Quotes about: life

Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.
– Theodore Roosevelt
Never throughout history has a man who lived a life of ease left a name worth remembering.
– Theodore Roosevelt
No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his well-being, to risk his body, to risk his life, in a great cause.
– Theodore Roosevelt
The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.
– Theodore Roosevelt
I cannot and do not live in the world of discretion, not as a writer, anyway. I would prefer to, I assure you - it would make life easier. But discretion is, unfortunately, not for novelists.
– Philip Roth
For me, acting's just great fun. A lot more fun than making sculptures, so that's what I wanted to do. It wasn't any great calling-maybe years later, when I'm 60 or whatever, I'll pretend it was, who knows?! But acting is just the most fun I could ever possibly have in my life... and it still is.
– Tim Roth
There is less pressure as a character actor. It generally means that you will be acting for all of your life, which is my intention. It is not my intention to just be a rich and famous person, that would be pretty boring.
– Tim Roth
Every man has a right to risk his own life for the preservation of it.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Reading, solitude, idleness, a soft and sedentary life, intercourse with women and young people, these are perilous paths for a young man, and these lead him constantly into danger.
– Jean Jacques Rousseau
Before marriage, a man will lay down his life for you; after marriage he won't even lay down his newspaper.
– Helen Rowland
Life begins at 40 - but so do fallen arches, rheumatism, faulty eyesight, and the tendency to tell a story to the same person, three or four times.
– Helen Rowland
The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn't commit when he had the opportunity.
– Helen Rowland
The hardest task in a girl's life is to prove to a man that his intentions are serious.
– Helen Rowland
Osama bin Laden and George Bush are both terrorists. They are both building international networks that perpetrate terror and devastate people's life. Bush, with the Pentagon, the WTO, the IMF, and the World Bank. Bin Laden with Al Qaeda. The difference is that nobody elected bin Laden.
– Arundhati Roy
People are so isolated, and so alone, and so suspicious, and so competitive with each other, and so sure that they are about to be conned by their neighbor, or by their mother, or by their sister, or their grandmother. What's the use of having fifty percent of the world's wealth, or whatever it is that you have, if you're going to live this pathetic, terrified life?
– Arundhati Roy
I know black women in Tennessee who have worked all their lives, from the time they were twelve years old to the day they died. These women don't listen to the women's liberation rhetoric because they know that it's nothing but a bunch of white women who had certain life-styles and who want to change those life-styles.
– Wilma Rudolph
Winning is great, sure, but if you are really going to do something in life, the secret is learning how to lose. Nobody goes undefeated all the time. If you can pick up after a crushing defeat, and go on to win again, you are going to be a champion someday.
– Wilma Rudolph
However confused the scene of our life appears, however torn we may be who now do face that scene, it can be faced, and we can go on to be whole.
– Muriel Rukeyser
If we don't bear witness as citizens, as people, as individuals, the right that we have had to life is sacrificed. There is a silence, instead of a speaking presence.
– Jane Rule
My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.
– Jane Rule
Enjoy your time in public service. It may well be one of the most interesting and challenging times of your life.
– Donald H. Rumsfeld
Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself.
– Salman Rushdie
Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
– Salman Rushdie
Let every dawn be to you as the beginning of life, and every setting sun be to you as its close.
– John Ruskin
There is no wealth but life.
– John Ruskin
Whether for life or death, do your own work well.
– John Ruskin
A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
– Bertrand Russell
That which exists through itself is called The Eternal. The Eternal has neither name nor shape. It is the one essence, the one primal spirit. Essence and life cannot be seen. They are contained in the light of heaven. The light of heaven cannot be seen. It is contained in the two eyes.
– Bertrand Russell
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
– Bertrand Russell
The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
– David Russell
Flops are a part of life's menu and I've never been a girl to miss out on any of the courses.
– Rosalind Russell
Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death.
– Rosalind Russell
My life is a series of things that just happen.
