CALVIN: My life needs a rewind/erase button.
HOBBES: … And a volume control.
Quotations about:
life
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
While you are upon the earth, enjoy the good things that are here (to the end that they were given), and be not melancholy, and wish yourself in Heaven.
John Selden (1584-1654) English jurist, legal scholar, antiquarian, polymath
Table Talk, § 104.4 “Pleasure” (1689)
Life is one long process of getting tired.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler (1912)
That best portion of a good man’s life,
His little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and love.
William Wordsworth (1770-1850) English poet
“Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey” (13 Jul 1798)
(Source)
Often paraphrased into a sentence, e.g., "The best portion of a good man's life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love."
Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
If I were to begin life again, I should want it as it was. I would only open my eyes a little more.
Jules Renard (1864-1910) French writer
Journal
Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish playwright and critic
The Doctor’s Dilemma, Act 5 [Ridgeon] (1906)
(Source)
We cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over our heads, but we can refuse to let them build their nests in our hair.
Proverbs, Sayings, and Adages
Chinese proverb
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes, and seeing them gratified. He that labours in any great or laudable undertaking, has his fatigues first supported by hope, and afterwards rewarded by joy; he is always moving to a certain end, and when he has attained it, an end more distant invites him to a new pursuit.
Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Essay (1753-11-27), The Adventurer, No. 111
(Source)
Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 “Life,” ix (1912)
Full text.
Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
William Saroyan (1908-1981) American writer
The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories, Preface (1934)
(Source)
Advice to writers.
The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as in playing a poor hand well.
(Other Authors and Sources)
H. T. Leslie
But men must know, that in this theatre of man’s life it is reserved only for God and angels to be lookers on.
Francis Bacon (1561-1626) English philosopher, scientist, author, statesman
De Augmentis Scientiarum [Advancement of Learning], Book 2, ch. 20, sec. 8 (1605)
If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable: think of it as a place of training and correction and it’s not so bad.
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
“Answers to Questions on Christianity”
All progress is based upon a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) English novelist, satirist, scholar
The Note-Books of Samuel Butler, ch. 1 “Life” (1912)
(Source)
Life is the childhood of our immortality.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) German poet, statesman, scientist
(Attributed)
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
J. M. Barrie (1860-1937) Scottish novelist and dramatist [James Matthew Barrie]
The Little Minister, ch. 1 “The Love-Light” (1891)
(Source)
