 Life is a long road on a short journey. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915),Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897 Numerous metaphors have been used to describe life. Among them is the metaphor of life as a battle. Try not to think of life in these terms because, if you regard life as a struggle, it will become one, and you will have little joy. It is far better to think of life as a journey in which the difficulties are hills to climb. The hills are there for a reason (even if you don't know what that reason is), and the sense of satisfaction after climbing the hill is almost always worth the effort. ~Richard E. Turner (1937–2011), The Grammar Curmudgeon, a.k.a. "The Mudge," "An Open Letter to My Grandson," January 1997 If life is not an adventure it's a sad venture, and drear at the price. After all life is after all; it is not what you make it, but what it makes you. ~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander (c.1890–1953), "Live Wires and Dead Marines," in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1931 June 1st God gives you a life and says, Okay, what are you going to do with it? ~Alice Cooper, interview with Cal Fussman, 2008 August 2nd, for Esquire's January 2009 eighth annual Meaning of Life issue To believe in immortality is one thing, but it is first needful to believe in life. ~Robert Louis Stevenson The world is hard and cruel. We are here none knows why, and we go none knows whither. We must be very humble. We must see the beauty of quietness. We must go through life so inconspicuously that Fate does not notice us. ~W. Somerset Maugham, The Moon and Sixpence, 1919 There is a reason you were born and a bunch of things you've got to do today regardless. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Just living is not enough... one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower. ~Hans Christian Andersen When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." ~Erma Bombeck [A]ll life budding like a rose and sparkling like its dew. ~Edgar Fawcett, "At a Window," Songs of Doubt and Dream, 1891 If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. ~E.B. White, quoted in Israel Shenker, "E.B. White: Notes and Comment by Author," New York Times, 1969 July 11th Life is simple, it's just not easy. ~Author Unknown A life without cause is a life without effect. ~Barbarella Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. ~Richard Bach Life is not always fair. Sometimes you get a splinter sliding down a rainbow. ~Terri Guillemets The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things. ~Henry David Thoreau I hope life isn't a big joke, because I don't get it. ~Jack Handey Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it. ~Christopher Morley,Thunder on the Left Forgive, O Lord, my little jokes on Thee, And I'll forgive Thy great big one on me. ~Robert Frost, "Cluster of Faith," 1962 In spite of the cost of living, it's still popular. ~Kathy Norris The line of life is a snarl of loops and ends. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915),Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897 To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. ~Emily Dickinson Yes, I will try to be. Because I believe that not being is arrogant. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin
Life is the hyphen between matter and spirit.
~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by
Two Brothers, 1827
My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot. ~Ashleigh Brilliant I say, if your knees aren't green by the end of the day, you ought to seriously re-examine your life. ~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes You fall out of your mother's womb, you crawl across open country under fire, and drop into your grave. ~Quentin Crisp As we struggle to make sense of things, life looks on in repose. ~Author Unknown I think I've discovered the secret of life — you just hang around until you get used to it. ~Charles Schulz In life we are all rolling stock running on the rails of Destiny, and if we fail to stop when flagged by Fate we miss our freight. On Life's railroad there is only one set of rails and no turntable. But why turn back; the scene improves as we travel onward; or we appreciate it better; that is, those who keep their eyes to the window. But there are some who would rather sleep than peep, and some who are so occupied with their ingrown eyebrows, their over-investments and under-devestments, the price of lead-headed eye-teeth, and the fate of the fat, that they are blind to the beauty of Being. Life should be like a train — eager, pressing forward as if bent on keeping a tryst with Time round the next bend; taking the grades sturdily, and running to Time.... A train is life in little, existence on distance, a fleeting thought, and a forward move. ~Kenneth Alfred Evelyn Alexander (c.1890–1953), "For Wheel or Whoa," in The New Zealand Railways Magazine, 1931 June 1st Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets. ~Arthur Miller Life is a whim of several billion cells to be you for a while. ~Author Unknown You can't escape history, or the needs and neuroses you've picked up like layers and layers of tartar on your teeth. ~Charles Johnson Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can. ~Danny Kaye The plane of life is a frozen sea, on which all make many slips, and finally break through into eternity. