Motivational Quotes

Life

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one's power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man's journey is about, I think.

- Smith, Lillian

Best Quotes about Life

We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do -- it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.

Lawrence, D. H.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.

Mumford, Lewis

Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns.

Feidelson, Charles

Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.

Munger, Thornton T.

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom.

Brown, Les

Life is a continual process of remaking ourselves.

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.

Osler, Sir William

To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.

Bachelard, Gaston

All things atrocious and shameless flock from all parts to Rome.

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

10.

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

11.

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave.

Crisp, Quentin

12.

It doesn't matter much where you live. It only matters how well you live when you're there

13.

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

14.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

May, Rollo

15.

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfillment or our experience. It is a thing narrowed by circumstances, incoherent in its utterance, and without that fine correspondence of form and spirit which is the only thing that can satisfy the artistic

Wilde, Oscar

16.

Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies.

Landers, Ann

17.

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.

La Bruyere, Jean De

18.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

James, William

19.

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

Shakespeare, William

20.

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

Hayes, Helen

21.

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

Menander of Athens

22.

New York is not Mecca. It just smells like it.

Simon, Neil

23.

One belongs to New York instantly. One belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years.

Wolfe, Thomas

24.

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

Rexford, Eben Eugene

25.

Don't worry about your life; what you shall eat, or drink, or the clothing for your body. [Matthew 6:31]

Bible

26.

On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

Buddha

27.

All great art is born of the metropolis.

Pound, Ezra

28.

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

Epicurus

29.

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

Gauguin, Paul

30.

All things may be bought in Rome with money.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

31.

In the book of life every page has two sides: we human beings fill the upper side with our plans, hopes and wishes, but providence writes on the other side, and what it ordains is seldom our goal.

Nisami

32.

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

Huxley, Aldous

33.

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

34.

To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.

Kornfield, Jack

35.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Child, Julia

36.

Live, let live, and help live

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

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.

38.

I used to trouble about what life was for -- now being alive seems sufficient reason.

Field, Joanna

39.

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

Pasternak, Boris

40.

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

Keller, Helen

41.

Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.

Proverb, French

42.

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

Wolfe, Thomas

43.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

44.

Life is a series of steps. Things are done gradually. Once in a while there is a giant step, but most of the time we are taking small, seemingly insignificant steps on the stairway of life.

Ransom, Ralph

45.

Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique and not too much imagination

Isherwood, Christopher

46.

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

Herold, Don

47.

You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.

Barbara Hall

48.

A man's life is 20 years of having his mother ask him where he is going, 40 years of having his wife ask the same question and, at the end, perhaps having the mourners wondering too.

49.

My kids idea of a hard life is to live in a house with only one phone.

Foreman, George

50.

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