Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

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

Calhoun, John C.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life, it stays with you, for Paris is a movable feast.

Hemingway, Ernest

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

James, William

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

Seneca

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

But look what we have built low-income projects that become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace. Cultural centers that are unable to support a good bookstore. Civic centers that are avoided by everyone but bums. Promenades that go from no place to nowhere and have no promenaders. Expressways that eviscerate great cities. This is not the rebuilding of cities. This is the sacking of cities.

Jacobs, Jane

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time.

Frankl, Viktor E.

10.

Birth, copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to the brass tacks.

Eliot, T. S.

11.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

Shaw, George Bernard

12.

Life is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you're gonna get.

Movie, Forrest Gump

13.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

14.

We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us towards death, the body maintains its irreparable lead.

Camus, Albert

15.

It is advisable that a person know at least three things, where they are, where they are going, and what they had best do under the circumstances.

Ruskin, John

16.

Life -- how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

Pritchett, V. S.

17.

To live is not breathing it is action.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

18.

The city is loveliest when the sweet death racket begins. Her own life lived in defiance of nature, her electricity, her frigidaires, her soundproof walls, the glint of lacquered nails, the plumes that wave across the corrugated sky. Here in the coffin depths grow the everlasting flowers sent by telegraph.

Miller, Henry

19.

Life is something that everyone should try at least once.

Henry J. Tillman

20.

Paris is the caf? of Europe.

Galiani, Ferdinando

21.

There is no shortcut to life. To the end of our days, life is a lesson imperfectly learned.

Salisbury, Harrison

22.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.

Plato

23.

Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.

Sophocles

24.

He lives who dies to win a lasting name.

Drummond, Henry

25.

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

Simon, Neil

26.

Order your soul; reduce your wants; live in charity; associate in Christian community; obey the laws; trust in Providence.

Augustine, St.

27.

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

28.

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

James, William

29.

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.

Frankl, Viktor E.

30.

Life. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay.

Bierce, Ambrose

31.

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

Austen, Jane

32.

All of life is a foreign country.

Kerouac, Jack

33.

Life is supposed to get tough.

Grammer, Kelsey

34.

The sad souls of those who lived without blame and without praise.

Dante Alighieri

35.

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

Camus, Albert

36.

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

Huxtable, Ada Louise

37.

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

Millay, Edna St. Vincent

38.

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

Antrim, Minna

39.

Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.

Buscaglia, Leo

40.

If God exists and we are made in his image we can have real meaning, and we can have real knowledge through what he has communicated to us.

Schaeffer, Francis

41.

The chief function of the city is to convert power into form, energy into culture, dead matter into the living symbols of art, biological reproduction into social creativity.

Mumford, Lewis

42.

Life isn't like a book. Life isn't logical or sensible or orderly. Life is a mess most of the time. And theology must be lived in the midst of that mess.

Colton, Charles Caleb

43.

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

44.

Life is fickle; the fair man doesn't invariably win.

Mark Hodder

45.

Life is but a moment, death also is but another.

Schuller, Robert H.

46.

Living the truth in your heart without compromise brings kindness into the world. Attempts at kindness that compromise your heart cause only sadness.

47.

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Johnson, Samuel

48.

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

Wilde, Oscar

49.

Life is a wilderness of twists and turns, where faith is your only compass.

Santaguida, Paul

50.

Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said,so. What did you think?

Wright, Steven