quotations about life
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
There is no normal life. There is only life.
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.
D. H. LAWRENCE
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères
We are buried when we're born. The world is a place of graves occupied and graves potential. Life is what happens while we wait for our appointment with the mortician.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
Life being full of harsh realities, we seek relief from them in a variety of pleasing delusions.
CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought
Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
There is more to life than not dying.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Clockwork Angel
Life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.
WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS
Reveries over Childhood and Youth
To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.
BERTOLT BRECHT
On Politics and Society
Life is what you put into it and how much you take out of it. You put in more than is expected, and you take out less than you want.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
When something makes no sense, sometimes you make something of it. A joke. A spiritual practice. A life.
HEATHER SELLERS
Good Housekeeping, Jan. 2011
Life itself suggests a higher good than life itself can yield.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
If we could live for a million years, then maybe it would be worthwhile to create some problems. But our life is short. Now you see, we are guests here on this planet, visitors who have come for a short time, so we need to use our days wisely, to make our world a little better for everyone.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Book of Joy
Anything in life is possible if you make it happen.
JACK LALANNE
Fiscal Fitness: 8 Steps to Wealth & Health from America's Leaders of Fitness
The most refined abstractions of logic conduct to a view of life, which, though startling to the apprehension, is, in fact, that which the habitual sense of its repeated combinations has extinguished in us. It strips, as it were, the painted curtain from this scene of things. I confess that I am one of those who are unable to refuse my assent to the conclusions of those philosophers who assert that nothing exists but as it is perceived.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Life", Essays and Letters
The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
A Free Man's Worship
The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.
ROBERT M. PIRSIG
Lila