Motivational Quotes

Life

In real life, however, you don't react to what someone did; you react only to what you think she did, and the gap between action and perception is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is but what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator?

- Jonathan Haidt

Best Quotes about Life

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

Santayana, George

If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don't seek, how are you different from earth, wood, or stone? You must seek without seeking.

Fo-Yan

New York is not Mecca. It just smells like it.

Simon, Neil

Life marches by, I suggest you get on with it.

Baluch, Joy

Life It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.

Shakespeare, William

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination

Isherwood, Christopher

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

Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Frankl, Viktor E.

10.

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

Brooke, Rupert

11.

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

Epicurus

12.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Bacon, Francis

13.

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.

Thomas, Dylan

14.

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

15.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

16.

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

Kornfield, Jack

17.

The city is recruited from the country.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

18.

Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

Jordan, David Starr

19.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Campbell, Joseph

20.

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

Sir Winston Churchill

21.

Life is very interesting if you make mistakes.

Carpentier, Georges

22.

We don't beat the Grim Reaper by living longer, we beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what do we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up. It's too late to do all the things that you're gonna kinda get around to.

Randy Pausch

23.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

24.

Real life seems to have no plots.

Burnett, Ivy Compton

25.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

26.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

27.

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

Carson, Rachel

28.

There are four things every person has more of than they know; sins, debt, years, and foes.

Proverb, Persian

29.

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

30.

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

La Bruyere, Jean De

31.

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

Welsh, John

32.

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

33.

The finest lives in my opinion are the common model, without miracle and without extravagance.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

34.

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

35.

There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

Norris, Kathleen

36.

Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.

Berenson, Bernard

37.

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

38.

The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist -- this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul -- a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

Mead, Margaret

39.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

Wilde, Oscar

40.

It doesn't matter much where you live. It only matters how well you live when you're there

41.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Thoreau, Henry David

42.

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

Byron, Lord

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.

Fran Lebowitz

46.

The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.

Wilde, Oscar

47.

In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

Baughan, Bill

48.

Paris is the caf? of Europe.

Galiani, Ferdinando

49.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Johnson, Samuel

50.

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.