The Quotes canon
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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Aristotle2 quotes
The prudent man aspires not to pleasure, but to the absence of pain. — Aristotle · 322 BCThe 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 · 322 BCHermann Hesse2 quotes
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 · 1910You must find your dream, then the way becomes easy. — Hermann Hesse · 1919Albert Camus1 quote
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 · 1942Alfred Tennyson1 quote
Ah, why
Should life all labor be? — Alfred Tennyson · 1832Anton Chekhov1 quote
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 · 1901Dante Alighieri1 quote
Consider your origin;
you were not born to live like brutes,
but to follow virtue and knowledge. — Dante Alighieri · 1321Derek Zoolander1 quote
Did you ever think that maybe there's more to life than being really, really, really, ridiculously good looking? — Derek Zoolander · 2001Douglas Adams1 quote
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 · 1980F. Scott Fitzgerald1 quote
What'll we do with ourselves this afternoon? And the day after that, and the next thirty years? — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1925Forrest Gump1 quote
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 · 1994Henry David Thoreau1 quote
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 · 1854Henry Miller1 quote
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. — Henry Miller · 1941Jane Austen1 quote
For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn? — Jane Austen · 1813John Keating1 quote
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 · 1989Julian Barnes1 quote
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 · 2011Juvenal1 quote
Only two things does he anxiously wish for-bread and circuses. — Juvenal · 127Lester Burnham1 quote
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 · 1999Marcus Aurelius1 quote
When a man sees his end, he wants to know there was some purpose to his life. — Marcus Aurelius · 2000Peter Gibbons1 quote
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 · 1999Plato1 quote
For what should a man live, if not for the pleasures of discourse? — Plato · 370 BCRobert Louis Stevenson1 quote
To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. — Robert Louis Stevenson · 1882Ron Swanson1 quote
If you don't believe in love, what's the point of living? — Ron Swanson · 2009Saloon hostess1 quote
Don't be in a hurry. You'll miss the best parts in life. — Saloon hostess · 1956Samuel Butler (novelist)1 quote
All animals, except man, know that the principal business of life is to enjoy it. — Samuel Butler (novelist) · 1902Socrates1 quote
For our discussion is about no ordinary matter, but on the right way to conduct our lives. — Socrates · 375 BCViktor Frankl1 quote
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 · 1946W.H. Davies1 quote
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare? — W.H. Davies · 1911William Blake1 quote
And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love. — William Blake · 1789William Shakespeare1 quote
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 · 1616