quotations about life
Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.
WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
Imaginary Conversations
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.
WALT DISNEY
"Deeds Rather Than Words"
Life is like patchwork: every day there is a fresh bit to be put on. We must understand more correctly how to fit in better the bits needed day by day in repairing this patchwork life of ours. As it is, the three-cornered bits too often get put into the square places; but it is essential for man's happiness that he comprehends and unhesitatingly accepts as a truism that it rests with us to make this patchwork to our own liking; that we have the power to shape this life of ours more regularly, harmoniously, and blend it more perfectly; and that our life as it is, or as it might be, depends upon whether this be done in the right spirit.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Life is not like water. Things in life don't necessarily flow over the shortest possible route.
HARUKI MURAKAMI
1Q84
Life is what you do while you're waiting to die.
DONALD TRUMP
interview, Playboy, Mar. 1990
Life! Don't talk to me about life.
DOUGLAS ADAMS
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Man reaches each stage in his life as a novice.
CHAMFORT
The Cynic's Breviary
Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest
Sometimes I believe that this less material life is our truer life, and that our vain presence on the terraqueous globe is itself the secondary or merely virtual phenomenon.
H. P. LOVECRAFT
"Beyond the Wall of Sleep"
Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.
JULIAN BARNES
The Sense of an Ending
The way of the world is to bloom and to flower and die but in the affairs of men there is no waning and the noon of his expression signals the onset of night. His spirit is exhausted at the peak of its achievement. His meridian is at once his darkening and the evening of his day.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
Thus will we deal with life, my little help-meet. Will we not, eh? What though it blink at us like an owl that is blinded by the sun, we will yet force it to smile.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Life of Man
What fills us is real, sweet, dopey, funny life.
ANNE LAMOTT
"Time Lost and Found", Sunset
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
WILLIAM HENRY DAVIES
Leisure
What unlooked-for things do happen, to be sure, in a long life!
ARISTOPHANES
Lysistrata
While there's life, there's hope.
ENGLISH PROVERB
A life ill spent makes a sad old age.
SPANISH PROVERB
Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up--and we are gone.
EDWARD YOUNG
Busiris, King of Egypt: A Tragedy
Along the road of life are many pleasure resorts, but think not that by tarrying in them you will take more days to the journey. The day of your arrival is already recorded.
AMBROSE BIERCE
"Epigrams of a Cynic"
I believe that life is a game, that life is a cruel joke, that life is what happens when you're alive and that you might as well lie back and enjoy it.
NEIL GAIMAN
American Gods