Motivational Quotes

Life

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

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Life

Life is like wine, the longer you take to enjoy it the more chance you've got of tasting vinegar.

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

Hewitt, George T.

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

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

Life is indeed difficult, partly because of the real difficulties we must overcome in order to survive, and partly because of our own innate desire to always do better, to overcome new challenges, to self-actualize. Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.

Albert Ellis, Michael Abrams, Lidia Dengelegi

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Aleichem, Sholom

Life's enchanted cup sparkles near the brim.

Byron, Lord

Who goes to Rome a beast returns a beast.

Proverb, Italian

The continuous invention of new ways of observing is man's special secret of living.

Young, J. Z.

10.

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

Salisbury, Harrison

11.

A great city, whose image dwells in the memory of man, is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; Faith hovers over the towers of Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world, Art.

Disraeli, Benjamin

12.

Life is a campaign not a battle, and has its defeats as well as its victories.

Piatt, Don

13.

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.

14.

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

Smith, Logan Pearsall

15.

Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.

Clark, Frank A.

16.

This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.

Whitman, Walt

17.

Too often man handles life as he does the bad weather, He whiles away the time as he waits for it to stop.

Polgar, Alfred

18.

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

19.

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

20.

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

21.

Search for meaning, eat, sleep. Search for meaning, eat, sleep. Die, search for meaning, search for meaning, search for meaning.

Horton, Doug

22.

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

Feidelson, Charles

23.

Difficulties come when you don't pay attention to life's whisper. Life always whispers to you first, but if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you'll get a scream.

Oprah Winfrey

24.

We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.

Pascal, Blaise

25.

Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.

Southey, Robert

26.

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

27.

We have committed the Golden Rule to memory; let us now commit it to life.

Markham, Edwin

28.

I have done my fiddling so long under Vesuvius that I have almost forgotten to play, and can only wait for the eruption and think it long of coming. Literally no man has more wholly outlived life than I. And still it's good fun.

Stevenson, Robert Louis

29.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

30.

When we speak the word life, it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach.

Artaud, Antonin

31.

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

Herzen, Alexander

32.

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

William Shakespeare

33.

Live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my coming too; For the cause that lacks resistance, For the future and the distance, And the good that I can do.

34.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

William Goldman

35.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.

Edison, Thomas A.

36.

Live today for tomorrow it will all be history.

Proverb

37.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

Dryden, John

38.

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late

Franklin, Benjamin

39.

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

40.

We are in danger of making our cities places where business goes on but where life, in its real sense, is lost.

Humphrey, Hubert H.

41.

If you're not in New York, you're camping out.

Dewey, Thomas E.

42.

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

Antrim, Minna

43.

What life means to us is determined, not so much by what life brings to us as by the attitude we bring to life; not so much by what happens to us as by our reaction to what happens.

Dunnington, Lewis L

44.

To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life -- bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.

Pilgrim, Peace

45.

The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

46.

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

Herold, Don

47.

If you believed more in life you would fling yourself less to the moment.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

48.

There is no solitude in the world like that of the big city.

Norris, Kathleen

49.

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

50.

Life in the Fast Lane Playing in Traffic intense stressful challenging overwhelming fulfilling demanding exciting nerve-wrecking entrepreneurial unrelenting empowered exposed: no place to hide flexible confusing results compensation sweatshop team ascendancy ego suppression flat organizations who's my boss no titles no status customer focus self-abnegation decentralized decision making chaos the end of tenure the end of security no complacency fear ongoing change burnout