Best to live lightly, unthinkingly.
—Sophocles (495–405 BCE) Ancient Greek Dramatist
Live this day as if it will be your last. Remember that you will only find “tomorrow” on the calendars of fools. Forget yesterday’s defeats and ignore the problems of tomorrow. This is it. Doomsday. All you have. Make it the best day of your year. The saddest words you can ever utter are, “If I had my life to live over again. “Take the baton, now. Run with it! This is your day! Beginning today, treat everyone you meet, friend or foe, loved one or stranger, as if they were going to be dead at midnight. Extend to each person, no matter how trivial the contact, all the care and kindness and understanding and love that you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.
—Og Mandino (1923–96) American Self-Help Author
The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.
—Carl Rogers (1902–1987) American Psychologist
Life is an onion and one cries while peeling it.
—French Proverb
It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–65) American Diplomat, Politician, Orator
Life is an end in itself, and the only question as to whether it is worth living is whether you have had enough of it.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935) American Jurist, Author
A free life cannot acquire many possessions, because this is not easy to do without servility to mobs or monarchs…
—Epicurus (c.341–270 BCE) Greek Philosopher
Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it.
—Tom Lehrer (1928–2025) American Musician, Satirist, Mathematician
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
To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance.
—Buddhist Teaching
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 is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717–97) English Art Historian, Man of Letters, Politician
People find life entirely too time-consuming.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (1909–1966) Polish Aphorist, Poet
We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle—even if he can afford more.
—Masaru Ibuka (1908–97) Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer
We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.
—William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian Physician
Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time.
—Margaret Mead (1901–78) American Anthropologist, Social Psychologist
We have long forgotten the ritual by which the house of our life was erected. But when it is under assault and enemy bombs are already taking their toll, what enervated, perverse antiquities do they not lay bare in the foundations.
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German Literary and Marxist Critic
Life is made up of marble and mud.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
When I stand before thee at the day’s end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.
—Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali Poet, Polymath
The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.
—Buddhist Teaching
Life is just a journey.
—Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–97) English Royal, Humanitarian, Peace Activist
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 Author, Essayist, Clergyman
Even when I’m sick and depressed, I love life.
—Arthur Rubinstein (1888–1982) Polish-born American Pianist
You only live once; but if you live it right, once is enough.
—Unknown
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (1875–1926) Austrian Poet
We never live, but we hope to live; and as we are always arranging to be happy, it must be that we never are so.
—Blaise Pascal (1623–62) French Mathematician, Physicist, Theologian
He who experiences the unity of life sees his own Self in all beings, and all beings in his own Self, and looks on everything with an impartial eye.
—The Bhagavad Gita Hindu Scripture
Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.
—Hugh Prather (b.1938) American Christian Author, Minister, Counselor
Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.
—Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) American Catholic Theologian
He who is not busy being born is busy dying.
—Bob Dylan (b.1941) American Singer-songwriter
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