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

There is a time of life somewhere between the sullen fugues of adolescence and the retrenchments of middle age when human nature becomes so absolutely absorbing one wants to be in the city constantly, even at the height of summer.

Hoagland, Edward

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Santayana, George

Plunge boldly into the thick of life, and seize it where you will, it is always interesting.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

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

Cook, Robert A.

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

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

Austen, Jane

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

There are nine requisites for contented living: HEALTH enough to make work a pleasure; WEALTH enough to support your needs; STRENGTH enough to battle with difficulties and forsake them; GRACE enough to confess your sins and overcome them; PATIENCE enough to toil until some good is accomplished; CHARITY enough to see some good in your neighbor; LOVE enough to move you to be useful and helpful to others; FAITH enough to make real the things of God; HOPE enough to remove all anxious fears concerning the future.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

10.

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

11.

Life is always walking up to us and saying, 'Come on in, the living's fine,' and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

12.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Thoreau, Henry David

13.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Elbert Hubbard

14.

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

15.

Every morning I wake up saying, I'm still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.

Cousteau, Jacques

16.

Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

J.K. Rowling

17.

So in all these little ways we spin a web, a cocoon, around ourselves. The cocoon becomes nice and snug and comfortable because it is very familiar. We know every little corner of our life; we can even write poetry about it. We may also have ideas about the great mystery which religions speak of, which gives our cocoon an especial sense of security: we can worship the great mystery outside of it and feel good about that. The cocoon is safe, bounded, claustrophobic, and a little stale. We settle into it and live our lives.

Hayward, Jeremy W.

18.

I think we're here for each other.

Burnett, Carol

19.

One recipe for a longer life; Never exceed the speed limit.

20.

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

Dyer, Wayne

21.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

James, William

22.

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well.

Ackerman, Diane

23.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Kennedy, John F.

24.

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

Daniel Akst

25.

When I hear somebody sigh that Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?

Harris, Sidney J.

26.

The interest in life does not lie in what people do, nor even in their relations to each other, but largely in the power to communicate with a third party, antagonistic, enigmatic, yet perhaps persuadable, which one may call life in general.

Woolf, Virginia

27.

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.

Herold, Don

29.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Tremain, Rose

30.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You're going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don't try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.

Robbins, Anthony

32.

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

Canetti, Elias

33.

Live poor so you can die rich.

34.

Try as much as possible to be wholly alive, with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell and when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.

Saroyan, William

35.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Woolf, Virginia

36.

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.

37.

The lessons this life has planted in my heart pertain more to caring than crops, more to Golden Rule than gold, more to the proper choice than to the popular choice.

Kirby Larson

38.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Thoreau, Henry David

39.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat... the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

40.

This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Wordsworth, William

41.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

42.

In the game of life it's a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.

Baughan, Bill

43.

The City attaches an exaggerated importance to the healing power of lunch.

Fieldes, Christopher

44.

No one knows when they are well off.

Punch

45.

It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.

Kempis, Thomas

46.

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

Woody Allen

47.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

48.

Life is full of surprises and and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure-do it well, enjoy it-and then, not now, think about what comes next.

Condoleeza Rice

49.

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.

Holdcroft, Thomas L.

50.

My life is a battle.

Voltaire