Motivational Quotes

Life

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.

Famous Inspirational Daily Quotes

Best Quotes about Life

The life of every person is like a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another.

Barrie, Sir James M.

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

Brodsky, Joseph

Life is a horizontal fall.

Cocteau, Jean

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

Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.

Pavese, Cesare

What else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

Henry, O.

All of life is a foreign country.

Kerouac, Jack

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

Dickens, Charles

10.

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

11.

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.

Nash, Ogden

12.

Life is action and passion; therefore, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of the time, at peril of being judged not to have lived.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

13.

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

14.

To live is to go on a journey; to die is to come back home.

15.

Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

Jordan, David Starr

16.

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

17.

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

Pritchett, V. S.

18.

The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils.

Pliny The Elder

19.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

20.

Life never becomes a habit to me. It's always a marvel.

Mansfield, Katherine

21.

Life is something that everyone should try at least once.

Henry J. Tillman

22.

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

Cook, Robert A.

23.

Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.

Miller, Henry

24.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

25.

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

26.

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)

27.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Miller, Henry

28.

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

29.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

30.

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

Walpole, Horace

31.

I found Rome brick, I left it marble.

Augustus, Caesar

32.

A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again.

Mead, Margaret

33.

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

Isherwood, Christopher

34.

Don't be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.

Brecht, Bertolt

35.

We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold. And what can life be worth if the first rehearsal for life is life itself? That is why life is always a sketch. No sketch is not quite the right word, because a sketch is an outline of something, the groundwork for a picture, whereas the sketch that is our life is a sketch of nothing, an outline with no picture.

Kundera, Milan

36.

Life is like a taxi. The meter just keeps a-ticking whether you are getting somewhere or just standing still.

Erickson, Lou

37.

Live as you would have wished to live when you come to die.

Gellert

38.

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Miller, Henry

39.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Epictetus

40.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Radner, Gilda

41.

Always take hold of things by the smooth handle.

Jefferson, Thomas

42.

It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it.

Ellis, Havelock

43.

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.

44.

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

45.

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.

La Bruyere, Jean De

46.

Attack life, it's going to kill you anyway.

Coallier, Steven

47.

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

48.

The four stages of life are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.

Linkletter, Art

49.

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

50.

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