Motivational Quotes

Life

To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism -- this is the art of living.

- La Fontaine, Jean De

Best Quotes about Life

Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.

Rimbaud, Arthur

Without fullness of experience, length of days is nothing. When fullness of life has been achieved, shortness of days is nothing. That is perhaps why the young have usually so little fear of death; they live by intensities that the elderly have forgotten.

Mumford, Lewis

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

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. [About Paris]

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

William Shakespeare

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

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

Hume, David

Life is not a matter of place, things or comfort; rather, it concerns the basic human rights of family, country, justice and human dignity.

Marcos, Imelda

10.

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

11.

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.

Mead, Margaret

12.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

13.

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

14.

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

Proverb, Persian

15.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

Twain, Mark

16.

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

Rivarol, Antoine

17.

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

Carlyle, Thomas

18.

Life without meaning cannot be borne. We find a mission to which we're sworn

19.

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

20.

Life is but a game and we are the playthings of the gods.

21.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

22.

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

23.

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

Ovid

24.

Life is like one big Mardi Gras. But instead of showing your boobs, show people your brain, and if they like what they'll, you'll have more beads than you know what to do with.

Ellen DeGeneres

25.

You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.

Basset, Lucinda

26.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

27.

One has not great hopes from Birmingham. I always say there is something direful in the sound.

Austen, Jane

28.

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

29.

The person lives twice who lives the first life well.

Herrick, Robert

30.

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

31.

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

Isherwood, Christopher

32.

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

33.

For what is your life? It is even a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. [James 4:14]

Bible

34.

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

35.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

36.

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

37.

May you live as long as you want and not want as long as you live.

Hanks, Tom

38.

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

39.

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

40.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

Woody Allen

41.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Kennedy, John F.

42.

To live is not breathing it is action.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

43.

I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

44.

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

45.

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

Camus, Albert

46.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

Allen, Fred A.

47.

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

48.

Eternal truths will be neither true nor eternal unless they have fresh meaning for every new social situation.