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

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

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is but a moment, death also is but another.

Schuller, Robert H.

Life is full and overflowing with the new. But it is necessary to empty out the old to make room for the new to enter.

Caddy, Eileen

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

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

Aleichem, Sholom

It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

This life of separateness may be compared to a dream, a phantasm, a bubble, a shadow, a drop of dew, a flash of lightning.

Buddha

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Schweitzer, Albert

10.

The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values.

Norman Thomas

11.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Thoreau, Henry David

12.

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

Klee, Paul

13.

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

14.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

15.

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.

Brodsky, Joseph

16.

I found Rome brick, I left it marble.

Augustus, Caesar

17.

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

Diane Ackerman

18.

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

Seneca

19.

People do not live nowadays. They get about 10% out of life.

Duncan, Isadora

20.

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

21.

Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

Lao-Tzu

22.

Today, you have 100% of your life left.

Hopkins, Tom

23.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

Wilde, Oscar

24.

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

25.

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

Stone, Robert

26.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Camus, Albert

27.

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

Kornfield, Jack

28.

When we exercise self-control on a given occasion, we win for ourselves a little credibility we can rely on the next time around. Pretty soon we develop a reputation to ourselves that we want badly to uphold. With each test that we meet, our resolve gains momentum, fueled by the fear that we may succumb and establish a damaging precedent for our own weakness.

Daniel Akst

29.

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

30.

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

31.

The continuous invention of new ways of observing is man's special secret of living.

Young, J. Z.

32.

Every morning I wake up saying, I'm still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.

Cousteau, Jacques

33.

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

Dickens, Charles

34.

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

35.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

36.

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

37.

Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

38.

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

Wilde, Oscar

39.

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

Morley, Christopher

40.

There is only one way to come into this world; there are too many ways to leave it.

Harington, Donald

41.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.

Mumford, Lewis

42.

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

43.

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

Shakespeare, William

44.

The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.

Mankiewicz, Joseph L.

45.

He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

Dylan, Bob

46.

As a remedy to life in society I would suggest the big city. Nowadays, it is the only desert within our means.

Camus, Albert

47.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

Mansfield, Katherine

48.

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

49.

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

Rimbaud, Arthur

50.

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

James, William