Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

Life too near paralyses art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

Reality is the crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

Tomlin, Lily

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

Gurney, Robert

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life... I wanted to live so sturdily and so Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life... to drive life into a corner to know it by experience and be able to give an account of it in my next excursion.

Thoreau, Henry David

Live today for tomorrow it will all be history.

Proverb

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

Thoreau, Henry David

Washington is no place for a good actor. The competition from bad actors is too great.

Allen, Fred A.

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

Boom, Corrie Ten

The force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Drives my green age that blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer.

Thomas, Dylan

10.

Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

Lao-Tzu

11.

We quaff the cup of life with eager haste without draining it, instead of which it only overflows the brim -- objects press around us, filling the mind with the throng of desires that wait upon them, so that we have no room for the thoughts of death.

Wilde, Oscar

12.

There is more sophistication and less sense in New York than anywhere else on the globe.

Herold, Don

13.

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

14.

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

15.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

16.

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

17.

You can have peace of mind, improved health and an ever-increasing flow of energy. Life can be full of joy and satisfaction.

Peale, Norman Vincent

18.

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

Mccarthy, Mary

19.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our innermost being and reality, so that we can actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Campbell, Joseph

20.

What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is trivial; for all life is a dream and all dreams are dreams.

Calderon de la Barca, Pedro

21.

Young people talk of what they are doing; old people of what they have done; and fools of what they have a mind to do.

Proverb

22.

Towns are excrescences, gray fluxions, where men, hurrying to find one another, have lost themselves.

Forster, Edward M.

23.

Just as all thought, and primarily that of non-signification, signifies something, so there is no art that has no signification.

Camus, Albert

24.

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

25.

Paris is the caf? of Europe.

Galiani, Ferdinando

26.

Life is a gamble at terrible odds, if it were a bet, you would not take it.

Stoppard, Tom

27.

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

Presser, Ross

28.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

Mansfield, Katherine

29.

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

30.

Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.

Berenson, Bernard

31.

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

32.

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

33.

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.

Gandhi, Mahatma

34.

Living the truth in your heart without compromise brings kindness into the world. Attempts at kindness that compromise your heart cause only sadness.

35.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.

Cioran, E. M.

36.

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.

Waitley, Denis

37.

Life is very interesting if you make mistakes.

Carpentier, Georges

38.

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

Kierkegaard, S°ren

39.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

Miller, Henry

40.

Well, take your time and don't live too fast. Troubles will come and they will pass. Find a woman and you'll find love. Don't forget, son, there is someone up above.

Skynard, Lynard

41.

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, and love. They do not require coupons.

Hewitt, George T.

42.

What else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

Henry, O.

43.

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.

Mead, Margaret

44.

The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: Decide what you want.

Ben Stein

45.

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

Miller, Henry

46.

Paris, a city of gaieties and pleasures, where four-fifths of the inhabitants die of grief. [About Paris]

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

47.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

Twain, Mark

48.

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

Augustine, St.

49.

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

50.

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

John Lennon