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Life

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Make your life worth living. ~ Albert Einstein
Life is demanding without understanding. ~ Ace of Base

Life is a state that distinguishes organisms from non-living objects or dead organisms, being manifested by growth through metabolism and reproduction.

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  • There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.~~ 1931
The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best. ~ Felix Adler
A grain of sand, such are his few years compared with eternity. ~ Ecclesiasticus
  • It is written that the last enemy to be vanquished is death. We should begin early in life to vanquish this enemy by obliterating every trace of the fear of death from our minds. Then can we turn to life and fill the whole horizon of our souls with it, turn with added zest to all the serious tasks which it imposes and to the pure delights which here and there it affords.
    • Felix Adler, Life and Destiny (1913), Section 8: Suffering and Consolation.
  • Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.
    • Felix Adler, Life and Destiny (1913), Section 8: Suffering and Consolation.
  • The bitter, yet merciful, lesson which death teaches us is to distinguish the gold from the tinsel, the true values from the worthless chaff.
    The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.
    • Felix Adler, Life and Destiny (1913), Section 8: Suffering and Consolation.
  • Reconciling the opposites of life and death, of celebration and grief, of laughter and rage is no simple task, yet it is one worthy of our best understanding and our best effort. If, in all these centuries of death, we have continued to endure, we must celebrate that fact and the fact of our vitality in the face of what seemed, to many, inevitable extinction. For however painful and futile our struggle becomes, we have but to look outside at the birds, the deer, and the seasons to understand that change does not mean destruction, that life, however painful and even elusive it is at times, contains much joy and hilarity, pleasure and beauty for those who live within its requirements with grace.
  • I once went through books and wanted to understand what philosophers said about life. Some of them saw everything as dark. "Since we are nothing and we will reach zero, there is no room for joy and happiness during our temporary life on earth," they said. I read other books, written by wiser men. They were saying: "Since the end is zero anyway, let us at least be joyful and cheerful as long as we live." For my own character I like the second view of life, but within these limits: A man who sees the existence of all mankind in his own person is pathetic. Obviously that man will perish as an individual. What is necessary for any man to be satisfied and happy as long as he lives is not to work for himself, but for those who will come after him. Only in this way can a man of understanding act. Complete pleasure and happiness in life can only be found in working for the honor, existence and happiness of future generations.
  • Karma is the Law of Cause and Effect as applied to the life of the soul — the law whereby it reaps the results of its own sowing, or suffers the reaction from its own action... however, it has a larger meaning, and is used in the sense of the Law of Justice, or the Law of Reward and Punishment, operating along the lines of personal experience, personal life, and personal character. p. 223

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He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. ~ Philip James Bailey
Life hath more awe than death. ~ Philip James Bailey
One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion. ~ Simone de Beauvoir
What one needs to do at every moment of one's life is to put an end to the old world and to begin a new world. ~ Nikolai Berdyaev
The loss of belief in reincarnation, and of a sane view as to the continuity of life, whether it were spent in this or in the next two worlds, brought with it various incongruities and indefensible assertions, among them the blasphemous and terrible idea of the eternal torture of the human soul for sins committed during the brief span of one life spent on earth. ~ Annie Besant
Suffering exists: Life is suffering.... Suffering is due to attachment... the desire to have and control things... There is an end to suffering....In order to end suffering... follow the Eightfold Path.
Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue... ~ Richard Francis Burton
Life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
And hope and fear [...]
Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
How love might be, hath been indeed, and is. ~ Robert Browning
  • All souls incarnate and re-incarnate under the Law of Rebirth. Hence each life is not only a recapitulation of life experience, but an assuming of ancient obligations, a recovery of old relations, an opportunity for the paying of old indebtedness, a chance to make restitution and progress, an awakening of deep-seated qualities, the recognition of old friends and enemies, the solution of revolting injustices, and the explanation of that which conditions the man, and makes him what he is. Such is the law which is crying now for universal recognition.
  • The new psychology must inevitably be built upon the premise that this one life is not man's sole opportunity in which to achieve integration and eventual perfection. The great Law of Rebirth must be accepted, and it will then be found to be, in itself, a major releasing agent in any moment of crisis, or any psychological problem case.
  • Practically all the teaching given anent rebirth or reincarnation, has emphasised the material phenomenal side, though there has always been a more or less casual reference to the spiritual and mental gains acquired in the school of life upon this planet, from incarnation to incarnation. The true nature of the unfolding awareness, and the growth of the inner consciousness of the true man, have been little noted; the gain of each life in added grasp of the mechanism of contact, and the result of increased sensitivity to the environment, are seldom if ever stressed.
  • We live in deeds, not years: in thoughts, not breaths;
    In feelings, not in figures on a dial.
    We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives
    Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.
  • It matters not how long we live, but how.
  • Art would not be important if life were not important, and life is important.
    • James Baldwin "An interview with James Baldwin" (1961), in Conversations with James Baldwin, p. 21
  • Life! we've been long together
    Through pleasant and through cloudy weather;
    Tis hard to part when friends are dear,—
    Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear.
    Then steal away, give little warning.
    Choose thine own time,
    Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime,
    Bid me "Good-morning."
  • Science leads to great achievements, which, quite rightly, fill of joy those who seek the truth, but if pursued, teaches us that we must seek other sources of ultimate truth and find answers to existential questions about the meaning of life and the mystery of death.
    • Franco Bassani, "Knowing the universe. For whom?" “Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples”, Rimini meeting 2006, August 23, 2006
  • We require in our life both personal effort and Divine Guidance. Nothing can be achieved simply by personal effort, we also require Divine Mercy. But simply Divine Mercy is not enough, we require the strength and courage to receive it. Just as a bird cannot fly without both wings, so also a man cannot attain success in spiritual life without personal endeavour and Divinity.
    • Paramahansa Maharshi Nagendranath Bhaduri, Extracts from precepts of Maharshi Nagendranath, The Levitating Saint [ His Life & Advices] - Translated by Prof. Tripurasankar Sen Shastri , Nagendra Mission, 2B Rammohan Roy Road, Kolkata -700 009,W.B, India, p. 32
  • One's life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation and compassion.
    • Simone de Beauvoir, As quoted in Successful Aging : A Conference Report (1974) by Eric Pfeiffer, p. 142.
  • Human evolution is the evolution of the Thinker... At first, as little conscious as a baby’s earthly body, he almost slept through life after life, till the experiences playing on him from without awakened some of his latent forces into activity; but gradually he assumed more and more part in the direction of his life, until, with manhood reached, he took his life into his own hands, and an ever-increasing control over his future destiny. p. 131
  • All evolution consists of an evolving life, passing from form to form as it evolves, and storing up in itself the experiences gained through the forms; the reincarnation of the human soul is not the introduction of a new principle into evolution, but the adaptation of the universal principle to meet the conditions rendered necessary by the individualisation of the continuously evolving life... A life of extreme hardship, of ceaseless struggle with nature, will develop very different powers from those evolved amid the luxuriant plenty of a tropical island; both sets of powers are needed, for the soul is to conquer every region of nature, but striking differences may thus be evolved even in souls of the same age, and one may appear to be more advanced than the other, according as the observer estimates most highly the more “practical” or the more “contemplative” powers of the soul, the active outward-going energies, or the quiet inward-turned musing faculties. The perfected soul possesses all, but the soul in the making must develop them successively, and thus arises another cause of the immense variety found among human beings. For again, it must be remembered that human evolution is individual. p.180-202
  • The loss of belief in reincarnation, and of a sane view as to the continuity of life, whether it were spent in this or in the next two worlds, brought with it various incongruities and indefensible assertions, among them the blasphemous and terrible idea of the eternal torture of the human soul for sins committed during the brief span of one life spent on earth. p. 307
    • Annie Besant, in Esoteric Christianity, or The Lesser Mysteries, by Annie Besant, (1914)
  • The aim of life is inquiry into the Truth, and not the desire for enjoyment in heaven by performing religious rites, Those who possess the knowledge of the Truth, call the knowledge of non-duality as the Truth, It is called Brahman, the Highest Self, and w:Bhagavan.
    • Bhagavata Purana 1.2.10-11, translated by Daniel Sheridan 1986, p. 23
  • LIFE, n. A spiritual pickle preserving the body from decay. We live in daily apprehension of its loss; yet when lost it is not missed. The question, "Is life worth living?" has been much discussed; particularly by those who think it is not, many of whom have written at great length in support of their view and by careful observance of the laws of health enjoyed for long terms of years the honors of successful controversy.
    • Ambrose Bierce, The Cynic's Dictionary (1906); republished as The Devil's Dictionary (1911).
  • When one unacquainted with the noble doctrine looks around him, and observes the inequalities of birth and fortune, of intellect and capacities; when one sees honour paid fools and profligates, on whom fortune has heaped her favours by mere privilege of birth, and their nearest neighbor, with all his intellect and noble virtues -- far more deserving in every way -- perishing of want and for lack of sympathy; when one sees all this and has to turn away, helpless to relieve the undeserved suffering, one's ears ringing and heart aching with the cries of pain around him -- that blessed knowledge of Karma alone prevents him from cursing life and men, as well as their supposed Creator.
  • Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. Each cell in the living body must sacrifice itself to the perfection of the whole; when it is otherwise, disease and death enforce the lesson.
    ...Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow; whence springs suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness.
    ...The discovery and right use of the true essence of Being — this is the whole secret of life.
    • H.P. Blavatsky, Gems from the East, a Birthday Book of Precepts and Axioms, (1890)
  • For life, with all it yields of joy and woe,
    And hope and fear     (believe the aged friend),
    Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,—
    How love might be, hath been indeed, and is.
  • I suppose—one has to suppose—that to the AIs, love is just one more quantifiable entity in a universe of quantifiable entities. Probably it’s as basic to them as a bit of clockwork; the right neurons firing, a few chemicals in the right combination. But then again, the same can be said of life itself. The sweet, living Earth, with all its countless green fronds and numberless beating hearts, is all just clockwork and chemistry, all eminently quantifiable and understandable. That doesn’t stop it from being something amazing and magical, measureless and infinite.
  • Lives matter in the sense that they assume physical form within the sphere of appearance; lives matter because they are to be valued equally.

