Motivational Quotes

Life

Life is raw material. We are artisans. We can sculpt our existence into something beautiful, or debase it into ugliness. It's in our hands.

- Better, Cathy

Best Quotes about Life

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

Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

Life -- No, I've nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.

Forster, Edward M.

Half my life is an act of revision.

Irving, John

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

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

Coriolanus III

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.

Caesar, Sid

Make your life a happy one. That is where success is possible to every man.

Powell, Robert

10.

Life begins when you get out of the grandstand into the game.

Debevoise, P. L.

11.

Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.

Proverb, French

12.

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

13.

If you seek, how is that different from pursuing sound and form? If you don't seek, how are you different from earth, wood, or stone? You must seek without seeking.

Fo-Yan

14.

The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears -- as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

15.

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

16.

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

17.

The good life is one inspired by life and guided by knowledge.

Russell, Bertrand

18.

See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.

Pope John XXIII

19.

Dance like no one is watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like no one is listening, Live like it's heaven on earth.

Purkey, William

20.

Most of us fall short much more by omission than by commission. While the world perishes we go our way: purposeless, passionless, day after day.

Pilgrim, Peace

21.

First I was dying to finish high-school and start college. Then I was dying to finish college and start working. Next, I was dying for my children to grow old enough for school, so I could return to work. Finally, I was dying to retire. And now, I am dying

22.

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

23.

Life is at its best when it's shaken and stirred.

Facult, F. Paul

24.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

25.

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

Augustine, St.

26.

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Mumford, Lewis

27.

Life too near paralyses art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

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

29.

Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears.

Camus, Albert

30.

The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live --moreover, the only one.

Cioran, E. M.

31.

The city as a center where, any day in any year, there may be a fresh encounter with a new talent, a keen mind or a gifted specialist -- this is essential to the life of a country. To play this role in our lives a city must have a soul -- a university, a great art or music school, a cathedral or a great mosque or temple, a great laboratory or scientific center, as well as the libraries and museums and galleries that bring past and present together. A city must be a place where groups of women and men are seeking and developing the highest things they know.

Mead, Margaret

32.

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

Mansfield, Katherine

33.

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

Dante Alighieri

34.

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

Rexford, Eben Eugene

35.

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

36.

Not by gain our life is measured, But by what we've lost 'Tis scored; 'Tis not how much wine is drunken But how much has been outpoured. For the strength of love never standeth In the sacrifice we bear; He who has the greatest suffering Ever has the most to share.

Nee, Watchman

37.

Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition

38.

Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one.

Nabokov, Vladimir

39.

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

40.

It's not how long life is but the quality of our life that is important.

Dawson, Roger

41.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Elbert Hubbard

42.

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

Tacitus, Publius Cornelius

43.

Nothing can be meaner than the anxiety to live on, to live on anyhow and in any shape; a spirit with any honor is not willing to live except in its own way, and a spirit with any wisdom is not over-eager to live at all.

Santayana, George

44.

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)

45.

The art of living lies not in eliminating but in growing with troubles.

Baruch, Bernard M.

46.

Taken in any context, except seriously, life on earth is palatable and positively enjoyable.

47.

The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning -- in other words, of absurdity --the more energetically meaning is sought.

Havel, Vaclav

48.

Life is but a game and we are the playthings of the gods.

49.

He lives who dies to win a lasting name.

Drummond, Henry

50.

The catalogue of forms is endless: until every shape has found its city, new cities will continue to be born. When the forms exhaust their variety and come apart, the end of cities begins.

Calvino, Italo