LIFE

Related Subjects: Birth, Evolution, Experience, Health, Mortality, Reality, Soul, Strength

1. Life is my college. May I graduate well, and earn some honors.—LOUISA ALCOTT, Life, Letters and Journals
   

2. All men have one entrance into life, and the like going out.—Apocrypha: Wisdom of Solomon

3. He most lives
   Who thinks most—feels the noblest —acts the best.—PHILIP J. BAILEY, Festus

4. The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.—J. M. BARRIE, The Little Minister
   

5. Life, Crichton is like a cup of tea; the more heavily we drink the sooner we reach the dregs.—J. M. BARRIE, The Admirable Crichton
   

6. Our days on the earth are as a shadow.—Bible, 1 Chronicles 29:15
   

7. All that a man hath, will he give for his life.—Bible, Job 2:4
   

8. There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?—GEORGE BORROW, Lavengro

9. Life comes before literature, as the material always comes before the work. The hills are full of marble before the world blooms with statues.—PHILLIPS BROOKS,
   Literature and Life
   

10. Life is a copycat and can be bullied into following the master artist who bids it come to heel.—HEYWOOD BROUN, It Seems to Me
    

11. A little sunburnt by the glare of life.—ELIZABETH B. BROWNING, Aurora Leigh
    

12. How good is man's life, the mere living! how fit to employ
    All the heart and the soul and the senses forever in joy!—BROWNING, Saul
    

13. So live, that when thy summons comes to join
    The innumerable caravan which moves
    To that mysterious realm, where each shall take
    His chamber in the silent halls of death,
    Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
    Scourged to his dungeon, but, sustained and soothed
    By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave,
    Like one that wraps the drapery of his couch
    About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.—BRYANT, Thanatopsis
    

14. O Life! thou art a galling load,
    Along a rough, a weary road,
    To wretches such as I!—BURNS, Despondency
    

15. Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.—JOHN BURROUGHS, The Summit of the Years
    

16. How short this Life, how long withal; how false its weal, how true its woes,
    This fever-fit with paroxysms to mark its opening and its close.—RICHARD BURTON, The Kasidah of Haji Abdu
    

17. Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo, not for a man.—SAMUEL BUTLER, Note-Books
    

18. Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.—SAMUEL BUTLER, Note-Books
    

19. 'Tis very certain the desire of life Prolongs it.—BYRON, Don Juan
    

20. Life, be it happy or unhappy, fortunate or unfortunate, is the only good man possesses, and he who does not love life is unworthy of life.—CASANOVA
    

21. The short period of life is long enough for living well and honourably.—CICERO, De Senectute
    

22. If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.—JOHN CLARE
    

23. In life we are strangled between two doors, of which the one is labelled Too Soon and the other Too Late.—BARBEY D'AUREVILLY
    

24. Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret.—DISRAELI, Coningsby
    

25. All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding in.—HAVELOCK ELLIS, The Art of Life

26. Life is too short to waste
    In critic peep or cynic bark,
    Quarrel or reprimand;
    'Twill soon be dark;
    Up! mind thine own aim, and
    God speed the mark!—EMERSON
    

27. Life's a pudding full of plums;
    Care's a canker that benumbs,
    Wherefore waste our elocution
    On impossible solution?
    Life's a pleasant institution,
    Let us take it as it comes!—W. S. GILBERT, The Gondoliers
    

28. Life's perhaps the only riddle
    That we shrink from giving up.—W. S. GILBERT, The Gondoliers
    

29. Life is made up of marble and mud.—HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables
    

30. Life is (I think) a blunder and a shame.—W. E. HENLEY, In Hospital
    

31. Life is an end in itself and the only question whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.—JUSTICE HOLMES
    

32. There are two ways of living: a man may be casual and simply exist, or constructive and deliberately try to do something with his life. The constructive idea implies constructiveness not only about one's own life, but about that of society, and the future possibilities of humanity.—JULIAN HUXLEY, Essays of a Biologist
    

33. Men are educated to be self-reliant and enterprising in the details of life, but dependent, unreflective, laissez-faire about life itself. The idea that the basis of living could be really and radically altered is outside most people's orbit; and if it is forced upon their notice, they often as not find it in some way immoral.—JULIAN HUXLEY, Essays of a Biologist
    

34. We have the fact that ninety-nine people out of a hundred are concerned with getting a living rather than with living, and that if for any reason they are liberated from this necessity, they generally have not the remotest idea how to employ their time with either pleasure or profit to themselves or to others.—JULIAN HUXLEY, Essays of a Biologist
    

35. The only faith that is both concrete and comprehensive is in life, its abundance and its progress. My final belief is in life.—JULIAN HUXLEY, I Believe
    

36. I believe that life can be worth living. I believe this in spite of pain, squalor, cruelty, unhappiness, and death. I do not believe that it is necessarily worth living, but only that for most people it can be.—JULIAN HUXLEY, I Believe
    

37. Be not afraid of life, Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.—WILLIAM JAMES, The Will to Believe
    

38. Life is very short, and very uncertain; let us spend it as well as we can.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
    

39. Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life

40. Life is not long, and too much of it must not pass in idle deliberation how it shall be spent.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
    

41. It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.—SAMUEL JOHNSON, Boswell: Life
    

42. Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown.—KEATS, Sleep and Poetry
    

