Motivational Quotes

Life

Young people talk of what they are doing; old people of what they have done; and fools of what they have a mind to do.

- Proverb

Best Quotes about Life

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

We will neglect our cities to our peril, for in neglecting them we neglect the nation.

Kennedy, John F.

Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirous of living more do we really live.

Gasset, Jose Ortega Y

Everybody should do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.

James, William

Prepare for death, if here at night you roam, and sign your will before you sup from home.

Johnson, Samuel

Refrain from asking what going to happen tomorrow, and everyday that fortune grants you, count as gain.

Horace

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.

Santayana, George

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

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

10.

Live for those who love me, For those who know me true, For the Heaven that smiles above me, And awaits my coming too; For the cause that lacks resistance, For the future and the distance, And the good that I can do.

11.

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

12.

Life does not consist mainly, or even largely, of facts and happenings. It consists mainly of the storm of thought that is forever flowing through one's head.

Twain, Mark

13.

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

14.

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

Field, Joanna

15.

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

Dante Alighieri

16.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

17.

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor.

Nash, Ogden

18.

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth.

Einstein, Albert

19.

The supreme irony of life is that hardly anyone gets out of it alive.

Robert Heinlein

20.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

21.

The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.

Eliot, T. S.

22.

Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

Lao-Tzu

23.

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

24.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Hume, David

25.

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

26.

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

Young, J. Z.

27.

The cloud-capp'd towers,the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare

28.

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

29.

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mode of happiness. but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed the change; happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow Up.

Morgan, Charles

30.

To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one's power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man's journey is about, I think.

Smith, Lillian

31.

Life is a campaign not a battle, and has its defeats as well as its victories.

Piatt, Don

32.

Do not take life too seriously; you will never get out of it alive.

Hubbard, Elbert

33.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems, and suffer, and understand, for all that is life.

Krishnamurti, Jiddu

34.

To a wise man every day is a new life.

35.

The faces in New York remind me of people who played a game and lost.

Kempton, Murray

36.

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

Osler, Sir William

37.

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.

William Goldman

38.

Everyone is trying to accomplish something big, not realizing that life is made up of little things.

Clark, Frank A.

39.

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

40.

The city is recruited from the country.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

41.

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

Franklin, Benjamin

42.

When I hear somebody sigh that Life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, Compared to what?

Harris, Sidney J.

43.

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

44.

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

William Shakespeare

45.

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

Oprah Winfrey

46.

Every morning I wake up saying, I'm still alive; a miracle. And so I keep on pushing.

Cousteau, Jacques

47.

When we exercise self-control on a given occasion, we win for ourselves a little credibility we can rely on the next time around. Pretty soon we develop a reputation to ourselves that we want badly to uphold. With each test that we meet, our resolve gains momentum, fueled by the fear that we may succumb and establish a damaging precedent for our own weakness.

Daniel Akst

48.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

Shaw, George Bernard

49.

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

50.

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