Quotes about life
page 91
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For? (2002), Ch. 2 : I'm Not an Accident
Source: The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here for?
“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
Source: Shadow of the Giant
“I never knew what life was until it ran out in a red gush over any lips, my hands!”
Source: Sputnik Sweetheart
“In order for one to learn the important lessons of life, one must first overcome a fear each day.”
Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or objects.”
As quoted by Ernst Straus in Einstein: A Centenary Volume by A.P. French (1980), p. 32.
Attributed in posthumous publications
Variant: "if you want to be a happy man, you should tie your life to a goal, not to other people and not to things." A quote from Ernst Straus' memoir of Einstein in Albert Einstein: Historical and Cultural Perspectives edited by Gerald Holton and Yehuda Elkana (1982), p. 420 http://books.google.com/books?id=CNuwE3NL1QgC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA420#v=onepage&q&f=false
Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
Journal entry (November 1951) as published in the Kerouac ROMnibus http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/resguide/resources/j100.html
“Life, not death, is the great mystery you must confront.”
Source: The Final Testament of the Holy Bible
Variants (Many of MLKs' speeches were delivered many times with slight variants): An Individual has not started living fully until they can rise above the narrow confines of individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of humanity. Every person must decide at some point, whether they will walk in light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment: Life's most persistent and urgent question is: 'What are you doing for others?'
As quoted in The Words of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Coretta Scott King, Second Edition (2011), Ch. "Community of Man", p. 3
1950s, Conquering Self-centeredness (1957)
“In the middle of a crazy and drunk life, you have to hang onto the good and sober moments tightly.”
Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian
“It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top.”
Source: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates (2000)
Variant: At moments when life is at its worst there are two things that you can
do: 1) break down, lose hope, and refuse to go on while lying facedown on the ground
banging your fists and kicking your legs, or 2) laugh.
Source: A Place Called Here
Page 1087
Source: It (1986)
Context: Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question...So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away...drive away from Derry, from memory...but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night. Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.
Context: So you leave, and there is an urge to look back, to look back just once as the sunset fades, to see that severe New England skyline one final time... Best not to look back. Best to believe that there will be happily ever afters all the way around - and so there may be; who is to say there will not be such endings? Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question... So drive away quick, drive away while the last of the light slips away... drive away from Derry, from memory... but not from desire. That stays, the bright cameo of all we were and all we believed as children, all that shone in our eyes even when we were lost and the wind blew in the night. Drive away and try to keep smiling. Get a little rock and roll on the radio and go toward all the life there is with all the courage you can find and all the belief you can muster. Be true, be brave, stand. All the rest is darkness.
Source: Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology
Tous les changements, même les plus souhaités ont leur mélancolie, car ce que nous quittons, c'est une partie de nous-mêmes; il faut mourir à une vie pour entrer dans une autre.
Pt. II, ch. 4
The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard (1881)
“But sooner or later, no matter who you are, life uses everyone as its whipping boy.”
Source: Born of Silence
Variant: Every woman should have four pets in her life. A mink in her closet, a jaguar in her garage, a tiger in her bed, and a jackass who pays for everything.
“Life isn't fair," Owen told her. "Get used to it.”
Source: Just Listen
“The complete bottom has fallen out of my life.”
Source: Annie's Baby: The Diary of Anonymous, A Pregnant Teenager
Source: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
“There is only one good thing in life, and that is love.”
"The Love of Long Ago"
Source: The Complete Short Stories of de Maupassant
Context: 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.
Source: Red Bird
Source: My Horizontal Life: A Collection of One-Night Stands
Source: Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“I can’t undo the past. But in the future, I will gladly lay my life down for you, brother. (Styxx)”
Source: Second Chances
“There are two important days in a woman's life: the day she is born and the day she finds out why.”
Source: When Women Were Birds: Fifty-four Variations on Voice
Katniss and Peeta (p. 388; closing words of the main text)
Source: The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)
Context: I know this would have happened anyway. That what I need to survive is not Gale's fire, kindled with rage and hatred. I have plenty of fire myself. What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again. And only Peeta can give me that.
So after, when he whispers, "You love me. Real or not real?"
I tell him, "Real."
Source: The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake
Source: The English Patient
Post-war years (1945–1955)
Source: On his appointment as Prime Minister, May 10, 1940; The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948).
“You try to keep life simple but it never works, and in the end all you have left is yourself.”
Source: A is for Alibi
“Life is nothing if you're not obsessed.”
Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
“Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.”
Speaking Of Love (1980)
Source: The Yellow Wall-Paper
Source: Eden Close
Source: The Starlight Crystal
Source: Slow Learner: Early Stories
“The unwounded life bears no resemblance to the Rabbi.”
Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging
Source: 1975, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975), Ch. 7: Time
Context: Sometimes you're invited to a big ball and for months you think about how glamorous and exciting it's going to be. Then you fly to Europe and you go to the ball and when you think back on it a couple of months later what you remember is maybe the car ride to the ball, you can't remember the ball at all. Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life. I should have been dreaming for months about the car ride to the ball and getting dressed for the car ride, and buying my ticket to Europe so I could take the car ride. Then, who knows, maybe I could have remembered the ball.
“You must become the producer, director and actor in the unfolding story of your life.”
Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
“Writing is a dog’s life, but the only one worth living.”
Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story
“No one in life can ever match fiction”
Source: The Truth About Lord Stoneville
“Each book can make a life or a fragment of it more beautiful.”