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Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. ~ James Branch Cabell
The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. ~ Albert Camus
I am the life
That'll never, never die;
I'll live in you
If you'll live in me —
I am the Lord
Of the Dance, said he. ~ Sydney Carter
Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment. ~ Sri Chinmoy
Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. ~ Vicki Corona.
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. ~ Marie Curie
  • Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over books. But life is a fine ardent spectacle; and I have loved the actors in it: and I have loved their youth and high-heartedness, and their ungrounded faiths, and their queer dreams, my Kerin, about their own importance and about the greatness of the destiny that awaited them, — while you were piddling after, of all things, the truth!
    • James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), Saraïde, in Book Seven : What Saraïde Wanted, Ch. XLVII : Economics of Saraïde.
  • Life is very marvelous … and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed.
    • James Branch Cabell, The Silver Stallion : A Comedy of Redemption (1926), The Gander, in Book Seven : What Saraïde Wanted, Ch. XLV : The Gander Also Generalizes.
  • The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it.
    • Albert Camus, "The Reading Room," Alger Républicain (1938) critiquing Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, as quoted in Albert Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd (2002) by Avi Sagi, p. 43.
  • People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.
  • It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.
  • As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life.
    • Rachel Carson Speech (1954) In Lost Woods: The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson (1998)
  • The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species-man-acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world.
  • Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can't. But I don't believe that the Federal Government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved.
    • Jimmy Carter, answer to a question asking whether it is fair that women who can afford abortions can get them while women who cannot afford them are precluded, news conference, Washington, D.C. (July 12, 1977). Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977, book 2, p. 1237.
  • They cut me down
    And I leapt up high;
    I am the life
    That'll never, never die;
    I'll live in you
    If you'll live in me —
    I am the Lord
    Of the Dance, said he.
    • Sydney Carter, Lord of the Dance (1963)
      • The quotes in Lord of the Dance are from the definitive lyrics to original "Lord of the Dance" song which was written to accompany the Shaker tune of "Simple Gifts" by Joseph Brackett. These were later adapted (in either ignorance or denial of the actual origins) without authorization or acknowledgments in the theatrical play "Lord of the Dance", and in other adaptations since.
  • Woman: What is my true life work?
    Cayce: Encouraging the weak and the faint; giving strength and courage to those who have faltered.
    • Edgar Cayce, ( Many Mansions Chapter 20 - A Philosophy of Vocational Choice )
  • Forget the financial angle and consider rather which is the best outlet for the greatest contribution you can make towards making the world a better place in which to live. Efforts should never be expended purely for mercenary reasons. Pecuniary gains should come as a result of the entity's using his abilities in the direction of being helpful.
    • Edgar Cayce, ( Many Mansions Chapter 20 - A Philosophy of Vocational Choice )
  • In our lives there is a simple colour, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love.
    • Marc Chagall in: C. Robertson (1998) Dictionary of quotations. p. 78 - Pagina 78
  • Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment.
    • Sri Chinmoy, Ten Thousand Flower Flames Part 1-100 (1979), #4029, Part 41.
  • O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life.
    • Cicero, Tusc. Quæst, Book V. 2. 5. Reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 596-97.
A happy life consists in tranquility of mind. ~ Cicero
  • Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age—each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season.
  • Undoubtedly, as it seems to me at least, satiety of all pursuits causes satiety of life. Boyhood has certain pursuits: does youth yearn for them? Early youth has its pursuits: does the matured or so-called middle stage of life need them? Maturity, too, has such as are not even sought in old age, and finally, there are those suitable to old age. Therefore as the pleasures and pursuits of the earlier periods of life fall away, so also do those of old age; and when that happens man has his fill of life and the time is ripe for him to go.
  • How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!
    • Cicero, Tusculan Disputations Book II, Chapter IV; translation by Andrew P. Peabody (45 BC)
  • We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind.
    • Cicero, De Natura Deorum – On the Nature of the Gods (45 BC)
  • To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.
  • You try your damnedest, but something always goes wrong. That’s life. If you’re smart, you plan for it.
  • Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!
  • Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
    • Vicki Corona, Tahitian Choreographies (Aug 1, 1989) Dance Fantasy Productions, p. 36 (Discussion).
  • Still ending, and beginning still.
  • What is it but a map of busy life,
    Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
  • Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.
    • 'La vie n’est facile pour aucun de nous. Mais quoi, il faut avoir de la persévérance, et surtout de la confiance en soi. Il faut croire que l’on est doué pour quelque chose, et que, cette chose, il faut l'atteindre coûte que coûte.'
      • Marie Curie, As quoted in Madame Curie : A Biography (1937) by Eve Curie Labouisse, p. 69.
  • One is born, one runs up bills, one dies.
    • Richard Curtis (English screenwriter and film director) and Ben Elton (British-Australian comedian and author). Stated by Rowan Atkinson playing Edmund Blackadder in the BBC situation comedy, Blackadder the Third, episode four, 'Amy and Amiability', 1987.

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For with You is the source of life;
By light from you we can see light. ~ David
Life's a garden, dig it! ~ Joe Dirt
The consciousness of life is higher than life. ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • Life is an urge of the Universe to understand itself.
    • N. S. Dhami, "A Phrase Steps Out of the Past".
  • Life's a garden, dig it!
  • A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once.

