LIFE QUOTES XVIII

quotations about life

Life, how sweet soever it seems, is a draught mingled with bitter ingredients; some drink deeper than others before they come at them: But, if they do not swim at the top for youth to taste them, it is ten to one but old age will find them thick at the bottom. And it is the employment of faith and patience, and the work of wisdom and virtue, to teach us to drink the sweet part down with pleasure and thankfulness, and to swallow the bitter without reluctance.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine


Once introduced into this world, life would never leave--there was no end to the explosive, consuming, voracious lust of long chain molecules to link and match and make of themselves yet more and more and again more.

GREGORY BENFORD

Against Infinity

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The trouble with life ... is its amorphousness, its ridiculous fluidity. Look at it: thinly plotted, largely themeless, sentimental and ineluctably trite. The dialogue is poor, or at least violently uneven. The twists are either predictable or sensationalist. And it's always the same beginning; and the same ending.

MARTIN AMIS

introduction, Experience

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When man would make a rose with tools, he fashions petals and leaves of wax, colors them, manufactures a stalk by the same mechanical process -- and the rose is done. When God makes a rose, he lets a bird or a puff of wind drop a seed into the ground; out of the seed there emerges a stalk; and out of the stalk, branches; and on these branches, buds; and out of these buds roses unfold; and the rose is never done, for it goes on endlessly repeating itself. This is the difference between manufacture and growth. Man's method is the method of manufacture; God's method is the method of growth. What man makes is a finished product -- death. What God makes is an always finishing and never finished product -- life.

LYMAN ABBOTT

The Theology of an Evolutionist

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Ah, what is life!
'T is but a passing touch upon the world;
A print upon the beaches of the earth
Next flowing wave will wash away.

ANNA KATHERINE GREEN

"Life"

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I am a true adorer of life, and if I can't reach as high as the face of it, I plant my kiss somewhere lower down. Those who understand will require no further explanation.

SAUL BELLOW

Henderson the Rain King

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I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.

JOHN KEATS

letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, May 3, 1818

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Life is a charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought


Life is a continual march towards the grave.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims


Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!

ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD

"Life! I Know Not What Thou Art"

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Much too oft we make life gloomy--
When happy we might be,
If we gathered more of sunshine,
And not dark shadows see.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

Thoughts


One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others.

SIMONE DE BEAUVOIR

The Coming of Age

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That life is brief hath seemed a piteous thing
Since the first mortal watched it glide away.
And sad it is that flowers have but one day,
And sad that birds have little time to sing;
That joy is fleeting as the bloom of Spring;
That youth so soon is startled from its play,
And manhood from its labor, to essay
The old vain struggle with the shadowy King.
But sadder far it is that life is long;
Ay, long enough for bliss to turn to bale,
For innocence to lose the dread of wrong,
For hearts to harden, love itself to fail;
And faith be wearied out (O, sad and strange!)
Unless Death save us from the deathly change.

CAROLINE SPENCER

"Life"

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The evil fortune of the living in no way affects the dead.

ARISTOTLE

Nicomachean Ethics

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Where I come from in the Eastern Region, life is still -- well, things are changing very fast but if one is interested, one can still see signs of what life used to look like.

CHINUA ACHEBE

Conversations with Chinua Achebe

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Any life, however long and complicated it may be, actually consists of a single moment -- the moment when a man knows forever more who he is.

JORGE LUIS BORGES

"A Biography of Tadeo Isidoro Cruz"


Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?

HONORÉ DE BALZAC

Letters of Two Brides

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He or she who has made the best of the life after death has made the best of the life before it.

SAMUEL BUTLER

"How to Make the Best of Life", Essays on Life, Art and Science


I think the serious things really are the things that make for happiness--people and things that are compatible, love.... So many people are content just to sit around and talk about them instead of getting out and attaining them. As if life were a joke of some kind.

WILLIAM FAULKNER

Mosquitoes

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If a man knew how to live he would never die.

ROBERT PENN WARREN

All the King's Men

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