quotations about life
What is life but a series of inspired follies?
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Pygmalion
To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated.
BERTOLT BRECHT
On Politics and Society
There is more to life than not dying.
CASSANDRA CLARE
Clockwork Angel
The rich pearl of life,
Soon moulders in its blackened urn, the tomb.
ISAAC MCLELLAN
"Musings"
The meaning of our lives is revealed through experiences that at first seem at odds with each other--moments we wish would never end and moments we wish had never begun.
JOHN ELDREDGE
Desire
Real life ... it was an ambiguous world, where actions sometimes had no meaning, where chaos reigned and no one was allowed to see the big picture, only their small portion of it.
BENTLEY LITTLE
The Policy
One must live as he can.
MAXWELL ANDERSON
Winterset
Life! we have been long together,
Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
'Tis hard to part when friends are dear;
Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear;-
Then steal away, give little warning,
Choose thine own time;
Say not Good-night, but in some brighter clime
Bid me Good-morning!
ANNA LETITIA BARBAULD
"Life! I Know Not What Thou Art"
Life itself was only futility, vain words, a squabble of cap and bells.
MICHEL FOUCAULT
Madness & Civilization
Life is what you put into it and how much you take out of it. You put in more than is expected, and you take out less than you want.
MICHAEL J. FOX
Good Housekeeping, June 2011
Life is an incurable disease.
ABRAHAM COWLEY
To Dr. Scarborough
Life at the greatest is but a froward child, that must be humor'd and coax'd a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.
OLIVER GOLDSMITH
The Good-Natured Man
It's over before you know it. It all goes by so fast. Yeah the bad nights take forever, and the good nights don't ever seem to last.
TOM PETTY
The Best of Everything
Is all our Life, then but a dream
Seen faintly in the golden gleam
Athwart Time's dark resistless stream?
LEWIS CARROLL
Sylvie and Bruno
I know nothing more enjoyable than that happy-go-lucky wandering life, in which you are perfectly free; without shackles of any kind, without care, without preoccupation, without thought even of to-morrow. You go in any direction you please, without any guide save your fancy.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"Miss Harriet"
You had to take life as it came. It gave no quarter, spared no feelings. Limited no pain. Put no ceiling on happiness.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Innocent
You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Why, what in the world should we care for if it's not our lives, the only gift the Lord never offers us a second time?
MARCEL PROUST
Swann's Way
What is terrible is that after every one of the phases of my life is finished, I am left with no more than some banal commonplace that everyone knows.
DORIS LESSING
The Golden Notebook