LIFE QUOTES XXVI

quotations about life

How strange it is, our little procession of life! The child says, "When I am a big boy." But what is that? The big boy says, "When I grow up." And then, grown up, he says, "When I get married." But to be married, what is that after all? The thought changes to "When I'm able to retire." And then, when retirement comes, he looks back over the landscape traversed; a cold wind seems to sweep over it; somehow he has missed it all, and it is gone.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Feast of Stephen


As long as you live, keep learning how to live.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales

Tags: Seneca


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


What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES

Leisure

Tags: William Henry Davies


I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.

ROBERT BROWNING

In a Balcony

Tags: Robert Browning


The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.

JEROME K. JEROME

"The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway"

Tags: Jerome K. Jerome


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


The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.

GEORGE ELIOT

Janet's Repentance

Tags: George Eliot


We cross the stream of life at different places. Some wade through the shallows in a drought, others have to swim across deep waters in a storm.

CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM

The Maxims of Marmaduke


What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!

ARISTOPHANES

Lysistrata

Tags: Aristophanes


If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death
Perhaps the world can teach us
as when everything seems dead
but later proves to be alive.

PABLO NERUDA

Extravagaria

Tags: Pablo Neruda


The bright side of life's unpredictability is that it's not over until it's over. As dark as the passages and confusing as the cul-de-sacs that you find yourself in are, progress is nevertheless being made. Something is unfolding. You are becoming.

MARION WINIK

Ladies Home Journal, Dec. 2008


Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.

WALT DISNEY

"Deeds Rather Than Words"

Tags: Walt Disney


The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Blood Meridian


Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.

DONALD TRUMP

interview, Playboy, Mar. 1990

Tags: Donald Trump


Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.

CHAMFORT

The Cynic's Breviary


Life is the lust of a lamp for the light that is dark till the dawn of the day that we die.

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE

"Nephelidia"

Tags: Algernon Charles Swinburne


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

GEORGE MEREDITH

"Hard Weather"

Tags: George Meredith


Life is like patchwork: every day there is a fresh bit to be put on. We must understand more correctly how to fit in better the bits needed day by day in repairing this patchwork life of ours. As it is, the three-cornered bits too often get put into the square places; but it is essential for man's happiness that he comprehends and unhesitatingly accepts as a truism that it rests with us to make this patchwork to our own liking; that we have the power to shape this life of ours more regularly, harmoniously, and blend it more perfectly; and that our life as it is, or as it might be, depends upon whether this be done in the right spirit.

JAMES PLATT

Platt's Essays


Life is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius.

JULIE ANDREWS

Star Weekly, Apr. 29, 1965

Tags: Julie Andrews