Life
Quotations
Abraham Lincoln:
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in
your years. [American President]
Alan Bennett:
Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.
Albert Einstein:
True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's
goodness and righteousness. [Inventor]
Albert Einstein:
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile. [Inventor]
Albert Schweitzer:
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This is what gives me the
fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining,
promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life
are evil. [Civilization and Ethics, 1949]
Alice Walker:
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a
bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on
earth is it for.
Amelia Burr:
Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
Anais Nin:
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.
Anais Nin:
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again;
and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Annie Dillard:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
Barbara Kingsolver:
Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The
daily work - that goes on, it adds up.
Barry Lopez:
How is one to live a moral and compassionate existence when one is fully aware
of the blood, the horror inherent in life, when one finds darkness not only in
one's culture but within oneself? If there is a stage at which an individual
life becomes truly adult, it must be when one grasps the irony in its unfolding
and accepts responsibility for a life lived in the midst of such paradox. One
must live in the middle of contradiction, because if all contradiction were
eliminated at once life would collapse. There are simply no answers to some of
the great pressing questions. You continue to live them out, making your life a
worthy expression of leaning into the light. [Arctic Dreams]
Ben Jonson:
A good life is a main argument.
Benjamin Franklin:
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made
of.
Bertrand Russell:
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of humankind
[British Philosopher].
Bertrand Russell:
The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Buckminster Fuller:
Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and
that is that no instruction book came with it.
Buddha:
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would
change.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish
each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as
important as how we have lived. [played by Patrick Stewart, from the film "Star Trek: Generations"
]
Carl Jung:
There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in
the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness,
and the word 'happy' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.
Carl Sandburg:
Our lives are like a candle in the wind.
Carl Sandburg:
Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you
weep.
Charlotte Bronte:
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the
expectation.
Chinese proverb:
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one,
and a lily with the other.
Corita Kent:
Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is
vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live
each, is to succeed.
Corita Kent:
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.
Dorothy Thompson:
Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger,
misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with
all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond
our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.
Dorothy Thompson:
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.
E. B. White:
You have been my friend. That in itself is a tremendous thing. I wove my webs
for you because I liked you. After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we
live a little while, we die. A spider's life can't help being something of a
mess, with all this trapping and eating flies. By helping you, perhaps I was
trying to lift up my life a trifle. Heaven knows anyone's life can stand a
little of that. [Charlotte, "Charlotte's Web"]
Edith Wharton:
Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience
does not become a part of the moral tissue.
Edna St. Vincent Millay:
Life is a quest and love a quarrel ...
Elbert Hubbard:
Life is just one damned thing after another.
Elbert Hubbard:
Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.
Eleanor Roosevelt:
I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply
look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must
never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
Elizabeth Drew:
The test of literature is, I suppose, whether we ourselves live more intensely
for the reading of it.
Emily Dickinson:
That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet.
Ernest Becker:
The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the
anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and
so we must shrink from being fully alive.
Ernest Becker:
[W]e now know that the human animal is characterized by two great fears that
other animals are protected from: the fear of life and the fear of death...
Heidegger brought these fears to the center of his existential philosophy. He
argued that the basic anxiety of [humanity] is anxiety about being-in-the-world,
as well as anxiety of being-in-the-world. That is, both fear of death and fear
of life, of experience and individuation.
Ernest Becker:
I think that taking life seriously means something such as this: that whatever
man does on this planet has to be done in the lived truth of the terror of
creation, of the grotesque, of the rumble of panic underneath everything.
Otherwise it is false. Whatever is achieved must be achieved with the full
exercise of passion, of vision, of pain, of fear, and of sorrow. How do we know
... that our part of the meaning of the universe might not be a rhythm in
sorrow?
F. Forrester Church:
Religion is the human response to being alive and having to die.
Franklin P. Jones:
Love doesn't make the world go 'round; love is what makes the ride worthwhile.
Frederick Buechner:
The life I touch for good or ill will touch another life, and that in turn
another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what far place my touch
will be felt.
Friedrich Nietzsche:
And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.
And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one
laugh.
George Bernard Shaw:
I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the community, and as long as I live
it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.
George Eliot:
What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?
George Sand:
Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.
George Santayana:
Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.
Germaine Greer:
Security is when everything is settled. When nothing can happen to you. Security
is the denial of life.
Goethe:
A useless life is an early death.
HH the Dalai Lama:
What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful. [Tibetan Monk]
Harry Emerson Fosdick:
Nothing else matters much -- not wealth, nor learning, nor even health --
without this gift: the spiritual capacity to keep zest in living. This is the
creed of creeds, the final deposit and distillation of all important faiths:
that you should be able to believe in life.
Helen Keller:
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the
children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the
long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Henri Frederick Amiel:
Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those
who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to
be kind.
Henry David Thoreau:
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.
Henry James:
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will
help create the fact.
Henry Van Dyke:
Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and
to look up at the stars.
Immanuel Kant:
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. [French Philosopher]
Immanuel Kant:
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life. [French Philosopher]
Isaac Asimov:
If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type
a little faster.
Isadora Duncan:
People do not live nowadays - they get about ten percent out of life.
James F. Bymes:
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be
more afraid of life than death
Jean-Paul Sartre:
Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Joan Baez:
You don't get to choose how you're going to die. Or when. You can only decide
how you're going to live. Now.
John Dewey:
Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future
living.
John Dewey:
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
John Lennon:
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
Katharine Hepburn:
Without discipline, there's no life at all.
Leo Buscaglia:
What we call the secret of happiness is no more a secret than our willingness to
choose life.
Lord Byron:
The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.
Madame de Stael:
The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our
misfortunes.
