Quotes about life

"We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable."

James, William on life   

"Always take hold of things by the smooth handle."

Jefferson, Thomas on life   

"He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale."

Johnson, Samuel on life   

"Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for."

Jordan, David Starr on life   

"Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race."

Joyce, James on life   

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"Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come."

Kafka, Franz on life   

"Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law."

Kant, Immanuel on life
4 fans of this quote   

"Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can."

Kaye, Danny on life   

"Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others"

Keller, Helen on life
3 fans of this quote   

"It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life."

Kempis, Thomas on life   

"There is always inequity in life. Some men are killed in a war, and some men are wounded, and some men are stationed in the Antarctic and some are stationed in San Francisco. It's very hard in military or personal life to assure complete equality. Life"

Kennedy, John F. on life   

"We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it."

Kennedy, John F. on life   

"Life is unfair."

Kennedy, John F. on life   

"All of life is a foreign country."

Kerouac, Jack on life
7 fans of this quote   

"Living Life Tomorrow's fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again."

Khayyam, Omar on life   

"Life is short; live it up."

Khrushchev, Nikita on life   

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

Kierkegaard, Søren on life
12 fans of this quote   

"This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die."

Kierkegaard, Søren on life   

"It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position."

Kierkegaard, Søren on life
6 fans of this quote   

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

Kierkegaard, Søren on life
16 fans of this quote   

"Life must be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards."

Kierkegaard, Søren on life
14 fans of this quote   

"Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living."

Kierkegaard, Søren on life
14 fans of this quote   

"The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions."

Klee, Paul on life   

"To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one."

Kornfield, Jack on life   

"You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life."

Krishnamurti, Jiddu on life
7 fans of this quote   

"If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow."

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth on life
3 fans of this quote   

"We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture."

Kundera, Milan on life
3 fans of this quote   

"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."

Kushner, Rabbi Harold S. on life
9 fans of this quote   

"They that have lived a single day have lived an age."

La Bruyere, Jean De on life   

"There are three stages in a person's life, birth, their life and death. They are not conscious of birth submit to death and forget to live."

La Bruyere, Jean De on life   

"If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other."

La Bruyere, Jean De on life
4 fans of this quote   

"To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism -- this is the art of living."

La Fontaine, Jean De on life
3 fans of this quote   

"Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies."

Landers, Ann on life   

"Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it."

Larkin, Philip on life   

"We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do -- it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much."

Lawrence, D. H. on life   

"Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour."

Leacock, Stephen B. on life   

"Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe."

Leary, Denis on life
7 fans of this quote   

"Life is something you do when you can't get to sleep."

Lebowitz, Fran on life   

"People find life entirely too time-consuming."

Lec, Stanislaw J. on life   

"Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it."

Lehrer, Tom on life
14 fans of this quote