Quotations about:
    life


Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.


The cheerful live longest in life, and after it, in our regards.

Christian Nestell Bovee (1820-1904) American epigrammatist, writer, publisher
Intuitions and Summaries of Thought (1862)
 
Added on 30-Jul-16 | Last updated 30-Jul-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Bovee, Christian Nestell

Whether you believe that life evolved over billions of years or God made everything, you can’t justify torturing an animal for a shampoo.

Ricky Gervais (b. 1961) English comedian, actor, director, writer
Twitter (15 Mar 2012)
    (Source)
 
Added on 28-Jul-16 | Last updated 28-Jul-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Gervais, Ricky

Hope for the best.
Expect the worst.
The world’s a stage.
We’re unrehearsed.

Brooks - were unrehearsed - wist_info quote

Mel Brooks (b. 1926) American comedic actor, writer, producer [b. Melvyn Kaminsky]
The Twelve Chairs, “Hope for the Best, Expect the Worst”, chorus (1970)
 
Added on 20-Jul-16 | Last updated 20-Jul-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Brooks, Mel

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

Publilius Syrus (d. 42 BC) Assyrian slave, writer, philosopher [less correctly Publius Syrus]
Sententiae [Moral Sayings], # 633
 
Added on 20-Jul-16 | Last updated 20-Feb-17
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Publilius Syrus

Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums, who can’t, and those in cemeteries.

Everett Dirksen (1896-1969) American politician
(Attributed)
 
Added on 14-Jul-16 | Last updated 14-Jul-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Dirksen, Everett

The best things in life aren’t things.

Art Buchwald (1925-2007) American humorist, columnist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 11-Jul-16 | Last updated 11-Jul-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Buchwald, Art

On a recent Sunday evening, Theo came up with an aphorism: the bigger you think, the crappier it looks. Asked to explain he said, “When we go on about the big things, the political situation, global warming, world poverty, it all looks really terrible, with nothing getting better, nothing to look forward to. But when I think small, closer in — you know, a girl I’ve just met, or this song we’re going to do with Chas, or snowboarding next month, then it looks great. So this is going to be my motto — think small.”

Ian McEwan (b. 1948) English novelist and screenwriter
Saturday (2005)
 
Added on 5-Jul-16 | Last updated 5-Jul-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by McEwan, Ian

The wish falls often warm upon my heart that I may learn nothing here that I cannot continue in the other world; that I may do nothing here but deeds that will bear fruit in heaven.

Jean Paul Richter (1763-1825) German writer, art historian, philosopher, littérateur [Johann Paul Friedrich Richter; pseud. Jean Paul]
Letter to Rector Werner (1781)
    (Source)
 
Added on 22-Jun-16 | Last updated 22-Jun-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Richter, Jean-Paul

Remember that man’s life lies all within this present, as ’twere but a hair’s-breadth of time: as for the rest, the past is gone, the future yet unseen.

Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180) Roman emperor (161-180), Stoic philosopher
Meditations, Book 3, #10
 
Added on 15-Jun-16 | Last updated 15-Jun-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Marcus Aurelius

Science doesn’t purvey absolute truth. Science is a mechanism. It’s a way of trying to improve your knowledge of nature. It’s a system for testing your thoughts against the universe and seeing whether they match. And this works, not just for the ordinary aspects of science, but for all of life. I should think people would want to know that what they know is truly what the universe is like, or at least as close as they can get to it.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-American author, polymath, biochemist
Interview, Bill Moyers’ World Of Ideas (21 Oct 1988)
    (Source)
 
Added on 14-Jun-16 | Last updated 14-Jun-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Asimov, Isaac

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of each day and hour.

Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) Canadian economist, writer and humorist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 8-Jun-16 | Last updated 8-Jun-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Leacock, Stephen

The world’s an Inn; and I her guest.
I eat; I drink; I take my rest.
My hostess, nature, does deny me
Nothing, wherewith she can supply me;
Where, having stayed a while, I pay
Her lavish bills, and go my way.

Quarles - worlds an inn - wist_info quote

Francis Quarles (1592-1644) English poet
“On the World”
    (Source)
 
Added on 6-Jun-16 | Last updated 7-Jun-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Quarles, Francis

My soul, sit thou a patient looker-on;
Judge not the play before the play is done:
Her plot hath many changes; every day
Speaks a new scene; the last act crowns the play.

