|
Life |
|
| "We are always getting ready to live, but
never living." |
| -- Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
| "The mere sense of living is joy
enough." |
| -- Emily Dickinson |
|
| "Realize life as an end in itself.
Functioning is all there is." |
| -- Oliver Wendell Holmes |
|
| "Remember that life is not measured in
hours but in accomplishments." |
| -- James A. Pike |
|
| “Life is the sum of all your choices.” |
| -- Albert Camus |
|
| "This secret spoke Life herself unto me:
'Behold,' said she, 'I am that which must ever surpass
itself.'" |
| -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900),
German philosopher |
|
| “A living thing is distinguished from a dead
thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place
in it.” |
| -- Herbert Spencer |
|
| "Life is not anything, but an opportunity
for something." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832),
German writer, scientist |
|
| "There is more to life than increasing its
speed." |
| -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), India
nationalist |
|
"You are to learn to listen to the
cursed radio music of life and to reverence the spirit behind it and to laugh at
its distortions."
|
| -- Herman
Hesse,
German novelist |
|
| "Live all you can. It is a
mistake not to. It doesn't matter so much what you do in particular, so long as
you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?" |
| -- Henry James
|
|
| "The purpose of life is a life of
purpose." |
| -- Robert Byrne |
|
| "The secret of life is honesty and fair
dealing. If you can fake that, you've got it made. " |
| -- Julius Henry Marx (1890-1977), [Groucho]
American comedian, actor |
|
| "Life is either a daring adventure or nothing." |
| -- Helen Keller
|
|
| "My one regret in life is that I am not
someone else." |
| -- Woody Allen, American writer and actor |
|
| "Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's
the transition that's troublesome." |
| -- Isaac Asimov (1920 - 1992) |
|
| “Life must be understood
backwards. But it must be lived forward.” |
| -- Soren Kierkegaard |
|
| "One life - a little gleam of Time between
two Eternities." |
| -- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), British
historian |
|
| "Life is ours to be spent, not to be
saved." |
| -- D. H. Lawrence (1885-1930), British writer |
|
"Life is eternal and love
is immortal, and death is only a horizon...
And a horizon is nothing, save the limit of our sight." |
|
--
Carly Simon
|
|
| "Man is immortal; therefore he must die
endlessly. For life is a creative idea; it can only find itself in
changing forms." |
| -- Sir Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Bengali
writer |
|
| "Life is a process of becoming, a
combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail
is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a
kind of death." |
| -- Anaïs Nin, American writer |
|
| "The world is not a playground; it's a
schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. And the one
eternal question for us all is how better we can love." |
| -- Henry Drummond (1851 - 1897), Scottish
clergyman and author |
|
| "How far you go in life
depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged,
sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because
someday in your life you will have been all of these." |
|
-- George Washington Carver
|
|
| "If a man hasn't discovered something he will
die for, he isn't fit to live."
|
| --
Martin Luther King
Jr.
|
|
| "Life does not cease to be
funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people
laugh."
|
| --
George Bernard Shaw(1856 -
1950)
|
|
| "I have learned this at least by my experiment: that if
one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors
to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success
unexpected in common hours." |
| -- Henry David Thoreau (1817-62), American
writer |
|
| “Life is a succession of lessons which we must
lived to be understood.” |
| --
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
| "Nothing in life is to be feared. It is
only to be understood." |
| -- Marie Curie (1867-1934), Polish-born French
chemist |
|
| "Where there is love there is life." |
| -- Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), India
nationalist |
|
| "Life is like a game of cards. The hand
you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free
will." |
| -- Jawaharial Nehru (1889-1964), Prime Minister
of India |
|
| "If A is success in life, then A equals x
plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth
shut." |
| -- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), German-born
American theoretical physicist |
|
| "The
proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days
in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." |
|
--
Jack
London
|
|
| "Life is like music, it must be composed
by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had
better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases,
though not often." |
| -- Samuel Butler (1612-80), English poet,
author |
|
| "There was that law of life, so cruel and so
just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same."
|
|
--
Norman Mailer
|
|
"The biggest mistake
people make in life is not trying to make a living at
doing what they most enjoy."
|
| --
Malcomb
S. Forbes 1919-1990, American Publisher, Businessman
|
|
| "If you concentrate on finding whatever is good in every situation,
you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a
feeling that nurtures the soul."
|
|
--
Rabbi Harold Kushner
|
|
| "Life is full of doors that don't open
when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don't want
them to." |
| -- Roger Zelazny (1937-95), Scifi, fantasy writer |
|
| "Man is fed with fables through life, and leaves it
in the belief he knows something of what has been passing, when in truth
he has known nothing but what has passed under his own eye." |
| -- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826),
3rd US President |
|
| "Life is not advancement. It is growth. It does not
move upward, but expands outward, in all directions." |
| -- Russell G. Alexander (b.
