quotations about life
Desire, both the whispers and the shouts, is the map we have been given to find the only life worth living.
JOHN ELDREDGE
Desire
Some moments in a life, and they needn't be very long or seem very important, can make up for so much in that life; can redeem, justify, that pain, that bewilderment, with which one lives, and invest one with the courage not only to endure it, but to profit from it; some moments teach one the price of the human connection: if one can live with one's own pain, then one respects the pain of others, and so, briefly, but transcendentally, we can release each other from pain.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
Life is not a bed of roses.
ENGLISH PROVERB
If we could live for a million years, then maybe it would be worthwhile to create some problems. But our life is short. Now you see, we are guests here on this planet, visitors who have come for a short time, so we need to use our days wisely, to make our world a little better for everyone.
DOUGLAS CARLTON ABRAMS
The Book of Joy
Every day is the same thing out the door
Feel further away then ever before
Some things in life, it gets too late to learn
Well, I'm lost somewhere
I must have made a few bad turns
BOB DYLAN
"Highlands"
Man's life is entirely in his operations, which may all be classed under three heads: he thinks, he feels, and he acts -- these three modes of activity exhaust his powers.
WILLIAM BATCHELDER GREENE
The Doctrine of Life
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
RICHARD BACH
Illusions
Nothing comes at all -- never anything. And I cannot accustom myself to that. It is this monotony, this absolute fixity in life, that is the hardest thing for me to endure. I should like to go away from here. Go away? But where and how? I do not know, and I stay.
OCTAVE MIRBEAU
The Diary of a Chambermaid
Our lives fade behind us before we die.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit is Rich
Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.
JOHN TWELVE HAWKS
The Traveler
Life is short, if we are only said to live when we enjoy ourselves; and if we were merely to count up the hours we spent agreeably, a great number of years would hardly make up a life of a few months.
JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE
"Of the Affections", Les Caractères
All of life is a foreign country.
JACK KEROUAC
letter, June 24, 1949
Like water spilt upon the ground--alas,
Our little lives flow swiftly on and pass;
Yet may they bring rich harvests and green grass!
HENRY VAN DYKE
"Epigrams and Greetings"
It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right.
GEORGE ELIOT
Adam Bede
Human life [is] ... a process of filling in time until the arrival of death, or Santa Claus, with very little choice, if any, of what kind of business one is going to transact during the long wait.
ERIC BERNE
Games People Play
Life consists in molting our illusions. We form creeds today only to throw them away tomorrow. The eagle molts a feather because he is growing a better one.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
URSULA K. LE GUIN
The Left Hand of Darkness
Remember that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived.
SUSAN ROSE BLAUNER
How I Stayed Alive When My Brain Was Trying to Kill Me
Life, the river of the Spirit, consenting to anguish and sorrow.
SRI AUROBINDO
Ahana
There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
NORMAN MAILER
The Deer Park