Motivational Quotes

Life

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

- Menander of Athens

Best Quotes about Life

Life is just a bowl of pits.

Rodney Dangerfield

The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.

Mumford, Lewis

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing; the main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.

Aurelius, Marcus

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony.

Reed, Lou

In making a living today, many no longer leave room for life.

Sizoo, Joseph R.

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.

Mills, C. Wright

My kids idea of a hard life is to live in a house with only one phone.

Foreman, George

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

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

10.

People do not live nowadays. They get about 10% out of life.

Duncan, Isadora

11.

Cities are distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake.

Baudrillard, Jean

12.

Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands.

Better, Cathy

13.

Those who live are those who fight.

Hugo, Victor

14.

The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.

Baruch, Bernard M.

15.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Rogers, Carl

16.

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

Isherwood, Christopher

17.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

Boulanger, Nadia

18.

We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.

Einstein, Albert

19.

Life is a rollercoaster. Try to eat a light lunch.

Schmaltz, David A.

20.

The City attaches an exaggerated importance to the healing power of lunch.

Fieldes, Christopher

21.

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

Bachelard, Gaston

22.

We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do -- it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.

Lawrence, D. H.

23.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Miller, Henry

24.

Live virtuously, and you cannot not die too soon, or live too long.

Russell, Lady R.

25.

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.

Caesar, Sid

26.

It is faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth looking at.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell

27.

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

28.

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

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

29.

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

30.

It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.

Kempis, Thomas

31.

All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

32.

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

Southey, Robert

33.

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

Sir Winston Churchill

34.

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

35.

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

36.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs

37.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

38.

The less routine the more life.

Alcott, Amos Bronson

39.

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

40.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Tremain, Rose

41.

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

42.

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.

Benjamin, Walter

43.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

44.

Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.

45.

Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition

46.

Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.

Munger, Thornton T.

47.

And so from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe, and then, from hour to hour,we rot and rot; and thereby hangs a tale.

William Shakespeare

48.

The measure of a life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.

Boom, Corrie Ten

49.

Life's a bitch, and life's got lots of sisters.

Presser, Ross

50.

Making a life comes before making a living.