Marcus Aurelius:
The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it.
Marcus Aurelius:
Remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now lives, nor
lives any other than this which he now loses.
Marcus Aurelius:
And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it
were the last.
Margaret Fuller:
Men for the sake of getting a living forget to live.
Maria Mitchell:
Study as if you were going to live forever; live as if you were going to die
tomorrow.
Marie Curie:
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. [American Author]
Mark Twain:
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do
than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe
harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. [American
Author]
Mark Twain:
There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility.
Inside of the dullest exterior there is a drama, a comedy and a tragedy.
[American Author]
Mark Twain:
Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
[American Author]
Mark Twain:
Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.
[American Author]
Martin Luther King, Jr.:
An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines
of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.
[American Civil Rights Leader]
Mary Oliver:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?
May Sarton:
A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life
itself.
Mohandas K. Gandhi:
Where there is love there is life. [Indian Leader, Peace Guru]
Med Yones:
Everything in life goes through cycles, the
four seasons, the plants, businesses, economies and countries. The same is
true for your relationships. Do not hold on to unrealistic or romantic
notions such as "forever" or you'll suffer unnecessarily.
[Leadership Coach]
Med Yones:
There is no such thing as a pain-free life.
In fact emotional pain is a necessary and useful life tool that alerts you
to re-examine your living environment and values [Leadership Coach]
Norman MacEwan:
Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get,
but we make a life by what we give.
Norman Vincent Peale:
Live your life and forget your age. [American Author]
Oliver Wendell Holmes:
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth
living.
Oliver Wendell Holmes:
A man may fulfill the object of his existence by asking a question he cannot
answer, and attempting a task he cannot achieve.
Omar N. Bradley:
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war
than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have
grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.
Oscar Wilde:
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Paul Anka:
I've lived a life that's full, I've travelled each and every highway, and more, much more than this, I did it my way.
[American Singer ]
Paul Beattie was a Unitarian Universalist minister, serving in congregations
including in Kansas City, Missouri, and last at the First Unitarian Church of
Pittsburgh, PA. He was also president of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists,
among his many involvements.
Paul Bowles:
... we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens
only a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more
times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon
that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life
without it? Perhaps four or five times more. perhaps not even that. How many
more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all
seems limitless.
Pearl S. Buck:
The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.
Pearl S. Buck:
The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart
withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears
only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them
they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and
each shows us only what lies in its own focus.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year. No man has
learned anything rightly, until he knows that every day is Doomsday.
Ralph Waldo Emerson:
Life is a succession of lessons, which must be lived to be understood.
Ray Bradbury:
Life is "trying things to see if they work."
Raymond Charles Barker:
The principle of life is that life responds by corresponding; your life becomes
the thing you have decided it shall be.
Robert Byrne:
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Frost:
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost:
What is this talked-of mystery of birth
But being mounted bareback on the earth?
Robert Louis Stevenson:
The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your
eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before
you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life's plain, common work as it
comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in
life.
Roy H. Williams:
Lives, like money, are spent. What are you buying with yours?
Sarah Ban Breathnach:
An authentic life is the most personal form of worship. Everyday life has become
my prayer.
Sarah Bernhardt:
Life begets life. Energy becomes energy. It is by spending oneself that one
becomes rich.
Sean O'Casey:
I have found life an enjoyable, enchanting, active, and sometime terrifying
experience, and I've enjoyed it completely. A lament in one ear, maybe, but
always a song in the other.
Seneca:
Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.
Sharon Welch:
Injustice can be eliminated, but human conflicts and natural limitations cannot
be removed. The conflicts of social life and the limitations of nature cannot be
controlled or transcended. They can, however, be endured and survived. It is
possible for there to be a dance with life, a creative response to its intrinsic
limits and challenges ... [A Feminist Ethic of Risk]
Sophia Lyon Fahs:
Life becomes religious whenever we make it so: when some new light is seen, when
some deeper appreciation is felt, when some larger outlook is gained, when some
nobler purpose is formed, when some task is well done.
Stephen Covey:
Whatever is at the center of our life will be the source of our security,
guidance, wisdom, and power.
Theodore Rubin:
There are two ways to slide easily through life: to believe everything or to
doubt everything; both ways save us from thinking.
Thich Nhat Hanh:
Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is
not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we
cannot be in touch with life.
Thomas Jefferson:
It is in our lives and not our words that our religion must be read.
Tom Lehrer:
Life is like a sewer. What you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Toni Morrison:
Birth, life, and death -- each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
Ursula K. LeGuin:
If you see a whole thing - it seems that it's always beautiful. Planets,
lives.... But close up a world's all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life's a
hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern.
Victor Frankl:
If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load that is
laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together. So, if
therapists wish to foster their patients' mental health, they should not be
afraid to increase that load through a reorientation toward the meaning of one's
life.
Victor Frankl:
A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being
who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able
to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able
to bear almost any "how."
Victor Hugo:
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Virginia Satir:
Over the years I have developed a picture of what a human being living humanely
is like. She is a person who understand, values and develops her body, finding
it beautiful and useful; a person who is real and is willing to take risks, to
be creative, to manifest competence, to change when the situation calls for it,
and to find ways to accommodate to what is new and different, keeping that part
of the old that is still useful and discarding what is not.
Wallace Stegner:
Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to wisdom,
but to scar tissue and callus.
Will Rogers:
Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have
rushed through life trying to save.
William Blake:
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
William James:
Religion, whatever it is, is a man's total reaction upon life. The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1902
[American Psychologists]
William James:
These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life
is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact. [American
Psychologists]
Winston Churchill:
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. [British
Prime Minister]
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