– Harold Russell
Any relations in a social order will endure, if there is infused into them some of that spirit of human sympathy which qualifies life for immortality.
– George William Russell
When steam first began to pump and wheels go round at so many revolutions per minute, what are called business habits were intended to make the life of man run in harmony with the steam engine, and his movement rival the train in punctuality.
– George William Russell
Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, rehearses life's own fragmentation. More even than the novel, it embraces the contingency of things.
– Jonathan Raban
Thing is, it's very easy to be righteous from a distance. It's his life. It's not my business to say what is wrong or right.
– Daniel Radcliffe
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.
– Gilda Radner
An easy-going husband is the one indispensable comfort of life.
– Marie Louise De La Ramee
I'm not the type to sit on the porch and watch life go by.
– Sally Rand
Art is life's dream interpretation.
– Otto Rank
All life demands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish, and insensitive to the real values of life. The very striving and hard work that we so constantly try to avoid is the major building block in the person we are today.
– Ralph Ransom
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.
– Ralph Ransom
A news sense is really a sense of what is important, what is vital, what has color and life - what people are interested in. That's journalism.
– Burton Rascoe
Life is a tide; float on it. Go down with it and go up with it, but be detached. Then it is not difficult.
– Prem Rawal
This life that has been given to us as a gift, as such a precious gift. To really try to understand it, really try to recognize it, is the greatest meditation. Through the media of this Knowledge we can tap into our inner sources that are so beautiful.
– Prem Rawal
A woman has got to love a bad man once or twice in her life, to be thankful for a good one.
– Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Life's challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they're supposed to help you discover who you are.
– Bernice Johnson Reagon
I have two ambitions in life: one is to drink every pub dry, the other is to sleep with every woman on earth.
– Oliver Reed
Honest pioneer work in the field of science has always been, and will continue to be, life's pilot. On all sides, life is surrounded by hostility. This puts us under an obligation.
– Wilhelm Reich
Actually, I only have a few friends in real life. And when I say friends, I'm referring to those people who I've known since the 1960s.
– Jean Reno
A director makes only one movie in his life. Then he breaks it into pieces and makes it again.
– Jean Renoir
Remember that you are an Englishman, and have consequently won first prize in the lottery of life.
– Cecil Rhodes
My craziest ideas come from cartoons. I approach music by taking that cartoon extreme and the real life extreme and finding somewhere in the middle. The animated element lures people in, but the real-life substance puts the nail in the coffin.
– Busta Rhymes
My dream role would probably be a psycho killer, because the whole thing I love about movies is that you get to do things you could never do in real life, and that would be my way of vicariously experiencing being a psycho killer. Also, it's incredibly romantic.
– Christina Ricci
For me life is a challenge. And it will be a challenge if I live to be 100 or if I get to be a trillionaire.
– Beah Richards
Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? It is a frightening and sacred moment. There is no return. One's life is charged forever. It is the fire that gives us our shape.
– Mary Caroline Richards
To have character is to be big enough to take life on.
– Mary Caroline Richards
I've just gone through so much in my life that pulling my top up just doesn't seem like that big a deal.
– Nicole Richie
It's the safety valve of middle life, and the solace of age.
– Mary Roberts Rinehart
I don't really believe in regret. I think you can always learn from the past, but I wouldn't want a different life.
– Molly Ringwald
Living with the immediacy of death helps you sort out your priorities in life. It helps you to live a less trivial life.
– Sogyal Rinpoche
In some ways, her life is so much worse that everybody else's, people feel almost cheered up and inspired. They feel like, 'If Hayley hasn't killed herself, why should I?'
– Kelly Ripa
I love the market, it is my work, my play and my life.
– Rene Rivkin
Any man who selects a goal in life which can be fully acheived has already defined his own limitations.
– Cavett Robert
If today I had a young mind to direct, to start on the journey of life, and I was faced with the duty of choosing between the natural way of my forefathers and that of the present way of civilization, I would, for its welfare, unhesitatingly set that child's feet in the path of my forefathers. I would raise him to be an Indian!
