Quotes · Skopia

35 quotes

Diogenes Laertius, The Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers · 200

★ 1.3

Man must work by the sweat of his brow whatever his class, and that should make up the whole meaning and purpose of his life and happiness and contentment.

Anton Chekhov

1901

★ 1.9

Autobiography and memoir

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the “why” for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any “how.”

Viktor Frankl

Man's Search for Meaning · 1946

★ 1.9

Novel · Science fiction

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Douglas Adams

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe · 1980

★ 1.9

Novel · Coming of age story

You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy.

Hermann Hesse

Demian · 1919

★ 1.9

Scripture · Religious literature

Fear God, and keep his commandments: for this is the whole duty of man.

Ecclesiastes 12:13

931 BC

★ 2.0

Poem

Ah, why Should life all labor be?

Alfred Tennyson

Poems · 1832

★ 2.0

TV program · Comedy (TV) · Comedy

If you don't believe in love, what's the point of living?

Ron Swanson

Parks and Recreation · 2009

★ 2.1

Novel

What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years?

F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby · 1925

★ 2.2

Play · Tragedy (play)

What is a man If his chief good and market of his time Be but to sleep and feed? A beast, no more.

William Shakespeare

Hamlet · 1616

★ 2.3

Novel

If what matters in a person's existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one's external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless.

Hermann Hesse

Gertrude · 1910

★ 3.5

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Henry Miller

1941

★ 3.5

Film · Comedy (film) · Comedy

Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms, and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements!

Peter Gibbons

Office Space · 1999

★ 3.5

Novel

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Julian Barnes

The Sense of an Ending · 2011

★ 3.5

Travel writing

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.

Robert Louis Stevenson

1882

★ 3.6

Novel

All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler (novelist)

The Way of All Flesh · 1902

★ 3.6

Film · Teen (film) · Drama (film) · Teen · Drama

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion and medicine, law, business, engineering. These are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

John Keating

Dead Poets Society · 1989

★ 3.6

Film · Black comedy (film) · Comedy drama (film) · Black comedy · Comedy drama

This isn't life! This is just stuff! And it's become more important to you than living! Well, honey, that's just nuts.

Lester Burnham

American Beauty · 1999

★ 3.7

Film · Historical drama (film) · Drama (film) · Historical drama · Drama

When a man sees his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life.

Marcus Aurelius

Gladiator · 2000

★ 3.7

Film · Comedy (film) · Comedy

Did you ever think that maybe there's more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously good looking?

Derek Zoolander

Zoolander · 2001

★ 3.7

Poem

And we are put on earth a little space, That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

William Blake

Songs of Innocence · 1789

★ 3.8

Film · Epic (film) · Adventure comedy (film) · Epic · Adventure comedy

Don't be in a hurry. You'll miss the best parts in life.

Saloon hostess

Around the World in 80 Days · 1956

★ 3.8

Philosophical literature

The good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy.

Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC

★ 3.9

Film · Drama (film) · Drama

I don’t know if we each have a destiny, or if we’re all just floatin’ around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both get happening at the same time.

Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump · 1994

★ 3.9

Film · Romantic comedy (film) · Comedy drama (film) · Romantic comedy · Comedy drama

I just don't know what I'm supposed to be. You know?

Charlotte (Lost in Translation)

Lost in Translation · 2003

★ 3.9

Novel

For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice · 1813

★ 4.0

Philosophical literature

The prudent man aspires not to pleasure, but to the absence of pain.

Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC

★ 4.0

Essay · Philosophical literature

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Albert Camus

The Myth of Sisyphus · 1942

★ 6.1

Scripture · Religious literature

And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

Genesis 1:28

1405 BC

★ 6.2

Poem

What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?

W.H. Davies

1911

★ 6.9

Autobiography and memoir

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Walden · 1854

★ 7.1

Poem

Only two things does he anxiously wish for-bread and circuses.

Juvenal

Satires · 127

★ 7.3

Poem · Narrative poem · Epic poem · Religious literature

Consider your origin; you were not born to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.

Dante Alighieri

Inferno · 1321

★ 8.0

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

For what should a man live, if not for the pleasures of discourse?

Plato

Phaedrus · 370 BC

★ 8.2

Philosophical dialogue · Dialogue · Philosophical literature

For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives.

Socrates

Plato, Republic · 375 BC

★ 8.2

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