Quotes about: life

It seems to me that people have vast potential. Most people can do extraordinary things if they have the confidence or take the risks. Yet most people don't. They sit in front of the telly and treat life as if it goes on forever.
– Philip Adams
Only when man's life comes to its end in prosperity can one call that man happy.
– Aeschylus
In the middle of the journey of our life I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost.
– Dante Alighieri
The experience of this sweet life.
L'esperienza de questa dolce vita.
– Dante Alighieri
Everyone needs a strong sense of self. It is our base of operations for everything that we do in life.
– Julia T. Alvarez
Hope is only the love of life.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
Truth is the secret of eloquence and of virtue, the basis of moral authority; it is the highest summit of art and life.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
Life is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.
– Wally 'Famous' Amos
Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.
– Hans Christian Andersen
Every man's life is a fairy-tale written by God's fingers.
– Hans Christian Andersen
Be alert to give service. What counts a great deal in life is what we do for others.
– Anonymous
Remember this-that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Very little is needed to make a happy life.
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
You will find rest from vain fancies if you perform every act in life as though it were your last.
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
He is the better equipped for life. As for swimming, who has the less to carry.
– Apuleius
In the arena of human life the honours and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities.
– Aristotle
What we play is life.
– Louis Armstrong
Youth would be an ideal state if it came a little later in life.
– Herbert Henry Asquith
After you've been in a place for a while, everything starts to look... I won't say better, there's no need to go to extremes...but your everyday life does start to become...familiar.
– David Assael
If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.
– John Atkinson
Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
– John Barth
Life is too short for traffic.
– Dan Bellack
I had learnt to seek intensity…more of life, a concentrated sense of life.
– Nina Berberova
Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
– Sarah Bernhardt
Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life.
– Bible
If there was strife and contention in the home, very little else in life could compensate for it.
– Lawana Blackwell
Patterning your life around other's opinions is nothing more than slavery.
– Lawana Blackwell
The truth is that all of us attain the greatest success and happiness possible in this life whenever we use our native capacities to their greatest extent.
– Dr. Smiley Blanton
All that counts in life is intention.
– Andrea Bocelli
One must not lose desires. They are mighty stimulants to creativeness, to love, and to long life.
– Alexander A. Bogomoletz
If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm.
– Elizabeth Bowen
Wonder is what sets us apart from other life forms. No other species wonders about the meaning of existence or the complexity of the universe or themselves.
– Herbert W. Boyer
Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life.
– Bertolt Brecht
Sometimes when you look back on a situation, you realize it wasn't all you thought it was. A beautiful girl walked into your life. You fell in love. Or did you? Maybe it was only a childish infatuation, or maybe just a brief moment of vanity.
– Henry Bromel
We all carry around so much pain in our hearts. Love and pain and beauty. They all seem to go together like one little tidy confusing package. It's a messy business, life. It's hard to figure--full of surprises. Some good. Some bad.
– Henry Bromel
Use your imagination not to scare yourself to death but to inspire yourself to life.
– Adele Brookman
But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?
– Lois McMaster Bujold
What a mistake to suppose that the passions are strongest in youth! The passions are not stronger, but the control over them is weaker! They are more easily excited, they are more violent and apparent; but they have less energy, less durability, less intense and concentrated power than in the maturer life.
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton
If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection. It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest is in and the perennials are gone. Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before.
– Mitchell Burgess
Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life.
– Dr. David M. Burns
I have a hundred times wished that one could resign life as an officer resigns a commission.
– Robert Burns
Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.
– Amelia Burr
The lesson which life repeats and constantly enforces is 'look under foot.' You are always nearer the divine and the true sources of your power than you think.
– John Burroughs
The very idea of a bird is a symbol and a suggestion to the poet. A bird seems to be at the top of the scale, so vehement and intense his life. . . . The beautiful vagabonds, endowed with every grace, masters of all climes, and knowing no bounds -- how many human aspirations are realised in their free, holiday-lives -- and how many suggestions to the poet in their flight and song!
– John Burroughs
As Americans, we want peace -- we work and sacrifice for peace. But there can be no peace if our security depends on the will and whims of a ruthless and aggressive dictator. I'm not willing to stake one American life on trusting Saddam Hussein.
– George W. Bush
We know that dictators are quick to choose aggression, while free nations strive to resolve differences in peace. We know that oppressive governments support terror, while free governments fight the terrorists in their midst. We know that free peoples embrace progress and life, instead of becoming the recruits for murderous ideologies.
– George W. Bush
I consider being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill.
– Samuel Butler
Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.
– Samuel Butler
Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.
– James F. Byrnes
If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
– Albert Camus
Slow down and enjoy life. It's not only the scenery you miss by going too fast - you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.
– Eddie Cantor
Welcome to the human race. Nobody controls his own life, Ender. The best you can do is choose to be controlled by good people, by people who love you.