Francis Quarles (1592-1644) English poet
Respice Finem, Epigram (1635)
 
Added on 31-May-16 | Last updated 31-May-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Quarles, Francis

All life is nucleic acid; the rest is commentary.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Russian-American author, polymath, biochemist
“Science: Beginning with Bone,” Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (May 1987)
 
Added on 24-May-16 | Last updated 24-May-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Asimov, Isaac

I live my life in celebration and in praise of the life I’m living. What you focus on expands. The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. The more you complain, the more you find fault, the more misery and fault you will have to find.

Oprah Winfrey (b. 1954) American TV personality, actress
“Words of the Week,” Jet (27 Oct 1986)
    (Source)
 
Added on 13-May-16 | Last updated 13-May-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Winfrey, Oprah

He shrugged his shoulders. “I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”

Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) American author
“Queen of the Black Coast” (1934)
 
Added on 9-May-16 | Last updated 9-May-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Howard, Robert E.

Life is too short to do mediocre work and it is definitely too short to build shitty things.

Stewart Butterfield (b. 1973) Canadian tech entrepreneur and businessman
(Attributed)
 
Added on 15-Apr-16 | Last updated 15-Apr-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Butterfield, Stewart

Whether it’s the best of times or the worst of times, it’s the only time we’ve got.

Buchwald - only time weve got - wist_info quote

Art Buchwald (1925-2007) American humorist, columnist
(Attributed)
 
Added on 13-Apr-16 | Last updated 13-Apr-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Buchwald, Art

When we walk in the Lord’s presence, everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of Him. This is what is meant by a prayerful life. It is not a life in which we say many prayers but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of Him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) Dutch Catholic priest and writer
The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (1977)
 
Added on 1-Apr-16 | Last updated 1-Apr-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Nouwen, Henri

Prayer is not a pious decoration of life but the breath of human existence.

Henri Nouwen (1932-1996) Dutch Catholic priest and writer
The Wounded Healer (1972)
 
Added on 11-Mar-16 | Last updated 11-Mar-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Nouwen, Henri

Art is not living. It is a use of living.

Lorde - art is not living - wist_info quote

Audre Lorde (1934-1992) American writer, feminist, civil rights activist
“My Words Will Be There”
    (Source)
 
Added on 22-Feb-16 | Last updated 22-Feb-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Lorde, Audre

O Earth! all bathed with blood and tears, yet never
Hast thou ceased putting forth thy fruit and flowers.

Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) Swiss-French writer, woman of letters, critic, salonist [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Madame de Staël, Madame Necker]
Corinne, Book 13, ch. 4 (1807)
 
Added on 2-Feb-16 | Last updated 2-Feb-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by De Stael, Germaine

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.

Abraham Joshua Heschel
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) Polish-American rabbi, theologian, philosopher
“No Religion Is an Island,” Union Theological Seminary Quarterly Review (Jan 1966)
 
Added on 8-Jan-16 | Last updated 8-Jan-16
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Heschel, Abraham

One must, in one’s life, make a choice between boredom and suffering.

Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) Swiss-French writer, woman of letters, critic, salonist [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Madame de Staël, Madame Necker]
Letter to Claude Hochet (Summer 1800)

Quoted in J. Christopher Herold, Mistress to an Age: A Life of Madame de Staël (1958). Herold added, "Her decision was emphatically in favor of suffering, which after all was a pleasure compared to boredom."
 
Added on 15-Dec-15 | Last updated 15-Dec-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by De Stael, Germaine

Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love; the shores of existence are strewn with them.

Germaine de Staël (1766-1817) Swiss-French writer, woman of letters, critic, salonist [Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, Madame de Staël, Madame Necker]
Reflections on Suicide [Réflexions sur le suicide], Sec. 1 (1813) [tr. De Finod]
 
Added on 18-Nov-15 | Last updated 18-Nov-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by De Stael, Germaine

When thinking about life, remember this: no amount of guilt can change the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Anonymous
 
Added on 29-Oct-15 | Last updated 29-Oct-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by ~Other

Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one Glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things about which you care nothing.

Teresa of Ávila (1515-1582) Spanish mystic, poet, philosopher, saint
“Maxims for Her Nuns”

In Complete Works St. Teresa of Avila, Vol. 3 (1963) [ed. Peers]
 
Added on 28-Oct-15 | Last updated 28-Oct-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Teresa of Avila

I am afraid. Not of life, or death, or nothingness, but of wasting it as if I had never been.

Keyes - never been - wist_info

Daniel F. Keyes (1927-2014) American author
Flowers for Algernon (novel) (1966)
 
Added on 26-Oct-15 | Last updated 26-Oct-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Keyes, Daniel

The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.

