Motivational Quotes

Life

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

- William Shakespeare

Best Quotes about Life

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

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance -- nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city -- as one loses oneself in a forest -- that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

Benjamin, Walter

Life's splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.

Kafka, Franz

I believe that life is a journey, often difficult and sometimes incredibly cruel, but we are well equipped for it if only we tap into our talents and gifts and allow them to blossom.

Brown, Les

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

Angelou, Maya

Birth, copulation and death. That's all the facts when you come to the brass tacks.

Eliot, T. S.

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.

Blake, William

All of life is a foreign country.

Kerouac, Jack

The four stages of life are infancy, childhood, adolescence, and obsolescence.

Linkletter, Art

10.

Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality--not as we expect it to be but as it is--is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.

Buechner, Frederick

11.

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

Oprah Winfrey

12.

A large city cannot be experientially known; its life is too manifold for any individual to be able to participate in it.

Huxley, Aldous

13.

The sublimity of wisdom is to do those things living that are desired when dying.

14.

In the morning of life, work; in the mid day give council; in the evening, pray.

Proverb, German

15.

Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.

Curie, Madame Marie

16.

We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle -- even if he can afford more.

Ibuka, Massaru

17.

Live virtuously, and you cannot not die too soon, or live too long.

Russell, Lady R.

18.

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

Schuller, Robert H.

19.

The screech and mechanical uproar of the big city turns the citified head, fills citified ears -- as the song of birds, wind in the trees, animal cries, or as the voices and songs of his loved ones once filled his heart. He is sidewalk-happy.

Wright, Frank Lloyd

20.

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

21.

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.

22.

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

23.

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

Camus, Albert

24.

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.

Cabell, James Branch

25.

Only those live who do good.

Tolstoy, Count Leo

26.

This is it. There are no hidden meanings. All that mystical stuff is just what's so.

Erhard, Werner

27.

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

Byron, Lord

28.

When in Rome, do as Rome does.

Bierce, Ambrose

29.

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

Dante Alighieri

30.

Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.

Herzen, Alexander

31.

Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.

Radner, Gilda

32.

People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly

Warhol, Andy

33.

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

Cousteau, Jacques

34.

Life is too short to learn German.

Porson, R.

35.

Most of us fall short much more by omission than by commission. While the world perishes we go our way: purposeless, passionless, day after day.

Pilgrim, Peace

36.

Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.

Lehrer, Tom

37.

It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.

Herold, Don

38.

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

William Shakespeare

39.

Life is always walking up to us and saying, 'Come on in, the living's fine,' and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

Baker, Russell (Wayne)

40.

Any city however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich. These are at war with one another.

Plato

41.

Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.

May, Rollo

42.

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity.

Butler, Philip

43.

Nothing is beneath you if it is in the direction of your life.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

44.

Life's but a day at most.

Burns, George

45.

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

46.

When I consider life, it is all a cheat. Yet fooled with hope, people favor this deceit.

Dryden, John

47.

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

48.

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

49.

Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition

50.

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

Moses, Grandma