Motivational Quotes

Life

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.

Best Quotes about Life

In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.

Spengler, Oswald

Every perfect life is a parable invented by God.

Weil, Simone

Life is something that everyone should try at least once.

Henry J. Tillman

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.

Augustine, St.

Every man's life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Hemingway, Ernest

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

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

Kierkegaard, S°ren

Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns.

Feidelson, Charles

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around.

Hepburn, Katharine

10.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

Camus, Albert

11.

Life is but a moment, death also is but another.

Schuller, Robert H.

12.

Life is very interesting if you make mistakes.

Carpentier, Georges

13.

Life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward, you have to give back.

Oprah Winfrey

14.

Life is just a bowl of pits.

Rodney Dangerfield

15.

All of life is a foreign country.

Kerouac, Jack

16.

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.

Cowper, William

17.

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

Camus, Albert

18.

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare

19.

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

20.

A neighborhood is a residential area that is changing for the worse.

Ciardi, John

21.

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom.

Brown, Les

22.

Give a man a dollar and you cheer his heart. Give him a dream and you challenge his heart. Give him Christ and you change his heart. Then the dollar and the dream become meaningful to him, and to others.

Strait, C. Neil

23.

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

Kierkegaard, S°ren

24.

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

25.

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

26.

I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.

Fields, W. C.

27.

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

Duncan, Isadora

28.

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

Young, J. Z.

29.

People should always have something which they prefer to life.

Seume, Johann G.

30.

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

31.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [Psalms 90:10]

Bible

32.

Life is not always not always what one wants it to be., but to make the best of it as it is the only way of being happy.

Churchill, Jennie Jerome

33.

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

Welsh, John

34.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Elbert Hubbard

35.

Life is real! Life is earnest! And death is not its goal. Dust thou art, to dust returneth, was not spoken of the soul.

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

36.

Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

Lehrer, Tom

37.

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

Brodsky, Joseph

38.

Life at the greatest and best is but a froward child, that must be humored and coaxed a little till it falls asleep, and then all the care is over.

Goldsmith, Oliver

39.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

40.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

41.

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Mumford, Lewis

42.

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

Blake, William

43.

Where the criminals cover their crimes by making them legal. [On Washington D. C.]

Dane, Frank

44.

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

Aristotle

45.

One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: Have no anxiety about the morrow; or the words of Sir William Osler; Live in day-tight compartments.

Carnegie, Dale

46.

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

47.

Life is full of surprises and and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure-do it well, enjoy it-and then, not now, think about what comes next.

Condoleeza Rice

48.

Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.

Robbins, Anthony

49.

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

Christopher Morley

50.

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