quotations about life
Still, life had a way of adding day to day.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
What is our life but a succession of preludes to that unknown song whose first solemn note is sounded by death?
ALPHONSE DE LAMARTINE
Méditations Poétiques
[A] carefully constructed life is a meticulous diversion from living.
J.R. KINNARD
"'Completely Unknown' Deals in Ambiguity and Subtle Charms", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
If we look at life in its various stages, has it been worth living at each period? It is rarely doubted as regards the youth. Life is to them a joyous thing--all is fresh and new; and life to their minds seems plastic and pliable; they have the experiment of living their life before them. Putting aside the fact that men do not start in the world with the desire for, or properly trained to make the "best of this life," we will consider if "life lived as it is" by the majority, life as realized in ordinary life, is worth living. And the reply must be, "Yes." Man has a body fitted and adapted for the purposes of life; and although, because of his own disobedience or the faults of his predecessors, he may not enjoy good health, yet the majority have a bodily structure that, if carefully attended to, will enable them successfully to do their work and feel it is a privilege to live, and be able to earn sufficient to live upon; and I think it must be admitted that to the majority, by the use of their brains, by industry, and by thrift, there is the possibility of securing sufficient to supply all with the ways and means of life. Wealth, no doubt, is power; it gives great influence, secures its possessor from many annoyances, gives facilities for attempting and effecting what others might dream of in vain; but it is a mistake to think that "life is more worth living" to the rich man than to the poor. Wealth can only belong to the few, and it would be impossible to imagine that the Creator had done His work so badly that only the "idle rich" were able to enjoy this life. The morning can find you without anxiety; the day may find you equal to the fulfilment of your duties; you may do your work willingly and cheerfully; you may retain the bright cloudlessness of your early days--"the child's heart within the man's"--and, day by day, enjoy life, and retire to rest without its bringing to you sleeplessness or morbid terrors, if you be a machanic, perhaps more so than if you were a Rothschild. Each and every condition of life has its duties and anxieties, its troubles and drawbacks, as well as its pleasures. I have implicit faith in the Creator's law of compensation. My belief is, that God wills, and has so arranged that in all ranks of life, let the difference of condition or capability be what it may, each one has it within him to make his life beautiful and happy. To every living being life is preferable to death; life to each and every one of us "is worth living."
JAMES PLATT
"Is Life Worth Living?", Platt's Essays
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
Life is a muddle. It seems a brilliant muddle, if you are an optimist; a dull one, if you aren't; but in neither case can you deny that it is the muddlers who keep it going.
MAX BEERBOHM
The Prince of Minor Writers: The Selected Essays of Max Beerbohm
A long life is a life well spent.
LEONARDO DA VINCI
Thoughts on Art and Life
Life is a pressure cooker and whether you remain serene or become stressed-out depends on how you handle that pressure.
KEVIN LEMAN
Stopping Stress before It Stops You: A Game Plan for Every Mom
Life is like our game of whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Life is the wave's deep whisper on the shore
Of a great sea beyond.
HENRY ABBEY
"The Roman Sentinel"
Life must be lived with courage, with climbing and risks, else there is no happiness, no hope, no true success, no future.
JENNETTE LEE
The Ibsen Secret
Life, too much of it, and not enough. The fear that it will end some day, and the fear that tomorrow will be the same as yesterday.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
A man's life is like a well, not like a snake--it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Life is a spell so exquisite that everything conspires to break it.
EMILY DICKINSON
letter to Louisa and Frances Norcross, Apr. 1873
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
The truth about the world ... is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
To those who view the voyage of life from the port of departure the bark that has accomplished any considerable distance appears already in close approach to the farther shore.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"The Death of Halpin Frayser"
Each life is one short word slowly uttered.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Blue Jay's Dance
If life be wretched, it is hard to bear it; if it be happy, it is horrible to lose it ; both come to the same thing.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of Mankind", Les Caractères