1954), Father, Human Being, Recovering Philosopher |
|
| "The end of life is to be like God, and
the soul following God will be like him." |
| -- Socrates (470?-399 BC), Greek philosopher |
|
| "Seventy percent of success in life is
showing up." |
| -- Woody Allen, American film producer, actor,
and comic |
|
| "Life will always be to a large extent
what we ourselves make it." |
| -- Samuel Smiles (1812-1904) |
|
| "What is this life if, so full of care, We
have no time to stand and stare." |
| -- W. H. Davies |
|
| "Life is divided into three terms - that
which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past
to profit by the present, and from the present to live better in the
future." |
| -- William Wordsworth (1770-1850), British poet |
|
| "In the end the aggressors always destroy
themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get
along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a
triumph of cooperation and creativity." |
| -- Fritjof Capra, American scientist |
|
|
"What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the
night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time."
|
| -- Crowfoot (1821-90), Native
American, Blackfoot, warrior, orator
|
|
| "Life is not a spectacle or
a feast; it is a predicament." |
|
-- George
Santayana
|
|
| "We think in generalities, but we live in
detail." |
| -- Alfred North Whitehead |
|
| “Life is one long struggle between
conclusions based on abstract ways of conceiving cases, and opposite
conclusions prompted by our instinctive perception of them.” |
| -- William James |
|
|
"A
long and wicked life followed by five minutes of perfect grace gets you into
Heaven. An equally long life of decent living and good works followed by one
outburst of taking the name of the Lord in vain—then have a heart attack at
that moment and be damned for eternity. Is that the system?"
|
|
-- Robert
A. Heinlein |
|
| "No one gets out of this
world alive, so the time to live, learn, care, share, celebrate, and love is now." |
| --
Dr. Leo Buscaglia
|
|
| "Life has taught us
that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward
together in the same direction."
|
|
--
Antoine De Saint-Exupery |
|
| "Life is 10
percent what you make it and 90 percent how you take it."
|
| --
Irving Berlin
|
|
|
"Here is the test to find whether your
mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't." |
|
--
Richard David Bach, American author
|
|
| "Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to
life. The only completely consistent people are the
dead." |
|
--
Aldous Huxley |
|
"The influence of each human being on others in this life is a kind
of immortality." |
| -- John Quincy Adams
|
|
| "Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is
a predicament." |
| -- George Santayana (1863-1952), Spanish-born
American philosopher |
|
| "There
are no more real water cycles, no more microscopy, nor
bacteriology. Believe me, today crocodiles are no longer
crocodiles." |
| -- Max
Ernst, German painter |
|
| "You can only
predict things after they have happened."
|
|
--
Eugene Ionesco
|
|
| "I
expect to pass through life but once. If therefore, there be any
kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let
me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way
again."
|
|
--
William
Penn (1644-1718)
|
|
| "The art of living is more like
wrestling than dancing." |
| --
Marcus Aurelius |
|
"The tragedy of life is not
that man loses, but that he
almost wins."
|
|
--
Heywood Broun
|
|
| "Life isn't about finding yourself. Life
is about creating yourself." |
| -- George Bernard Shaw |
|
| "Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never
use." |
|
-- Charles M. Schulz |
|
| "Life happens at the level of events, not words."
|
| --
Alfred Adler |
|
| "The proper
function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in
trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." |
|
--
Jack London
|
|
|
"The grand
essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to
love and something to hope for."
|
|
--
Joseph Addison
|
|
| "Life
is not so much a matter of position as of disposition."
|
| -- Andrew Carnegie |
|
| "Viewed from the summit of reason, all
life looks like a malignant disease and the world like a
madhouse." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749 - 1832),
German writer and scientist |
|
| "Life is no brief
candle to me. It is sort of a splendid torch which I have got hold of for
a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before
handing it on to future generations."
