Life—No, I’ve nothing to teach you about it for the moment. May be writing about it another week.
—E. M. Forster (1879–1970) English Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist
Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?
—Ashleigh Brilliant (b.1933) British Cartoonist, Author
Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
—Rollo May (1909–94) American Philosopher
The enjoyments of this life are not equal to its evils.
—Pliny the Elder (23–79CE) Roman Statesman, Scholar
Be glad of life because it gives you to chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
—Henry van Dyke Jr. (1852–1933) American Author, Educator, Clergyman
Life is a struggle, but not a warfare.
—John Burroughs (1837–1921) American Naturalist, Writer
Where there is life there is wishful thinking.
—Gerald F. Lieberman
The tragedy of life is not that man loses,
but that he almost wins.
—Heywood Hale Broun (1918–2001) American Journalist, Commentator, Actor
Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.
—French Proverb
He who is not busy being born is busy dying.
—Bob Dylan (b.1941) American Singer-songwriter
For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life.
—William Blake (1757–1827) English Poet, Painter, Printmaker
This is what you shall do: love the earth and sun, and animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence towards the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown, or to any man or number of men; go freely with the powerful uneducated persons, and with the young, and mothers, of families: read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life: re-examine all you have been told at school or church, or in any books, and dismiss whatever insults your soul.
—Walt Whitman (1819–92) American Poet, Essayist, Journalist, American, Poet, Essayist, Journalist
We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.
—D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) English Novelist, Playwright, Poet, Essayist, Literary Critic
We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.
—Menander (c.343–c.291 BCE) Greek Comic Dramatist, Poet
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge—that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts—That hope always triumphs over experience—That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.
—Robert Fulghum (b.1937) American Unitarian Universalist Author, Essayist, Clergyman
Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
Life is just a journey.
—Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–97) English Royal, Humanitarian, Peace Activist
The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
I used to trouble about what life was for—now being alive seems sufficient reason.
—Marion Milner (‘Joanna Field’) (1900–98) British Writer, Psychoanalyst
Life has taught me to think, but thinking has not taught me to live.
—Alexander Herzen (1812–70) Russian Revolutionary, Writer
We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.
—Paul Boese
Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really merely commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations and leading to the most outer results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusions most stale and unprofitable.
—Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930) Scottish Writer
Not where I breathe, but where I love, I live; Not where I love, but where I am, I die.
—Robert South (1634–1716) English Theologian, Preacher
Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.
—W. C. Fields (1880–1946) American Actor, Comedian, Writer
Life is made up of marble and mud.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
—Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) Canadian Political Scientist, Humorist
I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) American Jurist, Author
It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.
—Don Herold (1889–1966) American Humorist, Writer, Illustrator, Cartoonist
To live fully is to let go and die with each passing moment, and to be reborn in each new one.
—Jack Kornfield (b.1945) American Buddhist Teacher
In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.
—Sid Caesar (1922–2014) American Comic Actor
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