quotations about life
Life is real, life should be earnest. To be enjoyed, we must have an aim, an object in life; and to be happy, to enjoy life, the object must be one worthy the highest, purest, best part of our nature.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Life is Supercalifragilisticexpialidocius.
JULIE ANDREWS
Star Weekly, Apr. 29, 1965
Will our life not be a tunnel between two vague clarities? Or will it not be a clarity between two dark triangles?
PABLO NERUDA
The Book of Questions
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
Life is the thing--the song of life--
The eager plow, the thirsty knife!
CONRAD AIKEN
"Youth Imperturbable"
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"
Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments.
ANAIS NIN
diary, winter, 1931-32
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"
Like water spilt upon the ground--alas,
Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass;
Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Epigrams and Greetings"
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.
AMY LOWELL
"Petals", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass
Life is no way to treat an animal.
KURT VONNEGUT
A Man Without a Country
As long as you live, keep learning how to live.
SENECA
Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales
Life is a journey that's constantly flowing, regardless of the number of candles that will be on your next birthday cake. For you to stay in the same place forever would mean to resist growth. And that's what we're all here to do anyway -- we're here to grow.
ELISE MOREAU
"How to Change Your Life at Any Age", Care2, September 1, 2016
Ah! this beautiful world ... Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly, and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hyperion
As for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion.
MARCUS AURELIUS
Meditations
Life is a horizontal fall.
JEAN COCTEAU
Opium
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
God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
Reader's Digest, July 1972
Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Resort
I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.
JACK LONDON
The Turtles of Tasman