quotations about life
Life is lumpy. And a lump in the oatmeal, a lump in the throat, and a lump in a breast are not the same lump. One should learn the difference.
ROBERT FULGHUM
Uh-Oh
Life is always uncertain, and common prudence dictates to every man the necessity of settling his temporal concerns, while it is in his power, and while the mind is calm and undisturbed.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
letter to Mrs. Martha Washington, Jun. 18, 1775
Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.
ANONYMOUS
Each life is one short word slowly uttered.
LOUISE ERDRICH
The Blue Jay's Dance
A man's life is like a well, not like a snake--it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.
AUSTIN O'MALLEY
Keystones of Thought
The truth about the world ... is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
Blood Meridian
Life is just a party, and parties weren't meant 2 last.
PRINCE
"1999"
What is the meaning of life?... A simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Life is like our game of whist ... I don't enjoy the game much, but I like to play my cards well, and see what will be the end of it.
GEORGE ELIOT
Felix Holt
Life is droll. It has no common sense. It is the game of a mountebank.
WILLIAM JOHN LOCKE
The Joyous Adventures of Aristide Pujol
Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.
RAINER MARIA RILKE
Letters to a Young Poet
Life is a wheel, and if you wait long enough, it always comes back around to where it started.
STEPHEN KING
Duma Key
Life is a lot like math. There's always new stuff to do, always another problem to solve. Work through it one problem at a time.
STEPHANIE SANTILLO
"Sheehan valedictorian: 'Life is a lot like math'", My Record Journal, June 3, 2016
Treasure the pain; treasure what you have with her, including the fear. Treasure what you may have, including the failure. Treasure it because if we don't live this life, if we don't live it to the fullest year after year and century after century, well, then, we die.
ANNE RICE
The Wolves of Midwinter
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
Yes, life is but a waste,
A cheerless pathway, where
No healthy fruit allures the taste,
No flowerets balm the air,
If Love, the wild rose, ne'er luxuriates there.
WILLIAM B. TAPPAN
"Love"
Still, life had a way of adding day to day.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
Mrs. Dalloway
Our lives teach us who we are.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
London Independent, Feb. 4, 1990
Like a ghostly roll of drums remorselessly beat the measure of life.
VIRGINIA WOOLF
To the Lighthouse
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
BERTRAND RUSSELL
letter to Ottoline Morrell, Dec. 17, 1920