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

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.

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

Norman Thomas

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

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

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

Fields, W. C.

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.

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)

Life may not be beautiful, but it is interesting.

Seeley, Sir John Robert

It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.

Ruskin, John

10.

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

11.

My life is a battle.

Voltaire

12.

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

Camus, Albert

13.

On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

Buddha

14.

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

15.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

May, Rollo

16.

We dribble away our life, little by little, in small packages -- we don't throw it away all at once.

Cook, Robert A.

17.

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, and love. They do not require coupons.

Hewitt, George T.

18.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

19.

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity.

Butler, Philip

20.

Live, let live, and help live

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

21.

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Santayana, George

22.

Life begins when you get out of the grandstand into the game.

Debevoise, P. L.

23.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

Dyer, Wayne

24.

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story.

Mccarthy, Mary

25.

Life is just a bowl of pits.

Rodney Dangerfield

26.

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.

Fuller, Thomas

27.

Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it.

Stoppard, Tom

28.

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

Brooke, Rupert

29.

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.

Barrymore, John

30.

Only those live who do good.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

31.

If one had but a single glance to give the world, one should gaze on Istanbul.

Lamartine, Alphonse De

32.

I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital... not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground. The crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change.

Ruskin, John

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.

Allen, Fred A.

36.

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

37.

There is no shortcut to life. To the end of our days, life is a lesson imperfectly learned.

Salisbury, Harrison

38.

Life is something that everyone should try at least once.

Henry J. Tillman

39.

We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.

Einstein, Albert

40.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Child, Julia

41.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

Carson, Johnny

42.

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.

Nash, Ogden

43.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

44.

Live virtuously, and you cannot not die too soon, or live too long.

Russell, Lady R.

45.

My art and profession is to live.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

46.

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.

Leary, Denis

47.

Feelings are really your GPS system for life. When your supposed to do something, or not supposed to do something, your emotional guidance system lets you know.

Oprah Winfrey

48.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

Jefferson, Thomas

49.

Every time I look into the eyes of an animal I see life; the force of life and the beauty of creation

O'Reilly, Radar

50.

Life is a video game. No matter how good you get, you are always zapped in the end