Life Quotes

Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.

John Burroughs

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

Theodore Roosevelt, Speech in New York, September 7, 1903

There is a need for heroism in American life today.

Vicki Baum

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For the ordinary man is passive. Within a narrow circle home life, and perhaps the trade unions or local politics he feels himself master of his fate, but against major events he is as helpless as against the elements. So far from endeavouring to influence the future, he simply lies down and lets things happen to him.

George Orwell

I take a simple view of life keep your eyes open and get on with it.

Sir Laurence Kerr Olivie

Home life as we understand it is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

George Bernard Shaw

All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

Communist Manifesto

I would rather think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to come together and make sense.

Rabbi Harold Kushne

The indispensable first step to getting the things you want out of life is this decide what you want.

Ben Stein

The world is wide, and I will not waste my life in friction when it could be turned into momentum.

Frances Willard

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly combat.

Plato

Four things come not back - - The spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life, and the neglected opportunity.

Arabian Prove

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

If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return.

Margot Fonteyn

I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.

William Frank Buckley, Jr.

A Muslim who meets with others and shares their burdens is better than one who lives a life of seclusion and contemplation.

Prophet Mohammed, Muslim

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.

William Osle

Patriotism is not a short outburst of emotion, but is the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.

Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.

Seneca, Epistles

When we can say no not only to things that are wrong and sinful, but also to things pleasant, profitable, and good which would hinder and clog our grand duties and our chief work, we shall understand more fully what life is worth, and how to make the most of it.

Charles A. Stoddard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, not even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.

Henry David Thoreau

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint on it you can.

Danny Kaye

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory

Everybody in this life has their challenges and difficulties. That is part of our mortal test.... Peace comes through hope.

James E. Faust

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

Mary Catherine Bateson

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

Susan Sontag

In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work.

Horace, Satires

True wisdom is seeing what is beneficial to your eternal life, and managing your life according to that. You do this when you not only know these things and grasp them with your understanding, but also will and do them.

Emanuel Swedenborg, From the book "Apocalypse Explained" #338

But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

Lois McMaster Bujold, "Barrayar", 1991

There are two ways to slide easily through life to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.

Alfred Korzybski

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depends on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the measure as I have received and am still receiving.

Albert Einstein

All these souls, after they have passed away a thousand years, are summoned by the divine ones in great array, to the lethean river... In this way they become forgetful of the former earthlife, and re - Visit the vaulted realms of the world, willing to return again into living bodies.

Virgil

Life is a perpetual instruction in cause and effect.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Money, which represents the prose of life, and which is hardly spoken of in parlors without an apology, is, in its effects and laws, as beautiful as roses.

Ralph Waldo Emerson