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882 I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches. ~Alice Roosevelt Longworth Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once. ~Lillian Dickson We are born wet, naked, and hungry. Then things get worse. ~Author Unknown Life is like a beautiful melody, only the lyrics are messed up. ~Author Unknown Life is a cement trampoline. ~Howard Nordberg To preserve a man alive in the midst of so many chances and hostilities, is as great a miracle as to create him. ~Jeremy Taylor Life... is like a box of chocolates — a cheap, thoughtless, perfunctory gift that no one ever asks for, unreturnable because all you get back is another box of chocolates. So, you're stuck with mostly undefinable whipped mint crap, mindlessly wolfed down when there's nothing else to eat while you're watching the game. Sure, once is a while you get a peanut butter cup or an English toffee but it's gone too fast and the taste is fleeting. In the end, you are left with nothing but broken bits filled with hardened jelly and teeth-shattering nuts, which, if you are desperate enough to eat, leaves nothing but an empty box of useless brown paper. ~The X-Files He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. ~Friedrich Nietzsche God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. ~Author Unknown Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. ~Grandma Moses I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it's not the answer. ~Jim Carrey The great business of life is to be, to do, to do without, and to depart. ~John, Viscount Morley, Address on Aphorisms Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies. ~Erich Fromm My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can. ~Cary Grant To live remains an art which everyone must learn, and which no one can teach. ~Havelock Ellis Life is just one damned thing after another! ~Author unknown, c.1909, see quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/02/life-one Living involves tearing up one rough draft after another. ~Author unknown My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn. ~Louis Adamic No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence. ~Thomas Carlyle, Sir Walter Scott, in London and Westminster Review, 12 November 1838 Don't think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire. I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drive into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark. ~Samuel Johnson Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: "I am with you kid. Let's go." ~Maya Angelou Life has meaning only if one barters it day by day for something other than itself. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery Why torture yourself when life'll do it for you? ~Author Unknown Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. ~George Bernard Shaw, The Doctor's Dilemma, 1906 Puritans will never believe it, but life is full of disagreeable things that aren't even good for you. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 'Tis all a chequer board of nights and days, Where destiny with men for pieces plays; Hither and thither, and mates, and slays. ~Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyám, 1859 Life: It is about the gift not the package it comes in. ~Dennis P. Costea, Jr. ...the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse. ~Walt Whitman, "O Me! O Life!", Leaves of Grass Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first. ~Mark Twain Life is the game that must be played. ~Edwin Arlington Robinson You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. ~Albert Camus There is no wealth but life. ~John Ruskin I know what things are good: friendship and work and conversation. These I shall have. ~Rupert Brooke Life will always remain a gamble, with prizes sometimes for the imprudent, and blanks so often to the wise. ~Jerome K. Jerome The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it. ~Henry David Thoreau I've learned never to be surprised if what must inevitably happen happens right now. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life is not a final. It's daily pop quizzes. ~Author Unknown Eating, loving, singing and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool. ~Gioacchino Rossini We mourn the transitory things and fret under the yoke of the immutable ones. ~Paul Eldridge I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. ~T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock Life was a damned muddle — a football game with everyone offside and the referee gotten rid of — everyone claiming the referee would have been on his side. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald Any idiot can face a crisis — it's day to day living that wears you out. ~Anton Chekhov Following straight lines shortens distances, and also life. ~Antonio Porchia,Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid. ~Frederick Buechner Life is all too wondrous sweet, and the world is so beautifully bewildered; it is the dream of an intoxicated divinity... ~Heinrich Heine (d.1856), "Ideas: Book Le Grand," 1826, translated from German by Charles Godfrey Leland, Pictures of Travel, 1855 Life is like sailing. You can use any wind to go in any direction. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com However we sail on the ocean of life our course is determined by Nature's trade-winds and Divinity's undertow. