LIFE QUOTES XXVI

quotations about life

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


If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?

EDWARD ALBEE

The Play About the Baby

Tags: Edward Albee


The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

The Joyful Wisdom

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.

DORIS LESSING

The Golden Notebook

Tags: Doris Lessing


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


Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary


If people knew the story of their lives how many would then elect to live them? People speak about what is in store. But there is nothing in store. The day is made of what has come before. The world itself must be surprised at the shape of that which appears. Perhaps even God.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

The Crossing


No man is matriculated to the art of life till he has been well tempted.

GEORGE ELIOT

Romola


Any state of life contents if we know no other.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

ARISTOPHANES

Lysistrata

Tags: Aristophanes


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

E. H. CHAPIN

Living Words


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


Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.

DAN SIMMONS

Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons


Odd thing about death ... it reaffirms life.

RITA MAE BROWN

Hounded to Death

Tags: Rita Mae Brown


I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy -- who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity -- only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart -- does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.

SAUL BELLOW

Herzog


Try not to turn your life into a race, least of all an obstacle race.

JOSÉ BERGAMÍN

Head in the Clouds

Tags: José Bergamín


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


Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.

AMY LOWELL

"Petals", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass

Tags: Amy Lowell


Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

"Ashes of Life"

Tags: Edna St. Vincent Millay


How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

"Two Moods"

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich