Motivational Quotes

Life

The old Quaker was right: I expect to pass through life but once. If there is any kindness, or any good thing I can do to my fellow beings, let me do it now. I shall pass this way but once.

- Gannett, W. C.

Best Quotes about Life

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

Young, J. Z.

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

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

Aristotle

You really haven't changed, you've just become more of yourself. That is really what were all trying to do: become more of ourselves.

Oprah Winfrey

The person who does not know how to live while they are making a living is a poorer person after their wealth is won than when they started.

Holland, Josiah Gilbert

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Sartre, Jean-Paul

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.

Moses, Grandma

When it comes to life the critical thing is whether you take things for granted or take them with gratitude.

Chesterton, Gilbert K.

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Rogers, Carl

10.

The old Quaker was right: I expect to pass through life but once. If there is any kindness, or any good thing I can do to my fellow beings, let me do it now. I shall pass this way but once.

Gannett, W. C.

11.

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

12.

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.

Lorca, Federico Garcia

13.

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

14.

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

Havel, Vaclav

15.

I'm impressed with the people from Chicago. Hollywood is hype, New York is talk, Chicago is work.

Douglas, Michael

16.

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

17.

If I shall sell both my forenoons and afternoons to society, as most appear to do, I'm sure that, for me, there would be nothing left worth living for.

Thoreau, Henry David

18.

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act.

Truman Capote

19.

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

20.

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

21.

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

22.

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

Nouwen, Henri

23.

You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.

Baez, Joan

24.

The life of man is a journey; a journey that must be traveled, however bad the roads or the accommodation.

Goldsmith, Oliver

25.

Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.

Jordan, David Starr

26.

Life is a little gleam of time between two eternity s.

Carlyle, Thomas

27.

Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find tomorrow on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday's defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, If I had my life to live over again. Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.

Mandino, Og

28.

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

29.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: I'm with you kid. Let's go.

Angelou, Maya

30.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Camus, Albert

31.

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

Frankl, Viktor E.

32.

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

Heath, David M.

33.

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

Samuel Butler

34.

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

Dante Alighieri

35.

The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.

Calhoun, John C.

36.

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

Oprah Winfrey

37.

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

38.

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.

39.

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

Wickett, Michael

40.

The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.

Wilde, Oscar

41.

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

Russell, Bertrand

42.

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

Orben, Robert

43.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

Hayakawa, S. I.

44.

Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

45.

The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great -- and they know I know it.

Gable, Clark

46.

Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of consciousness to the end.

Woolf, Virginia

47.

Life at the top is financially rewarding, spiritually draining, physically exhausting, and short.

Newman, Peter C.

48.

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

Christopher Morley

49.

Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it.

Proverb, Indian

50.

Don't worry about your life; what you shall eat, or drink, or the clothing for your body. [Matthew 6:31]