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Good things don't last and life moves so fast. ~ Billie Eilish
The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
When life is true to the poles of nature, the streams of truth will roll through us in song. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson
  • As he came forth of his mother's womb, naked shall he return to go as he came, and shall take nothing of his labour, which he may carry away in his hand. And this also is a sore evil, that in all points as he came, so shall he go: and what profit hath he that hath laboured for the wind? All his days also he eateth in darkness, and he hath much sorrow and wrath with his sickness.
  • What is man? What is his purpose? What is the good in him and what the bad? Take the length of his life: a hundred years is long. Like a drop of water from the sea, a grain of sand, such are his few years compared with eternity. For this reason, the Lord has patience with them and pours out his mercy on them. He sees and realizes how miserable their end is and so he heaps his forgiveness upon them. Man’s mercy is for his neighbor but the compassion of the Lord reaches all people; he rebukes, corrects, teaches and brings back his flock like a shepherd. He takes pity on those who accept correction and eagerly seek his will.
  • If it wasn’t disappointing, you wouldn’t know it was life.
  • What is the meaning of human life, or of organic life altogether? To answer this question at all implies a religion. Is there any sense then, you ask, in putting it? I answer, the man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate but almost disqualified for life.
  • Be a loner. That gives you time to wonder, to search for the truth. Have holy curiosity. Make your life worth living.
  • Man can find meaning in life, short and perilous as it is, only through devoting himself to society.
  • Life's a vast sea
    That does its mighty errand without fail,
    Painting in unchanged strength though waves are changing.
  • The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself. He is not to live the future as described to him but to live the real future to the real present. The highest revelation is that God is in every man.
  • Sooner or later that which is now life shall be poetry, and every fair and manly trait shall add a richer strain to the song.
  • When life is true to the poles of nature, the streams of truth will roll through us in song.
  • So likewise all this life of martall men,
    What is it but a certaine kynde of stage plaie?
    Where men come forthe disguised one in one arraie,
    An other in an other eche plaiying his part.
    • Erasmus, Praise of Folie. Challoner's translation (1549), p. 43.
  • Sometimes I think life is all one long fucking count: We count the hours, the bulls count us, and the head bulls count counts.

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Life is like the sea. There'll be a direction to follow even if you sail more than one day or one life... the promise of a new land is your guide, because you know that the sea is a huge world that's beautiful only if there's a shore. ~ Patricky Field
We're all alive, but we don't know why or what for; we're all searching for happiness; we're all leading lives that are different and yet the same. ~ Anne Frank
I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for life" instead of for "death." ~ Erich Fromm
Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun. ~ Robert Frost
  • The sea is only beautiful if there's a shore. Life is like the sea. There'll be a direction to follow even if you sail more than one day or one life... the promise of a new land is your guide, because you know that the sea is a huge world that's beautiful only if there's a shore.
    • Patricky Field, as quoted in Beautiful if there's a shore (2008) song by Patricky Field.
  • O ja, ik wil niet zoals de meeste mensen voor niets geleefd hebben. Ik wil van nut of plezier zijn voor de mensen, die om mij heen leven en die mij toch niet kennen.
    • I don't want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I've never met.
    • Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944), 5 April 1944.
  • Wij leven allen, maar weten niet waarom en waarvoor, wij leven allen met het doel gelukkig te worden, we leven allen verschillend en toch gelijk.
    • We're all alive, but we don't know why or what for; we're all searching for happiness; we're all leading lives that are different and yet the same.
    • Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944), 6 July 1944.
    • Variant translation: We all live with the objective of being happy, our lives are all different and yet the same.
  • There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life.
    • Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning, p. 126 in the 1984 Pocket Books edition.
  • Dost thou love life? then do not squander time; for that is the stuff life is made of.
    • Benjamin Franklin, reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 582
  • I believe that none can "save" his fellow man by making a choice for him. To help him, he can indicate the possible alternatives, with sincerity and love, without being sentimental and without illusion. The knowledge and awareness of the freeing alternatives can reawaken in an individual all his hidden energies and put him on the path to choosing respect for "life" instead of for "death."
    • Erich Fromm, Credo (1965), First published in English in On Being Human (1994) by Erich From, edited by Rainer Funk, pp. 99-105. Full text online.
  • Human beings desire more than small pleasures in the routines of life. We also seek great challenges in the face of death.
  • In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life — It goes on.
    • Robert Frost, as quoted in The Harper Book of Quotations (1993) edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry, p. 261.
  • Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
    The brook runs down in sending up our life.
    The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
    And there is something sending up the sun.

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A temporary sojourn in alien lands. ~ Louis Ginzberg
All manifested life is sorrow, unless man knows how to live it. ~ Gautama Buddha
  • The First Truth is an assertion that all manifested life is sorrow, unless man knows how to live it. In commenting upon this, the Bodhisattva said that there are two senses in which manifested life is sorrowful. One of these is to some extent inevitable, but the other is an entire mistake and is very easily to be avoided... Even though we may be only a tiny fragment—indeed, a fragment of a fragment—we are nevertheless a part of a magnificent reality. There is nothing to be proud of in being only a fragment, but there is a certainty that because we are therefore part of the higher, we can eventually rise into the higher and become one therewith. That is the end and aim of our evolution. And even when we attain that, remember that it is not for the sake of our delight in the advancement, but that we may be able to help in the scheme. All these sacrifices and limitations may rightly be described as involving suffering; but they are undertaken gladly as soon as the ego [soul/God within] fully understands. An ego has not the perfection of the Monad, and so he does not fully understand at first; he has to learn like everybody else.
  • There is another sense in which life is often sorrow, but a kind of sorrow that can be entirely avoided. The man who lives the ordinary life of the world often finds himself in trouble of various kinds. It would not be true to say that he is always in sorrow, but he is often in anxiety, and he is always liable at any moment to fall into great sorrow or anxiety. The reason for this is that he is full of lower desires of various kinds, not at all necessarily wicked, but desires for lower things; and because of these desires he is tied down and confined. He is constantly striving to attain something which he has not, and he is full of anxiety as to whether he will attain it; and when he has attained it, he is anxious lest he should lose it. This is true not only of money but of position and power, of fame and of social advancement. All these cravings cause incessant trouble in many different ways.
  • The thought occurred to me: 'When an untaught, run-of-the-mill person, himself subject to death, not beyond death, sees another who is dead, he is horrified, humiliated, & disgusted, oblivious to himself that he too is subject to death, not beyond death. And if I — who am subject to death, not beyond death — were to be horrified, humiliated, & disgusted on seeing another person who is dead, that would not be fitting for me.' As I noticed this, the living person's intoxication with life entirely dropped away.
  • Life is a jest; and all things show it.
    I thought so once; and now I know it.
    • John Gay My Own Epitaph, inscribed on Gay’s monument in Westminster Abbey; also quoted as "I thought so once; but now I know it".
It is the law of life that if you are kind to someone you feel happy.  If you are cruel you are unhappy.  And if you hurt someone, you will be hurt back. ~ Cary Grant
  • The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness, And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.
  • Jacob said unto Pharaoh, "The days of the years of my pilgrimage are an hundred and thirty years," using the word pilgrimage in reference to life on earth, which the pious regard as a temporary sojourn in alien lands.
  • The life is worth living. It's not true, what the tired and reactionary say. We're not on this earth to suffer and die. We're here to fulfill a mission.
  • All the bloomy flush of life is fled.
  • Life is a reaching out for something or someone. That is its definition. We choose one thing and then another to reach for, climbing to a new rung on the ladder as awareness grows, but they are all only symbols, even human love at its highest and most redemptive.
  • I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do, or any kindness that I can show to any fellow creature, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
    • Generally attributed to Stephen Grellet, but not found in his published writings. Same idea found in The Spectator. (Addison). No. I, Volume I. March 1. 1710. Canon Jepson positively claimed it for Emerson. Attributed to Edward Courtenay, due to the resemblance of the Earl's epitaph. See Literary World, March 15, 1905. Also to Carlyle, Miss A. B. Hageman, Rowland Hill, Marcus Aurelius.
  • In non-theistic traditions, such as Buddhism, everything is due to its own causes. Karma may come from this lifetime, but it may even come from previous lifetimes. From the Buddhist point of view, we must make forceful positive karma, which can be stronger than the previous negative karma. This can reduce or even eliminate the previous negative karma. So look forward. Lead some kind of new life, full of determination. Lead your life in an honest way, a truthful way. By truthful acts, by compassionate acts, increase positive karma.

