Quotes about life

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

— Diane Ackerman

The less routine the more life.

— Amos Bronson Alcott

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

— James Allen

Life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.

— Woody Allen

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

— Henri Frederic Amiel

Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's finger.

— Hans Christian Anderson

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go.

— Maya Angelou

Life loves the liver of it.

— Maya Angelou

The drama of life begins with a wail and ends with a sigh.

— Minna Antrim

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

— Aristotle

When we speak the word life, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.

— Antonin Artaud

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.

— St. Augustine

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing; the main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.

— Marcus Aurelius

Your life is what your thoughts make it.

— Marcus Aurelius

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

— Marcus Aurelius

Let men see, let them know, a real man, who lives as he was meant to live.

— Marcus Aurelius

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

— Gaston Bachelard

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

— Francis Bacon

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.

— Joan Baez

Life is always walking up to us and saying, 'Come on in, the living's fine,' and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

— Russell (Wayne) Baker

Life marches by, I suggest you get on with it.

— Joy Baluch

Life is a long lesson in humility.

— Sir James M. Barrie

The life of every person is like a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.

— Sir James M. Barrie

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.

— John Barrymore

The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.

— Bernard M. Baruch

You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.

— Lucinda Basset

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

— Jean Baudrillard

In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

— Bill Baughan

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.

— Guy Bellamy

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

— Stephen Vincent Benet

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.

— Walter Benjamin

Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.

— Bernard Berenson

Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands.

— Cathy Better

Don't worry about your life; what you shall eat, or drink, or the clothing for your body. [Matthew 6:31]

— Bible

For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. [James 4:14]

— Bible

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [Psalms 90:10]

— Bible

All that man has will he give for his life.

— Bible

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

— Ambrose Bierce

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.

— Josh Billings

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

— Josh Billings

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

— Josh Billings

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

— William Blake

We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.

— Paul Boese

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

— Corrie Ten Boom

It is not how many years we live, but rather what we do with them.

— Evangeline Cory Booth

There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?

— George Borrow

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

— Nadia Boulanger

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

— Christian Nevell Bovee

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

— Bertolt Brecht

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

— Joseph Brodsky

Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God's Paradise.

— Phillips Brooks

The tragedy of life is not that a man loses, but that he almost wins.

— Heywood Broun

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom.

— Les Brown

Life is a glass given to us to fill; a busy life is filling it with as much as it can hold; a hurried life has had more poured into it than it can contain.

— William Adams Brown

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

— Robert Browning

This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.

— Buddha

On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

— Buddha

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

— Frederick Buechner

I think we're here for each other.

— Carol Burnett

Real life seems to have no plots.

— Ivy Compton Burnett

Life's but a day at most.

— George Burns

Look to the future, because that is where you'll spend the rest of your life.

— George Burns

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

— John Burroughs

Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.

— Leo Buscaglia

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity.

— Philip Butler

Life is one long process of getting tired.

— Samuel Butler

To live is like to love-all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

— Samuel Butler

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

— Samuel Butler

Life is like playing the violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

— Samuel Butler

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

— Samuel Butler

When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), sleep, eating and swilling, buttoning and unbuttoning -- how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse.

— Lord Byron

Between two worlds life hovers like a star, twixt night and morn, upon the horizon's verge.

— Lord Byron

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

— Lord Byron

Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

— Lord Byron

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

— James Branch Cabell

Life is full and overflowing with the new. But it is necessary to empty out the old to make room for the new to enter.

— Eileen Caddy

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.

— Sid Caesar

What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is trivial; for all life is a dream and all dreams are dreams.

— Pedro Calderon de la Barca

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

— John C. Calhoun

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.

— Joseph Campbell

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

— Albert Camus

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

— Albert Camus

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

— Albert Camus

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

— Albert Camus

If, after all, men cannot always make history have meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.

— Albert Camus

In private life I never knew anyone interfere with other people's disputes but he heartily repented of it.

— Thomas Carlyle

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.

— Thomas Carlyle

Life is a little gleam of time between two eternity s.

— Thomas Carlyle

One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: Have no anxiety about the morrow; or the words of Sir William Osler; Live in day-tight compartments.

— Dale Carnegie

Life is very interesting if you make mistakes.

— Georges Carpentier

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead.

— Johnny Carson

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the Earth are never alone or weary of life.

— Rachel Carson

We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

— Jimmy Carter

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.

— Violet Bonham Carter

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts.

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Living, just by itself -- what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting --or he'll come along and nibble your brain.

— Louis-Ferdinand Celine

She fights and vanquishes in me, and I live and breathe in her, and I have life and being.

— Miguel De Cervantes

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

— Gilbert K. Chesterton

Life itself is the proper binge.

— Julia Child

Life is not always not always what one wants it to be., but to make the best of it as it is the only way of being happy.

— Jennie Jerome Churchill