quotations about life
He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Life's generally artless ... but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind your back, and before you know it you're in the final act of a lousy movie.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM
The Schopenhauer Cure
When we dead awaken ... we see that we have never lived.
HENRIK IBSEN
When We Dead Awaken
Scorn ye not the little things,
For life is made from them.
ARDELIA COTTON BARTON
"Little Things"
I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
speech during the Great March on Detroit, Jun. 23, 1963
Activity does not necessarily mean life.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
A life knows few revelations; these must be followed when they come.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest
Life -- a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Is Civilization Progress?", Reader's Digest, July 1964
There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
NORMAN MAILER
The Deer Park
Work, whiskey, and cards were life.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
Take responsibility for making your own life beautiful.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
Life is a cycle of both suffering and pleasure. One doesn't exist without the other.
VENERABLE POMNYUN
"How Can We Create A Happy Life For Ourselves And A More Just Society?", Huffington Post, August 15, 2016
We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Life is like a school; one can learn, one can graduate, one can skip a grade or stay behind.
ELIZABETH LESSER
The New American Spirituality: A Seeker's Guide
So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Broken Music"
Life is full of doors that don't open when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don't want them to.
ROGER ZELAZNY
Blood of Amber
Life -- and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison -- is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.
NEIL GAIMAN
Death Talks About Life
It is a matter of embracing one's only life, even though this life so often seems to be, merely, one's doom. And it is, in a way, though not "merely." But to refuse the doom of one's only life is to be trapped outside all nourishment.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives ... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway