Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

Shaw, George Bernard

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

Orben, Robert

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 real being, with no status, is always going in and out through the doors of your face.

Lin-Chi

In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal.

Nisami

Man's course begins in a garden, but it ends in a city.

Maclaren, Alexander

See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.

Pope John XXIII

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

The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.

Goldsmith, Oliver

10.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

Dryden, John

11.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Ackerman, Diane

12.

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

13.

Not by gain our life is measured, But by what we've lost 'Tis scored; 'Tis not how much wine is drunken But how much has been outpoured. For the strength of love never standeth In the sacrifice we bear; He who has the greatest suffering Ever has the most to share.

Nee, Watchman

14.

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

Shakespeare, William

15.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.

Mumford, Lewis

16.

The sad souls of those who lived without blame and without praise.

Dante Alighieri

17.

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

18.

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

Prather, Hugh

19.

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

20.

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

Ward, William A.

21.

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

22.

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

23.

The difference between life and the movies is that a script has to make sense, and life doesn't.

Mankiewicz, Joseph L.

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Child, Julia

27.

Life is an earnest business, and no one every became good or great on a diet of broad grins.

Blackie, Professor

28.

Life is a gift, and it offers us the privilege, opportunity, and responsibility to give something back by becoming more.

Robbins, Anthony

29.

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.

Holdcroft, Thomas L.

30.

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

Presser, Ross

31.

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

32.

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.

Markham, Edwin

33.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Camus, Albert

34.

A life is like a tree -- if you don't make it straight when its young and green, you'll never do it when it's old and dry.

35.

In the morning of life, work; in the mid day give council; in the evening, pray.

Proverb, German

36.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

William Goldman

38.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

Robert Heinlein

39.

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

Schmaltz, David A.

40.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

41.

Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith.

Steve Jobs

42.

Where there is life there is wishful thinking.

Lieberman, Gerald F.

43.

Live as you would have wished to live when you come to die.

Gellert

44.

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

Baruch, Bernard M.

45.

Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.

Clark, Frank A.

46.

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

Ovid

47.

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

Burns, George

48.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

Huxley, Aldous

49.

The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.

Russell, Bertrand

50.

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