quotations about life
You have not lost all when you have life.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
You tasted it. Isn't that enough? Of what do you ever get more than a taste? That's all we're given in life, that's all we're given of life. A taste. There is no more.
PHILIP ROTH
The Dying Animal
As you speed along the highway of life ... you might pause and consider. When everything's coming your way, maybe you're driving in the wrong lane.
JOSEPH FINDER
Paranoia
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
Poor Richard's Almanac
He or she who has made the best of the life after death has made the best of the life before it.
SAMUEL BUTLER
"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science
How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard.
PHILIP ROTH
The Professor of Desire
It is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
Life asks for a preparation as complete as we can afford; the great contest should be fought with spirit but with good temper always; we should never think the game lost while it is still going; and finally we should have the satisfaction of quitting the field able to say: I did my best.
ARTHUR LYNCH
Moods of Life
Life calls the tune, we dance.
JOHN GALSWORTHY
Five Tales
Life can be cruel and uncomfortable at times. That doesn't define you. It's how we survive and create a colorful life with our experiences. Good and bad.
PAMELA ANDERSON
interview, Parade Magazine, January 23, 2015
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Collected Plays
Life is being, not having.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Life is much the same when it's going well-- resonant and unremarkable. But who, not under disaster's seal, can understand what life is like when it begins to crumble?
MARY OLIVER
"Storm in Massachusetts, September 1982", Dream Work
Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors!
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
journal, Mar. 1859
Life should be a fruitful garden,
Fair in blossom, and rich in seed;
Conscience, the sharp and faithful warden,
Watchful against the frost and weed.
Study should its labyrinths trace
Where wisdom's pleasant waters flow;
And industry the garden grace
With plants that choicest gifts bestow.
C. B. LANGSTON
"What Should Life Be?"
Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
MARY OLIVER
"Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?", West Wind
The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.
ARISTOTLE
Nicomachean Ethics
Weeks passed, a whirl of lights and sound and laughter, a fever dream, vertiginous, roaring, mad, he quit his job, not caring what came after, and struck out blindly; money enough he had, and life, by Christ, would go now as he bade; he got it by the throat, he was its master; sing! went his whip, and life danced on the faster.
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth"
Your responsibility is to be an explorer, not a tourist in this adventure that is your life.
MARY ANNE RADMACHER
Honey In Your Heart