Motivational Quotes

Life

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing; the main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.

- Aurelius, Marcus

Best Quotes about Life

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

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

Only to the extent that someone is living out this self transcendence of human existence, is he truly human or does he become his true self. He becomes so, not by concerning himself with his self's actualization, but by forgetting himself and giving himself, overlooking himself and focusing outward.

Frankl, Viktor E.

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

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

Living Life Tomorrow's fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.

Khayyam, Omar

Life is a long lesson in humility.

James M. Barrie

He that embarks on the voyage of life will always wish to advance rather by the impulse of the wind than the strokes of the oar; and many fold in their passage; while they lie waiting for the gale.

Johnson, Samuel

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

10.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

11.

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

Woody Allen

12.

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

Simon, Neil

13.

Even when I'm sick and depressed, I love life.

Rubinstein, Arthur

14.

I can't be bitter. No one has a contract on life.

Heath, David M.

15.

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

William Shakespeare

16.

One of the most appalling comments on our present way of life is that half of all the beds in our hospitals are reserved for patients with nervous and mental troubles, patients who have collapsed under the crushing burden of accumulated yesterdays and fearful tomorrows. Yet a vast majority of those people would be walking the streets today, leading happy, useful lives, if they had only heeded the words of Jesus: Have no anxiety about the morrow; or the words of Sir William Osler; Live in day-tight compartments.

Carnegie, Dale

17.

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.

18.

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

Edison, Thomas A.

19.

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Temple, Sir William

20.

No one knows when they are well off.

Punch

21.

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

Walpole, Horace

22.

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

Huxtable, Ada Louise

23.

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Kafka, Franz

24.

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

Chamfort, Sebastien-Roch Nicolas De

25.

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

26.

Life is not lost by dying; life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day, in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

Benet, Stephen Vincent

27.

Washington is a place where politicians don't know which way is up and taxes don't know which way is down.

Orben, Robert

28.

The tragedy of life is not that a man loses, but that he almost wins.

Broun, Heywood

29.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

30.

We have penetrated far less deeply into the regularities obtaining within the realm of living things, but deeply enough nevertheless to sense at least the rule of fixed necessity... what is still lacking here is a grasp of the connections of profound generality, but not a knowledge of order itself.

Einstein, Albert

31.

What is a city, but the people; true the people are the city.

Coriolanus III

32.

The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.

Eliot, T. S.

33.

Life's but a day at most.

Burns, George

34.

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

Fieldes, Christopher

35.

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

Field, Joanna

36.

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

Dyer, Wayne

37.

To a wise man every day is a new life.

38.

Life does not happen to us, it happens from us.

Wickett, Michael

39.

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

40.

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

42.

Either these [unsaved] people are to be evangelized, or the leaven of communism and infidelity will assume such enormous proportions that it will break you in a reign of terror such as this country has never known.

Moody, Dwight L.

43.

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

Prather, Hugh

44.

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

James, William

45.

We don't beat the Grim Reaper by living longer, we beat the Reaper by living well and living fully, for the Reaper will come for all of us. The question is what do we do between the time we are born and the time he shows up. It's too late to do all the things that you're gonna kinda get around to.

Randy Pausch

46.

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

47.

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

Erickson, Lou

48.

I should have no objection to go over the same life from its beginning to the end: requesting only the advantage authors have, of correcting in a second edition the faults of the first.

Franklin, Benjamin

49.

Living, just by itself -- what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and Boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting --or he'll come along and nibble your brain.

Celine, Louis-Ferdinand

50.

We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.

Boese, Paul