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The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory. ~ Edith Hamilton
What kind of life a person is reborn into depends on Karma. Karma refers to all the deeds, words, and thoughts of one’s life... Karma is the deciding factor in one's fate in his or her next life. ~ Walter Hazen
Life is worth Living
Through every grain of it,
From the foundations
To the last edge
Of the cornerstone, death. ~ William Ernest Henley
Life — life — let there be life! ~ William Ernest Henley
If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together! ~ Frank Herbert
Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act. ~ Fred Hoyle
  • He was, first and last, the born fighter, to whom the consciousness of being matched against a great adversary suffices and who can dispense with success. Life for him was an adventure, perilous indeed, but men are not made for safe havens. The fullness of life is in the hazards of life. And, at the worst, there is that in us which can turn defeat into victory.
    • Edith Hamilton, The Great Age of Greek Literature (1942), p. 243. She was referring to Aeschylus.
  • What kind of life a person is reborn into depends on Karma. Karma refers to all the deeds, words, and thoughts of one’s life. Buddhists believe karma is the deciding factor in one's fate in his or her next life.
  • My secret to a long, healthy life is to always keep working. It keeps me busy and happy, and gives me a reason to stay alive.
  • 'Life is worth Living
    Through every grain of it,
    From the foundations
    To the last edge
    Of the cornerstone, death.'
  • Life — life — let there be life!
    Better a thousand times the roaring hours
    When wave and wind,
    Like the Arch-Murderer in flight
    From the Avenger at his heel,
    Storm through the desolate fastnesses
    And wild waste places of the world!
  • Life — give me life until the end,
    That at the very top of being,
    The battle-spirit shouting in my blood,
    Out of the reddest hell of the fight
    I may be snatched and flung
    Into the everlasting lull,
    The immortal, incommunicable dream.
  • Life — life — life! 'Tis the sole great thing
    This side of death,
    Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!
  • Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
    • Patrick Henry, Speech at the Second Virginia Convention at St. John's Church in Richmond, Virginia (23 March 1775)
  • One doth but break-fast here, another dine; he that lives longest does but suppe; we must all goe to bed in another World.
  • If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We're all in this beauty together!
  • Let all live as they would die.
  • The world is like a ride in an amusement park, and when you choose to go on it you think it's real because that's how powerful our minds are. The ride goes up and down, around and around, it has thrills and chills, and it's very brightly colored, and it's very loud, and it's fun for a while. Many people have been on the ride a long time, and they begin to wonder, "Hey, is this real, or is this just a ride?" And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and say, "Hey, don't worry; don't be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride." And we … kill those people. "Shut him up! I've got a lot invested in this ride, shut him up! Look at my furrows of worry, look at my big bank account, and my family. This has to be real." It's just a ride. But we always kill the good guys who try and tell us that, you ever notice that? And let the demons run amok … But it doesn't matter, because it's just a ride. And we can change it any time we want. It's only a choice. No effort, no work, no job, no savings of money. Just a simple choice, right now, between fear and love.
    The eyes of fear want you to put bigger locks on your doors, buy guns, close yourself off.
    The eyes of love instead see all of us as one. Here's what we can do to change the world, right now, to a better ride.'
    Take all that money we spend on weapons and defenses each year and instead spend it feeding and clothing and educating the poor of the world, which it would pay for many times over, not one human being excluded, and we could explore space, together, both inner and outer, forever, in peace.
  • No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
  • live
    so nothing will be left
    for death at the end
  • O Damsel Dorothy! Dorothy Q.!
    Strange is the gift that I owe to you;
    Such a gift as never a king
    Save to daughter or son might bring,—
    All my tenure of heart and hand,
    All my title to house and land;
    Mother and sister and child and wife
    And joy and sorrow and death and life!
    • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., "Dorothy Q"., stanza 5, in The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes (1975), p. 187. Dorothy Quincy was Holmes's great-grandmother, and, as he explained in a head-note to the poem, p. 186–87, "the daughter of Judge Edmund Quincy, and the aunt of Josiah Quincy, junior, the young patriot and orator who died just before the American Revolution, of which he was one of the most eloquent and effective promoters".
What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand? Horace
  • What odds does it make to the man who lives within Nature's bounds, whether he ploughs a hundred acres or a thousand?
    • Book I, satire i, line 48
  • If my character is flawed by a few minor faults, but is otherwise decent and moral, if you can point out only a few scattered blemishes on an otherwise immaculate surface, if no one can accuse me of greed, or of prurience, or of profligacy, if I live a virtuous life, free of defilement (pardon, for a moment, my self-praise), and if I am to my friends a good friend, my father deserves all the credit... As it is now, he deserves from me unstinting gratitude and praise. I could never be ashamed of such a father, nor do I feel any need, as many people do, to apologize for being a freedman's son.
    • Horace, Satires, Book I, satire vi, lines 65–92 (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)
  • Nil sine magno
    vita labore dedit mortalibus.
    • Life grants nothing to us mortals without hard work. / Life has given nothing to mortals without great labor.
    • Horace, Satires, Book I, satire ix, line 59 (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)
  • Then take, good sir, your pleasure while you may;
    With life so short 'twere wrong to lose a day.
    • Horace, Satires, Book II, satire viii, line 96 (trans. Conington) (c. 35 BC and 30 BC)
  • He will through life be master of himself and a happy man who from day to day can have said, "I have lived: tomorrow the Father may fill the sky with black clouds or with cloudless sunshine."
    • Horace, Odes, Book III, ode xxix, line 41 (c. 23 BC and 13 BC)
  • Tomorrow we will be back on the vast ocean.
    • Horace, The Routledge Dictionary of Latin Quotations: The Illiterati's Guide to Latin Maxims, Mottoes, Proverbs and Sayings
  • Life is a hopeless rear guard action against an overwhelming foe; still how can we not admire those who battle on regardless?
  • We have really lost in our society the sense of the sacredness of life.

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Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. ~ William James
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. ~ Steve Jobs
  • Death's got to be easy, because life is hard. It'll leave you physically, mentally, and emotionally scarred.
  • What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.
  • It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result is the only thing that makes the result come true.
    • William James, in "Is Life Worth Living?" The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897).
  • Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
    • William James, in "Is Life Worth Living?" The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897).
  • I am the resurrection and the life. The one who exercises faith in me, even though he dies, will come to life; and everyone who is living and exercises faith in me will never die at all.
  • Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.
    • Jesus, John 17:3 (NIV).
    • Variants:
    • And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.
      • John 17:3 (KJV)
    • This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ.
  • Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
    • Steve Jobs, Address at Stanford University (12 June, 2005).
  • Life is a pill which none of us can bear to swallow without gilding.
  • What then is the universe for, and for what final purpose is man the immortal thinker here in evolution? It is all for the experience and emancipation of the soul, for the purpose of raising the entire mass of manifested matter up to the stature, nature, and dignity of conscious god-hood. The great aim is to reach self-consciousness; not through a race or a tribe or some favored nation, but by and through the perfecting, after transformation, of the whole mass of matter as well as what we now call soul. Nothing is or is to be left out. The aim for present man is his initiation into complete knowledge, and for the other kingdoms below him that they may be raised up gradually from stage to stage to be in time initiated also.
    This is evolution carried to its highest power; it is a magnificent prospect; it makes of man a god, and gives to every part of nature the possibility of being one day the same; there is strength and nobility in it, for by this no man is dwarfed and belittled, for no one is so originally sinful that he cannot rise above all sin. Treated from the materialistic position of Science, evolution takes in but half of life; while the religious conception of it is a mixture of nonsense and fear. Present religions keep the element of fear, and at the same time imagine that an Almighty being can think of no other earth but this and has to govern this one very imperfectly. But the old theosophical view makes the universe a vast, complete, and perfect whole.
  • Karma is an unfamiliar word for Western ears....Applied to man's moral life it is the law of ethical causation, justice, reward and punishment; the cause for birth and rebirth, yet equally the means for escape from incarnation. Viewed from another point it is merely effect flowing from cause, action and reaction, exact result for every thought and act. It is act and the result of act; for the word's literal meaning is action.

K

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Love will come find you
Just to remind you
Of who you are
[...] See that's the thing about love
[...] Then life
It will embrace you
Totally amaze you
So you don't give up ~ Alicia Keys
I came like Water, and like Wind I go. ~ Omar Khayyam
And fear not lest Existence closing your
Account should lose or know the type no more:
The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has poured
Millions of Bubbles like us and will pour. ~ Omar Khayyam
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it. ~ Martin Luther King
Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. Brahman is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law O Arjuna. Those who violate it, indulging the senses for their own pleasure and ignoring the needs of others, have wasted their life... Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life.. ~ Lord Krishna
it may be better to die fighting for survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless life. ~ Theodore Kaczynski
  • To many of us, freedom and dignity are more important than a long life or avoidance of physical pain. Besides, we all have to die some time, and it may be better to die fighting for survival, or for a cause, than to live a long but empty and purposeless life.
  • A young man goes through the power process by becoming a hunter, hunting not for sport or for fulfillment but to get meat that is necessary for food. (In young women the process is more complex, with greater emphasis on social power; we won’t discuss that here.) This phase having been successfully passed through, the young man has no reluctance about settling down to the responsibilities of raising a family. (In contrast, some modern people indefinitely postpone having children because they are too busy seeking some kind of “fulfillment.” We suggest that the fulfillment they need is adequate experience of the power process — with real goals instead of the artificial goals of surrogate activities.) Again, having successfully raised his children, going through the power process by providing them with the physical necessities, the primitive man feels that his work is done and he is prepared to accept old age (if he survives that long) and death. any modern people, on the other hand, are disturbed by the prospect of physical deterioration and death, as is shown by the amount of effort they expend trying to maintain their physical condition, appearance and health. We argue that this is due to unfulfillment resulting from the fact that they have never put their physical powers to any practical use, have never gone through the power process using their bodies in a serious way.
  • Azazel: You've been on the force so long you think you've seen it all, but you haven't. 'Cause life's always got one more surprise for you. And sometimes, it's a big one.
  • I compare human life to a large mansion of many apartments, two of which I can only describe, the doors of the rest being as yet shut upon me.
  • Love will come find you
    Just to remind you
    Of who you are
    [...] See that's the thing about love
    [...] Then life
    It will embrace you
    Totally amaze you
    So you don't give up
  • Brahman/Achheram word is the immutable self on which all that lives, moves and has its being rests. Self is the spirit in man and nature. Karma is the creative impulse out of which life’s forms issue. The whole cosmic evolution is called karma.
  • Ah Love! could you and I with him conspire
    To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
    Would we not shatter it to bits—and then
    Re-mould it nearer to the Heart's Desire?
  • Think, in this batter'd Caravanserai
    Whose portals are alternate Night and Day,
    How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp
    Abode his destin'd Hour and went his way.
  • A Moment's Halt—a momentary taste
    Of BEING from the Well amid the Waste—
    And, Lo! the phantom Caravan has reach'd
    The NOTHING it set out from. Oh, make haste!
  • But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays
    Upon this Checker-board of Nights and Days;
    Hither and thither moves, and checks, and slays,
    And one by one back in the Closet lays.
  • And fear not lest Existence closing your
    Account should lose or know the type no more:
    The Eternal Sáki from that Bowl has poured
    Millions of Bubbles like us and will pour.
  • Measure thy life by loss instead of gain;
    Not by the wine drunk, but by the wine poured forth.
    • Harriet King,The Disciples (1873), Ugo Bassi, III ("The Sermon in the Hospital").
  • (What is the most amazing thing about life?) IK: That it persists despite its fragility. Everything sort of hangs by a hair's breadth and yet somehow it manages.... You hear such horrible stories about people's lives...war, abuse, poverty-that anybody survives is remarkable. Audre Lorde once said, "None of us were meant to survive." There's truth to that, and I remain amazed that so many of us do. It's extraordinary that we can even walk around and function in a minimal way, much less in a productive way. For whatever turmoil goes on internally with people and the pain that they experience at night in their dreams, they still manage somehow to construct lives during the day which are meaningful to other people and to themselves.
    • Irena Klepfisz 1997 interview in Meaning and Memory: Interviews with Fourteen Jewish Poets by Gary Pacernick (2001)
  • Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
    • Martin Luther King, Jr., Strength to Love (1963), Last paragraph of section III of Antidotes for fear, page 122 (see link at top of the section).
We say that life is service for evolution. One might find it simpler to say that life is evolution, but We emphasize the idea of service. Indeed, everything is in the process of evolution, but life’s full expression can come only under conditions of voluntary service. ~ Koot Hoomi
  • We say that life is service for evolution. One might find it simpler to say that life is evolution, but We emphasize the idea of service. Indeed, everything is in the process of evolution, but life’s full expression can come only under conditions of voluntary service. It is the voluntary quality of service that indicates the rightness of the path. In general, people dislike the concept of service. They dream about a time when there will be no need for it, and would be horrified to learn that all of life is unending service... It is hard for them to understand that art is a refined aid for evolution, and that We recommend the mastery of any art or craft as a rapid approach to service. A master will willingly agree to perpetual service in the perfection of his art, and feels no need to count the hours of labor.... Our life is a voluntary mastership and is not concerned with limits. 305
  • Even on Earth it is possible to almost forget time, and service becomes joy. I affirm that one can prepare oneself for such service under all circumstances. One need not be a sage to accept life as something important and responsible. There are examples of even simple farmers who were ready to devote themselves to the idea of service. It was the loss of this concept of service that turned earthly life into slavery and insanity. But the time is approaching when people will be looking, even unwittingly, for the purpose of life. They will first refer to evolution in scientific terms, but the next step will be the acceptance of service as the right approach to life. The Thinker taught that the concept of service can solve the riddles of life. 305
  • At the beginning, mankind and the obligation of selfless service were created together. Through selfless service, you will always be fruitful and find the fulfillment of your desires: this is the promise of the Creator... Every selfless act, Arjuna, is born from Brahman, the eternal, infinite Godhead. Brahman is present in every act of service. All life turns on this law O Arjuna. Those who violate it, indulging the senses for their own pleasure and ignoring the needs of others, have wasted their life. But those who realize the Self are always satisfied. Having found the source of joy and fulfillment, they no longer seek happiness from the external world. They have nothing to gain or lose by any action; neither people nor things can affect their security. Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life.
  • If you are eating well and your condition is pure and clean, life itself becomes like the dreams or visions that you have when sleeping.

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Wasting time is one of the worst faults of the world. Life is so short, every moment is so precious and yet, we live as if life will never end. ~Franz Liszt
If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of. ~ Bruce Lee
The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced. ~ Jacobus Johannes Leeuw
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
When life leaves us blind Love keeps us kind. ~ Linkin Park
This is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end. He has no choice as to that; but the length of time which he will take in qualifying himself for the higher examinations is left entirely to his own discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school-life is not a thing in itself, but only a preparation... endeavours to comprehend as fully as possible the rules of his school, and shapes his life in accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no time may be lost in the learning of whatever lessons are necessary. ~ C.W. Leadbeater
Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do. ~ Jack London
The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time. ~ Jack London
Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. ~ Jack London
  • Life is too short and hard and strange not to blame God for what He done made of the world.
  • Life is years of sheer, endless boredom punctuated by bouts of the mildly interesting.
  • Oh, Life ! — the wearisome, the vexatious — whose pleasures are either placed beyond our reach, or within it when we no longer desire them — when youth toils for the riches, age may possess but not enjoy; — where we trust to friendship, one light word may destroy ; or to love, that dies even of itself; — where we talk of glory, philosophical, literary, military, political — die, or, what is much more, live for it — and this coveted possession dwells in the consent of men of whom no two agree about it.
  • Yes! Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death! Live!
    • Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee , Auntie Mame, act II, scene vi (1957). Auntie Mame is speaking. Based on the novel of the same title by Patrick Dennis.
  • Every one of us has a long line of... physical lives behind him... Each of such lives is a day at school. The ego puts upon himself his garment of flesh and goes forth into the school of the physical world to learn certain lessons. He learns them, or does not learn them, or partially learns them, as the case may be, during his school day of earth-life; then he lays aside the vesture of the flesh and returns home to his own level for rest and refreshment. In the morning of each new life he takes up again his lesson at the point where he left it the night before. Some lessons he may be able to learn in one day, while others may take him many days. If he is an apt pupil and learns quickly what is needed, if he obtains an intelligent grasp of the rules of the school, and takes the trouble to adapt his conduct to them, his school-life is comparatively short...
  • This is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end. He has no choice as to that; but the length of time which he will take in qualifying himself for the higher examinations is left entirely to his own discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school-life is not a thing in itself, but only a preparation... endeavours to comprehend as fully as possible the rules of his school, and shapes his life in accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no time may be lost in the learning of whatever lessons are necessary.
  • Certain broad facts are always put before men in some form or other. They are explained even to savage tribes by their medicine-men, and to the rest of mankind by various religious teachers and in all kinds of scriptures. It is very true that scriptures and religions differ, but the points in which they all agree have to be accepted by a man before he can understand life sufficiently to live happily. One of these facts is the eternal Law of Cause and Effect. If a man lives under the delusion that he can do anything that he likes, and that the effect of his actions will never recoil upon himself, he will most certainly find that some of these actions eventually involve him in unhappiness and suffering. If, again, he does not understand that the object of his life is progress, that God’s Will for him is that he shall grow to be something better and nobler than he is now, then also he will bring unhappiness and suffering upon himself, because he will be likely to live for the lower side of life only, and that lower side of life never finally satisfies the inner man.
  • Time means a lot to me because, you see, I, too, am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing and simplifying. If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
    • Bruce Lee, Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 10; Here Lee paraphrases a much older English proverb: If you care for life, don't waste your time; for time is what life is made of. (as quoted in Bordighera and the Western Riviera (1883) by Frederick Fitzroy Hamilton, p. 189).
  • The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced.
    • Jacobus Johannes Leeuw, The Conquest of Illusion (1928), p. 9
  • Hey, hey, hey. A life. A life, Jimmy. Do you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come.
    • Lester Freamon to Jimmy McNulty, The Wire.
  • 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.
  • Back home where life leaves us blind
    Love keeps us kind     [...] When life leaves us blind
    Love keeps us kind
    • Linkin Park, The Messenger from the album "A Thousand Suns" (September 13, 2010)
  • What shall we call this undetermin'd state,
    This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless oceans,
    That whence we came, and that to which we tend?
    • George Lillo, Arden of Feversham (performed in 1759), Act III, scene 2.
  • Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
  • I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.
    • The Bulletin, San Francisco, California, December 2, 1916, part 2, p. 1.
    • Also included in Jack London’s Tales of Adventure, ed. Irving Shepard, Introduction, p. vii (1956)
  • Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.
    • Jack London, as quoted in Sacred Journey of the Peaceful Warrior (1991) by Dan Millman, p. 78
    • Life’s not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes playing a poor hand well.
      • Jack London, as quoted in "They Came to Write in Hawai‘i" by Joseph Theroux, in Spirit of Aloha (March/April 2007)
  • This life of ours is a wild æolian harp of many a joyous strain,
    But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain.
  • My life, I live to the limit and I love it.
    • Jennifer Lopez, "I'm Real (Murder Remix)" (2001).
  • Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous.

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In the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow… ~ George MacDonald
What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead. ~ Nelson Mandela
I have very strongly this feeling... that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary. ~ Bryan Magee
Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about. ~ Rollo May
Life hath set
No landmarks before us. ~ Owen Meredith
The karma principle can be explained easily with the help of the lotus. The flower signifies human life as being governed by cause and effect. Every cause produces an imprint leading to an effect that can be experienced during the doer's lifetime or in his future life.... ~ V N Mittal, and TOI Crest
The difficulty in life is the choice. ~ George Moore
There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in your own way. ~ Christopher Morley
  • "In the midst of life we are in death," said one; it is more true that in the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow — a word for that which cannot be — a negation, owing the very idea of itself to that which it would deny. But for life there could be no death. If God were not, there would not even be nothing. Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence.
  • Everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest, God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.
    • Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince (1513)
  • The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within — and make the point: This can be done.
    • Abraham Maslow As quoted in The Meaning of Life : According to the Great and the Good (2007) edited by Richard T. Kinnier
  • Life ain't great now, but it's much improved.
  • Life comes from physical survival; but the good life comes from what we care about.
  • Life hath set
    No landmarks before us.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Pt II, Canto V, Stanza 14.
  • When life leaps in the veins, when it beats in the heart,
    When it thrills as it fills every animate part,
    Where lurks it? how works it? * * * we scarcely detect it.
    • Owen Meredith (Lord Lytton), Lucile (1860), Part II, Canto I, Stanza 5.
  • For men to tell how human life began
    Is hard; for who himself beginning knew?
  • Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou liv'st
    Live well; how long or short permit to heav'n.
  • Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel. You know, with a bit of pornography if you're lucky.
    • Alan Moore, The Mustard magazine interview (January 2005)
  • The difficulty in life is the choice.
  • A narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless seas,
    The past, the future, two eternities.
    • Thomas Moore, Lalla Rookh (1817), Veiled Prophet. Idea given as a quotation in the Spectator. No. 590, Sept. 6, 1714.
At his birth there is weeping and travailing, in his youth pain and groans, all his days are 'full of trouble,' and in the end he returns unto dust. ~ Mordecai
  • Who is man that he should act proudly and arrogantly? man born of woman and few in days? At his birth there is weeping and travailing, in his youth pain and groans, all his days are 'full of trouble,' and in the end he returns unto dust.
  • There is only one success … to be able to spend your life in your own way.
  • The goal and the meaning of existence is to strive upward beyond the limits of the known, and to help one another.
  • "You're talking about a search for the meaning of life?" I asked. "No, no, no," he said. "For the experience of being alive."
    • Bill Moyers (1988) The Power of Myth, in the Introduction

N

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Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. ~ Anaïs Nin
Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage. ~ Anaïs Nin
  • Poco a poco y también mucho a mucho
    me sucedió la vida...
    • Little by little, and also in great leaps,
      Life happened to me...
    • Pablo Neruda, October Fullness (1964)
  • What is life? - Life - that is: continually shedding something that wants to die; Life - that is: being cruel and inexorable against anything that is growing weak and old in us, and not just in us. Life - therefore means: being devoid of respect for the dying, the wretched, the aged? Always being a murderer? And yet old Moses said: 'Thou shalt not kill.'
  • Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.
    • Anaïs Nin, D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study (1932).
  • We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection. We write, like Proust, to render all of it eternal, and to persuade ourselves that it is eternal. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it.
    • Anaïs Nin, entry for February 1954, in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5 as quoted in Woman as Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 38.
  • Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
    • Anaïs Nin, as quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126.
  • A Sanskrit Scholar, J.W. Hauer, speaking of the central message of the "Gita" says, "We are not called to solve the meaning of life, but to find out the deed demanded by us and to work, and so by action to master the riddle of life." Whilst Sanskara says that the essential purpose of the "Gita" is to teach us a way out of bondage and not merely enjoin action.
  • Our life is no dream, but it should and perhaps will become one.
    • Novalis, Fragments, "Magische Philosophie"

O

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To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go. ~ Mary Oliver
  • I'm alright. I love you. I love my life. I'm always close to you.
  • Life, from its origins onwards, is the continuation of "one and the same momentum". At a certain moment, in certain points of space, a vital current was born, which in its creative evolution was then divided into divergent lines, dissociating the various tendencies, which slept in it like a fertile germ.
    Evolutionary movement would be a simple thing, if life described a unique trajectory, similar to that of a full bomb, launched by a cannon. But here we are dealing with a howitzer, which immediately exploded into fragments, which, being themselves species of howitzers, in turn exploded into fragments, destined to explode again and so on for a long and long time. We perceive nothing but what is closest to us, that is, the scattered movements of the pulverized splinters. Starting from these we must go back, from degree to degree, to the original movement, to find the "unique source" of all the kingdoms of nature, of all the countless species, of all the millions of individuals, who were, are and will be. (chap. X, pp. 145-146)


  • To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.
    • Mary Oliver, American Primitive (1983), "In Blackwater Woods"

P

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I asked none why life ends in ways uncertain. ~ Suman Pokhrel
We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. ~ Randy Pausch
It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life. ~ Jean-Luc Picard
Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived. ~ Jean-Luc Picard
It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free. ~ Terry Pratchett in Pyramids
  • Many solutions are offered as to how to gain the something more in life. ...Wealth, strength, and keenness of intellect, taken separately of together, do not constitute the essence of real life. ...At its best, life consists of these things, plus something more. ...In Jesus Christ we see perfection in life. ...From an imperfect understanding of Jesus Christ, it would appear that real life depends upon the fulfilling of three conditions — the dwelling on friendly and affectionate terms with God, with ourselves, and with our fellowmen. ...If we fulfill to any degree these three conditions of being in friendly relations with God, ourselves, and our fellows, we shall discover something more of the meaning of life.
    • Kirby Page (1920) Something More, A Consideration of the Vast, Undeveloped Resources of Life. p. 63-67
  • When you wonder about the mystery of yourself, look to Christ who gives you the meaning of life. When you wonder what it means to be a mature person, look to Christ who is the fullness of humanity. And when you wonder about your role in the future of the world... look to Christ.
    • John Paul II "Address to High School Students", Source: Libreria Editrice Vaticana
  • Do not tell people how to live their lives. Just tell them stories. And they will figure out how those stories apply to them.
  • We don't beat the reaper by living longer, but by living well, and living fully — for the reaper will come for all of us. The question is: what do we do between the time we're born and the time he shows up. Because when he shows up, it’s too late to do all the things that you’re always gonna, kinda get around to.
  • You've got to understand life, understand it when you're young.
  • Someone once told me that time was a predator that stalked us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because they'll never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we've lived.
  • An uneasy rhythm of life
    is more life like than an easy death.
  • I asked none
    why life ends in ways uncertain.
  • Life was running, running
    after a mirage-like desires.
  • I asked my life
    why it carried along my dreams but
    chose to escape me.
  • Still enveloped in a blanket of dreams
    my life continued to lie still, pretending as if
    it was in a deep slumber.
  • Will you please go journeying
    for your own sake,
    till I come living a moment of life?
  • May life remain enamored of its own charm
  • This ME
    made whole by
    combining countless fragments
    could not live in any one part
    with complete ease.
  • May I splinter away from myself
    break into whole units
    and
    live in each with perfection!
  • Every moment age is creeping up stealthily,
    but life, life is melting down
    like a candle that is flickering around.
  • Life is withering away
    like a candle that is melting down.
  • Life incinerates incessantly trying to smile
    and keeps broiling continuously
    pretending to be alive.
  • Death is shaping up slowly and quietly
    but life, life is melting down
    like a candle that is flickering all night.
  • Unaware about my surrounding, unconscious I live.
  • It’s not my wish to walk intoxicated; to live for never is not my choice.
  • A portion of life, every moment gets torn out of me hurting, and flees away.
  • Let us (since life can little more supply
    Than just to look about us and to die)
    Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
    A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
  • Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.
  • Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
    To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.
  • On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
    Reason the card, but passion is the gale.
  • Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
    They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
  • Like following life through creatures you dissect,
    You lose it in the moment you detect.
  • See how the World its Veterans rewards!
    A Youth of Frolics, an old Age of Cards;
    Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,
    Young without Lovers, old without a Friend;
    A Fop their Passion, but their Prize a Sot;
    Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.
  • It was said that life was cheap in Ankh-Morpork. This was, of course, completely wrong. Life was often very expensive; you could get death for free.
  • If my delight had not been in your law, I should have perished in my affliction. I will never forget your commandments, because by them you give me life. I am yours; oh, that you would save me! for I study your commandments.
    • Psalms, 119: 92-94
  • General:... when one considers the meaning of life, it is a struggle between alternative viewpoints of life itself. And without the ability to defend one's own viewpoint against other perhaps more aggressive ideologies, then reasonableness and moderation could, quite simply, disappear. That is why we'll always need an army, and may God strike me down were it to be otherwise.
  • Chairman: Item six on the agenda, the Meaning of Life. Now Harry, you’ve had some thoughts on this.
    :Harry: That’s right, yeah. I’ve had a team working on this over the past few weeks, and what we’ve come up with can be reduced to two fundamental concepts. One, people are not wearing enough hats. Two, matter is energy. In the Universe there are many energy fields which we cannot normally perceive. Some energies have a spiritual source which act upon a person’s soul. However, this soul does not exist ab initio as orthodox Christianity teaches; it has to be brought into existence by a process of guided self-observation. However, this is rarely achieved owing to man’s unique ability to be distracted from spiritual matters by everyday trivia. [Pause.]
    :Max: What was that about hats?

Q

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Know that the life of this world is only a game, a temporary attraction, a means of boastfulness among yourselves and a place for multiplying your wealth and children. It is like the rain which produces plants that are attractive to the unbelievers. These plants flourish, turn yellow, and then become crushed bits of straw. In the hereafter there will be severe punishment or forgiveness and mercy from God. This worldly life is only an illusion. ~ Quran
  • Participate in your life, don't just bear witness to the rain washing you away.
    • Thomm Quackenbush, We Shadows (2010).
  • Our Life is nothing but a Winter's day;
    Some only break their Fast, and so away:
    Others stay to Dinner, and depart full fed:
    The deepest Age but Sups, and goes to Bed:
    He's most in debt that lingers out the Day:
    Who dies betime, has less, and less to pay.
    • Francis Quarles, Divine Fancies, On The Life of Man (1633). Quoted in different forms for epitaphs.
  • Know that the life of this world is only a game, a temporary attraction, a means of boastfulness among yourselves and a place for multiplying your wealth and children. It is like the rain which produces plants that are attractive to the unbelievers. These plants flourish, turn yellow, and then become crushed bits of straw. In the hereafter there will be severe punishment or forgiveness and mercy from God. This worldly life is only an illusion.

R

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Without freedom of choice there is no creativity. Without creativity there is no life. The Body dies. ~ Gene Roddenberry
Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love. ~ Bertrand Russell
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead. ~ Bertrand Russell
  • Et là commençay à penser qu'il est bien vray ce que l'on dit, que la moitié du monde ne sçait comment l'aultre vit.
    And there I began to think that it is very true, which is said, that half the world does not know how the other half lives.
  • Vivat, fifat, pipat, bibat.
    May he live, fife, pipe, drink.
    • François Rabelais, Pantagruel (1532), Book IV, Chapter 53. Called by Epistemon, "O secret apocalyptique." It suggests "Old King Cole".
  • What is life? For the happy a pleasure, for the poor a torture, and to all an expectation of death.
  • I bargained with Life for a penny,
    And Life would pay no more,
    However I begged at evening
    When I counted my scanty store;
    For Life is a just employer,
    He gives you what you ask,
    But once you have set the wages,
    Why, you must bear the task.
    I worked for a menial's hire,
    Only to learn, dismayed,
    That any wage I had asked of Life,
    Life would have paid.
    • Jessie B. Rittenhouse, "My Wage", The Door of Dreams (1918), p. 25.
  • Many people ask, for example: What is the purpose of my life? Meaning: What am I meant to do? but the purpose of your life, and each life, is in its being. That being may include certain actions, but the acts themselves are only important in that they spring out of the essence of your life, which simply by being is bound to fulfill its purposes.
    • Jane Roberts, in Dreams, Evolution and Value Fulfillment, Volume One, Session 899, Page 225
  • We know how complicated life is today, how difficult it is, and we feel distressed about each lack of understanding, about each delay, about everything that complicates the progress. The neglect of one's duties can never be expiated. Your task is not an easy one, but with easy things one will not perfect oneself. Pure striving is always supported by the Great Teacher. Therefore, be victorious! The Great Teacher is always ready to give a helping hand to the striving disciple, but such help usually comes after all possibilities have been exhausted by the disciple himself. And herein lies the greatest wisdom and a great cosmic law of evolution. Only at the very limit of tension are our forces transmuted into the finest energies. Our thoughts are with you, and we know that all will come about safely unless we ourselves sever the silver cord by our selfishness, sluggardliness, and superficial attitude toward the Advices.
  • I must agree, life is the best teacher, and without life nothing can be learned. But someone has to open our eyes, and without the leading Principle all evolution would be retarded for endless centuries. Therefore, the books of the Teaching are so essential.
  • Verily, life is full of miracles if we approach everything with an open heart and with striving to beauty and self-perfection. And not by way of all sorts of artificial meditations and concentrations and other mechanical means, but in the great deed of everyday life. This great deed of life in all its severe beauty is practised by N.K. His life is the life of complete renunciation; he lives for the great service to humanity. Nothing belongs to him and he himself belongs not to himself. The greatest tolerance is his nature, and, like a magnet, he attracts the most diverse people and groups them around his name. The wisdom of the Master is his wisdom. Had it been otherwise, how could he be such a prophet? How could he succeed in the entrusted mission in spite of the dreadful obstacles which are raised by the dark ones at the end of Kali Yuga, during the dreadful Armageddon?
  • Life is most complicated, and only the consciousness which is united with the Higher Will can sense the right direction and steer its vessel through all storms. But the storms are inevitable and useful, for the ship as well as for the pilot and the whole crew, because only in this way are strength and firmness tested and also fearlessness and alertness developed.
  • Indeed, all the foundations of the Living Ethics must be applied in life, as otherwise life is impossible. With the new combinations of the planets, there will be a favorable radiation of spiritual rays, which will enable people to awaken their dormant energies. And verily, the feeling of reverence and highest devotion must again be sensed by humanity, if it is to continue its evolution. Likewise, cooperation between all the branches of life is becoming more and more possible. Precisely, science will stretch out a helping hand to religion, and the Indications of the Great Teachers will assume the radiance and power of the rays from the laboratories.
  • In short, in life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: Hit the line hard; don't foul and don't shirk, but hit the line hard!
    • Theodore Roosevelt, "The American Boy", published in St. Nicholas 27, no. 7 (May 1900), p. 574
  • Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
  • Life and hope for the world are to be found only in the deeds of love.
    • Bertrand Russell, Political Ideals (1917), Chapter V: National Independence and Internationalism.

S

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See also: William Shakespeare quotes about life
Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.... ~ William Saroyan
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley
There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second. ~ Logan Pearsall Smith
Quotation
Life could not be lived wet, whether it be in rain or tears. ~ Sanu Sharma
The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are. ~ Socrates
This is just a thing, and things can be replaced. Lives cannot. ~ Melinda M. Snodgrass
Life is nothing more but a grace period for turning the best of our genetic material into the next generation. ~ Solidus Snake
How we face death is at least as important as how we deal with life. ~ Jack B. Sowards
A free man thinks of nothing less than of death; and his wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life. ~ Baruch Spinoza
Life into death—life’s other shape; no rupture, only crossing. ~ Dejan Stojanovic
Creating means living. ~ Dejan Stojanovic
If birth is a manifestation of life, death is another. ~ Dejan Stojanovic
All life is unspeakably precious, because it’s only here for a brief moment, a flare against the dark, and then it’s gone forever. ~ J. Michael Straczynski
  • Sed multi mortales dediti ventri atque somno, indocti incultique vitam sicuti peregrinantes transiere.
    • Yet many human beings, resigned to sensuality and indolence, un-instructed and unimproved, have passed through life like travellers in a strange country.
    • Sallust, Bellum Catilinae, chapter II, (c. 44 BC).
  • Our biggest tragedy is not knowing what to do with our lives.
    • José Saramago, during the opening lecture of the course Literature and Power, Lights and Shadows, at the University Carlos III in Madrid, as quoted in Weissheimer Saramago prega retorno à filosofia para salvar democracia, Agência Carta Maior (19 January 2004).
  • Quem mihi dabis qui aliquod pretium tempori ponat, qui diem aestimet, qui intellegat se cotidie mori?
    • What man can you show me who places any value on his time, who reckons the worth of each day, who understands that he is dying daily?
      • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter I: On Saving Time, as translated by Richard Mott Gummere.
  • In hoc enim fallimur, quod mortem prospicimus: magna pars eius iam praeterit; quidquid aetatis retro est mors tenet.
    • For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands.
      • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter I: On Saving Time, as translated by Richard Mott Gummere.
  • Nulli potest secura vita contingere qui de producenda nimis cogitat.
    • No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.
      • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter IV: On the terrors of death, line 4 as translated by Richard Mott Gummere.
    • Art is long, life is short.
    • Seneca's (De Brevitate Vitae, 1.1) Latin translation of the Greek by Hippocrates.
  • Nemo quam bene vivat sed quam diu curat, cum omnibus possit contingere ut bene vivant, ut diu nulli.
    • Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man's power to live long.
      • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter XXII: On the futility of half-way measures, line 17 as translated by Richard Mott Gummere.
  • Sapiens vivit quantum debet, non quantum potest.
    • The wise man will live as long as he ought, not as long as he can.
      • Seneca the Younger, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium (Moral Letters to Lucilius), Letter LXX: On the proper time to slip the cable, line 4 as translated by Richard Mott Gummere.
  • Sikhs believe that human beings spend their time in a cycle of birth, life, and rebirth. They share this belief with followers of other Indian religious traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The quality of each particular life depends on the law of Karma. Karma sets the quality of a life according to how well or badly a person behaved in their previous life. The only way out of this cycle, which all faiths regard as painful, is to achieve a total knowledge of and union with God.
  • The most solid advice for a writer is this, I think: Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.
    • William Saroyan, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze (1934), Preface.
  • I believe there are ways whose ends are life instead of death.
  • Life could not be lived wet, whether it be in rain or tears.
  • Life doesn't end just because someone leaves.
  • My life is devoted to pulling me underground
    yet, I stand strong on my battleground
    determined I am
    not to let my life defeat my pride.
  • Life may change, but it may fly not;
    Hope may vanish, but can die not;
    Truth be veiled, but still it burneth;
    Love repulsed, — but it returneth!
  • Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
    Stains the white radiance of eternity.
  • If you oppress a man you will suffer oppression in this or another life and reap the fruit of the seed you have sown in this life. If you feed the poor, you will have plenty of food in this or another life. There is no power on this earth, which can stop the action from yielding their fruits. Such is the Law of Karma.
  • Yes, this is life; and everywhere we meet,
    Not victor crowns, but wailings of defeat.
    • Elizabeth Oakes Smith, "Sonnet III: The Unattained", line 10, in The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (New York: J. S. Redfield, 1845), p. 97.
  • Тhе сепtгаl роіпt геmаіпs that Darwin provided a theory which predicts that organisms should have parts adapted to ensure their survival and reproduction. This has led to the suggestion that life should be defined by the possession of those properties which are needed to ensure evolution by natural selection. That is, entities with the properties of multiplication, variation, and heredity are alive, and entities lacking one or more of those properties are not.
  • There are two things to aim at in life: first, to get what you want; and, after that, to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind achieve the second.
  • People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.
  • The inexperienced in wisdom and virtue, ever occupied with feasting and such, are carried downward, and there, as is fitting, they wander their whole life long, neither ever looking upward to the truth above them nor rising toward it, nor tasting pure and lasting pleasures. Like cattle, always looking downward with their heads bent toward the ground and the banquet tables, they feed, fatten, and fornicate. In order to increase their possessions they kick and butt with horns and hoofs of steel and kill each other, insatiable as they are.
  • Life is nothing more but a grace period for turning the best of our genetic material into the next generation.
    • Solidus Snake Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)
  • Expectation postponed makes the