Motivational Quotes

Life

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

- Coriolanus III

Best Quotes about Life

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.

Fuller, Thomas

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

Proverb, Persian

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

After reading all that has been written, and after thinking all that can be thought, on the topics of God and the soul, the man who has a right to say that he thinks at all, will find himself face to face with the conclusion that, on these topics, the most profound thought is that which can be the least easily distinguished from the most superficial sentiment.

Poe, Edgar Allan

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

Pope John XXIII

Cities, like cats, will reveal themselves at night.

Brooke, Rupert

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

Byron, Lord

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

Markiewicz, William

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.

10.

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

Temple, Sir William

11.

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

Carson, Johnny

12.

The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.

Santayana, George

13.

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

Gellert

14.

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

15.

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

Nietzsche, Friedrich

16.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Baudrillard, Jean

17.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

18.

Life is a zoo in a jungle.

Peter De Vries

19.

Our life's journey of self-discovery is not a straight-line rise from one level of consciousness to another. Instead, it is a series of steep climbs and flat plateaus, then further climbs. Even though we all approach the journey from different directions, certain of the journey's characteristics are common to all of us.

Wilde, Stuart

20.

I think we're here for each other.

Burnett, Carol

21.

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

Rubinstein, Arthur

22.

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

Young, J. Z.

23.

Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it.

Morley, Christopher

24.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Epictetus

25.

The essence of life is finding something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile.

Waitley, Denis

26.

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with astounding accuracy.

Shinn, Florence Scovel

27.

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

28.

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

Nabokov, Vladimir

29.

Life is a wilderness of twists and turns, where faith is your only compass.

Santaguida, Paul

30.

Life is a reciprocal exchange. To move forward, you have to give back.

Oprah Winfrey

31.

Life is like playing the violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Butler, Samuel

32.

Half my life is an act of revision.

Irving, John

33.

Life itself is the proper binge.

Child, Julia

34.

My art and profession is to live.

Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De

35.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

Miller, Henry

36.

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

37.

It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.

Kempis, Thomas

38.

Most people think life sucks, and then you die. Not me. I beg to differ. I think life sucks, then you get cancer, then your dog dies, your wife leaves you, the cancer goes into remission, you get a new dog, you get remarried, you owe ten million dollars in medical bills but you work hard for thirty-five years and you pay it back and then -- one day -- you have a massive stroke, your whole right side is paralyzed, you have to limp along the streets and speak out of the left side of your mouth and drool but you go into rehabilitation and regain the power to walk and the power to talk and then -- one day -- you step off a curb at Sixty-seventh Street, and BANG you get hit by a city bus and then you die. Maybe.

Leary, Denis

39.

Life marches by, I suggest you get on with it.

Baluch, Joy

40.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.

Mumford, Lewis

41.

Life is short and we have never too much time for gladdening the hearts of those who are travelling the dark journey with us. Oh be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Amiel, Henri Frederic

42.

Through this broad street, restless ever, ebbs and flows a human tide, wave on wave a living river; wealth and fashion side by side; Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.

Whittier, John Greenleaf

43.

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

Nouwen, Henri

44.

You have to do what you love to do, not get stuck in that comfort zone of a regular job. Life is not a dress rehearsal. This is it.

Basset, Lucinda

45.

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

Dante Alighieri

46.

We do not look in our great cities for our best morality.

Austen, Jane

47.

I found Rome brick, I left it marble.

Augustus, Caesar

48.

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

49.

We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn't matter so much as it seemed to do -- it's not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn't matter so much.

Lawrence, D. H.

50.

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

William Shakespeare