– Zack de la Rocha
A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away.
– Gene Roddenberry
The only way to enjoy anything in this life is to earn it first.
– Ginger Rogers
My approach to life can't be summed up in a pithy quote, and if yours can, you're in trouble.
– Mark Rogers
Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.
– Henry Rollins
If anything characterizes the cultural life of the seventies in America, it is an insistence on preventing failures of communication.
– Richard Rosen
Does art reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form, films have been a mirror held up to society's porous face.
– Marjorie Rosen
I will not leave a corner of my consciousness covered up, but saturate myself with the strange and extraordinary new conditions of this life, and it will all refine itself into poetry later on.
– Isaac Rosenberg
Homer: Oh, I'll never drink another beer in my life.Vendor: BEER HERE! I GOT BEER!Homer: OOH, I'll take ten!
– Patrick Rossiter
For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.
– Georges Rouault
I had a very bad year in my life. My mother died in February. I was 16 in April and graduated from high school that June. My father died in August and the mortgage was foreclosed in October. I can remember thinking, This is tough, but this is good for me. It's always stuck with me. I knew somehow that I was going through a period that was strengthening.
– James Rouse
In order to set forth the goodness of God towards myself, I have thought it prudent to record some of the leading incidents of my life, as a means of setting forth to my children that He is a rewarder of them who diligently seek Him.
– William Rowley
I'm really keen to go back and do some theatre, but I can't afford to at the moment because we're getting married in September. And then I'm hoping to direct a film at the end of this year, and that means a year of your life without pay.
– Richard Roxburgh
I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle.
– Arthur Rubinstein
Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.
– Arthur Rubinstein
We need to feel the cheer and inspiration of meeting each other, we need to gain the courage and fresh life that comes from the mingling of congenial souls, of those working for the same ends.
– Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin
Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
– Don Miguel Ruiz
Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.
– Don Miguel Ruiz
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
– Rumi
I always had a fantasy of being a chef, because I like kitchen life.
– Geoffrey Rush
The need for some venture of faith still remains; one must stake one's life upon something.
– Henry Norris Russell
Time to open up a new chapter in life, and to explore a larger centre.
– Lillian Russell
There is always a multitude of reasons both in favor of doing a thing and against doing it. The art of debate lies in presenting them; the art of life lies in neglecting ninety-nine hundredths of them.
– Mark Rutherford
Alas, we but chase feathers flying in the air, and tire our own spirits, for the froth and over-gilded clay of a dying life. One sight of what my Lord hath let me see within this short time, is worth a world of worlds.
– Samuel Rutherford
Think it not hard if you get not your will, nor your delights in this life; God will have you to rejoice in nothing but himself.
– Samuel Rutherford
What we don't talk about enough is Ohio's unique and remarkable quality of life. We are a state of cities, small towns and growing suburbs where life is affordable and destinations within reach. There is no better place to raise a family.
– Bob Taft
Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
– Rabindranath Tagore
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
– Rabindranath Tagore
For me, I hope to continue to the end, my struggle and life, to see a democratic, federative, united, prosperous Iraq, that Iraqi people will live in peace and prosperity, and Iraq will use its huge wealth for the benefit of the Iraqi people.
– Jalal Talabani
Life. People. Before, I used to take everything at face value. Because, when I say something, I mean it... so I used to feel that everybody else meant what they said. But of course that wasn't true. And life isn't that sweet and simple.
– Sharon Tate
My whole life has been decided by fate.
– Sharon Tate
The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.
– Jeremy Taylor
Life has loveliness to sell, all beautiful and splendid things, blue waves whitened on a cliff, soaring fire that sways and sings, and children's faces looking up, holding wonder like a cup.
– Sara Teasdale
Life is a frail moth flyingCaught in the web of the years that pass.
– Sara Teasdale
Life is but thought.
– Sara Teasdale