quotations about life
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Collected Plays
Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep.
FRAN LEBOWITZ
Metropolitan Life
Life is sweet.
ENGLISH PROVERB
Life is the thing--the song of life--
The eager plow, the thirsty knife!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Imperturbable"
Life was a storm to wander through.
STEPHEN VINCENT BENET
"The Quality of Courage"
Men do not escape from life because life is dull, but life escapes from men because men are little.
THOMAS WOLFE
Look Homeward, Angel
The secret of the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment of existence is: to live dangerously!
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
The Joyful Wisdom
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook
Behind every man's external life, which he leads in company, there is another which he leads alone, and which he carries with him apart. We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Between a gasp and a sigh, a life can change forever.
TIM LEBBON
Face
Between birth and burial, we find ourselves in a comedy of mysteries. If you don't think life is mysterious, if you believe you have it all mapped out, you aren't paying attention or you've anesthetized yourself with booze or drugs, or with a comforting ideology. And if you don't think life's a comedy--well, friend, you might as well hurry along to that burial. The rest of us need people with whom we can laugh.
DEAN KOONTZ
Odd Apocalypse
If you are good life is good.
ROALD DAHL
Matilda
If you can spend a perfectly useless afternoon in a perfectly useless manner, you have learned how to live.
LIN YUTANG
The Literary Digest, 1938
Knowledge about life is one thing; effective occupation of a place in life, with its dynamic currents passing through your being, is another.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Life ain't in holdin' a good hand but in playin' a poor one well.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Life is a luxury, isn't it? there's no use in it--but how delightful!
STELLA BENSON
This Is the End
Life is a problem. Not merely a premiss from which we start, but a goal towards which we proceed. It is an opportunity for us not merely to get, but to attain; not simply to have, but to be. Its standard of failure or success is not outward fortune, but inward possession.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis
Life is getting what you want, and I'm better at life than you are.
JEFF ABBOTT
Adrenaline
Life is like a cocktail, made up for the most part of sweet things, and tinged with a dash of bitters. We must drain it to the dregs to get at the cherry, just as we must live a full and rounded life to know all its pleasures.
EDGAR GUEST
Home Rhymes