Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Santayana, George

There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.

Hoagland, Edward

The old Quaker was right: I expect to pass through life but once. If there is any kindness, or any good thing I can do to my fellow beings, let me do it now. I shall pass this way but once.

Gannett, W. C.

To look at the cross-section of any plan of a big city is to look at something like the section of a fibrous tumor.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

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

Goldsmith, Oliver

Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short.

Newman, Peter C.

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.

Franklin, Benjamin

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

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

Santaguida, Paul

10.

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

William Shakespeare

11.

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions.

Klee, Paul

12.

To live is to go on a journey; to die is to come back home.

13.

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

Socrates

14.

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.

Fuller, Thomas

15.

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.

Cowper, William

16.

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

17.

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

Calhoun, John C.

18.

Washington is a city of people doing badly what should not be done at all.

Gurney, Robert

19.

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Johnson, Samuel

20.

No one knows when they are well off.

Punch

21.

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

22.

We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle -- even if he can afford more.

Ibuka, Massaru

23.

Life isn't simple. But the beauty of it is, you can always start over. It'll get easier.

Alacia Bessette

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

27.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

28.

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

Norris, Kathleen

29.

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

Blake, William

30.

I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital... not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground. The crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change.

Ruskin, John

31.

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

Delacroix, Eugene

32.

Can't nothing make your life work if you ain't the architect.

McMillan, Terry

33.

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

34.

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

35.

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans.

Lennon, John

36.

Life is at its best when it's shaken and stirred.

Facult, F. Paul

37.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

38.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

James M. Barrie

39.

Today's city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.

Oppenheimer, Martin

40.

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

Young, J. Z.

41.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

Seneca

42.

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

Pope John XXIII

43.

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

44.

Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.

Hubbard, Elbert

45.

On the whole, I am on the side of the unregenerate who affirms the worth of life as an end in itself, as against the saints who deny it.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

46.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

47.

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

48.

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

49.

My art and profession is to live.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

50.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.

Baez, Joan