Motivational Quotes

Life

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it.

- Canetti, Elias

Best Quotes about Life

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

Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don't do that by sitting around.

Hepburn, Katharine

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

Live poor so you can die rich.

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

Heath, David M.

There are four things every person has more of than they know; sins, debt, years, and foes.

Proverb, Persian

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

This city now doth, like a garment, wear the beauty of the morning; silent bare, ships, towers, domes, theatres and temples lie open unto the fields and to the sky; All bright and glittering in the smokeless air.

Wordsworth, William

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Cities are distinguished by the catastrophic forms they presuppose and which are a vital part of their essential charm. New York is King Kong, or the blackout, or vertical bombardment: Towering Inferno. Los Angeles is the horizontal fault, California breaking off and sliding into the Pacific: Earthquake.

Baudrillard, Jean

13.

Walk through life eager and open to self-improvement and that which is going to best help you evolve, because that's really why were here: to evolve as human beings.

Oprah Winfrey

14.

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

15.

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

Cook, Robert A.

16.

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

17.

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

Dewey, Thomas E.

18.

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.

O'Neill, Eugene

19.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Frankl, Viktor E.

20.

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

William Shakespeare

21.

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

Roosevelt, Eleanor

22.

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

23.

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

Cioran, E. M.

24.

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.

Holdcroft, Thomas L.

25.

Life is a means of extracting fiction.

Stone, Robert

26.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Elbert Hubbard

27.

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

28.

Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement.

Dimnet, Ernest

29.

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.

Osler, Sir William

30.

It's better to be an authentic loser than a false success, and to die alive than to live dead.

Markiewicz, William

31.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Child, Julia

32.

Life is hardly more than a fraction of a second. Such a little time to prepare oneself for eternity!

Gauguin, Paul

33.

Your life is what your thoughts make it.

Aurelius, Marcus

34.

The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.

Hayes, Helen

35.

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness... they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

36.

The slightest living thing answers a deeper need than all the works of man because it is transitory. It has an evanescence of life, or growth, or change: it passes, as we do, from one stage to the another, from darkness to darkness, into a distance where we, too, vanish out of sight. A work of art is static; and its value and its weakness lie in being so: but the tuft of grass and the clouds above it belong to our own travelling brotherhood.

Stark, Freya

37.

Life has taught me that it is not for our faults that we are disliked and even hated, but for our qualities.

Berenson, Bernard

38.

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

Wickett, Michael

39.

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

Dyer, Wayne

40.

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

41.

Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.

Prather, Hugh

42.

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

Hewitt, George T.

43.

Life is given for wisdom, and yet we are not wise; for goodness, and we are not good; for overcoming evil, and evil remains; for patience and sympathy and love, and yet we are fretful and hard and weak and selfish. We are keyed not to attainment, but to the struggle toward it.

Munger, Thornton T.

44.

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Tremain, Rose

45.

All things may be bought in Rome with money.

Juvenal, (Decimus Junius Juvenalis)

46.

Life may not be beautiful, but it is interesting.

Seeley, Sir John Robert

47.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

48.

Life is an exciting business, and most exciting when it is lived for others

Keller, Helen

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.

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

Dante Alighieri