LIFE QUOTES XXXII

quotations about life

Death gives a life to some men and women compared with which their so-called existence here is as nothing. Which is the truer life of Shakespeare, Handel, that divine woman who wrote the Odyssey, and of Jane Austen -- the life which palpitated with sensible warm motion within their own bodies, or that in virtue of which they are still palpitating in ours?

SAMUEL BUTLER

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


You have to fight for your life. That's the chief condition on which you hold it.

SAUL BELLOW

Herzog

Tags: Saul Bellow


That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.

THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH

"Shaw Memorial Ode"

Tags: Thomas Bailey Aldrich


Funny. You talk of life as if it were a train you have to catch up with. How long have you been trying, three days? And not got a glimpse of it yet, in spite of caviar and champagne?

VICKI BAUM

Grand Hotel


Life is a warfare against the malice of others.

BALTASAR GRACIAN

The Art of Worldly Wisdom

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The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.

BRUCE LEE

Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee's Wisdom for Daily Living

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Life is often wasted in a search after unattainable advantages, and generally, through the scruples of pride and vanity, our happiness is delayed from day to day, by a rejection of those pleasures and benefits which are within our reach.

CHARLES WILLIAM DAY

The Maxims, Experiences, and Observations of Agogos

Tags: Charles William Day


But better die than live mechanically a life that is a repetition of repetitions.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Women in Love


If you have no wounds, how can you know if you're alive?

EDWARD ALBEE

The Play About the Baby

Tags: Edward Albee


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


It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.

GEORGE ELIOT

Adam Bede


Life is a marathon. It takes time, patience and commitment to creating a comeback.

GREG M. DAVIS

"Donald Trump Does Not Know the Struggle of African Americans", Time, September 1, 2016


Life is not the unique property of Earth. Nor is life in the shape of human beings. Life takes many forms on other planets and far stars, forms that would seem bizarre to humans, as human life is bizarre to other life-forms.

H. P. LOVECRAFT

"The Dark Brotherhood"


To live is to war with trolls.

HENRIK IBSEN

dedicatory lines, Peer Gynt

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If we look at life in its small details, how ridiculous it all seems. It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with protozoa. How we laugh as they bustle about so eagerly and struggle with one another. Whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.

IRVIN D. YALOM

The Schopenhauer Cure

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Do you know the only value life has is what life puts upon itself? And it is of course overestimated, for it is of necessity prejudiced in its own favour.

JACK LONDON

The Sea Wolf

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Man's life is like the morning dew.

JAPANESE PROVERB


Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?

JOSEPH HELLER

Catch-22

Tags: Joseph Heller


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

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Life-and-death. Lifedeath. One event. One short event. Don't forget.

ROBERT FULGHUM

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten