quotations about life
I suspect most of life takes place in the interstices of what's already been articulated.
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Rain Taxi, winter 2000/2001
Each new epoch in life seems an encounter. There is a tussle and a cloud of dust, and we come out of it triumphant or crest-fallen, according as we have borne ourselves.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW
Table-Talk
We look back upon our life only as on a thing of broken pieces, because our misses and failures are always the first to strike us, and outweigh in our imagination what we have done and attained.
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe
What misery to live in this world! We are like men whose enemies are at the door, who must not lay aside their arms, even while sleeping or eating, and are always in dread lest the foe should enter the fortress by some breach in the walls. O my Lord and my all! How canst thou wish us to prize such a wretched existence?
TERESA OF AVILA
The Interior Castle
If life is not a continual denial of the past, then it is nothing.
ARNOLD BENNETT
The Reasonable Life
Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
attributed, Lindbergh: Flight's Enigmatic Hero
Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain.
EMIL CIORAN
A Short History of Decay
Well life has a funny way of sneaking up on you
When you think everything's okay and everything's going right
And life has a funny way of helping you out when
You think everything's gone wrong and everything blows up
In your face
ALANIS MORISSETTE
"Ironic"
Life thunders on.
LOLA RIDGE
"Frank Little at Calvary"
So our lives glide on: the river ends we don't know where, and the sea begins, and then there is no more jumping ashore.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Life is more sweet than I
Knew: the shifted scene
Less wavered, more trimmed with light,
Than the years before.
Look down. People pass over the ice
As a file of thin ghosts creep,
And fade beyond the hill.
You, and you, and you--
Small souls, shrinking away.
MARK TURBYFILL
"Journey"
Life packed a clever one-two punch: cruelty and absurdity.
DEAN KOONTZ
Velocity
A good life keeps off wrinkles.
SPANISH PROVERB
Life compulsively dangled the possibility of life. Life, the dramatist on speed. Life, that couldn't stop with its foreshadows and ironies and symbols and clues, its wretched jokes and false endings and twists. Life with its hopeless addiction to plot.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
That's what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you're through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.
FREDERIK POHL
Gateway
I think we can all agree life is a lot better when a dog chasing bears is one of the biggest news stories of the day.
JOHN HALTIWANGER
"This Savage Dog Chased Bears Out Of Its Neighborhood Like A Total Boss", Elite Daily, September 1, 2016
If life is a death sentence, then we all have plenty of time to kill.
GREGORY ADAMS
"Review: Life Is a Death Sentence", Exclaim, June 10, 2016
Every now and then life sold you an illusion of design. A coincidence, a parallel, a sledgehammer symbol. The goods were always faulty. You forked over the cash only to discover they'd fallen apart by the time you got home. But life kept at it. Life couldn't help it. Life was a compulsive salesman.
GLEN DUNCAN
Talulla Rising
To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you.
ANAIS NIN
diary, Mar. 6, 1936
She seemed to listen to life as though life were the most cunning and charming of confidence men: knowing perfectly well that she was being conned, she, nevertheless, again and again, gave the man the money for the Brooklyn Bridge. She never gained possession of the bridge, of course, but she certainly learned how to laugh. And the tiny lines in her face had been produced as much by laughter as by loss.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone