Motivational Quotes

Life

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

- Byron, Lord

Best Quotes about Life

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Radner, Gilda

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

In real life, however, you don't react to what someone did; you react only to what you think she did, and the gap between action and perception is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is but what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator?

Jonathan Haidt

If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don't seek, how are you different from earth, wood, or stone? You must seek without seeking.

Fo-Yan

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.

Lorca, Federico Garcia

People creep into childhood, bound into youth, sober in adulthood, and soften into old age.

Giles, Henry

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

I used to trouble about what life was for -- now being alive seems sufficient reason.

Field, Joanna

The cloud-capp'd towers,the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare

10.

Life is an earnest business, and no one every became good or great on a diet of broad grins.

Blackie, Professor

11.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Tremain, Rose

12.

Live poor so you can die rich.

13.

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Frankl, Viktor E.

14.

Life is a classroom in which each of us is being tested, tried, and passed.

Thibodeau, Robert

15.

Life is a glass given to us to fill; a busy life is filling it with as much as it can hold; a hurried life has had more poured into it than it can contain.

Brown, William Adams

16.

This is a world of action, and not for moping and droning in.

Dickens, Charles

17.

Life is a dead-end street.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

Menander of Athens

19.

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination

Isherwood, Christopher

20.

First I was dying to finish high-school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Next, I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school, so I could return to work. Finally, I was dying to retire. And now, I am dying

21.

The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist -- this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul -- a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

Mead, Margaret

22.

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living that are desired when dying.

23.

The person who does not know how to live while they are making a living is a poorer person after their wealth is won than when they started.

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

24.

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

25.

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

26.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

Connolly, Cyril

27.

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.

Rivarol, Antoine

28.

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

29.

Don't worry about your life; what you shall eat, or drink, or the clothing for your body. [Matthew 6:31]

Bible

30.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

Michelangelo

31.

Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns.

Feidelson, Charles

32.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

33.

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

34.

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

Kempis, Thomas

35.

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Santayana, George

36.

You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.

Basset, Lucinda

37.

There is no quiet place in the white man's cities. No place to hear the unfurling of leaves in spring, or the rustle of an insect's wings. But perhaps it is because I am a savage and do not understand. The clatter only seems to insult the ears.

Seattle, Chief

38.

Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

Byron, Lord

39.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others

Keller, Helen

42.

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing; the main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.

Aurelius, Marcus

43.

Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.

Larkin, Philip

44.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.