quotations about life
Men do not escape from life because life is dull, but life escapes from men because men are little.
THOMAS WOLFE
Look Homeward, Angel
Once introduced into this world, life would never leave--there was no end to the explosive, consuming, voracious lust of long chain molecules to link and match and make of themselves yet more and more and again more.
GREGORY BENFORD
Against Infinity
Stop and consider! life is but a day;
A fragile dew-drop on its perilous way
From a tree's summit.
JOHN KEATS
"Sleep and Poetry"
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet
EMILY DICKINSON
"That it will never come again"
There are sad times, of course, but then life is a mixture and an authentic life story is the good, the bad, and everything in between.
NIK FARAH
"Recording a life is so precious", The Star, August 12, 2016
You're alive. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change.
NEIL GAIMAN
The Graveyard Book
Everyday life cannot be cast in heroic mould. No doubt there seems, at any rate at first sight, no room left in this scheme of life for that longing after the infinite which expands the mind and soul. But what is there to prevent me from launching on that boundless sea our familiar craft?
HONORÉ DE BALZAC
Letters of Two Brides
I do know that about ten times as many people find their lives dull, and unnecessarily dull, as ever admit it; and I do believe that if we busted out and admitted it sometimes, instead of being nice and patient and loyal for sixty years, and then nice and patient and dead for the rest of eternity, why, maybe, possibly, we might make life more fun.
SINCLAIR LEWIS
Babbitt
If a man knew how to live he would never die.
ROBERT PENN WARREN
All the King's Men
It was good that God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
All the Pretty Horses
Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
JACK LONDON
White Fang
Life consists of burning up questions.
ANTONIN ARTAUD
Selected Writings
Life is a constant series of new and familiar challenges, adversities that wax and wane until the end.
ANDREW PASCHAL
"Singles Going Steady", PopMatters, September 1, 2016
Life is but a field which we soon travel over, and the vale of eternity presents itself.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
Life is like checkers. When you reach the top, you can move wherever you want.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Listen. Are you breathing just a little and calling it a life?
MARY OLIVER
"Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?", West Wind
Lives are snowflakes -- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods
That's one of the many things I hate about life, that it's a hideously cliched business.
JOHN BANVILLE
The Paris Review, spring 2009
The eternal present is the space within which your whole life unfolds, the one factor that remains constant. Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.
ECKHART TOLLE
The Power of Now
The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.
FRANK HERBERT
Dune Messiah