Quotes about: life

Bear in mind that you should conduct yourself in life as at a feast.
– Epictetus
You can't do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
– Evan Esar
The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.
– Euripides
There is one thing alone
that stands the brunt of life throughout its course:
a quiet conscience.
– Euripides
Eliminate something superfluous from your life. Break a habit. Do something that makes you feel insecure.
– Piero Ferrucci
I've never struck a woman in my life, not even my own mother.
– W. C. Fields
Death hath so many doors to let out life.
– John Fletcher
If I have learnt anything, it is that life forms no logical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?
– Margot Fonteyn
Life is consciousness.
– Emmet Fox
The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.
– Anatole France
If you wouldst live long, live well, for folly and wickedness shorten life.
– Benjamin Franklin
To lengthen thy life, lessen thy meals.
– Benjamin Franklin
What is it about genus arboretum that socks us in the figurative solar plexus? We see a logging truck go cruising down the road, stacked with a bunch of those fresh-cut giants, we feel like we lost a brother. Next thing you know, we're in The Brick, we're flopping money down on the bar. Wood. We're under a roof. Wood. We're walking the floors. Wood. Grabbing a pool cue. That's wood. Our friends in the forest carry a set of luggage from the mythical baggage carousel. Tree of life, tree of knowledge, family tree, Buddha's Bodhi tree. Page one of life, in the beginning. Genesis 3:22. Adam and Eve. They're kicking back in the garden of Eden and boom, they get an eviction notice. Why is that? Lest they should also take of the tree of life, eat and live forever. A definitive Yahweh no-no. Be good to yourself, go out and plant a wet one on a tree.
– Diane Frolov and Robin Green
He's turned his life around. He used to be depressed and miserable. Now he's miserable and depressed.
– David Frost
Life is a risk.
– Diane Von Furstenberg
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
– Paul Gauguin
I am convinced that life in a physical body is meant to be an ecstatic experience.
– Shakti Gawain
When I'm trusting and being myself... everything in my life reflects this by falling into place easily, often miraculously.
– Shakti Gawain
Make your life a mission - not an intermission.
– Arnold H. Glasgow
Is there life before death?
– Graffito
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
– Martha Graham
Sex should be wild. Unfettered and free. We're animals, aren't we? And, basically, we're all wolves in sheep's fur. I always wanted more. Not frequency, I am not talking about frequency; although that would have been great, too. I wanted more intensity. I wanted to be out there, outside myself, outside my skin. I wanted sex to be like robbing life out of the jaws of death!
– Robin Green
Doubt 'til thou canst doubt no more...doubt is thought and thought is life. Systems which end doubt are devices for drugging thought.
– Albert Guerard
Unless a life is activated by sustained purpose it can become a depressingly haphazard affair.
– Richard Guggenheimer
Please write again soon. Though my own life is filled with activity, letters encourage momentary escape into others lives and I come back to my own with greater contentment.
– Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
Time is a cruel thief to rob us of our former selves. We lose as much to life as we do to death.
– Elizabeth Forsythe Hailey
Because you are in control of your life. Don't ever forget that. You are what you are because of the conscious and subconscious choices you have made.
– Barbara Hall
You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act.
– Barbara Hall
Life only demands from you the strength you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away.
– Dag Hammarskjold
Every day we do things, we are things that have to do with peace. If we are aware of our life..., our way of looking at things, we will know how to make peace right in the moment, we are alive.
– Thich Nhat Hanh
It is only by following your deepest instinct that you can lead a rich life, and if you let your fear of consequence prevent you from following your deepest instinct, then your life will be safe, expedient and thin.
– Katharine Butler Hathaway
Laughing at our mistakes can lengthen our own life. Laughing at someone else's can shorten it.
– Cullen Hightower
I do believe it is possible to create, even without ever writing a word or painting a picture, by simply molding one's inner life. And that too is a deed.
– Etty Hillesum
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.
– Oliver Wendell Holmes
Miserable mortals who, like leaves, at one moment flame with life, eating the produce of the land, and at another moment weakly perish.
– Homer
Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books.
– Bell Hooks
Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realisation in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer's high privilege.
– Herbert Hoover
Remember when life's path is steep to keep your mind even.
– Horace
Don't take life too seriously. You'll never get out of it alive.
– Elbert Hubbard
He who every morning plans the transaction of the day and follows out that plan, carries a thread that will guide him through the maze of the most busy life. But where no plan is laid, where the disposal of time is surrendered merely to the chance of incidence, chaos will soon reign.
– Victor Hugo
I am more and more convinced that our happiness or unhappiness depends far more on the way we meet the events of life, than on the nature of those events themselves.
– Wilhelm von Humboldt
Custom is the great guide of human life.
– David Hume
Get pleasure out of life...as much as you can. Nobody ever died from pleasure.
– Sol Hurok
Cats and monkeys; monkeys and cats; all human life is there.
– Henry James
Live all you can - it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that, what have you had?
– Henry James
There are women who are for all your 'times of life.' They're the most wonderful sort.
– Henry James
Thanks to his constant habit of shaking the bottle in which life handed him the wine of experience, he presently found the taste of the lees rising as usual into his draught.
– Henry James
The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.
– William James
The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
– William James
The stream of thought flows on; but most of its segments fall into the bottomless abyss of oblivion. Of some, no memory survives the instant of their passage. Of others, it is confined to a few moments, hours or days. Others, again, leave vestiges which are indestructible, and by means of which they may be recalled as long as life endures.
– William James
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
– Storm Jameson
Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life: if it has been honest and dutiful to society the religion which has regulated it cannot be a bad one.
– Thomas Jefferson
It is not growing like a tree
in bulk doth make man better be;
Or standing long an oak, three hundred year,
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sere,
A lily of a day
is fairer in May
Although it fall and die that night,
It was the plant of flower and light,
In small proportions we just beauties see;
And in short measures, life may perfect be.
– Benjamin Johnson
Such is the common process of marriage. A youth and maiden exchange meeting by chance, or brought together by artifice, exchange glances, reciprocate civilities, go home, and dream of one another. Having little to divert attention, or diversify thought, they find themselves uneasy when they are apart, and therefore conclude that they shall be happy together. They marry, and discover what nothing but voluntary blindness had before concealed; they wear out life in altercations, and charge nature with cruelty.
– Samuel Johnson
I don't believe in guilt, I believe in living on impulse as long as you never intentionally hurt another person, and don't judge people in your life. I think you should live completely free.
– Angelina Jolie
If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.
– Angelina Jolie
Take your life in your own hands and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.
– Erica Jong
A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.
– Erica Jong
Be life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for.
– David Starr Jordan
Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.
– Carl Gustav Jung
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.
– Carl Gustav Jung
The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.
– Carl Gustav Jung
One path alone leads to a life of peace: The path of virtue.
– Juvenal
Count it the greatest sin to prefer life to honor, and for the sake of living to lose what makes life worth having.
– Juvenal
The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
– Okakura Kakuzo
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
– Garrison Keillor
We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
– Charles Kingsley
I've arrived at this outermost edge of my life by my own actions. Where I am is thoroughly unacceptable. Therefore, I must stop doing what I've been doing.
– Alice Koller
There are two ways to slide easily through life; to believe everything or to doubt everything. Both ways save us from thinking.
– Alfred Korzybski
A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one's life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.
– Louis L'Amour
A life lived in chaos is an impossibility...
– Madeleine L'Engle
In human life, art may arise from almost any activity, and once it does so, it is launched on a long road of exploration, invention, freedom to the limits of extravagance, interference to the point of frustration, finally discipline, controlling constant change and growth.
– Susanne K. Langer
It is a fine thing to establish one's own religion in one's heart, not to be dependent on tradition and second-hand ideals. Life will seem to you, later, not a lesser, but a greater thing.
– David Herbert Lawrence
I detest life-insurance agents; they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.
– Stephen B. Leacock
Life is something that happens when you can't get to sleep.
– Fran Lebowitz
People find life entirely too time-consuming.
– Stanislaw J. Lec
Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
– John Lennon
An exile's life is no life.
– Leonidas of Tarentum
Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television.
– David Letterman
A simple enough pleasure, surely, to have breakfast alone with one's husband, but how seldom married people in the midst of life achieve it.
– Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Actions have consequences...first rule of life. And the second rule is this - you are the only one responsible for your own actions.
– Holly Lisle
To say the least, a town life makes one more tolerant and liberal in one's judgement of others.
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
At the worst, a house unkept cannot be so distressing as a life unlived.
– Dame Rose Macaulay
Do not rely completely on any other human being, however dear. We meet all life's greatest tests alone.
– Agnes Macphail
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet: and, amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog, has made an alliance with us.
– Maurice Maeterlinck
Age is…wisdom, if one has lived one's life properly.
– Miriam Makeba
A college degree is not a sign that one is a finished product but an indication a person is prepared for life.
– Reverend Edward A. Malloy
The most important thing in life is to see to it that you are never beaten.
– Andre Malraux
Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster. Your life will never be the same again.
– Og Mandino
By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with... the earth and the wonders thereof - the sea - the sun.
– Katherine Mansfield
Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it; it's only for wallowing in.
– Katherine Mansfield
We lift ourselves by our thought, we climb upon our vision of ourselves. If you want to enlarge your life, you must first enlarge your thought of it and of yourself. Hold the ideal of yourself as you long to be, always, everywhere - your ideal of what you long to attain - the ideal of health, efficiency, success.
– Orison Swett Marden
Tomorrow's life is too late. Live today.
– Marcus Valerius Martialis
In this life he laughs longest who laughs last.
– John Masefield
Think of what would happen to us in America if there were no humorists; life would be one long Congressional Record.
– Thomas L. Masson
Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life.
– W. Somerset Maugham
D'you call life a bad job? Never! We've had our ups and downs, we've had our struggles, we've always been poor, but it's been worth it, ay, worth it a hundred times I say when I look round at my children.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Life wouldn't be worth living if I worried over the future as well as the present.
– W. Somerset Maugham
Men seek but one thing in life - their pleasure.
– W. Somerset Maugham