Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
—Buddhist Teaching
It is vanity to desire a long life and to take no heed of a good life.
—Thomas a Kempis (1379–1471) German Religious Priest, Writer
Live as if everything you do will eventually be known.
—Hugh Prather (b.1938) American Christian Author, Minister, Counselor
Two babies were born on the same day at the same hospital. They lay there and looked at each other. Their families came and took them away. Eighty years later, by a bizarre coincidence, they lay in the same hospital, on their deathbeds, next to each other. One of them looked at the other and said, so. What did you think?
—Steven Wright (b.1955) American Comedian, Actor, Writer
Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (1914–2008) Indian Hindu Religious Leader
Living Life Tomorrow’s fate, though thou be wise, Thou canst not tell nor yet surmise; Pass, therefore, not today in vain, For it will never come again.
—Omar Khayyam (1048–1123) Persian Mathematician
It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–65) American Diplomat, Politician, Orator
You only live once; but if you live it right, once is enough.
—Unknown
We take these risks, not to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping us.
—Anonymous
Life, we learn too late, is in the living, in the tissue of every day and hour.
—Stephen Leacock
Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”
—Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American Poet
In a real sense, people who have read good literature have lived more than people who cannot or will not read. It is not true that we have only one life to live; if we can read, we can live as many more lives and as many kinds of lives as we wish.
—S. I. Hayakawa (1906–92) Canadian-born American Academic, Elected Rep, Politician
Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it’s what they bring to the world that really counts.
—Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874–1942) Canadian Novelist, Diarists
The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it.
—J. M. Barrie (1860–1937) Scottish Novelist, Dramatist, Author
These then are my last words to you. Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.
—William James (1842–1910) American Philosopher, Psychologist, Physician
The surrender of life is nothing to sinking down into acknowledgment of inferiority.
—John C. Calhoun (1782–1850) American Head of State, Politician, Activist
Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
—Eugene O’Neill (1888–1953) American Playwright
To live life well is to express life poorly; if one expresses life too well, one is living it no longer.
—Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French Philosopher, Psychoanalyst, Poet
Your life and my life flow into each other as wave flows into wave, and unless there is peace and joy and freedom for you, there can be no real peace or joy or freedom for me. To see reality–not as we expect it to be but as it is–is to see that unless we live for each other and in and through each other, we do not really live very satisfactorily; that there can really be life only where there really is, in just this sense, love.
—Frederick Buechner (b.1926) American Presbyterian Clergyman, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Essayist, Theologian
I have an existential map; it has you are here written all over it.
—Steven Wright (b.1955) American Comedian, Actor, Writer
Life is to be lived. If you have to support yourself, you had bloody well better find some way that is going to be interesting. And you don’t do that by sitting around wondering about yourself.
—Katharine Hepburn (1907–2003) American Actor, TV Personality
Life is the farce which everyone has to perform.
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91) French Poet
Life may have no meaning. Or even worse, it may have a meaning of which I disapprove.
—Ashleigh Brilliant (b.1933) British Cartoonist, Author
People do not live nowadays. They get about 10% out of life.
—Isadora Duncan (1877–1927) American Dancer, Choreographer
Every man’s life is a fairy tale, written by God’s fingers.
—Hans Christian Andersen (1805–75) Danish Author, Poet, Short Story Writer
If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose. So the one is pretty equal to the other.
—Jean de La Bruyere
Do not take life too seriously—you will never get out of it alive.
—Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American Writer, Publisher, Artist, Philosopher
Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.
—V. S. Pritchett (1900–97) British Short Story Writer, Biographer, Memoirist, Literary Critic
Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded.
—Fulton J. Sheen (1895–1979) American Catholic Religious Leader, Theologian
We Japanese enjoy the small pleasures, not extravagance. I believe a man should have a simple lifestyle—even if he can afford more.
—Masaru Ibuka (1908–97) Japanese Entrepreneur, Engineer
Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.
—Luigi Pirandello (1867–1936) Italian Dramatist, Novelist, Short Story Writer, Author
All of life is a foreign country.
—Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American Novelist, Poet
The hardest years in life are those between ten and seventy.
—Helen Hayes (1900–93) American Actor, Philanthropist
The tragedy of life is not that man loses,
but that he almost wins.
—Heywood Hale Broun (1918–2001) American Journalist, Commentator, Actor
Life is a grindstone. But whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us.
—Thomas L. Holdcroft
It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards.
—Soren Kierkegaard (1813–55) Danish Philosopher, Theologian
To yackety-yak about the past is for me time lost. Every morning I wake up saying, ‘I’m still alive — a miracle.’ And so I keep on pushing.
—Jacques Cousteau (1910–97) French Military Leader, Explore, Ecologist, Scientist, Photographer
Why does life keep teaching me lessons I have no desire to learn?
—Ashleigh Brilliant (b.1933) British Cartoonist, Author
Life is a great surprise. I do not see why death should not be an even greater one.
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977) Russian-born American Novelist
Life is a comedy for those who think… and a tragedy for those who feel.
—Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford
Life has a practice of living you, if you don’t live it.
—Philip Larkin (1922–85) English Poet, Librarian, Novelist
Life is short; live it up.
—Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) Russian Head of State, Political leader
In the game of life it’s a good idea to have a few early losses, which relieves you of the pressure of trying to maintain an undefeated season.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (1915–77) American Columnist, Author
It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it’s one damn thing over and over.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) American Poet, Playwright, Feminist
Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations.
—Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) English Polymath, Philosopher, Sociologist, Political Theorist
Let us live while we live.
—Philip Doddridge (1702–51) English Nonconformist Religious Leader, Educator, Hymn writer
There’s night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there’s likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?
—George Borrow (1803–81) English Novelist, Author
What a life! True life is elsewhere. We are not in the world.
—Arthur Rimbaud (1854–91) French Poet
Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.
—W. C. Fields (1880–1946) American Actor, Comedian, Writer