quotations about life
One must live as he can.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
The most important part of living is not the living but the pondering upon it.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Arrowsmith
I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.
JACK LONDON
The Turtles of Tasman
Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms on other planets and far stars, forms that would seem bizarre to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life-forms.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"The Dark Brotherhood"
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.
AMY LOWELL
"Petals", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass
If life gives you rotten eggs, make a crepe.
ALI MARGO
"Princess: Life is a bowl of cherries -- so throw that into your crepe", Aspen Times, May 19, 2016
I have not wasted life, but life hath wasted me.
BHARTRHARI
"Against the Desire of Worldly Things"
That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Shaw Memorial Ode"
Our lives fade behind us before we die.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
The unfairness of life is indicative of trees. I planted twenty trees on the same block. It's so fucking weird. Six became huge. One is giant. And there are some little shitty ones. Same soil. Same water. Same seed. But those little ones just don't grow. I can't explain it.
TIM ALLEN
Esquire, Nov. 2011
Like water spilt upon the ground--alas,
Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass;
Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Epigrams and Greetings"
Life, in my estimation, is a biological misadventure that we terminate on the shoulders of six strange men whose only objective is to make a hole in one with you.
FRED ALLEN
Fred Allen's Letters
Everything is so comfortable; the tea-urn hisses so plainly, the toast is so warm, the breakfast so neat, the food so edible, that one turns away, in excitable moments, a little angrily from anything so quiet, tame, and sober. Have we not always hated this life?
WILLIAM BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
In bowling and in life, if a person made the spares, the strikes would take care of themselves.
STEPHEN KING (as Richard Bachman)
Blaze
A stream roars downward to a hidden sea
That slumbers moonless, starless, without bound,
Whence comes nor voice, nor form, nor any sound:
The stream is Life, the sea--Eternity.
WILLIAM WILSEY MARTIN
"Life"
Life is but a field which we soon travel over, and the vale of eternity presents itself.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
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
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
Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.
SRI AUROBINDO
Ahana
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway