Quotes about life

Life may not be beautiful, but it is interesting.

— Sir John Robert Seeley

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

— Seneca

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

— Seneca

Life is warfare.

— Seneca

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

— Seneca

People should always have something which they prefer to life.

— Johann G. Seume

Life It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.

— William Shakespeare

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

— William Shakespeare

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale.

— William Shakespeare

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

— George Bernard Shaw

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

— George Bernard Shaw

Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.

— Fulton John Sheen

Life is obstinate and clings closest where it is most hated.

— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.

— Carol Shields

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.

— Florence Scovel Shinn

In making a living today, many no longer leave room for life.

— Joseph R. Sizoo

Well, take your time and don't live too fast. Troubles will come and they will pass. Find a woman and you'll find love. Don't forget, son, there is someone up above.

— Lynard Skynard

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

— Samuel Smiles

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one's power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man's journey is about, I think.

— Lillian Smith

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

— Logan Pearsall Smith

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

— Socrates

An unexamined life is not worth living.

— Socrates

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

— Socrates

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

— Sophocles

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.

— Robert Southey

Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.

— Herbert Spencer

The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.

— Freya Stark

Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don't watch it, and so slowly if we do.

— John Steinbeck

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!

— Adlai E. Stevenson

I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

We live in an ascending scale when we live happily, one thing leading to another in an endless series.

— Robert Louis Stevenson

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

— Robert Stone

Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it.

— Tom Stoppard

Give a man a dollar and you cheer his heart. Give him a dream and you challenge his heart. Give him Christ and you change his heart. Then the dollar and the dream become meaningful to him, and to others.

— C. Neil Strait

May you live all the days of your life.

— Jonathan Swift

When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.

— Rabindranath Tagore

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

— Sir William Temple

Life is a classroom in which each of us is being tested, tried, and passed.

— Robert Thibodeau

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.

— Dylan Thomas

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

— Henry David Thoreau

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

— Henry David Thoreau

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life... I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

— Henry David Thoreau

However mean your life is, meet it and live it; do not shun it and call it hard names. It is not so bad as you are. It looks poorest when you are the richest.

— Henry David Thoreau

He is not dead who departs from life with a high and noble fame; but he is dead, even while living, whose brow is branded with infamy.

— Johann Ludwig Tieck

Only those live who do good.

— Count Leo Tolstoy

Reality is the crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

— Lily Tomlin

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

— Rose Tremain

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

— Mark Twain

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.

— Mark Twain

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

— Source Unknown

It doesn't matter much where you live. It only matters how well you live when you're there

— Source Unknown

First I was dying to finish high-school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Next, I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school, so I could return to work. Finally, I was dying to retire. And now, I am dying

— Source Unknown

After all, life is really simple; we ourselves create the circumstances that complicate it.

— Source Unknown

A man's life is 20 years of having his mother ask him where he is going, 40 years of having his wife ask the same question and, at the end, perhaps having the mourners wondering too.

— Source Unknown

A life is like a tree -- if you don't make it straight when its young and green, you'll never do it when it's old and dry.

— Source Unknown

Life is like wine, the longer you take to enjoy it the more chance you've got of tasting vinegar.

— Source Unknown

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat... the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

— Source Unknown

Life is but a game and we are the playthings of the gods.

— Source Unknown

Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you are always zapped in the end

— Source Unknown

Life is a continual process of remaking ourselves.

— Source Unknown

Life in the Fast Lane Playing in Traffic intense stressful challenging overwhelming fulfilling demanding exciting nerve-wrecking entrepreneurial unrelenting empowered exposed: no place to hide flexible confusing results compensation sweatshop team ascendancy ego suppression flat organizations who's my boss no titles no status customer focus self-abnegation decentralized decision making chaos the end of tenure the end of security no complacency fear ongoing change burnout

— Source Unknown

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

— Source Unknown

Life is tragic for those who have plenty to live on and nothing to live for.

— Source Unknown

Life is not one thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over!

— Source Unknown

Taken in any context, except seriously, life on earth is palatable and positively enjoyable.

— Source Unknown

To live is to go on a journey; to die is to come back home.

— Source Unknown

To a wise man every day is a new life.

— Source Unknown

The truest end of life, is to find the life that doesn't end.

— Source Unknown

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living that are desired when dying.

— Source Unknown

The average person living to age 70 has 613, 000 hours of life. This is too long a period not to have fun.

— Source Unknown

Take life as you find it, but don't leave it that way

— Source Unknown

One recipe for a longer life; Never exceed the speed limit.

— Source Unknown

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching.

— Source Unknown

No one finds life worth living; he must make it worth living.

— Source Unknown

Making a life comes before making a living.

— Source Unknown

Living the truth in your heart without compromise brings kindness into the world. Attempts at kindness that compromise your heart cause only sadness.

— Source Unknown

Live poor so you can die rich.

— Source Unknown

Live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my coming too; For the cause that lacks resistance, For the future and the distance, And the good that I can do.

— Source Unknown

Life without meaning cannot be borne. We find a mission to which we're sworn

— Source Unknown

The major justification for a life is the happiness and reward it brings to other lives.

— Source Unknown

Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition

— Source Unknown

There is only one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to love this life and live it as bravely and faithfully and cheerfully as we can.

— Henry Van Dyke

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

— Voltaire

My life is a battle.

— Voltaire

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

— Peter De Vries

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.

— Denis Waitley

Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.

— Horace Walpole

Three keys to more abundant living: caring about others, daring for others, sharing with others.

— William A. Ward

Life is a state of mind.

— Jack Warden

People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly

— Andy Warhol

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

— Simone Weil

Life is an uphill business for the guy who's not on the level.

— John Welsh

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

— Alfred North Whitehead

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one 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 towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.

— Walt Whitman

Life does not happen to us, it happens from us.

— Michael Wickett

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

— Oscar Wilde

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

— Oscar Wilde

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

— Oscar Wilde

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

— Oscar Wilde

Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d'heure made up of exquisite moments.

— Oscar Wilde