quotations about life
Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
letter to his son Eduard, Feb. 5, 1930
The truth about the world ... is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
When life is cheap death is rich.
EDWARD ABBEY
One Life at a Time, Please
Life inspires more dread than death -- it is life which is the great unknown.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Life is an immense dream. Why toil?
All day long I drowse with wine,
And lie by the post at the front door.
Awakening, I gaze upon the garden trees,
And, hark, a bird is singing among the flowers.
Pray, what season may this be?
Ah, the songster's a mango-bird,
Singing to the passing wind of spring.
I muse and muse myself to sadness,
Once more I pour my wine, and singing aloud,
Await the bright moonrise.
My song is ended--
What troubled my soul?--I remember not.
LI BAI
"Awakening From Sleep on a Spring Day"
To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"The Death of Halpin Frayser"
Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore
Of a great sea beyond.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Roman Sentinel"
Into each life some rain must fall.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Rainy Day"
There is one purpose to life and one only: to bear witness to and understand as much as possible of the complexity of the world -- its beauty, its mysteries, its riddles.
ANNE RICE
Servant of the Bones
Life is not about having a good time. We're told you do certain things. You behave a certain way and happiness will come your way. Which isn't true. I don't think we're put on this earth to live happy lives. I think we're put here to challenge ourselves physically, emotionally, intellectually.
JOHN COUGAR MELLENCAMP
interview, Spin Magazine, February 1992
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
Life is like underwear, should be changed twice a day.
RAY BRADBURY
A Graveyard for Lunatics
To what can one compare our life on earth?
To a flock of geese
Waddling about in the snow
Leaving a faint trace of their passage.
SU SHI
"Remembrance"
We bring into the world a poor, needy, uncertain life, short at the best; all the imaginations of the wise have been busied to find out the ways how to revive it with pleasure, or relieve it with counsel; how to compose it with ease, and settle it with safety; to some of these ends have been employed the instructions of Lawgivers, the reasonings of Philosophers, the inventions of Poets, the pains of labouring, and the extravagancies of the Voluptuous; all the world is at work perpetually about nothing else, but only that our poor mortal lives should pass the easier and the happier that little time we possess them; or else end the better when we lose them.
WELLINS CALCOTT
Thoughts Moral and Divine
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
ANONYMOUS
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination.
BRUCE LEE
Jeet Kune Do: Bruce Lee's Commentaries on the Martial Way
Well, you live your life the way you want, I live mine the way I want. We see who makes it farther.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Simple Truth
Life is a pressure cooker and whether you remain serene or become stressed-out depends on how you handle that pressure.
KEVIN LEMAN
Stopping Stress before It Stops You: A Game Plan for Every Mom
Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations