character Code (first published 1991), where it is not attributed to Twain: "The three most significant days in your life are: 1. The day you were born. 2. The day you find out why you were born. 3. The day you discover how to contribute the gift you were born to give" ( Google Books link https://books.google.com/books?id=gIKCxWxNmeMC&pg=PA147&dq=%22day+you+find+out+why%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwijrJzc84vLAhUJzGMKHajvADEQ6AEIIjAB#v=onepage&q=%22day%20you%20find%20out%20why%22&f=false) Disputed

Motivational

“All that glisters is not gold;
Often have you heard that told:
Many a man his life hath sold
But my outside to behold:
Gilded tombs do worms enfold.”

William Shakespeare The Merchant of Venice

Source: The Merchant of Venice

“A dog reflects the family life. Whoever saw a frisky dog in a gloomy family, or a sad dog in a happy one? Snarling people have snarling dogs, dangerous people have dangerous ones.”

Arthur Conan Doyle book The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Source: The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes

Happiness, People, Sadness, Family

“So be sure when you step, Step with care and great tact. And remember that life's A Great Balancing Act. And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (98 and ¾ percent guaranteed) Kid, you'll move mountains.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

Mountain, Success

“If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there's salvation in life. Even if you can't get together with that person.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84 (2009-2010)

Love, Heart, Personality, Hope

“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”

Langston Hughes (1902–1967) American writer and social activist

Source: The Collected Poems

Death, Music, Dead

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

Death, Men, War, Fear

“Only old Benjamin professed to remember every detail of his long life and to know that things never had been, nor ever could be much better or much worse--hunger, hardship, and disappointment being, so he said, the unalterable law of life.”

George Orwell book Animal Farm

Source: Animal Farm

Hunger, Law, Disappointment

“Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Lear, Tolstoy and the Fool," Polemic (March 1947)
Context: A normal human being does not want the Kingdom of Heaven: he wants life on earth to continue. This is not solely because he is "weak," "sinful" and anxious for a "good time." Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise. Ultimately it is the Christian attitude which is self-interested and hedonistic, since the aim is always to get away from the painful struggle of earthly life and find eternal peace in some kind of Heaven or Nirvana. The humanist attitude is that the struggle must continue and that death is the price of life.

People, Imagination, Suffering

“What I want in my life is compassion, a flow between myself and others based on a mutual giving from the heart.”

Marshall B. Rosenberg (1934–2015) American psychologist

Source: Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life

Heart

“The choices you make now, the people you surround yourself with, they all have the potential to affect your life, even who you are, forever.”

Sarah Dessen book The Truth About Forever

Source: The Truth About Forever

People

“Perhaps that's what all human relationships boil down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it?”

Toni Morrison book Song of Solomon

Source: Song of Solomon

“Life isn't a book. There's no guarantee of a happy ending.”

Kristin Cast book Hunted

Source: Hunted

Happiness, Books

“I have loved in life and I have been loved.
I have drunk the bowl of poison from the hands of love as nectar,
and have been raised above life's joy and sorrow.
My heart, aflame in love, set afire every heart that came in touch with it.
My heart has been rent and joined again;
My heart has been broken and again made whole;
My heart has been wounded and healed again;
A thousand deaths my heart has died, and thanks be to love, it lives yet.
I went through hell and saw there love's raging fire,
and I entered heaven illumined with the light of love.
I wept in love and made all weep with me;
I mourned in love and pierced the hearts of men;
And when my fiery glance fell on the rocks, the rocks burst forth as volcanoes.
The whole world sank in the flood caused by my one tear;
With my deep sigh the earth trembled, and when I cried aloud the name of my beloved,
I shook the throne of God in heaven.
I bowed my head low in humility, and on my knees I begged of love,
"Disclose to me, I pray thee, O love, thy secret."
She took me gently by my arms and lifted me above the earth, and spoke softly in my ear,
"My dear one, thou thyself art love, art lover,
and thyself art the beloved whom thou hast adored.”

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927) Indian Sufi

Source: The Dance of the Soul

Love, Death, Men, God

“Life is a mirror: if you frown at it, it frowns back; if you smile, it returns the greeting.”

