quotations about life
What is the meaning of life?... A simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Our lives teach us who we are.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
London Independent, Feb. 4, 1990
Life seems so long, and its capacity so great, to one who knows nothing of all the intervals it needs must hold -- intervals between aspirations, between actions, pauses as inevitable as the pauses of sleep. And life looks impossible to the young unfortunate, unaware of the inevitable and unfailing refreshment. It would be for their peace to learn that there is a tide in the affairs of men, in a sense more subtle -- if it is not too audacious to add a meaning to Shakespeare -- than the phrase was meant to contain. Their joy is flying away from them on its way home; their life will wax and wane; and if they would be wise, they must wake and rest in its phases, knowing that they are ruled by the law that commands all things -- a sun's revolutions and the rhythmic pangs of maternity.
ALICE MEYNELL
"The Rhythm of Life", The Rhythm of Life and Other Essays
Yes, life is but a waste,
A cheerless pathway, where
No healthy fruit allures the taste,
No flowerets balm the air,
If Love, the wild rose, ne'er luxuriates there.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"Love"
Still, life had a way of adding day to day.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
ROBERT FULGHUM
Uh-Oh
Life is a wonderful thing to talk about, or to read about in history books -- but it is terrible when one has to live it. It is almost impossible to sleep for more than twelve hours a day, and the remaining twelve hours have to be filled in somehow.
JEAN ANOUILH
The Collected Plays
Life is a lot like math. There's always new stuff to do, always another problem to solve. Work through it one problem at a time.
STEPHANIE SANTILLO
"Sheehan valedictorian: 'Life is a lot like math'", My Record Journal, June 3, 2016
Each life is one short word slowly uttered.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Blue Jay's Dance
To feed death with her works is here life's doom.
SRI AUROBINDO
Savitri
The whole world's a bottle,
And life's but a dram,
When the bottle gets empty,
It sure ain't worth a damn.
BOB DYLAN
"Moonshiner"
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
Life was never anything but a perpetual see-saw between gravity and jest.
GEORGE ELIOT
Romola
Life is made up of three kinds of people -- those who live it, those afraid to, those in between.
LOUISE ERDRICH
Love Medicine
In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life -- It goes on.
ROBERT FROST
attributed, A New Treasury of Words to Live By
A man's life is like a well, not like a snake--it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
You just do it. You force yourself to get up. You force yourself to put one foot before the other, and goddamn it, you refuse to let it get to you. you fight. you cry. You curse. Then you go about your business of living. That's how I've done it. There's no other way.
MARILYN MONROE
My Story
Most people had not lived -- nor could it, for that matter, be said that they had died-- through any of their terrible events. They had simply been stunned by the hammer. They passed their lives thereafter in a kind of limbo of denied and unexamined pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
Another Country
Life is being, not having.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Life is an uncertain flower--oft by the tempest o'erthrown.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims