Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

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

Debevoise, P. L.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.

Plato

Life is a wilderness of twists and turns, where faith is your only compass.

Santaguida, Paul

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

Life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.

Allen, Woody

Three keys to more abundant living: caring about others, daring for others, sharing with others.

Ward, William A.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

Miller, Henry

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Hume, David

10.

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.

11.

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

Cook, Robert A.

12.

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour.

Leacock, Stephen B.

13.

If one considered life as a simple loan, one would perhaps be less exacting. We possess actually nothing; everything goes through us.

Delacroix, Eugene

14.

The world has so many lessons to teach you. I consider the world, our earth, to be like a school, and our life, the classrooms. Sometimes on our planet life school, the lessons often come dressed up as detours and road blocks and sometimes as full blown crises. And the secret I've learned to getting ahead is being open to the lessons.

Oprah Winfrey

15.

If I had been present at creation, I would have given some useful hints.

Wise, Alfonso The

16.

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

Platen

17.

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

18.

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

Southey, Robert

19.

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

20.

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

James, William

21.

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Miller, Henry

22.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

Pirandello, Luigi

23.

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

24.

The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears -- as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

25.

The truest end of life, is to find the life that doesn't end.

26.

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

27.

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

Norris, Kathleen

28.

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

Orben, Robert

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.

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

Stoppard, Tom

31.

Life is fickle; the fair man doesn't invariably win.

Mark Hodder

32.

Life is like a taxi. The meter just keeps a-ticking whether you are getting somewhere or just standing still.

Erickson, Lou

33.

Half my life is an act of revision.

Irving, John

34.

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

35.

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

Oliver Wendell Holmes

36.

Life in the Fast Lane Playing in Traffic intense stressful challenging overwhelming fulfilling demanding exciting nerve-wrecking entrepreneurial unrelenting empowered exposed: no place to hide flexible confusing results compensation sweatshop team ascendancy ego suppression flat organizations who's my boss no titles no status customer focus self-abnegation decentralized decision making chaos the end of tenure the end of security no complacency fear ongoing change burnout

37.

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

Camus, Albert

38.

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

Young, J. Z.

39.

The good life is one inspired by life and guided by knowledge.

Russell, Bertrand

40.

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

Dimnet, Ernest

41.

Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you stop peddling.

Pepper, Claude D.

42.

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

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

43.

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one's will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them.

Gauguin, Paul

44.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

Thornton Wilder

45.

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

46.

Live, let live, and help live

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

47.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

Shaw, George Bernard

48.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Woolf, Virginia

49.

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late

Franklin, Benjamin

50.

If you're not in New York, you're camping out.

Dewey, Thomas E.