Motivational Quotes

Life

The old Quaker was right: I expect to pass through life but once. If there is any kindness, or any good thing I can do to my fellow beings, let me do it now. I shall pass this way but once.

- Gannett, W. C.

Best Quotes about Life

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.

Lawrence, D. H.

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.

Nouwen, Henri

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you.

Wolfe, Thomas

Not to find one's way in a city may well be uninteresting and banal. It requires ignorance -- nothing more. But to lose oneself in a city -- as one loses oneself in a forest -- that calls for a quite different schooling. Then, signboard and street names, passers-by, roofs, kiosks, or bars must speak to the wanderer like a cracking twig under his feet in the forest.

Benjamin, Walter

The purpose of life is to fight maturity.

Dick Werthimer

Life is not one thing after another. It's the same damn thing over and over!

Man alone is born crying, lives complaining, and dies disappointed.

Temple, Sir William

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

Shaw, George Bernard

It is a good thing that life is not as serious as it seems to a waiter.

Herold, Don

10.

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

11.

Life is but a game and we are the playthings of the gods.

12.

Be glad of life because it gives you a chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at stars.

Dyke, Henry Van

13.

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late

Franklin, Benjamin

14.

We come into this world head first and go out feet first; in between, it is all a matter of balance.

Boese, Paul

15.

He lives who dies to win a lasting name.

Drummond, Henry

16.

It is quite true what Philosophy says: that Life must be understood backwards. But that makes one forget the other saying: that it must be lived --forwards. The more one ponders this, the more it comes to mean that life in the temporal existence never becomes quite intelligible, precisely because at no moment can I find complete quiet to take the backward-looking position.

Kierkegaard, S°ren

17.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Miller, Henry

18.

Optimism and humor are the grease and glue of life. Without both of them we would never have survived our captivity.

Butler, Philip

19.

Making a life comes before making a living.

20.

Life's but a day at most.

Burns, George

21.

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

Percy, Walker

22.

Just as language has no longer anything in common with the thing it names, so the movements of most of the people who live in cities have lost their connection with the earth; they hang, as it were, in the air, hover in all directions, and find no place where they can settle.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

23.

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Roosevelt, Eleanor

24.

Perhaps life is just that... a dream and a fear.

Conrad, Joseph

25.

Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time.

Mead, Margaret

26.

Life is a wilderness of twists and turns, where faith is your only compass.

Santaguida, Paul

27.

The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing; the main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unseen attack.

Aurelius, Marcus

28.

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.

Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan

29.

On life's journey faith is nourishment, virtuous deeds are a shelter, wisdom is the light by day and right mindfulness is the protection by night. If a man lives a pure life, nothing can destroy him.

Buddha

30.

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from it.

Osler, Sir William

31.

To attain inner peace you must actually give your life, not just your possessions. When you at last give your life -- bringing into alignment your beliefs and the way you live then, and only then, can you begin to find inner peace.

Pilgrim, Peace

32.

Life does not happen to us, it happens from us.

Wickett, Michael

33.

The drama of life begins with a wail and ends with a sigh.

Antrim, Minna

34.

It has always been difficult for Man to realize that his life is all an art. It has been more difficult to conceive it so than to act it so. For that is always how he has more or less acted it.

Ellis, Havelock

35.

Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.

Miller, Henry

36.

Life too near paralyses art.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

37.

Today's city is the most vulnerable social structure ever conceived by man.

Oppenheimer, Martin

38.

Live virtuously, and you cannot not die too soon, or live too long.

Russell, Lady R.

39.

Life may not be beautiful, but it is interesting.

Seeley, Sir John Robert

40.

The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London or Tokyo.

Galbraith, John Kenneth

41.

I am sure care's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare

42.

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.

Kennedy, John F.

43.

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.

Moses, Grandma

44.

It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.

Hayakawa, S. I.

45.

Life in the Fast Lane Playing in Traffic intense stressful challenging overwhelming fulfilling demanding exciting nerve-wrecking entrepreneurial unrelenting empowered exposed: no place to hide flexible confusing results compensation sweatshop team ascendancy ego suppression flat organizations who's my boss no titles no status customer focus self-abnegation decentralized decision making chaos the end of tenure the end of security no complacency fear ongoing change burnout

46.

To live lightheartedly but not recklessly; to be gay without being boisterous; to be courageous without being bold; to show trust and cheerful resignation without fatalism -- this is the art of living.

La Fontaine, Jean De

47.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

Pirandello, Luigi

48.

Reality is the crutch for people who can't cope with drugs.

Tomlin, Lily

49.

In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in adulthood just, and in old age prudent.

Socrates

50.

Dance like no one is watching, Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like no one is listening, Live like it's heaven on earth.

Purkey, William