Life Quotes

There are words which sever hearts more than sharp swords; there are words the point of which sting the heart through the course of a whole life.

Frederika Breme

You can not gain peace by avoiding life.

Virginia Woolf

Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.

Dietrich Bonhoeffe

Three things in human life are important: the first is to be kind; the second is to be kind; and the third is to be kind.

Henry James

Happiness, that grand mistress of the ceremonies in the dance of life, impels us through all its mazes and meanderings, but leads none of us by the same route.

Charles Caleb Colton

I am for integrity, if only because life is very short and truth is hard to come by.

Kermit Eby

Who would venture upon the journey of life, if compelled to begin it at the end?

Madame de Maintenon

Life is a foreign language all men mispronounce it.

Christopher Morley

I was not looking for my dreams to interpret my life, but rather for my life to interpret my dreams.

Susan Sontag

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.

William James

Life is like a blanket too short. You pull it up and your toes rebel, you yank it down and shivers meander about your shoulder; but cheerful folks manage to draw their knees up and pass a very comfortable night.

Marion Howard

While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits of the dead?... While you do not know life, how can you know about death?

Confucius, The Confucian Analects, bk. 11: 11

Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.

Ecclesiastes

Answer That you are here - - - That life exists and identity, That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.

Walt Whitman

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Romania.

Dorothy Parker, Not So Deep as a Well (1937), "Comment".

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life.

Cynthia Ozick, O Magazine, September 2002

Seek not, my soul, the life of the immortals; but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.

Pindar, 518 - 438 B. C.

The mystery of life isn? t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.

Frank Herbert, Dune (Reverend Mother Mohiam)

Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.

Sren Aaby Kierkegaard

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Thomas H. Huxley

One friend in a lifetime is much two are many three are hardly possible.

Henry Adams

Celebrations are the juice of life.

John D. Hofbrauer, Jr.

The very essence of literature is the war between emotion and intellect, between life and death. When literature becomes too intellectual - - when it begins to ignore the passions, the motions - - It becomes sterile, silly, and actually without substance.

Isaac Bashevis Singe

Make your own recovery the first priority in your life.

Robin Norwood

In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.

John Masefield, "Window in Bye Street", 1912

Sin is the only real colour element left in modern life.

Oscar Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.

William Shakespeare, Julius Caesa

There is one piece of advice, in a life of study, which I think no one will object to; and that is, every now and then to be completely idle - To do nothing at all.

Sydney Smith

What an immense power over the life is the power of possessing distinct aims. The voice, the dress, the look, the very motions of a person, define and alter when he or she begins to live for a reason.

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

However mean your life is, meet it and live it: do not shun it and call it hard names. Cultivate poverty like a garden herb, like sage. Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends. Things do not change, we change. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. God will see that you do want society.

Henry David Thoreau

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

Archibald MacLeish

Fortunately, psychoanalysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist.

Karen Horney

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, But rather that it shall never have a beginning.

John Henry Newman

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

Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained.

Marie Curie

God, I dont have great faith, but I can be faithful. My belief in you may be seasonal, but my faithfulness will not. I will follow in the way of Christ. I will act as though my life and the lives of others matter. I will love. I have no greater gift to offer than my life. Take it.

Real Live Preache

Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another.

Kenny Ausubel