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 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

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Camus, Albert

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Life is an unbroken succession of false situations.

Thornton Wilder

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

Brodsky, Joseph

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

The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things

Rilke, Rainer Maria

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

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

Carson, Johnny

10.

He who allows his day to pass by without practicing generosity and enjoying life's pleasures is like a blacksmith's bellows. He breathes, but does not live.

Proverb

11.

If you're not in New York, you're camping out.

Dewey, Thomas E.

12.

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

13.

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.

Gandhi, Mahatma

14.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

15.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Steve Jobs

16.

Life is a comedy for those who think... and a tragedy for those who feel.

Walpole, Horace

17.

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

Sophocles

18.

Life is a glass given to us to fill; a busy life is filling it with as much as it can hold; a hurried life has had more poured into it than it can contain.

Brown, William Adams

19.

Life is a classroom in which each of us is being tested, tried, and passed.

Thibodeau, Robert

20.

The joy of life consists in the exercise of one's energies, continual growth, constant change, the enjoyment of every new experience. To stop means simply to die. The eternal mistake of mankind is to set up an attainable ideal.

Crowley, Aleister

21.

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

Calhoun, John C.

22.

Not only is life a bitch, but it is always having puppies.

Gusoff, Adrienne

23.

The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great -- and they know I know it.

Gable, Clark

24.

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

Leno, Jay

25.

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

26.

First I was dying to finish high-school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Next, I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school, so I could return to work. Finally, I was dying to retire. And now, I am dying

27.

Not by gain our life is measured, But by what we've lost 'Tis scored; 'Tis not how much wine is drunken But how much has been outpoured. For the strength of love never standeth In the sacrifice we bear; He who has the greatest suffering Ever has the most to share.

Nee, Watchman

28.

The cloud-capp'd towers,the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare

29.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

Davy, Sir Humphrey

30.

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

31.

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

Aristotle

32.

Life is a long lesson in humility.

James M. Barrie

33.

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Bierce, Ambrose

34.

Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it.

Proverb, Indian

35.

Man is born to live and not to prepare to live.

Pasternak, Boris

36.

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

37.

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

38.

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

Gurney, Robert

39.

The world's mine oyster, which I with sword will open.

William Shakespeare

40.

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

41.

We will neglect our cities to our peril, for in neglecting them we neglect the nation.

Kennedy, John F.

42.

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

Santayana, George

43.

Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.

Clark, Frank A.

44.

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

45.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

William Goldman

46.

Live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my coming too; For the cause that lacks resistance, For the future and the distance, And the good that I can do.

47.

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

48.

Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, If I had my life to live over again. Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

Mandino, Og

49.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

Wilde, Oscar

50.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Baudrillard, Jean