Motivational Quotes

Life

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

- Cabell, James Branch

Best Quotes about Life

Life loves the liver of it.

Angelou, Maya

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.

Kundera, Milan

Most of us fall short much more by omission than by commission. While the world perishes we go our way: purposeless, passionless, day after day.

Pilgrim, Peace

Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.

Nabokov, Vladimir

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

It is not how many years we live, but rather what we do with them.

Booth, Evangeline Cory

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

If I had been present at creation, I would have given some useful hints.

Wise, Alfonso The

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Truman Capote

10.

Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

J.K. Rowling

11.

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

12.

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

Billings, Josh

13.

Those who live are those who fight.

Hugo, Victor

14.

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

15.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Campbell, Joseph

16.

This is it. There are no hidden meanings. All that mystical stuff is just what's so.

Erhard, Werner

17.

Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists in the continual creative play of urban living. The city as we imagine it, then, soft city of illusion, myth, aspiration, and nightmare, is as real, maybe more real, than the hard city one can locate on maps in statistics, in monographs on urban sociology and demography and architecture.

Raban, Jonathan

18.

He who allows his day to pass by without practicing generosity and enjoying life's pleasures is like a blacksmith's bellows. He breathes, but does not live.

Proverb

19.

Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters.

Presser, Ross

20.

Today's city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.

Oppenheimer, Martin

21.

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Mumford, Lewis

22.

We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.

Boese, Paul

23.

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.

Augustine, St.

24.

What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is trivial; for all life is a dream and all dreams are dreams.

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro

25.

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

26.

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

Isherwood, Christopher

27.

One recipe for a longer life; Never exceed the speed limit.

28.

Only those live who do good.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

29.

The great city is that which has the greatest man or woman: if it be a few ragged huts, it is still the greatest city in the whole world.

Whitman, Walt

30.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Disraeli, Benjamin

31.

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.

Crowley, Aleister

32.

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

33.

Life is full of surprises and and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure-do it well, enjoy it-and then, not now, think about what comes next.

Condoleeza Rice

34.

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.

Gandhi, Mahatma

35.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [Psalms 90:10]

Bible

36.

I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.

Fields, W. C.

37.

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

38.

Live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my coming too; For the cause that lacks resistance, For the future and the distance, And the good that I can do.

39.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

Shakespeare, William

41.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

42.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.

Cioran, E. M.

43.

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.

Lennon, John

44.

Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

Lehrer, Tom

45.

Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, If I had my life to live over again. Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

Mandino, Og

46.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.

Edison, Thomas A.

47.

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

48.

All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

49.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.

Baez, Joan

50.

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

Rogers, Will