Charles F. Kettering (1876-1958) American inventor, engineer, researcher, businessman
(Attributed)
 
Added on 9-Oct-15 | Last updated 9-Oct-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Kettering, Charles F.

PELAGEA VLASOVA: Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) German poet, playwright, director, dramaturgist
The Mother (1930)
 
Added on 8-Oct-15 | Last updated 8-Oct-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Brecht, Bertholt

Life is a very bad novelist. It is chaotic and ludicrous.

Javier Marías (b. 1951) Spanish novelist, translator, columnist
“Javier Marías, The Art of Fiction No. 190,” Interview with Sarah Fay, The Paris Review (Winter 2006)
    (Source)

See also Twain.
 
Added on 24-Sep-15 | Last updated 24-Sep-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Marias, Javier

If you don’t turn your life into a story, you just become a part of someone else’s story.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents (2001)
 
Added on 16-Sep-15 | Last updated 16-Sep-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Pratchett, Terry

The golden apple of selfhood, thrown among the false gods, became an apple of discord because they scrambled for it. They did not know the first rule of the holy game, which is that every player must by all means touch the ball and then immediately pass it on. To be found with it in your hands is a fault: to cling to it, death. But when it flies to and fro among the players too swift for eye to follow, and the great master Himself leads the revelry, giving Himself eternally to His creatures in the generation, and back to Himself in the sacrifice, of the Word, then indeed the eternal dance ‘makes heaven drowsy with the harmony’. All pains and pleasures we have known on earth are early initiations in the movements of that dance: but the dance itself is strictly incomparable with the sufferings of this present time. As we draw nearer to its uncreated rhythm, pain and pleasure sink almost out of sight. There is joy in the dance, but it does not exist for the sake of joy. It does not even exist for the sake of good, or of love. It is Love Himself, and Good Himself, and therefore happy. It does not exist for us, but we for it.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
The Problem of Pain (1940)
 
Added on 16-Sep-15 | Last updated 16-Sep-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Lewis, C.S.

The main idea in golf as in life, I suppose, is to learn to accept what cannot be altered, and to keep on doing one’s own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy.

Robert Tyre "Bobby" Jones, Jr. (1902-1971) American amateur golfer, lawyer
Golf Is My Game (1960)
    (Source)
 
Added on 4-Sep-15 | Last updated 4-Sep-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Jones, Bobby

The latter part of a wise man’s life is taken up in curing the follies, prejudices, and false opinions he had contracted in the former.

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) English writer and churchman
“Thoughts on Various Subjects” (1706)
    (Source)
 
Added on 3-Sep-15 | Last updated 3-Sep-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Swift, Jonathan

Whoever destroys a soul, it is considered as if he destroyed an entire world. And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.

The Talmud (AD 200-500) Collection of Jewish rabbinical writings
Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9; Yerushalmi Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 37a
    (Source)

Alt. trans.: "Whoever destroys a single life is as guilty as though he had destroyed the entire world; and whoever rescues a single life earns as much merit as though he had rescued the entire world."
 
Added on 1-Sep-15 | Last updated 20-Dec-19
Link to this post | 1 comment
Topics: , , , , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Talmud

Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.

Earl Nightingale (1921-1989) American motivational speaker, writer, radio personality
(Attributed)
 
Added on 26-Aug-15 | Last updated 26-Aug-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Nightingale, Earl

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl’d shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Shakespeare
William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Sonnet 60, ll. 1-2
    (Source)
 
Added on 17-Aug-15 | Last updated 30-Jun-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Shakespeare, William

The Stream of Life sometimes glides smoothly on, through flowry meadows and enamell’d planes. At other times it draggs a winding reluctant Course through offensive Boggs and dismal gloomy Swamps. The same road now leads us thro’ a spacious Country fraught with evry delightful object, Then plunges us at once, into miry Sloughs, or stops our passage with craggy and inaccessible mountains. The free roving Songster of the forest, now rambles unconfin’d, and hopps from Spray to Spray but the next hour perhaps he alights to pick the scattered Grain and is entangled in the Snare. The Ship, which, wafted by a favourable gale, sails prosperously upon the peaceful Surface, by a sudden Change of weather may be tossed by the Tempest, and driven by furious, opposite winds, upon rocks or quicksands. In short nothing in this world enjoys a constant Series of Joy and prosperity.

