Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

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

Rilke, Rainer Maria

What I like about cities is that everything is king size, the beauty and the ugliness.

Brodsky, Joseph

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.

Wolfe, Thomas

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

Oppenheimer, Martin

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

Berenson, Bernard

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

Brodsky, Joseph

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

Fuller, Thomas

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

William Shakespeare

The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.

Wilde, Oscar

10.

A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs...

Epicurus

11.

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

12.

Taken in any context, except seriously, life on earth is palatable and positively enjoyable.

13.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Temple, Sir William

14.

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

15.

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

16.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

Cabell, James Branch

17.

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

Gauguin, Paul

18.

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

Daniel Akst

19.

People should always have something which they prefer to life.

Seume, Johann G.

20.

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

21.

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

Camus, Albert

22.

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

Stone, Robert

23.

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around.

Hepburn, Katharine

24.

We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.

Benjamin, Walter

25.

Life, an age to the miserable, and a moment to the happy.

Bacon, Francis

26.

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

27.

Life is not one thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over!

28.

The real being, with no status, is always going in and out through the doors of your face.

Lin-Chi

29.

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

Hewitt, George T.

30.

Life is really about a spiritual unfolding that is personal and enchanting -- an unfolding that no science or philosophy or religion has yet fully clarified.

Redfield, James

31.

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

32.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering - and it's all over much too soon.

Woody Allen

33.

Live virtuously, and you cannot not die too soon, or live too long.

Russell, Lady R.

34.

If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

35.

Cities give us collision. 'Tis said, London and New York take the nonsense out of a man.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

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

37.

Life is like eating artichokes, you have got to go through so much to get so little.

Dorgan, Thomas A.

38.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

39.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

40.

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance -- nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city -- as one loses oneself in a forest -- that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

Benjamin, Walter

41.

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

42.

Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.

Proverb, French

43.

If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don't seek, how are you different from earth, wood, or stone? You must seek without seeking.

Fo-Yan

44.

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

45.

A life is like a tree -- if you don't make it straight when its young and green, you'll never do it when it's old and dry.

46.

It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.

Edna St. Vincent Millay

47.

The drama of life begins with a wail and ends with a sigh.

Antrim, Minna

48.

One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching.

49.

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

50.

Dare to err and to dream. Deep meaning often lies in childish plays.

Schiller, Johann Friedrich Von