Motivational Quotes

Life

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energetically meaning is sought.

- Havel, Vaclav

Best Quotes about Life

We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.

Sir Winston Churchill

It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it.

Ellis, Havelock

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

Dewey, Thomas E.

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

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

Socrates

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time.

Mead, Margaret

One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

Austen, Jane

The major justification for a life is the happiness and reward it brings to other lives.

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

Landers, Ann

10.

Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. [About Paris]

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

11.

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

William Shakespeare

12.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

Camus, Albert

13.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

14.

See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.

Pope John XXIII

15.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.

Plato

16.

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

17.

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

18.

Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.

Brendan Gill

19.

Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

20.

When in Rome, do as Rome does.

Bierce, Ambrose

21.

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

Ben Stein

22.

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

23.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

24.

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

25.

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

Orben, Robert

26.

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

27.

We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do -- it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.

Lawrence, D. H.

28.

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

Holdcroft, Thomas L.

29.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

30.

In the morning of life, work; in the mid day give council; in the evening, pray.

Proverb, German

31.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

32.

He lives who dies to win a lasting name.

Drummond, Henry

33.

New York, the nation's thyroid gland.

Morley, Christopher

34.

Our life's journey of self-discovery is not a straight-line rise from one level of consciousness to another. Instead, it is a series of steep climbs and flat plateaus, then further climbs. Even though we all approach the journey from different directions, certain of the journey's characteristics are common to all of us.

Wilde, Stuart

35.

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

Rogers, Will

36.

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

Buechner, Frederick

37.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

James, William

38.

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Weil, Simone

39.

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

O'Neill, Eugene

40.

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

41.

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.

Proverb, Italian

42.

This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Wordsworth, William

43.

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

Horton, Doug

44.

Washington is a city of people doing badly what should not be done at all.

Gurney, Robert

45.

Life loves the liver of it.

Angelou, Maya

46.

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

Stone, Robert

47.

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

48.

But look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

Jacobs, Jane

49.

Dance like no one is watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like no one is listening, Live like it's heaven on earth.

Purkey, William

50.

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

John Lennon