quotations about life
Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
"The Procession of Life"
The facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction.
JEROME K. JEROME
"The Materialisation of Charles and Mivanway"
Life seems like a haunted wood, where we tremble and crouch and cry.
ALFRED AUSTIN
"A Woman's Apology"
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"
So life discloses--
Howe'er the pathway curve or turn--
New hopes that rise, new stars that burn
In changing splendor night or day;
New joys that drive old griefs away.
ANDREW DOWNING
"Among the Roses"
Life is a gift horse in my opinion.
J. D. SALINGER
"Teddy"
How good is man's life, the mere living!
How fit to employ
All the heart and the soul and the senses
Forever in joy!
ROBERT BROWNING
"Saul"
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
I think you've got to be truthful about the life you have. Otherwise, there's no possibility of achieving the life you want.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
WALTER MOSLEY
Black Genius
I accept that life is uncertain--that the goal is not to become more certain about anything but to relax more into the mystery of not knowing what will come next. And then, miracle of miracles, out there in the deep and uncertain water, I come into a peaceful knowing--a faithful wisdom that surpasses control and certainty.
ELIZABETH LESSER
Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
FRANK HERBERT
Children of Dune
Life is an illusion to be tailored to our needs.
BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON
Dune: House Harkonnen
Life and the world, or whatever we call that which we are and feel, is an astonishing thing. The mist of familiarity obscures from us the wonder of our being. We are struck with admiration at some of its transient modifications, but it is itself the great miracle. What are changes of empires, the wreck of dynasties, with the opinions which supported them; what is the birth and the extinction of religious and of political systems to life? What are the revolutions of the globe which we inhabit, and the operations of the elements of which it is composed, compared with life? What is the universe of stars, and suns, of which this inhabited earth is one, and their motions, and their destiny, compared with life? Life, the great miracle, we admire not, because it is so miraculous. It is well that we are thus shielded by the familiarity of what is at once so certain and so unfathomable, from an astonishment which would otherwise absorb and overawe the functions of that which is its object.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
"On Life", Essays and Letters
It is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it, and think how different its course would have been. Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
CHARLES DICKENS
Great Expectations
I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy -- who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity -- only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart -- does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.
SAUL BELLOW
Herzog
I realized that the ultimate joy in life comes from understanding that life is a process, the tapestry of threads bound together, where some fit in and some fall out of place: people come and go, events do not turn out as we would like to, we plan for the best, yet have to set for the worst. If we try to rush life, control it, get angry about it, it will run away from us. If we embrace life, breathe deeply into it and accept it as a wonder, we will be the richest people in the world in a split second.
MILENA MILICEVIC
"How I Overcame My Biggest Mistake in Life so Far", Huffington Post, June 14, 2016
Real life seldom structures a decent denouement.
DAN SIMMONS
Hyperion
Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
Life is but a web spun of ghosts and dreams and illusions.
ROBERT E. HOWARD
Kull: Exile of Atlantis