LIFE QUOTES XXXV

quotations about life

Sometimes life takes hold of one, carries the body along, accomplishes one's history, and yet is not real, but leaves oneself as it were slurred over.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Sons and Lovers

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


Life? Bah! It has no value. Of cheap things it is the cheapest. Everywhere it goes begging. Nature spills it out with a lavish hand. Where there is room for one life, she sows a thousand lives, and it's life eats life till the strongest and most piggish life is left.

JACK LONDON

The Sea-Wolf


Our lives fade behind us before we die.

JOHN UPDIKE

Rabbit is Rich

Tags: John Updike


Man's life is entirely in his operations, which may all be classed under three heads: he thinks, he feels, and he acts -- these three modes of activity exhaust his powers.

WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE

The Doctrine of Life

Tags: William Batchelder Greene


Nothing comes at all -- never anything. And I cannot accustom myself to that. It is this monotony, this absolute fixity in life, that is the hardest thing for me to endure. I should like to go away from here. Go away? But where and how? I do not know, and I stay.

OCTAVE MIRBEAU

The Diary of a Chambermaid

Tags: Octave Mirbeau


Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments.

ANAIS NIN

diary, winter, 1931-32


Life is a Shylock; always it demands
The fullest userer's interest for each pleasure.
Gifts are not freely scattered by its hands;
We make returns for every borrowed treasure.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"The Law"


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


When life looks like it's falling apart, it may just be falling in place.

BEVERLY SOLOMON

Good Housekeeping, Aug. 2009

Tags: Beverly Solomon


The world is a grindstone and life is your nose.

FRED ALLEN

attributed, The Mammoth Book of Comic Quotes

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Life is not a mere exterior movement, the movement of the being in its relations to other beings, but it is also, and especially, an internal movement from the visible to the invisible, from the real to the ideal, from the finite to the infinite.

SABINE BARING-GOULD

The Origin and Development of Religious Belief: Christianity

Tags: Sabine Baring-Gould


Everything is so comfortable; the tea-urn hisses so plainly, the toast is so warm, the breakfast so neat, the food so edible, that one turns away, in excitable moments, a little angrily from anything so quiet, tame, and sober. Have we not always hated this life?

WILLIAM BAGEHOT

Literary Studies

Tags: Walter Bagehot


He whose daily life has been a rounded whole, is easy in his mind.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales


Life is never a thing of continuous bliss. There is no paradise. Fight and laugh and feel bitter and feel bliss: and fight again. Fight, fight. That is life.

D. H. LAWRENCE

Studies in Classic American Literature

Tags: D. H. Lawrence


Who fears death does not enjoy life.

SPANISH PROVERB


Life is not a bed of roses.

ENGLISH PROVERB


Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.

SRI AUROBINDO

Ahana

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If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Suttree

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This world is a vaporous jest at best,
Tossed off by the gods in laughter,
And a cruel attempt at wit were it,
If nothing better came after.

ELLA WHEELER WILCOX

"A Gray Mood"


He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.

JAMES BALDWIN

Just Above My Head

Tags: James Baldwin