Motivational Quotes

Life

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity.

- Butler, Philip

Best Quotes about Life

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

Stone, Robert

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Camus, Albert

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare

It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.

Ruskin, John

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

William Shakespeare

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.

Mumford, Lewis

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

Jefferson, Thomas

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Boom, Corrie Ten

10.

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

11.

Living the truth in your heart without compromise brings kindness into the world. Attempts at kindness that compromise your heart cause only sadness.

12.

The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great -- and they know I know it.

Gable, Clark

13.

Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.

Frankl, Viktor E.

14.

There are a number of things wrong with Washington. One of them is that everyone is too far from home.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

15.

Nobody's journey is seamless or smooth. We all stumble. We all have setbacks. It's just life's way of saying, "Time to change course."

Oprah Winfrey

16.

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

O'Neill, Eugene

17.

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom.

Brown, Les

18.

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.

Shinn, Florence Scovel

19.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

20.

My kids idea of a hard life is to live in a house with only one phone.

Foreman, George

21.

In the early days of the Indian Territory, there were no such things as birth certificates. You being there was certificate enough.

Rogers, Will

22.

Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.

Mumford, Lewis

23.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.

Whitman, Walt

24.

The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

Woolf, Virginia

25.

Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said,so. What did you think?

Wright, Steven

26.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Camus, Albert

27.

The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.

Miller, Henry

28.

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

Poe, Edgar Allan

29.

Life too near paralyses art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

30.

This also -- that I live, I consider a gift of God.

Ovid

31.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

32.

The mountains, rivers, earth, grasses, trees, and forests are always emanating a subtle, precious light, day and night, always emanating a subtle, precious sound, demonstrating and expounding to all people the unsurpassed ultimate truth.

Yuan-Sou

33.

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

Kornfield, Jack

34.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

35.

It doesn't matter much where you live. It only matters how well you live when you're there

36.

Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.

Goldsmith, Oliver

37.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Thoreau, Henry David

38.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Kafka, Franz

39.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

40.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Temple, Sir William

42.

Difficulties come when you don't pay attention to life's whisper. Life always whispers to you first, but if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream.

Oprah Winfrey

43.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

44.

When I hear somebody sigh that Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?

Harris, Sidney J.

45.

It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.

Kempis, Thomas

46.

Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal. [On Washington D. C.]

Dane, Frank

47.

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

Orben, Robert

48.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

Wilde, Oscar

49.

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.

Carlyle, Thomas

50.

Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.

Baudrillard, Jean