|
|
--
George Bernard Shaw
|
|
| "Life
is a horizontal fall."
|
| --
Jean
Cocteau |
|
| "Don't let life discourage you; everyone
who got where he is had to begin where he was." |
| -- Richard Louis Evans (1906-71), American
writer, author |
|
| "Life is always a tightrope or a feather
bed. Give me the tightrope." |
| -- Edith Newbold Jones Wharton (1862-1937),
American writer |
|
| "If we were not all so interested in
ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be
able to endure it." |
| -- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788 - 1860) |
|
|
"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."
|
| -- John Lennon |
|
| "I can tell you, honest friend, what to
believe: believe life; it teaches better than book or orator." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832),
German writer, scientist |
|
|
"I
think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be
honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to
stand for something, to have made some difference that you lived at all."
|
| --
Leo
C. Rosten
|
|
| "Could we change our attitude, we should not only
see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life
would undergo a change of Appearance because we ourselves had undergone a
change of attitude."
|
|
-- Katherine Mansfield
|
|
|
"Life itself is neither good nor evil, but only a place
for good and evil."
|
| -- Marcus Aelius Aurelius (121-180 AD), Roman
emperor, philosopher |
|
|
"The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the
meaning of life."
|
| -- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910),
Russian writer, philosopher |
|
| "Love is the ultimate wildcard in the card
game of life." |
| -- Albert Emerson Unaterra
(1952-2002), American writer |
|
| "Life
can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards." |
| -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
(1749-1832), German writer, scientist |
|
| "In our life there is a single color, as on an
artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the
color of love." |
| -- Marc Chagall (1887-1985),
Russian-born artist |
|
| "There are certain queer times and occasions in this
strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes the whole universe for
a vast practical joke." |
| -- Herman Melville (1819-91),
American writer |
|
| "This secret spoke Life herself unto me:
"Behold," said she, "I am that which must ever surpass
itself." |
| -- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
(1844-1900), German philosopher |
|
| "And in the end it's not the years in your
life that count. It's the life in your years." |
| -- Abraham Lincoln (1809-65), 16th US President |
|
| "How far you go in life depends on you
being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged,
sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the
strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of
these." |
| -- George Washington Carver (1864-1943),
American chemist, inventor, educator |
|
| "Life being what it is, one dreams of
revenge." |
| -- Paul Gauguin (1848 - 1903), French painter |
|
| "There
was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay
more for remaining the same." |
| -- Norman Mailer, American
Writer |
|
| "Life is full of doors that don't open
when you knock, equally spaced amid those that open when you don't
want them to." |
| -- Roger Zelazny (1937-95), Scifi, fantasy
writer |
|
| "I would rather be ashes
than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze
than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor,
every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent plant. The
proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste may days in
trying to prolong them. I shall use my time." |
|
-- Jack London
|
|
| "God has placed in each soul an apostle to
lead us upon the illumined path. Yet many seek life from without,
unaware that is within them." |
| -- Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931), Lebanese-born
American mystic poet, painter |
|
| "This is what you shall
do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to
everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and
labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and
indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or
to any man or number of men... re-examine all you have been told at school or
church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very
flesh shall be a great poem." |
|
-- Walt Whitman
|
|
| "To earn the appreciation
of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; To appreciate
beauty; To find the best in others; To leave the world a bit better, whether by
a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; To know even
one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have
succeeded." |
|
--
Ralph Waldo Emerson |
|
| “Life
has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than
to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to,
everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or
despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful,
evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced
with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the
vision to recognize it as such.” |
| -- Henry Miller (1891-1980) |
|
| “The aim of art,
the aim of a life can only be to increase the sum of freedom and
responsibility to be found in every man and in the world. It cannot,
under any circumstances, be to reduce or suppress that freedom, even
temporarily. No great work has ever been based on hatred and
contempt. On the contrary, there is not a single true work of art
that has not in the end added to the inner freedom of each person
who has known and loved it.” |
| -- Albert Camus (1913-1960), French philosopher |
|
| "The tragedy of life is what dies in the
hearts and souls of people while they live." |
| -- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955), German-born
American theoretical physicist |
|
| "What is life? It is the flash of a
firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the
wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and
loses itself in the sunset." |
| -- Crowfoot, Blackfoot tribe warrior (last
words 1890) |
|