43. Life is but a day;
    A fragile dewdrop on its perilous way
    From a tree's summit.—KEATS, Sleep and Poetry
    

44. Life to be enjoyed has to be decorated. Bare subsistence is not enough.—SIR ARTHUR KEITH, I Believe
    

45. All efforts to find a rational justification of life, to declare it worth the living for this reason or that, are, in themselves, a confession of weakness, since life at its strongest never feels the need of any such justification and since the most optimistic philosopher is less optimistic than that man or animal who, his belief that life is good being too immediate to require the interposition of thought, is no philosopher at all.—J. W. KRUTCH, The Modern Temper
    

46. What is this chemical ferment called life all about? Small wonder that small men down the ages have conjured gods in answer. A little god is a snug little possession and explains it all. But how about you and me who have no God? There's damned little satisfaction in being a materialistic monist.—JACK LONDON
    

47. For a long life be moderate in all things, but don't miss anything.—DR. ADOLF LORENZ
    

48. Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.—MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations
    

49. Deem not life a thing of consequence. For look at the yawning void of the future, and at that other limitless space, the past.—MARCUS AURELIUS, Meditations
    

50. All life is an attempt to get beyond the barriers of self: some attempt it by drunkenness or devotion, some by love, drugs, danger or the arts: others by one of the churches or by service: many attempt it, blindly, many more under guidance which may be blind. They attempt because they hope that beyond their own personal nature they may touch the nature of the world.—JOHN MASEFIELD
    

51. The basic fact about human existence is riot that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore.—H. L. MENCKEN
    

52. It seems that I must live by that which causes others to die.—MICHELANGELO
    

53. The breath of life.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
    

54. Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
    Live well; how long or short permit to Heaven.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
    

55. This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
    The past, the future,—two eternities!—THOMAS MOORE, Lalla Rookh

56. The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart.—JOHN MORLEY, Address on Aphorisms
    

57. Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.—CARDINAL NEWMAN
    

58. Life always gets harder toward the summit—the cold increases, responsibility increases.—NIETZSCHE, The Antichrist
    

59. Life is just one damned thing after another.—F. W. O'MALLEY
    

60. The Leaves of Life keep falling one by one.—OMAR KHAYYAM, Rubaiyat
    

61. Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!—EUGENE O'NEILL, Strange Interlude
    

62. What is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman's life, and thirty in a man's?—PLATO, The Republic
    

63. The fever called "Living"
    Is conquered at last.—POE, For Annie
    

64. Live, and let live.—Proverb
    

65. Those that God loves do not live long.—Proverb
    

66. Life is half spent before we know what it is.—Proverb
    

67. It matters not how long you live, but how well.—PUBLILIUS SYRUS, Sententiae
    

68. In the cup of life, 'tis true,
    Dwells a draught of bitter dew .. .
    Yet no other cup I know
    Where such radiant waters glow.—AGNES ROBINSON, Epilogue
    

69. Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life.—THEODORE ROOSEVELT, The Great Adventure
    

70. There is no Wealth but Life.—RUSKIN, Unto This Last
    

71. Sound, sound the clarion, fill the fife!
    To all the sensual world proclaim,
    One crowded hour of glorious life
    Is worth an age without a name.—SCOTT, Old Mortality
    

72. The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.—SHAKESPEARE, All's Well that Ends Well
    

73. I do not set my life at a pin's fee.—SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet
    

74. Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale,
    Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.—SHAKESPEARE, King John
    

75. Out, out brief candle!
    Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
    That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
    And then is heard no more: it is a tale
    Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
    Signifying nothing.—SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth
    

76. I bear a charmed life.—SHAKESPEARE, Macbeth
    

77. You take my house, when you do take the prop
    That doth sustain my house; you take my life,
    When you do take the means whereby I live.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merchant of Venice
    

78. Life is a shuttle.—SHAKESPEARE, The Merry Wives of Windsor
    

79. Gonzalo: Here is everything advantageous to life.
    Antonio: True; save means to live.—SHAKESPEARE, The Tempest
    

80. Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.—BERNARD SHAW, Heartbreak House: Preface
    

81. Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives.—BERNARD SHAW, Back to Methuselah
    

82. Life like a dome of many-coloured glass,
    Stains the white radiance of eternity.—SHELLEY, Adonais
    

83. I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!—SHELLEY, Ode to the West Wind
    

84. May you live all the days of your life.—SWIFT, Polite Conversation
    

85. Life is a dream in the night, a fear among fears,
    A naked runner lost in a storm of spears.—ARTHUR SYMONS, In the Wood of Finvara
    

86. When all is done, human life is, at the greatest and the best, but like a froward child, that must be played with and humoured a little to keep it quiet till it falls asleep, and then the care is over.—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE, Miscellanea
    

87. To be awake is to be alive.—THOREAU, Walden
    

88. Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.—MARK TWAIN, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
    

89. All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"—a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.—MARK TWAIN, Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar
    

90. I advise you to go on living solely to enrage those who are pay­ing your annuities. It is the only pleasure I have left.—VOLTAIRE
    

91. Life is ever lord of Death
    And Love can never lose its own.—WHITTIER, Snow-Bound
    

92. For he who lives more lives than one
    More deaths than one must die.—OSCAR WILDE, The Ballad of Reading Gaol