LIFE QUOTES XXIX

quotations about life

Life is as the current spark on the miner's wheel of flints;
While it spinneth, there is light; stop it, all is darkness.

MARTIN FARQUHAR TUPPER

Proverbial Philosophy

Tags: Martin Farquhar Tupper


God made life simple. It is man who complicates it.

CHARLES LINDBERGH

Reader's Digest, July 1972


Every noble life becomes a revelation of the spirit which the love and joy of mankind cannot let perish from remembrance.

AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Table Talk


Though life's tuition is always ruinous, inexorably we learn.

JOHN BARTH

The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor

Tags: John Barth


The life that is demanding to be born is limitless. Nature is a spendthrift. Look at the fish and their millions of eggs. For that matter, look at you and me. In our loins are the possibilities of millions of lives. Could we but find time and opportunity and utilize the last bit and every bit of the unborn life that is in us, we could become the fathers of nations and populate continents.

JACK LONDON

The Sea-Wolf


Life was not fair. If you wanted something you had to take it. Before someone else took it from you. Neatly dissected down to its essence, life was one long series of lily pad hoppings. The quick and the resourceful were able to adapt and survive; all others were simply crushed as a more nimble creature landed on the lily pad they had occupied for too long.

DAVID BALDACCI

The Winner

Tags: David Baldacci


Study more how to die than how to live; if you would live till you were old, live as if you were to die when you are young.

WELLINS CALCOTT

Thoughts Moral and Divine

Tags: Wellins Calcott


Philosophers wrestling with the big questions of life are no longer alone. Now scientists are struggling to define life as they manipulate it, look for it on other planets, and even create it in test tubes.

SETH BORENSTEIN

USA Today, Aug. 19, 2007

Tags: Seth Borenstein


Life is sad
Life is a bust
All ya can do is do what you must

BOB DYLAN

"Buckets of Rain"

Tags: Bob Dylan


Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life.

SENECA

Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales


Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.

FRANK HERBERT

Chapterhouse: Dune


To keep from dying is not the same as "to live."

BRIAN HERBERT & KEVIN J. ANDERSON

Dune: House Harkonnen

Tags: Brian Herbert


If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death
Perhaps the world can teach us
as when everything seems dead
but later proves to be alive.

PABLO NERUDA

Extravagaria

Tags: Pablo Neruda


Life was a sorrowful throb of this Matter teaching it anguish,
Teaching it hope and desire trod out too soon in the mire,
Life the frail joy that regrets its briefness, life the long sorrow.

SRI AUROBINDO

Gems from Sri Aurobindo

Tags: Sri Aurobindo


Life is but sighs; and, when they cease, 'tis over.

WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR

Imaginary Conversations

Tags: Walter Savage Landor


I count life just a stuff
To try the soul's strength on.

ROBERT BROWNING

In a Balcony

Tags: Robert Browning


I am a spectator, so to speak, of the molecular whirlwind which men call individual life; I am conscious of an incessant metamorphosis, an irresistible movement of existence, which is going on within me -- and this phenomenology of myself serves as a window opened upon the mystery of the world.

HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

introduction, Journal Intime

Tags: Henri Frederic Amiel


Weakest and strongest of the things that God has made, Life is the heir of Death, and yet his conqueror--victim at once and victor. All living things succumb to Death's cradle; Life smiles at his impotence, and makes the grave her cradle.

JAMES HINTON

Life in Nature


You sit
Like a rain puddle in hell
Knitting the socks
Of your life.

CHARLES SIMIC

My Noiseless Entourage

Tags: Charles Simic


It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.

ANNE LAMOTT

Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith