LIFE QUOTES XXIII

quotations about life

To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.

BERTOLT BRECHT

On Politics and Society

Tags: Bertolt Brecht


Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

V. S. NAIPAUL

Half a Life

Tags: V. S. Naipaul


In life, unlike chess, the game continues after checkmate.

ISAAC ASIMOV

Fantastic Voyage II

Tags: Isaac Asimov


The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.

ALBERT CAMUS

attributed, Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd


Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.

GEORGE MEREDITH

"Hard Weather"

Tags: George Meredith


Life is short, but its ills make it seem long.

PUBLILIUS SYRUS

The Moral Sayings of Publilius Syrus

Tags: Publilius Syrus


Life is a song, rhythmic and sweet,
Love is its tune;
Treble and base blended in one,
Perfect as June.

ELIZA H. MORTON

"The Song of Life"


Life is like checkers. When you reach the top, you can move wherever you want.

KEN ALSTAD

Savvy Sayin's

Tags: Ken Alstad


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

Tags: Alan Lightman


Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"Beyond the Wall of Sleep"


Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales


You're alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change.

NEIL GAIMAN

The Graveyard Book

Tags: Neil Gaiman


Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

MARK TWAIN

The Tragedy of Pudd'nhead Wilson

Tags: Mark Twain


Real life ... it was an ambiguous world, where actions sometimes had no meaning, where chaos reigned and no one was allowed to see the big picture, only their small portion of it.

BENTLEY LITTLE

The Policy

Tags: Bentley Little


So life discloses--
Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
In changing splendor night or day;
New joys that drive old griefs away.

ANDREW DOWNING

"Among the Roses"

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For some reason or the other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured--disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui--in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

HENRY MILLER

Tropic of Cancer

Tags: Henry Miller


When our life is a continuous trial, the moments of respite seem only to substitute the heaviness of dread for the heaviness of actual suffering; the curtain of cloud seems parted an instant only that we may measure all its horror as it hangs low, black, and imminent, in contrast with the transient brightness; the waterdrops that visit the parched lips in the desert bear with them only the keen imagination of thirst.

GEORGE ELIOT

Janet's Repentance


Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

"Ashes of Life"

Tags: Edna St. Vincent Millay


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

Tags: Cormac McCarthy