Quotes about life
Here are 40 passages (out of 76) from classic authors that speak of life, for example by William James, Jack London and Plato.
We kept the passages whose text touches on the theme, starting with those where it comes up most. Each is given word for word, with its author, its work and the reference of the passage. To browse an author’s quotes, follow the name.
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“Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
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“There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.”
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“Not life, but a good life, is to be chiefly valued.”
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“Very little indeed is necessary for living a happy life.”
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“But, dost thou love life? then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of, as Poor Richard says.”
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“There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings.”
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“The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life? / Answer. / That you are here—that life exists and identity, / That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”
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“If aged and life-weary men have called to their neighbors, Think of dying! we younger and life-loving men may well keep encouraging and reminding one another with the cheerful words, Think of wandering!”
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“My life now, my whole life apart from anything that can happen to me, every minute of it is no more meaningless, as it was before, but it has the positive meaning of goodness, which I have the power to put into it.”
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“I think every one should love life above everything in the world.”
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“The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.”
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“Gray, my good friend, is every theory, But green the golden tree of life.”
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“Life is long, there will be good and bad to come, there will be everything.”
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“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?”
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“In these gorges, water is the mother of all life and the nurse of all beauty.”
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“Whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well.”
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“Yes, farewell! Liberty! New life! Resurrection from the dead! Unspeakable moment!”
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“However deceitful hope may be, yet she carries us on pleasantly to the end of life.”
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“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
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“We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.”
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“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”
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“My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man’s life?”
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“He is the happiest man who can set the end of his life in connection with the beginning.”
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“The old is crumbling down--the times are changing And from the ruins blooms a fairer life.”
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“Grow old along with me! / The best is yet to be, / The last of life, for which the first was made.”
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“Since long life is denied us, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least LIVED.”
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“Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth”
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“A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.”
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“The strength of a man’s virtue must not be measured by his occasional efforts, but by his ordinary life.”
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“So one thing from another rises ever; And in fee-simple life is given to none, But unto all mere usufruct.”
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“Why do we complain of Nature? she has dealt kindly with us. Life is long enough, if you know how to use it.”
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“That best portion of a good man’s life; / His little, nameless, unremembered acts / Of kindness and of love.”
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“There is no such obstacle to true living as waiting, which loses to-day while it is depending on the morrow.”
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“Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.”
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“Life has no terrors for him who has thoroughly apprehended that there are no terrors for him in ceasing to live.”
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“Love, I thought, is stronger than death or the fear of death. Only by it, by love, life holds together and advances.”
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“Living, Lesbia, we should e’en be loving. Sour severity, tongue of eld maligning, All be to us a penny’s estimation.”
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“Midway upon the journey of our life I found myself within a forest dark, For the straightforward pathway had been lost.”
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“To know how to grow old is the master work of wisdom, and one of the most difficult chapters in the great art of living.”
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“The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.”