LIFE QUOTES XXIV

quotations about life

Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.

DAVID GERROLD

Alternate Gerrolds

Tags: David Gerrold


You know your life needs more excitement when your greatest challenge all week is removing the lint from your dryer's lint-screen all in one piece!

TOM WILSON

Ziggy, Jan. 16, 1998

Tags: Tom Wilson


Life is a pilgrimage and if you don't play by the rules you don't find the Road to Damascus, you find the Crown of Thorns.

ANITA BROOKNER

The Paris Review, fall 1987

Tags: Anita Brookner


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

Tags: Doris Lessing


It's over before you know it. It all goes by so fast. Yeah the bad nights take forever, and the good nights don't ever seem to last.

TOM PETTY

The Best of Everything

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Life seems to me a preparation for something that never happens.

WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Reveries over Childhood and Youth

Tags: William Butler Yeats


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

Tags: Walter Bagehot


The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

Lila

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Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

RICHARD BACH

Illusions

Tags: Richard Bach


Life is life--whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.

SRI AUROBINDO

attributed, Humanimal

Tags: Sri Aurobindo


Life doesn't have a neat beginning and a tidy end; life is always going on. You should begin in the middle and end in the middle, and it should be all there.

V. S. NAIPAUL

Half a Life

Tags: V. S. Naipaul


When something makes no sense, sometimes you make something of it. A joke. A spiritual practice. A life.

HEATHER SELLERS

Good Housekeeping, Jan. 2011


To keep from dying is not the same as "to live."

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Harkonnen

Tags: Brian Herbert


The occurrence of an event is not the same thing as knowing what it is that one has lived through.

JAMES BALDWIN

Another Country

Tags: James Baldwin


He had learned the worst lesson that life can teach -- that it makes no sense.

PHILIP ROTH

American Pastoral


It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

FRANCIS BACON

Advancement of Learning

Tags: Francis Bacon


Mortal! that cull'st the flowers of life,
Think not to escape the thorn.

WILLIAM B. TAPPAN

"The Thorn of Life"

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I know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free; without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy.

GUY DE MAUPASSANT

"Miss Harriet"

Tags: Guy de Maupassant


Life divine! O life eternal!
Man cannot translate the thought.
Strong the chain that God hath welded;
Link on link hath chain been wrought.
Fabric new each day is woven,
Woven it on God's own loom.
We the threads can ne'er unravel,
Hidden they in Nature's womb.

ARDELIA COTTON BARTON

"Dost Thou Know?"

Tags: Ardelia Cotton Barton


Behold the life at ease; it drifts,
The sharpened life commands its course.

GEORGE MEREDITH

"Hard Weather"

Tags: George Meredith