John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Journal (27 Mar 1756)
 
Added on 12-Aug-15 | Last updated 12-Aug-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Adams, John

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) Indian philosopher, mystic, orator
Think on These Things, Part 1, ch. 3 (1963)
    (Source)
 
Added on 7-Aug-15 | Last updated 7-Aug-15
Link to this post | 1 comment
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Krishnamurti, Jiddu

There are more truths in twenty-four hours of a man’s life than in all the philosophies.

Raoul Vaneigem (b. 1934) Belgian writer
The Revolution of Everyday Life, 1.1 (1967)
 
Added on 6-Aug-15 | Last updated 6-Aug-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Vaneigem, Raoul

Because inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Moving Pictures (1990)
 
Added on 5-Aug-15 | Last updated 5-Aug-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Pratchett, Terry

A great many people (not you) do now seem to think that the mere state of being worried is in itself meritorious. I don’t think it is. We must, if it so happens, give our lives for others: but even while we’re doing it, I think we’re meant to enjoy Our Lord and, in Him, our friends, our food, our sleep, our jokes, and the birds’ song and the frosty sunrise.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
Letter to Alan Griffiths (20 Dec 1946)
    (Source)
 
Added on 5-Aug-15 | Last updated 5-Aug-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Lewis, C.S.

Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.

Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) Irish poet, wit, dramatist
Vera; or, The Nihilists, Act 2 [Prince Paul] (1881)
    (Source)

Almost always paraphrased, "Life is too important to be taken seriously."

In Lady Windermere's Fan, Act 2 (1892), he recycled the line as "Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."

Also (mis)attributed to G.K. Chesterton. More discussion of this quotation: Life Is Too Important To Be Taken Seriously – Quote Investigator.
 
Added on 30-Jul-15 | Last updated 30-Jun-22
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Wilde, Oscar

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: This is the ideal life.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
Mark Twain’s Notebook [ed. Paine (1935)]
 
Added on 27-Jul-15 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Twain, Mark

We all die. The goal isn’t to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.

Chuck Palahniuk (b. 1962) American novelist and freelance journalist
Diary [Grace] (2003)
 
Added on 24-Jul-15 | Last updated 24-Jul-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Palahniuk, Chuck

Let us never be betrayed into saying we have finished our education; because that would mean we had stopped growing.

No picture available
Julia H. Gulliver (1856-1940) American philosopher, educator, academician
(Attributed)
 
Added on 20-Jul-15 | Last updated 20-Jul-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Gulliver, Julia

Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God, do you learn.

C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) English writer, literary scholar, lay theologian [Clive Staples Lewis]
(Attributed)

There are several variants, but no citation for this quotation. See Pliny the Younger.
 
Added on 8-Jul-15 | Last updated 30-Jul-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , ,
More quotes by Lewis, C.S.

He died doing what he loved most: not being dead.

Joss Whedon (b. 1964) American screenwriter, author, producer [Joseph Hill Whedon]
Tweet (3 Oct 2014)
    (Source)
 
Added on 2-Jul-15 | Last updated 2-Jul-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Whedon, Joss

May you live to be a hundred years,
With one extra year to repent.

(Other Authors and Sources)
Irish proverb
 
Added on 22-Jun-15 | Last updated 22-Jun-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by ~Other

He preaches well that lives well, quoth Sancho; that’s all the Divinity I understand.

Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) Spanish novelist
Don Quixote, Part 2, Book 3, ch. 29 (1615) [tr. Motteux & Ozell (1743)]
 
Added on 9-Jun-15 | Last updated 9-Jun-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , , , , ,
More quotes by Cervantes, Miguel de

All of life is a foreign country.

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) Canadian-American novelist and poet
Letter to John Clellon Holmes (24 Jun 1949)
 
Added on 3-Jun-15 | Last updated 3-Jun-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , , ,
More quotes by Kerouac, Jack

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

Terry Pratchett (1948-2015) English author
Post, alt.fan.pratchett (7 Jun 1994)
    (Source)
 
Added on 27-May-15 | Last updated 20-Mar-20
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , ,
More quotes by Pratchett, Terry

The real reason for not committing suicide is because you always know how swell life gets again after hell is over.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961) American writer
Letter (1926)
 
Added on 14-May-15 | Last updated 14-May-15
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , , ,
More quotes by Hemingway, Ernest

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

Mark Twain (1835-1910) American writer [pseud. of Samuel Clemens]
The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson, ch. 7 epigraph “Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar” (1894)
 
Added on 11-May-15 | Last updated 26-Jan-19
Link to this post | No comments
Topics: , , ,
More quotes by Twain, Mark