quotations about life
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.
WALT DISNEY
"Deeds Rather Than Words"
That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Shaw Memorial Ode"
Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.
THEODOR W. ADORNO
Minima Moralia
Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life.
STEFAN ZWEIG
The World of Yesterday
We will never recognize the true value of our own lives until we affirm the value in the life of others.
RONALD REAGAN
"Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation"
Our daily lives have a kaleidoscopic quality, a feeling of walking down a breakfast buffet and spooning out things onto your plate. And there's a lot to eat at this brunch of experience. Too many pineapple rings, too many sausages, too much syrup.
NICHOLSON BAKER
interview, Interview Magazine, September 16, 2013
Life is like checkers. When you reach the top, you can move wherever you want.
KEN ALSTAD
Savvy Sayin's
Life appears in a vast variety and innumerable succession of individual forms, since the most salient character of the universe is just that it ceaselessly gives birth to living individuals.
JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON
Man and the Cosmos: An Introduction to Metaphysics
Life is real, life should be earnest. To be enjoyed, we must have an aim, an object in life; and to be happy, to enjoy life, the object must be one worthy the highest, purest, best part of our nature.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays
Anything in life is possible if you make it happen.
JACK LALANNE
Fiscal Fitness: 8 Steps to Wealth & Health from America's Leaders of Fitness
Life is a gift horse in my opinion.
J. D. SALINGER
"Teddy"
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
Life is a journey that's constantly flowing, regardless of the number of candles that will be on your next birthday cake. For you to stay in the same place forever would mean to resist growth. And that's what we're all here to do anyway -- we're here to grow.
ELISE MOREAU
"How to Change Your Life at Any Age", Care2, September 1, 2016
Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up--and we are gone.
EDWARD YOUNG
Busiris, King of Egypt: A Tragedy
Every day is a careful balance fought between the despondency that threatens to swamp me and the incredible joy of living.
CHRIS ABANI
Kalakuta Republic
Q: Is life a dream or a meditation? A: Life is a meditation when you know it is a dream.
BABA HARI DASS
Yoga Journal, May 1977
Life is a stream
On which we strew
Petal by petal the flower of our heart.
AMY LOWELL
"Petals", A Dome of Many-coloured Glass
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
WALTER MOSLEY
Black Genius
Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.
WALTER LIPPMANN
Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest
In bowling and in life, if a person made the spares, the strikes would take care of themselves.
STEPHEN KING (as Richard Bachman)
Blaze