Motivational Quotes

Life

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

Best Quotes about Life

Kierkegaard, S°ren

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

Aristotle

Look to the future, because that is where you'll spend the rest of your life.

Burns, George

The truest end of life, is to find the life that doesn't end.

Life is just a journey

Diana, Princess of Wales

In the morning of life, work; in the mid day give council; in the evening, pray.

Proverb, German

Life is a flower of which love is the honey.

Hugo, Victor

New York is an exciting town where something is happening all the time, most unsolved.

Carson, Johnny

The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind.

Mumford, Lewis

10.

It is very certain that the desire of life prolongs it.

Byron, Lord

11.

Simply the thing I am shall make me live.

Shakespeare, William

12.

Life is like eating artichokes, you have got to go through so much to get so little.

Dorgan, Thomas A.

13.

You really haven't changed, you've just become more of yourself. That is really what were all trying to do: become more of ourselves.

Oprah Winfrey

14.

Accept life, take it as it is? Stupid. The means of doing otherwise? Far from our having to take it, it is life that possesses us and on occasion shuts our mouths.

Camus, Albert

15.

Life is not so much a matter of position as of disposition

16.

The trouble with life is that there are so many beautiful women and so little time.

Barrymore, John

17.

The continuous invention of new ways of observing is man's special secret of living.

Young, J. Z.

18.

Life may not be beautiful, but it is interesting.

Seeley, Sir John Robert

19.

When we exercise self-control on a given occasion, we win for ourselves a little credibility we can rely on the next time around. Pretty soon we develop a reputation to ourselves that we want badly to uphold. With each test that we meet, our resolve gains momentum, fueled by the fear that we may succumb and establish a damaging precedent for our own weakness.

Daniel Akst

20.

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.

Menander of Athens

21.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Camus, Albert

22.

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

Wickett, Michael

23.

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

24.

How could drops of water know themselves to be a river? Yet the river flows on.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

25.

If we make our goal to live a life of compassion and unconditional love, then the world will indeed become a garden where all kinds of flowers can bloom and grow.

KuBler-Ross, Elisabeth

26.

He who is not busy being born is busy dying.

Dylan, Bob

27.

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose, So the one is pretty equal to the other.

La Bruyere, Jean De

28.

Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies.

Landers, Ann

29.

Live poor so you can die rich.

30.

Life is the only art that we are required to practice without preparation, and without being allowed the preliminary trials, the failures and botches, that are essential for training.

Mumford, Lewis

31.

Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to time, death is suddenly there, unintelligibly.

Baudrillard, Jean

32.

I have never felt salvation in nature. I love cities above all.

Michelangelo

33.

The only reason they come to see me is that I know that life is great -- and they know I know it.

Gable, Clark

34.

Life is made up, not of great sacrifices or duties, but of little things, in which smiles and kindness, and small obligations given habitually, are what preserve the heart and secure comfort.

Davy, Sir Humphrey

35.

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!

Stevenson, Adlai E.

36.

I look upon those pitiful concretions of lime and clay which spring up, in mildewed forwardness, out of the kneaded fields about our capital... not merely with the careless disgust of an offended eye, not merely with sorrow for a desecrated landscape, but with a painful foreboding that the roots of our national greatness must be deeply cankered when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground. The crowded tenements of a struggling and restless population differ only from the tents of the Arab or the Gipsy by their less healthy openness to the air of heaven, and less happy choice of their spot of earth; by their sacrifice of liberty without the gain of rest, and of stability without the luxury of change.

Ruskin, John

37.

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rilke, Rainer Maria

38.

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.

Benjamin, Walter

39.

Man spends his life in reasoning on the past, in complaining of the present, in fearing future.

Rivarol, Antoine

40.

Youth is too tumultuous for felicity; old age too insecure for happiness. The period most favorable to enjoyment, in a vigorous, fortunate, and generous life, is that between forty and sixty.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

41.

The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away. [Psalms 90:10]

Bible

42.

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

Conrad, Joseph

43.

The world has so many lessons to teach you. I consider the world, our earth, to be like a school, and our life, the classrooms. Sometimes on our planet life school, the lessons often come dressed up as detours and road blocks and sometimes as full blown crises. And the secret I've learned to getting ahead is being open to the lessons.

Oprah Winfrey

44.

Life is like playing a violin in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Samuel Butler

45.

Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it.

Proverb, Indian

46.

The cities of America are inexpressibly tedious. The Bostonians take their learning too sadly; culture with them is an accomplishment rather than an atmosphere; their Hub, as they call it, is the paradise of prigs. Chicago is a sort of monster-shop, full of bustles and bores. Political life at Washington is like political life in a suburban vestry. Baltimore is amusing for a week, but Philadelphia is dreadfully provincial; and though one can dine in New York one could not dwell there.

Wilde, Oscar

47.

The purpose of life is the expansion of happiness.

Yogi, Maharishi Mahesh

48.

America is a nation with no truly national city, no Paris, no Rome, no London, no city which is at once the social center, the political capital, and the financial hub.

Mills, C. Wright

49.

Those who talk on the razor-edge of double-meanings pluck the rarest blooms from the precipice on either side.

Smith, Logan Pearsall

50.

The man who says he has exhausted life generally means that life has exhausted him.

Wilde, Oscar