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897 Life is the only way to get covered in leaves, catch your breath on the sand, rise on wings... ~Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012), translated from the Polish by Clare Cavanagh and Stanisław Barańczak Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation. ~W. Somerset Maugham In life we all have an unspeakable secret, an irreversible regret, an unreachable dream and an unforgettable love. ~Diego Marchi Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life. ~Eleanor Roosevelt I count life just a stuff To try the soul's strength on. ~Robert Browning Today, fill your cup of life with sunshine and laughter. ~Dodinsky,www.dodinsky.com Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove. ~Ashleigh Brilliant Life is an incurable Disease. ~Abraham Cowley Different shades of life make the painting more beautiful. ~Mike Dolan,@HawaiianLife For 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 Life is not so bad if you have plenty of luck, a good physique, and not too much imagination. ~Christopher Isherwood I ask of life to shine meaning in everyone who is searching. ~Aurora Hernandez The only way to have a life is to commit to it like crazy. ~Angelina Jolie Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do. ~Bruce Crampton Life is a mixed blessing, which we vainly try to unmix. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 In masks outrageous and austere The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile. ~Elinor Hoyt Wylie, Let No Charitable Hope To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone. ~Reba McEntire The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss. ~Thomas Carlyle I say to my child, I will explain to you as much of life as I can, but you must remember that there is a part of life for which you are the explanation. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on. ~Havelock Ellis Sunday clears away the rust of the whole week. ~Joseph Addison We tear life out of life to use it for looking at itself. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin Fortunately analysis is not the only way to resolve inner conflicts. Life itself remains a very effective therapist. ~Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts, 1945, referring to psychoanalysis Give us Lord, a bit o' sun, A bit o' work and a bit o' fun; Give us all in the struggle and sputter Our daily bread and a bit o' butter. ~From an inn in Lancaster, England All human things hang on a slender thread, the strongest fall with a sudden crash. ~Ovid The tragedy of life is not that man loses, but that he almost wins. ~Heywood Broun When compiling his great dictionary, the young Noah Webster travels to the Himalayas, where he climbs to the cave of the world's wisest man. "O, great sage," he says, "tell me the meaning of life." The sage sits Noah at his feet and, with great solemnity, commences to unfold the meaning of life. When finished, he places a hand on the young man's shoulder and says, "Do you have any other questions, my son?" Noah flips a page in his notebook and says, "You wouldn't know the meaning of lift, would you?" ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life is not writ neatly with a steady hand between the prescriptive lines of a uniform, copy-book page; it is chaotic at the core — full of false starts, cross-outs, misspellings, and unsightly blotches. It is inherently messy. ~Dr. Idel Dreimer,www.lumpenbangenpiano.com Life is a long process of getting tired. ~Samuel Butler I really enjoy life I'm just not good at it. ~Daniel, @blindedpoet He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for. ~Moroccan Proverb The kaleidoscope of colour which is my life, shows the interesting choices I've made along the way. ~Antie Koekie But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth. ~Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum I wish to die knowing that I took a fleeting instant of eternity and fashioned from it a lifetime. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only question is how. ~Henry Ward Beecher The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live. ~Flora Whittemore Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what really is going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is to say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. ~Douglas Adams Opportunities and duties are the warp and woof of life. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Seven Seventy Seven Sensations, 1897 Suppose the world were only one of God's jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one? ~George Bernard Shaw There is a time early in life when there seem to be countless reasons for happiness, and then you discover your mom is making them up. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on. ~Robert Frost Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use. ~Charles Schulz There is no finish line. ~Nike advertisement It may be life is only worthwhile at moments. Perhaps that is all we ought to expect. ~Sherwood Anderson I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment. ~Ludwig Wittgenstein The art of life is the art of avoiding pain. ~Thomas Jefferson Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man's life. ~Vita Sackville-West The fear of life is the favorite disease of the 20th century. ~William Lyon Phelps Most men make the voyage of life as if they carried sealed orders which they were not to open till they were fairly in mid-ocean. ~James Russell Lowell In the end, no thought is unthinkable, no problem unshrinkable, no two strangers unlinkable. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back. ~Charlie Brown The world is a grindstone and life is your nose. ~Fred Allen Not unfortunately the universe is wild — game-flavoured as a hawk's wing. ~B.P. Blood The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth. ~Chinese Proverb People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle. ~Thich Nhat Hanh You live and learn. At any rate, you live. ~Douglas Adams Life just seems so full of connections. Most of the time we don't even pay attention to the depth of life. We only see flat surfaces. ~Colin Neenan [I wonder if this reminds anyone else of Apple's iOS 7 design or if I'm the only old-fashioned one who misses skeuomorphism. —tεᖇᖇ¡·g] Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. ~Norman Mailer Life can be easy, it is only question of choosing between solutions and illusions. ~Didier D'haese Everything which is properly business we must keep carefully separate from life. Business requires earnestness and method; life must have a freed handling. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers. ~Learned Hand The true harvest of my daily life is somewhat as intangible and indescribable as the tints of morning or evening. It is a little star dust caught, a segment of the rainbow which I have clutched. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden Life is the sum of all your choices. ~Albert Camus Life has its own hidden forces which you can only discover by living. ~Søren Kierkegaard How you handle life depends a lot on how you handle plan B, or if you have a plan B. ~Nelson DeMille, The General's Daughter, 1992 Life is a brief opportunity to do something prehumously. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity. ~Seneca Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, Stains the white radiance of Eternity... ~Percy Bysshe Shelley, "Adonais" Out of a hundred years a few minutes were made that stayed with me, not a hundred years. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin If A equals success, then the formula is: A = X + Y + Z, where X is work, Y is play, and Z is keep your mouth shut. ~Albert Einstein I gave my life to learning how to live. Now that I have organized it all... It is just about over. ~Sandra Hochman There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. ~Anaïs Nin Life is not fair, nor has it ever been, but the morning seems determined to dawn until it is. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life is a horizontal fall. ~Jean Cocteau Today was good. Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one. ~Dr. Seuss Mayhap the best thing I ever done in my life was only doing what was easiest for myself. It's allays been easier for me to work nor to sit still, but the real tough job for me 'ud be to master my own will and temper, and go right against my own pride.... perhaps nothing 'ud be a lesson to us if it didn't come too late. It's well we should feel as life's a reckoning we can't make twice over; there's no real making amends in this world, any more nor you can mend a wrong subtraction by doing your addition right. ~George Eliot, Adam Bede Only a few things are really important. ~Marie Dressler We are like people with short-term leases on summer cottages; we can never seem to make our provisions come out even with our stay. ~Mignon McLaughlin,The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 The movement of life has to rest in its own music. ~Rabindranath Tagore The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. ~Henry Miller Life is a series of reactions that aren't what you intend, to situations that aren't what they seem. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Everything that occurs in your life is part of God's plan to wake you up. ~Leonard Jacobson Life is like eating artichokes; you have got to go through so much to get so little. ~Thomas Aloysius Dorgan Summing up, it is clear the future holds great opportunities. It also holds pitfalls. The trick will be to avoid the pitfalls, seize the opportunities, and get back home by six o'clock. ~Woody Allen, "My Speech to the Graduates," Side Effects, 1980 There is a lesson we learn early and harmlessly, or late and traumatically — that there are things we can break that our parents can't fix. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth. ~Martin H. Fischer (1879–1962) [It ends: "As a doctor you'll have a front seat." —tεᖇᖇ¡·g] Life is beautiful if you flow with its natural beauty. Resistance makes it ugly. ~Terri Guillemets Life has no auto-settings. No batteries. You gots to wind it up! ~Jeb Dickerson,jebdickerson.com Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin Few of us write great novels; all of us live them. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 Life's like a novel with the end ripped out. ~Danny Orton and Blair Daly, "Stand" If you stop struggling, then you stop life. ~Huey Newton Things almost never turn out as horribly — or as wonderfully — as it seems they will. It's the occasional exception to this that keeps us on our toes, both in hope and in dread. ~David C. Hill, ***Dave Does the Blog (hill-kleerup.org/blog) Sometimes questions are more important than answers. ~Nancy Willard, quoted in The Meaning of Life, compiled by Hugh S. Moorhead [A]s if life were a thunder-storm wherein you can see by a flash the horizon, and then cannot see your hand.... ~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims, "Inspiration" It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you. ~Phillips Brooks Some men in their passage through life resemble a frog: they go a little and stop a little—but always by fits and starts, jerks and jumps. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882 My quest for cosmic understanding is a book I have picked up and put down many times, always forgetting to insert a bookmark. ~Robert Brault,rbrault.blogspot.com There is a strange reluctance on the part of most people to admit that they enjoy life. ~William Lyon Phelps [W]ith reference to our trip up the river of life.... How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.... It is lumber, man—all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness—no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots. Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing. You will find the boat easier to pull then, and it will not be so liable to upset, and it will not matter so much if it does upset; good, plain merchandise will stand water. You will have time to think as well as to work. Time to drink in life's sunshine—time to listen to the Æolian music that the wind of God draws from the human heart-strings around us... ~Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), 1889 The world itself is but a series of footnotes to a vast unfinished masterpiece. ~Vladimir Nabokov The swing on your porch is a better liver of life than the chair in front of your computer. ~Terri Guillemets Thoreau once thought the moon was larger over the United States than over the Old World, the sky bluer, the stars brighter, the thunder louder, the rivers longer, the mountains higher, the prairies vaster, and he mystically concluded that the spirit of man in America should be larger and more expansive "else why was America discovered?" Thoreau was wrong, and Thoreau was right. There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it, and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself. ~Lin Yutang, On the Wisdom of America You live long enough in a world spinning on its axis, you learn to spin in the same direction. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com When everything doesn't go perfectly as hoped, it isn't tragedy — it's life. ~Terri Guillemets One day can make your life. One day can ruin your life. All life is is four or five big days that change everything. ~Riding in Cars with Boys, Beverly Donofrio (book), Morgan Ward (screenplay) Life isn't fair, but it's still good. ~Author Unknown Life is a collection of moments you would have appreciated more if you had only known they were moments. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com When life gives you lemonade, make lemons. Life will be all like, "What?!" ~"Phil's-osophy" by Phil Dunphy (written by Christopher Lloyd, Steven Levitan, and Dan O'Shannon, Modern Family, "Schooled," original airdate 2012 October 10th) Even if you make a mistake, make it part of the dance and move on. ~Dance saying What if you stumble? Do what any choeographer would instruct you to do: Make it part of the dance. ~Peter A. Wish, 1998 We take a step, then we stumble. The joy in life comes when we make a dance out of both. ~Rich Turner (d.1989) Step. Stumble. Dance! ~Terri Guillemets, "Life's footwork," 2002 When you stumble, make it part of the dance. ~Author unknown, internet circulation circa 2006 When you stumble make it part of the dance.... Everyone messes up. It's part of the dance of life.... So the next time you stumble, smile at the crowd, kick up your heels, and dance a jig! The moment you embrace it as your own, no one will know it's not part of your dance. ~Suzy Toronto, c.2013 I teach you to know the wonder and the mystery of existence — not to analyse it but to enjoy it, not to make a theory out of it but to make a dance out of it. The whole existence is dancing, except men. They have become a big graveyard. I am calling you to come out of your graves. ~Osho (1931–1990), The Sword and the Lotus: Talks in the Himalayas Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we're here we should dance. ~Author unknown Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust — we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. ~Albert Einstein, in The Saturday Evening Post, 26 October 1929 When we are alone on a starlit night, when by chance we see the migrating birds in autumn descending on a grove of junipers to rest and eat; when we see children in a moment when they are really children, when we know love in our own hearts; or when, like the Japanese poet, Basho, we hear an old frog land in a quiet pond with a solitary splash — at such times the awakening, the turning inside out of all values, the "newness," the emptiness and the purity of vision that make themselves evident, all these provide a glimpse of the cosmic dance. ~Thomas Merton The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing. ~Marcus Aurelius,Meditations Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life is the other way around. ~David Lodge, The British Museum Is Falling Down, 1965 So much light, along with the darkness, it's life — just scary and joyous life! ~Terri Guillemets If a man in the morning hear the right way, he may die in the evening without regret. ~Confucius To drink the sunshine and to dream at night.... ~Author Unknown, "The Fall of Man" Each day of human life contains joy and anger, pain and pleasure, darkness and light, growth and decay. Each moment is etched with nature's grand design — do not try to deny or oppose the cosmic order of things. ~Morihei Ueshiba The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature. ~Joseph Campbell I have always preferred the reflection of the life to life itself. ~François Truffaut You don't want to get to the end of life's journey and discover you never left the interstate. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com In small proportions we just beauties see, And in short measures life may perfect be. ~Ben Jonson, To the Immortal Memory and Friendship of that Noble Pair, Sir Lucius Cary and Sir H. Morison, 1640 We should give meaning to life, not wait for life to give us meaning. ~Stacy Let me ask you, O, you men of the time, who are bent upon pleasure... I beg of you, if by some chance this obscure book falls into your hands, do not smile with noble disdain, do not shrug your shoulders; do not be too sure that I complain of an imaginary evil; do not be too sure that human reason is the most beautiful of faculties, that there is nothing real here below but quotations on the Bourse, gambling in the salon, wine on the table, a healthy body, indifference toward others, and the orgies which come with the night. For some day, across your stagnant life, a gust of wind will blow. Those beautiful trees that you water with the stream of oblivion, Providence will destroy; you will be reduced to despair.... in short I tell you, all frozen as you are, you are capable of loving something; some fiber of your being will be torn and you will give vent to a cry that will resemble a moan of pain. Some day, wandering about the muddy streets, when daily material joys shall have failed, you will find yourself seated disconsolately on a deserted bench at midnight. O! men of marble, sublime egoists, inimitable reasoners who have never given way to despair or made a mistake in arithmetic, if this ever happens to you, at the hour of your ruin you will remember Abelard when he lost Heloise.... Believe me, when in your distress you think of Abelard you will not look with the same eye... you will feel that the human reason can cure illusions but not sorrows; that God has use for Reason but He has not made her the sister of Charity.... You will look about you for something like hope, you will shake the doors of churches to see if they still swing, but you will find them walled up... destiny will mock at you and for reply give you a bottle of wine.... ~Alfred de Musset, The Confession of a Child of the Century/La Confession d'un enfant du siècle, 1836, translated from French by Kendall Warren Life is a sexually transmitted disease and there is a 100% mortality rate. ~R.D. Laing It's just life. Just live it. ~Terri Guillemets [L]ife is just like a big puzzle but you can't look at it and focus, you've... just got to close your eyes and let it come together. ~Corey Miller, LA Ink, "LA Ink Grand Opening" (season 1, episode 3, original airdate 2007 August 21st) Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras, 1942, translated from French by Lewis Galantière Live for the roots Love the green Dance with the blossoms ~Terri Guillemets [L]ife is a journey and not a destination... the heart must be set upon those matters of character which are eternal and not upon those matters of sensation which pass away. ~Lynn H. Hough Life is a process by which a few desperate longings morph into a thousand meaningless wants. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Many of us are equal to life's emergencies who cannot bear its day-after-dayness. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 Life is like an onion; you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it. ~James Gibbons Huneker Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor. ~Ogden Nash I do like a little bit of butter to my bread. ~A.A. Milne, When We Were Very Young I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles. ~Audrey Hepburn No trumpets sound when the important decisions of our life are made. Destiny is made silently. ~Agnes de Mille How we long to remove the clutter from our lives not realizing that the clutter is our lives. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life may be defined to be the power of self-augmentation or assimilation, not of self-nurture; for then a steam-engine over a coal-pit might be made to live. ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827 My friend asked me the essence of life and I smiled. ~Mike Dolan,@HawaiianLife It just seems sometimes that you've lived your whole life preparing for an inspection that never happened. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars. ~Henry Van Dyke People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966 Shall I redirect my life's journey because down some sideroad might be some trifle I'm entitled to? ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life is a long lesson in humility. ~James M. Barrie Life grows beautiful flowers over old scars. ~Terri Guillemets It has done me good to be somewhat parched by the heat and drenched by the rain of life. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow There is a what-the-hell moment in life when you feel you have been pre-punished for every sin you'll ever commit. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com You fool, You have been dangling For such a long time! When will you seize the opportunity Or feel the necessity To untangle the taut knot Of your bondage-life? ~Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower-Flames Life is a mortal maze, and only a few truly find their way. ~Terri Guillemets In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings. ~Richard Dawkins Sometimes in the poem of Life we hit a defective verse. Don't bother trying to rewrite it, move along, don't make it worse. ~Terri Guillemets Reason and justice tell me there's more love for humanity in electricity and steam than in chastity and vegetarianism. ~Anton Chekhov To live is like to love — all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. ~Samuel Butler Life is easier than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable. ~Kathleen Norris When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained. ~Mark Twain I don't need to live a long time. I just want to live a good time. ~Terri Guillemets, "One year, then another," 1996 Our search should not be a flight from life. ~TKV Desikachar Sacrifice is stamped upon every created thing. ~James Lendall Basford (1845–1915), Sparks from the Philosopher's Stone, 1882 [T]hat blessed mood, In which the burthen of the mystery, In which the heavy and the weary weight Of all this unintelligible world, Is lightened:—that serene and blessed mood, In which the affections gently lead us on,— Until, the breath of this corporeal frame And even the motion of our human blood Almost suspended, we are laid asleep In body, and become a living soul: While with an eye made quiet by the power Of harmony, and the deep power of joy, We see into the life of things. ~William Wordsworth, 1798 Though the circular round-and-round of routine be the bulk of life's affairs, make an occasional jutting diversion — of fun, love, or something that will outlast you — so the shape and motion of your life shall resemble the round lifegiving sun with bright rays shining forth from all directions. ~Terri Guillemets Life's a party. Invite yourself. ~Gary Johnson You can hope for a miracle in your life, or you can realize that your life is the miracle. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com One wanders through life as if wandering through a field in the dark of night, wearing a blindfold and very heavy shoes, with a poisonous toad waiting patiently beneath a clump of weeds, knowing full well that eventually you will step on him. ~Lemony Snicket What's your life's motto? Write one. And live by it. And revise it when life revises you. ~Terri Guillemets, "Don't cry, — rally!" 2009 Beauty is precious, you see, and the more beautiful something is, the more precious it is; and the more precious something is, the more it hurts us that it will fade away; and the more we are hurt by beauty, the more we love the world; and the more we love it, the more we are saddened that it is like finely powdered salt that runs away through the fingers, or is puffed away by the wind, or is washed away by the rain. ~Louis de Bernières, Birds Without Wings Though we live amid promiscuous pressures, spiritual clutter and forgetfulness, we probably still value the integrity of life. ~Baker Brownell, The College and the Community, 1952 Life is not like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today might burn your ass tomorrow. ~Author Unknown Life is a surprise party. ~Terri Guillemets, "Ribbons & shock," 1988 There are people who so arrange their lives that they feed themselves only on side dishes. ~José Ortega y Gasset The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe. ~Peter De Vries, Let Me Count the Ways, 1965 Every creatures stalks some other, and catches it, and is caught. ~Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960 Life is like a fancy restaurant — it will always try to seat you at the worst table you will accept. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com A great part of life consists in contemplating what we cannot cure. ~Robert Louis Stevenson Life. vitality; animation; vital spark, flame; respiration; breath of life, lifeblood; existence; vital air, be alive; live, breathe, respire; subsist &c. (exist); walk the earth, "strut and fret one's hour upon the stage" [Macbeth]; see the light, be born; fetch, draw, breath; quicken; vivify, reanimate, restore; body & soul together, the wolf from the door; support life; have nine lives; living, alive, in life, in the flesh, the land of the living; on this side of the grave, above ground, breathing, quick, animated; animative; lively &c. (active); all alive and kicking; tenacious of life; vital, viable, zoëtic; Promethean; vivendi causâ. Non est vivere sed valere vita; life is not merely being alive but being well [Martial]. ~Extracted from Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases Classified and Arranged So As To Facilitate the Expression of Ideas and Assist in Literary Compositionedited by C.O. Sylvester Mawson, 1911 I have come one step away from everything. And here I stay, far from everything, one step away. ~Antonio Porchia, Voces, 1943, translated from Spanish by W.S. Merwin Life is like a cobweb, not an organization chart. ~H. Ross Perot A man who has work that suits him and a wife, whom he loves, has squared his accounts with life. ~Friedrich Hegel Anxiety and distress, interrupted occasionally by pleasure, is the normal course of man's existence. ~Joseph Wood Krutch Life is one big judgment call. (And a neverending series of little ones.) ~Terri Guillemets Life is abundance, as in nature when all conditions are right the tree bears fruit. ~Mike Dolan, @HawaiianLife Lifeless with a heartbeat. ~Daniel, @blindedpoet There are no extra pieces in the universe. Everyone is here because he or she has a place to fill and every piece must fit itself into the big jigsaw puzzle. Deepak Chopra Half of life is [f@%'ing] up, the other half is dealing with it. ~Henry Rollins