quotations about life
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Life", Essays and Letters
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
Life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.
JOHN DOS PASSOS
Three Soldiers
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
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
Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Resort
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
Short is life, but endless is the theme.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
I know that life is a journey I must accept and that pain and confusion are temporary. I know that if I follow my heart, it will lead me where I belong.
JOSH GROBAN
O Magazine, Jan. 2007
What the philosophers once knew as life has become the sphere of private existence and now of mere consumption, dragged along as an appendage of the process of material production, without autonomy or substance of its own.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
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
Life is a horizontal fall.
JEAN COCTEAU
Opium
By the time you learn the rules of life, you're too old to play the game.
GRENVILLE KLEISER
Dictionary of Proverbs
Will our life not be a tunnel between two vague clarities? Or will it not be a clarity between two dark triangles?
PABLO NERUDA
The Book of Questions
He is dead already who doth not feel
Life is worth living still.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"Is Life Worth Living?", Lyrical Poems
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 parade of metamorphoses.
KATIE LESLIE
"How Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson's rough start in North Texas prepared her for tough job", Dallas Morning News, September 1, 2016
Who fears death does not enjoy life.
SPANISH PROVERB
Man's life is like the morning dew.
JAPANESE PROVERB
Life is like sex. It's not always good, but it's always worth trying.
PAMELA ANDERSON
Star