Motivational Quotes

Life

What life means to us is determined, not so much by what life brings to us as by the attitude we bring to life; not so much by what happens to us as by our reaction to what happens.

- Dunnington, Lewis L

Best Quotes about Life

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

Morley, Christopher

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.

Mills, C. Wright

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life... I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Thoreau, Henry David

The world has so many lessons to teach you. I consider the world, our earth, to be like a school, and our life, the classrooms. Sometimes on our planet life school, the lessons often come dressed up as detours and road blocks and sometimes as full blown crises. And the secret I've learned to getting ahead is being open to the lessons.

Oprah Winfrey

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.

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

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.

Holdcroft, Thomas L.

Life is supposed to get tough.

Grammer, Kelsey

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

10.

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

Camus, Albert

11.

What else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

Henry, O.

12.

Half my life is an act of revision.

Irving, John

13.

What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.

Rimbaud, Arthur

14.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

Robert Heinlein

15.

Taken in any context, except seriously, life on earth is palatable and positively enjoyable.

16.

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

Kempis, Thomas

17.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

Dryden, John

18.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Kennedy, John F.

19.

A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.

Ciardi, John

20.

Life isn't simple. But the beauty of it is, you can always start over. It'll get easier.

Alacia Bessette

21.

This tattered life is my only robe; the wind my only refuge.

Mountain, Marian

22.

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

23.

Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don't watch it, and so slowly if we do.

Steinbeck, John

24.

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge -- that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts -- That hope always triumphs over experience -- That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.

Fulghum, Robert

25.

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

Oppenheimer, Martin

26.

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

27.

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare

28.

Life is always walking up to us and saying, 'Come on in, the living's fine,' and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

29.

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

Fields, W. C.

30.

Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.

Robbins, Anthony

31.

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

32.

The old Quaker was right: I expect to pass through life but once. If there is any kindness, or any good thing I can do to my fellow beings, let me do it now. I shall pass this way but once.

Gannett, W. C.

33.

Reality is the crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

Tomlin, Lily

34.

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

Conrad, Joseph

35.

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Percy, Walker

36.

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.

Proverb, Italian

37.

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Mille, Agnes De

38.

And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then, from hour to hour,we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale.

William Shakespeare

39.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Child, Julia

40.

If you're not in New York, you're camping out.

Dewey, Thomas E.

41.

It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.

Herold, Don

42.

If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.

Delacroix, Eugene

43.

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Miller, Henry

44.

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

William Shakespeare

45.

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

Keller, Helen

46.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

47.

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.

48.

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.

Ben Stein

49.

The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism.

Baudrillard, Jean

50.

Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies.

Landers, Ann