I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things, but I'm not absolutely sure of anything, and many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here, and what the question might mean. I might think about it a little bit, but if I can't figure it out, then I go on to something else. But I don't have to know an answer.... I don't feel frightened by not knowing things, by being lost in the mysterious universe without having any purpose, which is the way it really is, as far as I can tell, possibly. It doesn't frighten me. ~Richard Phillips Feynman Life is just a series of trying to make up your mind. ~Timothy Fuller, Reunion with Murder, 1941 The history of man for the nine months preceding his birth would, probably, be far more interesting and contain events of greater moment than all the three score and ten years that follow it. ~Samuel Taylor Coleridge The Song of Love, the Song of Hate, the Songs of Praise and of Thanksgiving; I've learned them all, but there remains one called the Melody of Living. ~Frederic Ridgely Torrence, The House of a Hundred Lights: A Psalm of Experience After Reading a Couplet of Bidpai, 1899 Perhaps we are looking at this from a wrong perspective; this search for the truth, the meaning of life, the reason of God. We all have this mindset that the answers are so complex and so vast that it is almost impossible to comprehend. I think, on the contrary, that the answers are so simple; so simple that it is staring us straight in the face, screaming its lungs out, and yet we fail to notice it. We're looking through a telescope, searching the stars for the answer, when the answer is actually a speck of dirt on the telescope lens. ~Jason Q., from generationterrorists.com Life is little more than a loan shark: It exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes. ~Luigi Pirandello There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last. ~Robert Louis Stevenson Red life boils in my veins.... Every woman is to me the gift of a world.... I hear a thousand nightingales.... I could eat all the elephants of Hindostan and pick my teeth with the spire of Strasburg Cathedral.... Life is the greatest of blessings, and death the worst of evils... ~Excerpts from Heinrich Heine's Ideen: Das Buch Le Grand, 1826, translated from German and artfully compiled in Israel Zangwill'sDreamers of the Ghetto, "From a Mattress Grave," 1897 I live! Red life boils in my veins, earth yields beneath my feet, in the glow of love I embrace trees and statues, and they live in my embrace. Every woman is to me the gift of a world. I revel in the melody of her countenance, and with a single glance of my eye I can enjoy more than others with their every limb through all their lives. ~Heinrich Heine (d.1856), "Ideas: Book Le Grand," 1826, translated from German by Charles Godfrey Leland, Pictures of Travel, 1855 I think miracles exist in part as gifts and in part as clues that there is something beyond the flat world we see. ~Peggy Noonan The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. ~H.L. Mencken Almost everything in life is easier to get into than out of. ~Agnes' Law Chance is always powerful, let your hook always be cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish. ~Ovid Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work — that goes on, it adds up. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams Life is a series of collisions with the future. ~José Ortega y Gasset To the student I would say, "Life is principally multiple choice, but at the end there's a tough essay question." ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life is half spent before we know what it is. ~George Herbert, Jacula Prudentum, 1651 When life throws you lemons, make orange juice. It will leave them wondering how the hell you did that. ~Author Unknown Why does a person even get up in the morning? You have breakfast, you floss your teeth so you'll have healthy gums in your old age, and then you get in your car and drive down I-10 and die. Life is so stupid I can't stand it. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams After a lifetime of deep thought, I've decided that life is a distraction, but probably not from anything important. ~Robert Brault, rbrault.blogspot.com Life is the greatest of blessings and death the worst of evils.... all great, powerful souls love life. ~Heinrich Heine (d.1856), "Ideas: Book Le Grand," 1826, translated from German by Charles Godfrey Leland, Pictures of Travel, 1855 Curly: "Do you know what the secret of life is? One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else don't mean [$h¡t]." Mitch Robbins: "Yeah, but what's that one thing?" Curly: "That's what you've got to figure out." ~From the movie City Slickers, 1991, written by Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel Expecting the world to treat you fairly because you are good is like expecting the bull not to charge because you are a vegetarian. ~Dennis Wholey Life: my own little Pyrrhic victory. ~Terri Guillemets, "Plundered," 1994 Life is an endless struggle full of frustrations and challenges, but eventually you find a hair stylist you like. ~Author Unknown Why do critics make such an outcry against tragicomedies? is not life one? ~Augustus William Hare and Julius Charles Hare, Guesses at Truth, by Two Brothers, 1827 What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset. ~Crowfoot, 1890, as quoted in Catch the Whisper of the Windcompiled by Cheewa James |
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