– Orson Scott Card
So if it seems that some of what I'll have to say in the pages to come doesn't reflect the mellowing of age, that's only because I've never found that life and memories respond to time the way that tobacco does.
– Caleb Carr
As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life - so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.
– M. Cartmill
I am an old man, but in many senses a very young man. And this is what I want you to be, young, young all your life.
– Pable Casals
She used to drag her mattress besider her low window and lie awake for a long while, vibrating with excitement, as a machine vibrates from speed. Life rushed in upon her through that window - or so it seemed. In reality, of course, life rushes from within, not from without. There is no work of art so big or so beautiful that is was not once all contained in some youthful body, like this one which lay on the floor in the moonlight, pulsing with ardor and anticipation.
– Willa Cather
We cannot control the evil tongues of others; but a good life enables us to disregard them.
– Cato the Elder
If grass can grow through cement, love can find you at every time in your life.
– Cher
Anything that is of value in life only multiplies when it is given.
– Deepak Chopra
I have enjoyed greatly the second blooming that comes when you finish the life of the emotions and of personal relations; and suddenly find - at the age of fifty, say - that a whole new life has opened before you, filled with things you can think about, study, or read about...It is as if a fresh sap of ideas and thoughts was rising in you.
– Agatha Christie
It is necessary to try to surpass oneself always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.
– Queen Christina
A happy life consists in tranquillity of mind.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
A life of peace, purity, and refinement leads to a calm and untroubled old age.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
Our span of life is brief, but is long enough for us to live well and honestly.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity.
– Marcus Tullius Cicero
Turbulence is life force. It is opportunity. Let's love turbulence and use it for change.
– Ramsey Clark
In all the affairs of life, social as well as political, courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest to the grateful and appreciating heart.
– Henry Clay
Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes if you have not time properly to attend to pecuniary [monetary] matters. Want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of science and of genius itself.
– William Cobbett
The actual tragedies of life bear no relation to one's preconceived ideas. In the event, one is always bewildered by their simplicity, their grandeur of design, and by that element of the bizzare which seems inherent in them.
– Jean Cocteau
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
– Marquis de Condorcet
If a man withdraws his mind from the love of beauty, and applies it as sincerely to the love of the virtuous; if, in serving his parents, he can exert his utmost strength; if, in serving his prince, he can devote his life; if in his intercourse with his friends, his words are sincere - although men say that he has not learned, I will certainly say that he has.
– Confucius
The man who in view of gain thinks of righteousness; who in the view of danger is prepared to give up his life; and who does not forget an old agreement however far back it extends - such a man may be reckoned a complete man.
– Confucius
While you are not able to serve men, how can you serve spirits [of the dead]?...While you do not know life, how can you know about death?
– Confucius
I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may - light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.
– John Constable
The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence for any other life forms, and in forty years of searching, none has been discovered. There is absolutely no evidentiary reason to maintain this belief.
– Michael Crichton
I think wholeness comes from living your life consciously during the day and then exploring your inner life or unconscious at night.
– Margery Cuyler
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness.
– Robertson Davies
A happy childhood has spoiled many a promising life.
– Robertson Davies
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given the chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy. As everyone else, I love to dunk my crust in it. But alone, it is not a diet designed to keep body and soul together.
– Bette Davis
Life is a zoo in a jungle.
– Peter De Vries
Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self respect springs.
– Joan Didion
As a general rule the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forgo an advantage.
– Benjamin Disraeli
Dedicate some of your life to others. Your dedication will not be a sacrifice. It will be an exhilarating experience because it is an intense effort applied toward a meaningful end.
– Dr. Thomas Dooley
The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.
– Fyodor Dostoevsky
The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think.
– William O. Douglas
It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books which are your very own.
– Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Believe in life! Always human beings will live and progress to greater, broader and fuller life.
– W. E. B. Du Bois
It is amazing how much crisper the general experience of life becomes when your body is given a chance to develop a little strength.
– Frank Duff
Give not over thy soul to sorrow; and afflict not thyself in thy own counsel. Gladness of heart is the life of man and the joyfulness of man is length of days.
– Ecclesiastes
The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. The trite subjects of human efforts, possessions, outward success, luxury have always seemed to me contemptible.
– Albert Einstein
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
– Albert Einstein
We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.
– Dwight D. Eisenhower
I think I should have no other mortal wants, if I could always have plenty of music. It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am filled with music.
– George Eliot
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
– George Eliot
Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness.
– George Eliot
Make yourself necessary to somebody. Do not make life hard to any.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
Our chief want in life is somebody who shall make us do what we can.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
The bitterest tragic element in life to be derived from an intellectual source is the belief in a brute Fate or Destiny.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
A man builds a fine house; and now he has a master, and a task for life; he is to furnish, watch, show it, and keep it in repair, the rest of his days.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson