quotations about life
I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.
JOHN KEATS
letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, May 3, 1818
Life consists of burning up questions.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
Thoughts
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions
Life is the thing--the song of life--
The eager plow, the thirsty knife!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Imperturbable"
My life is a tree,
Yoke-fellow of the earth;
Pledged,
By roots too deep for remembrance,
To stand hard against the storm,
To fill by Place.
(But high in the branches of my green tree there is a wild bird singing:
Wind-free are the wings of my bird: she hath built no mortal nest.)
KARLE WILSON BAKER
The Tree
If life is often so hard as this, I don't see how we ever shall get through it.
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT
Little Women
Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always tickles.
NORA ROBERTS
From the Heart
Life is, alas, one eternal combat.
SARAH BERNHARDT
The Idol of Paris
Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
GASTON BACHELARD
Fragments of a Poetics of Fire
To realize life as absolute is to be existentially emancipated from life itself in that very realization, which understands that life is not life. The same applies to death.
MASAO ABE
Zen and the Modern World
So many little lives, amounting to nothing. I ask you: What is infinity multiplied by zero? It is hardly worth our discussion.
ALAN LIGHTMAN
Mr G: A Novel About the Creation
I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Babbitt
Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
From whatever point he starts, whatever path he follows, modern man comes to the same conclusion: behind its visible appearances, life hides a meaning that is eternally inaccessible to penetration by the spirit that seeks for its discovery, caught in the dilemma of being aware that it is impossible to find it, and yet also impossible to renounce the hopeless quest.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
"Le refus", L'Heure Nouvelle
He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense.
PHILIP ROTH
American Pastoral
Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.
GEORGE MEREDITH
"Hard Weather"