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

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Steve Jobs

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

Allen, Fred A.

The first thing that strikes a visitor to Paris is a taxi.

Allen, Fred A.

Life in the Fast Lane Playing in Traffic intense stressful challenging overwhelming fulfilling demanding exciting nerve-wrecking entrepreneurial unrelenting empowered exposed: no place to hide flexible confusing results compensation sweatshop team ascendancy ego suppression flat organizations who's my boss no titles no status customer focus self-abnegation decentralized decision making chaos the end of tenure the end of security no complacency fear ongoing change burnout

Life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable.

Allen, Woody

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

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

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

10.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others

Keller, Helen

11.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

12.

In matters of self-control as we shall see again and again, speed kills. But a little friction really can save lives.

Daniel Akst

13.

The crime problem in New York is getting really serious. The other day the Statue of Liberty had both hands up.

Leno, Jay

14.

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!

Stevenson, Adlai E.

15.

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

Herold, Don

16.

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

Duncan, Isadora

17.

Life is like wine, the longer you take to enjoy it the more chance you've got of tasting vinegar.

18.

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

Diane Ackerman

19.

Don't brood. Get on with living and loving. You don't have forever.

Rexford, Eben Eugene

20.

People should always have something which they prefer to life.

Seume, Johann G.

21.

Life was mostly made up of things you couldn't control, full of surprises, and they weren't always good. Life wasn't what you made it. You were what life made you.

Sara Zarr

22.

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

Thoreau, Henry David

23.

Washington is an endless series of mock palaces clearly built for clerks.

Huxtable, Ada Louise

24.

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.

Mills, C. Wright

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

Hayakawa, S. I.

29.

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

Pope John XXIII

30.

All of life is a foreign country.

Kerouac, Jack

31.

In Washington, the first thing people tell you is what their job is. In Los Angeles you learn their star sign. In Houston you're told how rich they are. And in New York they tell you what their rent is.

Hoggart, Simon

32.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

33.

In the early days all I hoped was to make a living out of what I did best. But, since there's no real market for masturbation I had to fall back on my bass playing abilities.

Claypool, Les

34.

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

Byron, Lord

35.

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time.

Mead, Margaret

36.

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

37.

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

38.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

39.

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

40.

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

Huxley, Aldous

41.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

42.

The city is recruited from the country.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

43.

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

Gurney, Robert

44.

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness. but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow Up.

Morgan, Charles

45.

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment.

Wittgenstein, Ludwig

46.

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

Seneca

47.

We dribble away our life, little by little, in small packages -- we don't throw it away all at once.

Cook, Robert A.

48.

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