Motivational Quotes

Life

Life is a long lesson in humility.

- James M. Barrie

Best Quotes about Life

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 like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.

Sheen, Fulton John

Life is short, but it's long enough to ruin any man who wants to be ruined.

Billings, Josh

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.

Shinn, Florence Scovel

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Baudrillard, Jean

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe.

Whitehead, Alfred North

Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.

Hubbard, Elbert

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.

Barbara Hall

Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the Earth are never alone or weary of life.

Carson, Rachel

10.

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.

Southey, Robert

11.

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Mumford, Lewis

12.

Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, If I had my life to live over again. Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

Mandino, Og

13.

The person lives twice who lives the first life well.

Herrick, Robert

14.

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

Seneca

15.

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

Poe, Edgar Allan

16.

Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal. [On Washington D. C.]

Dane, Frank

17.

I can't be bitter. No one has a contract on life.

Heath, David M.

18.

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

19.

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.

Osler, Sir William

20.

A life-worshipper's philosophy is comprehensive. He is at one moment a positivist and at another a mystic: now haunted by the thought of death and now a Dionysian child of nature; now a pessimist and now, with a change of lover or liver or even the weather, an exuberant believer that God's in his heaven and all's right with the world.

Huxley, Aldous

21.

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

22.

Your life is what your thoughts make it.

Aurelius, Marcus

23.

You can have peace of mind, improved health and an ever-increasing flow of energy. Life can be full of joy and satisfaction.

Peale, Norman Vincent

24.

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

25.

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

Epicurus

26.

In the early days all I hoped was to make a living out of what I did best. But, since there's no real market for masturbation I had to fall back on my bass playing abilities.

Claypool, Les

27.

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

Frankl, Viktor E.

28.

Life is a dead-end street.

Mencken, H. L.

29.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [Psalms 90:10]

Bible

30.

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

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von

31.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

32.

Can't nothing make your life work if you ain't the architect.

McMillan, Terry

33.

Living the truth in your heart without compromise brings kindness into the world. Attempts at kindness that compromise your heart cause only sadness.

34.

We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle -- even if he can afford more.

Ibuka, Massaru

35.

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.

La Bruyere, Jean De

36.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

James, William

37.

Life is a horizontal fall.

Cocteau, Jean

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

41.

Take life as you find it, but don't leave it that way

42.

Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.

Walpole, Horace

43.

Living Life Tomorrow's fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

Khayyam, Omar

44.

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

Camus, Albert

45.

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

46.

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

Welsh, John

47.

He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

Dylan, Bob

48.

The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.

Miller, Henry

49.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

50.

Making a life comes before making a living.