quotations about life
Life is a crucible. We are thrown into it, and tried.
E. H. CHAPIN
Living Words
Black river of torture, writhing senselessly, whirlpool of life, in vain I search thee for one moment's rest.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
"A Psalm of Life"
Our life a harp is, with unnumbered strings,
And tones and symphonies; but our poor skill
Some shallow notes from its great music brings.
JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY
"Dolores"
Life is a sculpture, chip, chip, chip. In good time, with good patience, even the most formidable rock can be shaped.
BERNARD BECKETT
Malcolm & Juliet
Your life is like a little flute complaining
A long way off, beyond the willow trees:
A long way off, and nothing left remaining
But memory of a music on the breeze.
HILAIRE BELLOC
Sonnets
Life
You have been good to me....
You have not made yourself too dear
to juggle with.
LOLA RIDGE
"Comrades"
Everything happens as though I were only one of the particular existences of some great incomprehensible and central being.... Sometimes this great totality of life appears to me so dramatically beautiful that it plunges me into ecstasy. But more often it seems like a monstrous beast that penetrates and surpasses me and which is everywhere, within me and outside me.... And terror grips and envelops me more powerfully from moment to moment.... My only way out is to write, to make others aware of it, so as not to have to feel all of it alone, to get rid of however small a portion of it.
ARTHUR ADAMOV
The Confession
A life is a life. The unbearable pain of losing someone you love is identical no matter how differently it is expressed. And yet the varying shades of the global reaction to tragedy based on location, nationality, ethnicity, culture and religion belie our humanity, a harsh reminder that our "global community" is an illusion, despite our seemingly desperate desire to cling to that notion.
ARWA DAMON
"A life is a life, wherever you are", CNN, March 29, 2016
I must not fall asleep in the middle of my life. Out of the blankness that surrounds me I must pluck the incident after incident after incident whose little explosions keep me going.
J. M. COETZEE
In the Heart of the Country
The advantage of literature over life is that its characters are clearly defined, and act consistently.
JEROME K. JEROME
"Reginald Blake, Financier and Cad"
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity,
Until Death tramples it to fragments.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
Adonais
Human life is a pilgrimage from the unknown to the unknown. No one knows whence he emanated or whither he is bound.
FEMI ABBAS
"A decade of royalty and faith", The Nation, September 2, 2016
Sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Rum Diary
It is a matter of embracing one's only life, even though this life so often seems to be, merely, one's doom. And it is, in a way, though not "merely." But to refuse the doom of one's only life is to be trapped outside all nourishment.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Life is distressing insomuch as we give exaggerated importance to altogether unimportant matters. Drifting along, I have observed that we men and women disturb ourselves about trifles, overlooking in the needless excitement the innumerable beauties which wait upon the way. Every ripple is not a wave, every wind is not a hurricane. Why worry whilst we are still upon the stream? It will be time enough to trouble when we meet the sea.
CHARLES EDWARD JERNINGHAM
The Maxims of Marmaduke
Life cannot be calculated. That's the big mistake our civilization made. We never accepted that randomness is not a mistake in the equation -- it is part of the equation.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
Life like a shroud on men and women lies.
MAURICE BROWNE
"At Dusk"
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives ... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
Ah! this beautiful world ... Indeed, I know not what to think of it. Sometimes it is all gladness and sunshine, and heaven itself lies not far off. And then it changes suddenly, and is dark and sorrowful, and clouds shut out the sky. In the lives of the saddest of us, there are bright days like this, when we feel as if we could take the great world in our arms. Then come the gloomy hours, when the fire will neither burn on our hearths nor in our hearts; and all without and within is dismal, cold, and dark.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Hyperion