Motivational Quotes

Life

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

- Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

Best Quotes about Life

The sad souls of those who lived without blame and without praise.

Dante Alighieri

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Frankl, Viktor E.

Life is like wine, the longer you take to enjoy it the more chance you've got of tasting vinegar.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it's one damn thing over and over.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

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

William Shakespeare

A man's life is 20 years of having his mother ask him where he is going, 40 years of having his wife ask the same question and, at the end, perhaps having the mourners wondering too.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement.

Dimnet, Ernest

10.

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

Shakespeare, William

11.

Life is supposed to get tough.

Grammer, Kelsey

12.

Half my life is an act of revision.

Irving, John

13.

Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

14.

May you live as long as you want and not want as long as you live.

Hanks, Tom

15.

Life is an uphill business for the guy who's not on the level.

Welsh, John

16.

The life of our city is rich in poetic and marvelous subjects. We are enveloped and steeped as though in an atmosphere of the marvelous; but we do not notice it.

Baudelaire, Charles

17.

A life is like a tree -- if you don't make it straight when its young and green, you'll never do it when it's old and dry.

18.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

19.

The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

William Shakespeare

20.

The four stages of life are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.

Linkletter, Art

21.

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.

Benjamin, Walter

22.

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

Wise, Alfonso The

23.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

William Shakespeare

24.

Search for meaning, eat, sleep. Search for meaning, eat, sleep. Die, search for meaning, search for meaning, search for meaning.

Horton, Doug

25.

Those who live are those who fight.

Hugo, Victor

26.

Cities are distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake.

Baudrillard, Jean

27.

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

28.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Steve Jobs

29.

In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

Baughan, Bill

30.

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

O'Neill, Eugene

31.

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

Augustine, St.

32.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

Franklin, Benjamin

33.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Camus, Albert

34.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Curie, Madame Marie

35.

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

36.

The tragedy of life is not that a man loses, but that he almost wins.

Broun, Heywood

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.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

Jefferson, Thomas

39.

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Aleichem, Sholom

40.

If you believed more in life you would fling yourself less to the moment.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs...

Epicurus

42.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

43.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

Conrad, Joseph

44.

He lives who dies to win a lasting name.

Drummond, Henry

45.

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

46.

Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

47.

In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal.

Nisami

48.

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

Menander of Athens

49.

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

50.

Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.

Huxtable, Ada Louise