LIFE QUOTES XXXV

quotations about life

Our lives fade behind us before we die.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich

Tags: John Updike


In a life without obstacles he would doubtless have abandoned himself to chance and to the voluptuous sauntering of adolescence. As he could be free only for an hour or two a day, his strength flowed into that space of time like a river between walls of rock. It is a good discipline for art for a man to confine his efforts between unshakable bounds. In that sense it may be said that misery is a master, not only of thought, but of style; it teaches sobriety to the mind as to the body. When time is doled out and thoughts measured, a man says no word too much, and grows accustomed to thinking only what is essential; so he lives at double pressure, having less time for living.

ROMAIN ROLLAND

Jean-Christophe

Tags: Romain Rolland


The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.

URSULA K. LE GUIN

The Left Hand of Darkness

Tags: Ursula K. Le Guin


No lifetime is long enough for those ... who simply wish to understand themselves and their lives. It is, perhaps, the curse of being human, but also a blessing.

DAN SIMMONS

The Rise of Endymion


Seek not life's jewels where the poppies grow,
Nor where Desire, all passion-poisoned, rears
Her luring domes, but in the heart of woe,
With shores far washed by sanctifying tears.

EDWARD ROBESON TAYLOR

"Life's Jewels"

Tags: Edward Robeson Taylor


It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.

GARRISON KEILLOR

"Could I have been any more inept?", Salon, Oct. 26, 1999

Tags: Garrison Keillor


It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange.

JACK LONDON

Tales of the North

Tags: Jack London


One of my teachers in grammar school, a nun, used to say, "La vie, c'est bien complique." I'm not sure what that meant to me at the time, but it's become the guiding principle of my life, my writing, my interactions with others. Life is very complicated indeed, and that's what makes it both difficult and interesting. Stereotypes, racism, xenophobia -- most negativity in the world comes out of the natural human desire to oversimplify. Life isn't simple.

JEANNETTE ANGELL

"A talk with author Jeannette Angell: From college lecturer to callgirl and back", Souixland, Oct. 8, 2004

Tags: Jeannette Angell


Life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.

JOHN DOS PASSOS

Three Soldiers

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As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.

MARCUS AURELIUS

Meditations

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Life is like sex. It's not always good, but it's always worth trying.

PAMELA ANDERSON

Star

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Life is a school of probability. In the writings of every man of patient practicality, in the midst of whatever other defects, you will find a careful appreciation of the degrees of likelihood; a steady balancing of them one against another; a disinclination to make things too clear, to overlook the debit side of the account in mere contemplation of the enormousness of the credit.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Estimates of Some Englishmen and Scotchmen

Tags: Walter Bagehot


Living is a disease from the pains of which sleep eases us every sixteen hours; sleep is but a palliative, death alone is the cure.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary

Tags: Sebastien Roch Nicolas Chamfort


Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Sons and Lovers

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


Life is the apprenticeship to progressive renunciation, to the steady diminution of our claims, of our hopes, of our powers, of our liberty.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

Journal Intime

Tags: Henri Frederic Amiel


The game of life is good, though all of life may be hurt, and though all lives lose the game in the end.

JACK LONDON

John Barleycorn

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Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living.

JOHN ELDREDGE

Desire

Tags: John Eldredge


Nothing comes at all -- never anything. And I cannot accustom myself to that. It is this monotony, this absolute fixity in life, that is the hardest thing for me to endure. I should like to go away from here. Go away? But where and how? I do not know, and I stay.

OCTAVE MIRBEAU

The Diary of a Chambermaid

Tags: Octave Mirbeau


Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.

SRI AUROBINDO

Ahana

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