Motivational Quotes

Life

In real life, however, you don't react to what someone did; you react only to what you think she did, and the gap between action and perception is bridged by the art of impression management. If life itself is but what you deem it, then why not focus your efforts on persuading others to believe that you are a virtuous and trustworthy cooperator?

- Jonathan Haidt

Best Quotes about Life

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

Kierkegaard, S°ren

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

Dimnet, Ernest

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

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

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

Pope John XXIII

May God bless you to live as long as you want to; and want to as long as you live!

Proverb, Scottish

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

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

Havel, Vaclav

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

Wickett, Michael

Everywhere one seeks to produce meaning, to make the world signify, to render it visible. We are not, however, in danger of lacking meaning; quite the contrary, we are gorged with meaning and it is killing us.

Baudrillard, Jean

10.

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

11.

Life is a series of little deaths out of which life always returns.

Feidelson, Charles

12.

In place of a world, there is a city, a point, in which the whole life of broad regions is collecting while the rest dries up. In place of a type-true people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman.

Spengler, Oswald

13.

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.

Holmes Jr., Oliver Wendell

14.

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

Field, Joanna

15.

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

16.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Disraeli, Benjamin

17.

To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life -- bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.

Pilgrim, Peace

18.

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

Truman Capote

19.

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late

Franklin, Benjamin

20.

Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at stars.

Dyke, Henry Van

21.

To live is to go on a journey; to die is to come back home.

22.

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

Cook, Robert A.

23.

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

Walpole, Horace

24.

Life is difficult and complicated and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

J.K. Rowling

25.

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

Cioran, E. M.

26.

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

27.

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare

28.

Life is a thing that mutates without warning, not always in enviable ways. All part of the improbable adventure of being alive, of being a brainy biped with giant dreams on a crazy blue planet.

Diane Ackerman

29.

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

30.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

Elbert Hubbard

31.

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

32.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

Michelangelo

33.

What should I say about life? That it's long and abhors transparence.

Brodsky, Joseph

34.

Life is full of surprises and and serendipity. Being open to unexpected turns in the road is an important part of success. If you try to plan every step, you may miss those wonderful twists and turns. Just find your next adventure-do it well, enjoy it-and then, not now, think about what comes next.

Condoleeza Rice

35.

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Miller, Henry

36.

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

Fieldes, Christopher

37.

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

Kempis, Thomas

38.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Camus, Albert

39.

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