Quotations About Life
I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better.
Samuel Butler
The Way of All Flesh, 1903
The Way of All Flesh, 1903
The marriage state, with or without the affection suitable to it, is the completest image of Heaven and Hell we are capable of receiving in this life.
Richard Steele
The Spectator
The Spectator
Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess, and to gain applause which he cannot keep.
Samuel Johnson
The Rambler, 1750
The Rambler, 1750
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard
The Note Book, 1927
The Note Book, 1927
You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.
Mignon McLaughlin
The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960
The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.
Kendall Hailey
The Day I Became an Autodidact
The Day I Became an Autodidact
As a teenager you are at the last stage in your life when you will be happy to hear that the phone is for you.
Fran Lebowitz
Social Studies
Social Studies
Life is short but there is always time for courtesy.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Social Aims
Social Aims
Religion enables us to ignore nothingness and get on with the jobs of life.
John Updike
Self-Consciousness, 1989
Self-Consciousness, 1989
Huge and mighty forms that do not live like living men, moved slowly through the mind by day and were trouble to my dreams.
William Wordsworth
Resolution and Independence
Resolution and Independence
Fathers represent another way of looking at life - the possibility of an alternative dialogue.
Louise J. Kaplan
Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978
Oneness and Separateness: From Infant to Individual, 1978
The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
Isaac Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, 1988
Those who have compared our life to a dream were right.... We sleeping wake, and waking sleep.
Michel de Montaigne
Essays, 1580
Essays, 1580
Life is always a rich and steady time when you are waiting for something to happen or to hatch.
E.B. White
Charlotte's Web, Chapter XXII: A Warm Wind
Charlotte's Web, Chapter XXII: A Warm Wind
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save.
Will Rogers
Autobiography, 1949
Autobiography, 1949
I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.
Jean Giraudoux
Amphitryon, 1929
Amphitryon, 1929
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith
Afterthoughts, 1931
Afterthoughts, 1931
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.
James Matthew Barrie
She's a machine. She lives, sleeps, eats and breathes pitching. It's her life.
Mike Lingle
Life is an adventure in forgiveness.
Norman Cousins
Stress is the trash of modern life ΓΆ€” we all generate it but if you don't dispose of it properly, it will pile up and overtake your life.
Terri Guillemets
The best way to succeed in life is to act on the advice we give to others.
Unknown
One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.
James Earl Jones
Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.
Madeleine L'Engle
A human life is a story told by God.
Hans Christian Andersen
How often we fail to realize our good fortune in living in a country where happiness is more than a lack of tragedy.
Paul Sweeney
Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.
James Dean
I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part.
Shirley MacLaine
When I was young, if a girl married poverty, she became a drudge; if she married wealth, she became a doll.
Susan B. Anthony
An educational system isn't worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn't teach them how to make a life.
Unknown
This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.
Matthew Arnold
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
George Elliot
Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
Sergei Rachmaninov
There is just one life for each of us: our own.
Euripides
If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there'd be a shortage of fishing poles.
Doug Larson
If our American way of life fails the child, it fails us all.
Pearl S. Buck
A life without love is like a year without summer.
Swedish Proverb
The guardian angels of life fly so high as to be beyond our sight, but they are always looking down upon us.
Jean Paul Richter
An apology is the superglue of life. It can repair just about anything.
Lynn Johnston
Without music, life would be an error.
Friedrich Nietzsche
God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled.
Unknown
See everything; overlook a great deal; correct a little.
Pope John XXIII
Let's not forget that the little emotions are the great captains of our lives and we obey them without realizing it.
Vincent Van Gogh
A son is a son till he takes him a wife, a daughter is a daughter all of her life.
Irish Saying
Life begins at retirement.
Unknown
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one.
Stella Adler
Without trust, words become the hollow sound of a wooden gong. With trust, words become life itself.
Unknown
Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through.
Anthony Burgess
The sadness of the incomplete--the sadness that is often Life, but should never be Art.
E.M. Forster
The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.
Lucille Ball
Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement.
Alfred Adler
When brothers agree, no fortress is so strong as their common life.
Antisthenes
There is no better boat than a horoscope to help a man cross over the sea of life.
Varaha Mihira
For man, as for flower and beast and bird, the supreme triumph is to be most vividly, most perfectly alive.
D.H. Lawrence
We cannot banish dangers, but we can banish fears. We must not demean life by standing in awe of death.
David Sarnoff
The rhythm of the weekend, with its birth, its planned gaieties, and its announced end, followed the rhythm of life and was a substitute for it.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner.
Colette
I believe half the unhappiness in life comes from people being afraid to go straight at things.
William J. Lock
People's affections can be as thin as paper; life is like a game of chess, changing with each move.
Chinese proverb
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
P.D. James
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.
Albert Einstein
No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.
Euripides
A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward.
George Jean Nathan
The trouble with us in America isn't that the poetry of life has turned to prose, but that it has turned to advertising copy.
Louis Kronenberger
Time = Life, Therefore, waste your time and waste of your life, or master your time and master your life.
Alan Lakein