quotations about life
Life is a theatre of alarms and contentions.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Human Nature and the Social Order
I submit to you that if a man has not discovered something that he will die for, he isn't fit to live.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
speech during the Great March on Detroit, Jun. 23, 1963
He lived the life he lived, like anybody, I guess, and he paid his dues, like everybody. Maybe what I mean when I say he made his life so hard was that he always tried to pay his dues in front.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
There was that law of life so cruel and so just which demanded that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same.
NORMAN MAILER
The Deer Park
Life like a shroud on men and women lies.
MAURICE BROWNE
"At Dusk"
Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.
IRVIN D. YALOM
The Schopenhauer Cure
Life -- a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.
CHARLES LINDBERGH
"Is Civilization Progress?", Reader's Digest, July 1964
Black river of torture, writhing senselessly, whirlpool of life, in vain I search thee for one moment's rest.
ELISE PUMPELLY CABOT
"Arizona"
Activity does not necessarily mean life.
PHILIP K. DICK
A Scanner Darkly
Take responsibility for making your own life beautiful.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
Sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks...
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Rum Diary
So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Broken Music"
Life is like a school; one can learn, one can graduate, one can skip a grade or stay behind.
ELIZABETH LESSER
The New American Spirituality: A Seeker's Guide
It is a matter of embracing one's only life, even though this life so often seems to be, merely, one's doom. And it is, in a way, though not "merely." But to refuse the doom of one's only life is to be trapped outside all nourishment.
JAMES BALDWIN
Just Above My Head
Work, whiskey, and cards were life.
HENRY ADAMS
The Education of Henry Adams
We had crossed from death into what certainly sounded like life. And not only did it sound like life, it looked like life; and not only did it look like life, it looked like a particular life, a life which was a particular reproach to me.
JAMES BALDWIN
Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone
To enjoy the flavor of life, take big bites. Moderation is for monks.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
Life -- and I don't suppose I'm the first to make this comparison -- is a disease: sexually transmitted, and invariably fatal.
NEIL GAIMAN
Death Talks About Life
Let us toast to animal pleasures, to escapism, to rain on the roof and instant coffee, to unemployment insurance and library cards, to absinthe and good-hearted landlords, to music and warm bodies and contraceptives ... and to the "good life", whatever it is and wherever it happens to be.
HUNTER S. THOMPSON
The Proud Highway
A life knows few revelations; these must be followed when they come.
JOHN UPDIKE
Rabbit at Rest