quotations about life
Life was like a batch of biscuits without the baking powder: flat, flat, flat.
KIRBY LARSON
Hattie Big Sky
Life is too short to blend in.
PARIS HILTON
Confessions of an Heiress
Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Life is being, not having.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
2 get through this thing called life.
PRINCE
"Let's Go Crazy"
When man would make a rose with tools, he fashions petals and leaves of wax, colors them, manufactures a stalk by the same mechanical process -- and the rose is done. When God makes a rose, he lets a bird or a puff of wind drop a seed into the ground; out of the seed there emerges a stalk; and out of the stalk, branches; and on these branches, buds; and out of these buds roses unfold; and the rose is never done, for it goes on endlessly repeating itself. This is the difference between manufacture and growth. Man's method is the method of manufacture; God's method is the method of growth. What man makes is a finished product -- death. What God makes is an always finishing and never finished product -- life.
LYMAN ABBOTT
The Theology of an Evolutionist
There is nothing men are so anxious to keep, and yet are so careless about, as life.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
The life so short, the craft so long to learn.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
"Parliament of Fowls"
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
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
The Ghost in My Life
Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"The Theologian's Tale", Tales of a Wayside Inn
Perhaps all of life is no more than a long preparation for the leaving of it.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Sea
Life should be touched, not strangled.
RAY BRADBURY
Farewell Summer
Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Woman's Apology"
Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
SAMUEL BUTLER
"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science
Life calls the tune, we dance.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Five Tales
His dangerous, overwhelming lust for life had failed to involve him in anything deeper than perhaps half a dozen extremely casual acquaintanceships in about as many bars.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
Philosophical Essays
Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy--well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
You have not lost all when you have life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims