Motivational Quotes

Life

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

- Poe, Edgar Allan

Best Quotes about Life

The tragedy of life is not that a man loses, but that he almost wins.

Broun, Heywood

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

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

Lehrer, Tom

Only those live who do good.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

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

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Schweitzer, Albert

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

10.

Life loves the liver of it.

Angelou, Maya

11.

Some people seem to go through life standing at the complaint counter.

Propp Jr., Fred

12.

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

13.

Life is supposed to get tough.

Grammer, Kelsey

14.

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

James, William

15.

The cities of the world are concentric, isomorphic, synchronic. Only one exists and you are always in the same one. It's the effect of their permanent revolution, their intense circulation, their instantaneous magnetism.

Baudrillard, Jean

16.

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

17.

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.

Mille, Agnes De

18.

You live in a deranged age, more deranged that usual, because in spite of great scientific and technological advances, man has not the faintest idea of who he is or what he is doing.

Percy, Walker

19.

There is only one way to get ready for immortality, and that is to love this life and live it as bravely and faithfully and cheerfully as we can.

Dyke, Henry Van

20.

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

Gauguin, Paul

21.

The city is recruited from the country.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Schmaltz, David A.

25.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

Dyer, Wayne

26.

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

Thornton Wilder

27.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth.

Einstein, Albert

28.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

29.

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

Seneca

30.

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

Bible

31.

It doesn't matter much where you live. It only matters how well you live when you're there

32.

People creep into childhood, bound into youth, sober in adulthood, and soften into old age.

Giles, Henry

33.

The four stages of life are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.

Linkletter, Art

34.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

35.

The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.

Zeno

36.

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

Fields, W. C.

37.

Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.

Baudrillard, Jean

38.

Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's finger.

Anderson, Hans Christian

39.

Living, just by itself -- what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting --or he'll come along and nibble your brain.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

40.

Life is a flower of which love is the honey.

Hugo, Victor

41.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

42.

Real life seems to have no plots.

Burnett, Ivy Compton

43.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

Wilde, Oscar

44.

Life is a state of mind.

Warden, Jack

45.

The truest end of life, is to find the life that doesn't end.

46.

Life is a series of steps. Things are done gradually. Once in a while there is a giant step, but most of the time we are taking small, seemingly insignificant steps on the stairway of life.

Ransom, Ralph

47.

Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

48.

Live today for tomorrow it will all be history.

Proverb

49.

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

Kornfield, Jack

50.

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

Ciardi, John