LIFE QUOTES XXV

quotations about life

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

GASTON BACHELARD

Fragments of a Poetics of Fire

Tags: Gaston Bachelard


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

Tags: David Baldacci


There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

JACK LONDON

The Call of the Wild

Tags: Jack London


Life is like a moustache. It can be wonderful or terrible. But it always tickles.

NORA ROBERTS

From the Heart

Tags: Nora Roberts


Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.

NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE

"The Procession of Life"

Tags: Nathaniel Hawthorne


Life is an incurable disease.

ABRAHAM COWLEY

To Dr. Scarborough

Tags: Abraham Cowley


Life is as the current spark on the miner's wheel of flints;
While it spinneth, there is light; stop it, all is darkness.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


The rich pearl of life,
Soon moulders in its blackened urn, the tomb.

ISAAC MCLELLAN

"Musings"

Tags: Isaac McLellan


Life is a string of uncooked macaroni on a double strand of sewing thread. Not even spray painted gold. Some people have strings of expensive pearls for lives, but not me ... I have macaroni and sewing thread.

ANN WUEHLER

The Care and Feeding of Baby Birds

Tags: Ann Wuehler


Life goes on forever like the gnawing of a mouse.

EDNA ST. VINCENT MILLAY

"Ashes of Life"

Tags: Edna St. Vincent Millay


I was thinking how amazing it was that the world contained so many lives. Out in these streets people were embroiled in a thousand different matters, money problems, love problems, school problems. People were falling in love, getting married, going to drug rehab, learning how to ice-skate, getting bifocals, studying for exams, trying on clothes, getting their hair-cut and getting born. And in some houses people were getting old and sick and were dying, leaving others to grieve. It was happening all the time, unnoticed, and it was the thing that really mattered.

JEFFREY EUGENIDES

Middlesex


The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began,
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

J. R. R. TOLKIEN

The Fellowship of the Ring

Tags: J. R. R. Tolkien


I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And then? I fall upon the thorns of life, I bleed. And what next? I get laid, I take a short holiday, but very soon after I fall upon those same thorns with gratification in pain, or suffering in joy -- who knows what the mixture is! What good, what lasting good is there in me? Is there nothing else between birth and death but what I can get out of this perversity -- only a favorable balance of disorderly emotions? No freedom? Only impulses? And what about all the good I have in my heart -- does it mean anything? Is it simply a joke? A false hope that makes a man feel the illusion of worth? And so he goes on with his struggles. But this good is no phony. I know it isn't. I swear it.

SAUL BELLOW

Herzog


Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides
Into the silent hollow of the past;
What is there that abides
To make the next age better for the last?

JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration

Tags: James Russell Lowell


I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me -- and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

introduction, Journal Intime

Tags: Henri Frederic Amiel


No man ever sailed over exactly the same route that another sailed over before him; every man who starts on the ocean of life arches his sails to an untried breeze.

WILLIAM MATHEWS

Hints on Success in Life


The world comes to us in an endless stream of puzzle pieces that we would like to think all fit together somehow, but that in fact never do.

ROBERT M. PIRSIG

Lila

Tags: Robert M. Pirsig


The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

A Free Man's Worship

Tags: Bertrand Russell


One must live as he can.

MAXWELL ANDERSON

Winterset

Tags: Maxwell Anderson


Men regret their life has been ill-spent, but this does not always induce them to make a better use of the time they have yet to live.

JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

"Of Mankind", Les Caractères