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863) novelist

Smile

“There are defining moments in one's life when you learn about yourself, and you deposit that knowledge in the experience account, so you can draw on it at some later date.”

Jeffrey Archer book Best Kept Secret

Source: Best Kept Secret

Knowledge, Learning, Drawing

“Some changes look negative on the surface but you will soon realize that space is being created in your life for something new to emerge.”

Eckhart Tolle (1948) German writer

Change, Hurtful

“Everyone thinks that courage is about facing death without flinching. But almost anyone can do that. Almost anyone can hold their breath and not scream for as long as it takes to die.

True courage is about facing life without flinching. I don't mean the times when the right path is hard, but glorious at the end. I'm talking about enduring the boredom, the messiness, and the inconvenience of doing what is right.”

Robin Hobb book The Mad Ship

Source: The Mad Ship

Death, Courage, Thinking, Time

“I've never been free in my whole life. Inside I've always chased myself. I've become intolerable to myself. I live in a lacerating duality. I'm seemingly free, but I'm a prisoner inside of me.”

Clarice Lispector book A Breath of Life

Source: A Breath of Life

“No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

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

As reported in Einstein — A Life (1996) by Denis Brian, when asked about a clipping from a magazine article reporting his comments on Christianity as taken down by Viereck, Einstein carefully read the clipping and replied, "That is what I believe." .
1920s, Viereck interview (1929)

Feeling, Reading, Personality

“What is the worth of anything we do? The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life”

Christopher Paolini book Eragon

Source: Eragon

Change

“All life is part of a complex relationship in which each is dependent upon the others, taking from, giving to and living with all the rest.”

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

Parting, Dependency

“This life we live nowadays! It's not life, it's stagnation, death-in-life. Look at all these bloody houses, and the meaningless people inside them! Sometimes I think we're all corpses. Just rotting upright.”

George Orwell book Keep the Aspidistra Flying

Source: Keep the Aspidistra Flying (1936), Ch. 5

Death, People, Thinking, Housing

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”

Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet

Quoted by Alvin Redman in The Epigrams of Oscar Wilde http://books.google.com/books?id=qUjQAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Keep+love+in+your+heart+a+life+without+it+is+like+a+sunless+garden+when+the+flowers+are+dead+the+consciousness+of+loving+and+being+loved+brings+a+warmth+and+richness+to+life+that+nothing+else+can+bring%22&pg=PA102#v=onepage (1952)

Love, Flowers, Heart, Dead

“If you have good friends, no matter how much life is sucking, they can make you laugh.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

“Sometimes when I'm alone
I Cry,
Cause I am on my own.
The tears I cry are bitter and warm.
They flow with life but take no form
I Cry because my heart is torn.
I find it difficult to carry on.
If I had an ear to confide in,
I would cry among my treasured friend,
but who do you know that stops that long,
to help another carry on.
The world moves fast and it would rather pass by.
Then to stop and see what makes one cry,
so painful and sad.
And sometimes…
I Cry
and no one cares about why.”

Tupac Shakur (1971–1996) rapper and actor

Pain, World, Sadness, Confidence

“Either I've turned stupid, or life's turned hard.”

Tamora Pierce Lioness Rampant

Source: Lioness Rampant

Stupidity

“Don't pointless things have a place, too, in this far-from-perfect world? Remove everything pointless from an imperfect life, and it'd lose even its imperfection.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

World, Perfection

“Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.”

Oscar Wilde book The Canterville Ghost

Source: The Canterville Ghost http://www.planetmonk.com/wilde/savile/canterville.c1.html (1887)

Death, Lie, Peace, Beauty

“[In the Universe it may be that] Primitive life is very common and intelligent life is fairly rare. Some would say it has yet to occur on Earth.”

Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) British theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author

Intelligence, Universe

“Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Benefit Of Clergy: Some Notes On Salvador Dalí," Dickens, Dali & Others: Studies in Popular Culture (1944) http://orwell.ru/library/reviews/dali/english/e_dali

Lying

“I don't care what you do to me, but I don't want you to hurt me. I've had enough hurt already in my life. More than enough. Now I want to be happy.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Happiness, Hurt