Motivational Quotes

Life

We will neglect our cities to our peril, for in neglecting them we neglect the nation.

- Kennedy, John F.

Best Quotes about Life

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

Havel, Vaclav

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

Look to the future, because that is where you'll spend the rest of your life.

Burns, George

The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

Woolf, Virginia

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.

Rivarol, Antoine

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.

Whitman, Walt

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.

Lorca, Federico Garcia

Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement.

Dimnet, Ernest

10.

Don't worry about your life; what you shall eat, or drink, or the clothing for your body. [Matthew 6:31]

Bible

11.

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

12.

The lessons this life has planted in my heart pertain more to caring than crops, more to Golden Rule than gold, more to the proper choice than to the popular choice.

Kirby Larson

13.

The average person living to age 70 has 613, 000 hours of life. This is too long a period not to have fun.

14.

The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

William Shakespeare

15.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Radner, Gilda

16.

Towns oftener swamp one than carry one out onto the big ocean of life.

Lawrence, D. H.

17.

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

Welsh, John

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Only those live who do good.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

21.

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

Proverb, Persian

22.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.

Kundera, Milan

23.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Temple, Sir William

24.

No city should be too large for a man to walk out of in a morning.

Connolly, Cyril

25.

So in all these little ways we spin a web, a cocoon, around ourselves. The cocoon becomes nice and snug and comfortable because it is very familiar. We know every little corner of our life; we can even write poetry about it. We may also have ideas about the great mystery which religions speak of, which gives our cocoon an especial sense of security: we can worship the great mystery outside of it and feel good about that. The cocoon is safe, bounded, claustrophobic, and a little stale. We settle into it and live our lives.

Hayward, Jeremy W.

26.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

Davy, Sir Humphrey

27.

Threescore years and ten is enough; if a man can't suffer all the misery he wants in that time, he must be numb.

Billings, Josh

28.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

Pound, Ezra

29.

Life is just a bowl of pits.

Rodney Dangerfield

30.

What is a city, but the people; true the people are the city.

Coriolanus III

31.

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.

La Bruyere, Jean De

32.

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

33.

Variability is the law of life, and as no two faces are the same, so no two bodies are alike, and no two individuals react alike and behave alike under the abnormal conditions which we know as disease.

Osler, Sir William

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.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

36.

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

Ben Stein

37.

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

38.

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

Johnson, Samuel

39.

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.

Colton, Charles Caleb

40.

Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don't watch it, and so slowly if we do.

Steinbeck, John

41.

This also -- that I live, I consider a gift of God.

Ovid

42.

Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

Pavese, Cesare

43.

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

44.

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

45.

Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short.

Newman, Peter C.

46.

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

Butler, Philip

47.

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

48.

Man values life as a sacred jewel in such a way that he reveres him most who haughtily scorns it.