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Nature of life41 quotes
Everything that lives,
Lives not alone, nor for itself. — William Blake · 1789Life, what is it but a dream? — Lewis Carroll · 1871One lives but once in this world. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks. — T.S. Eliot · 1932Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of livin' is gone. — John Mellencamp · 1982When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation),—sleep, eating, and swilling—buttoning and unbuttoning—how much remains of downright existence? The summer of a dormouse. — Lord Byron · 1813All 41 quotes →Life24 quotes
Everything that lives,
Lives not alone, nor for itself. — William Blake · 1789Birth, and copulation, and death.
That's all the facts when you come to brass tacks. — T.S. Eliot · 1932Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. · 1911The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way. — Michael Crichton · 1953If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. — Jacques Barzun · 1959Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. — Allen Saunders · 1957All 24 quotes →The human condition4 quotes
Life is a gamble at terrible odds-if it was a bet, you wouldn't take it. — Tom Stoppard · 1966The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. — Vladimir Nabokov · 1951It’s just like our life, we appear and we disappear. We are so important to some, but we are just…passing through. — Natalia (Before Midnight) · 2013We never reach a point at which our lives lie before us as a clearly marked open road, never have and never should expect a map to the years ahead, never do close those circles that seem, at thirteen and fourteen and nineteen, so urgently in need of closing. — Joan Didion · 1992Ephemeral nature of life2 quotes
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go... Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the hand with which we hold off death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in the winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset. — H. Rider Haggard · 1885The present life of man, O king, seems to me, in comparison of that time which is unknown to us, like to the swift flight of a sparrow through the room wherein you sit at supper in winter, with your commanders and ministers, and a good fire in the midst, whilst the storms of rain and snow prevail ahead; the sparrow, I say, flying in at one door, and immediately out at another, whilst he is within, is safe from the wintry storm; but after a short space of fair weather, he immediately vanishes out of your sight, into the dark winter from which he had emerged. So this life of man appears for a short space, but of what went before, or what is to follow, we are utterly ignorant. — Venerable Bede · 731Adversity1 quote
The wise and tragic sense of life. By this I mean...the sense that life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat, and that the redeeming things are not "happiness and pleasure" but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle. — F. Scott Fitzgerald · 1940Being present1 quote
Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. — Allen Saunders · 1957Biological life1 quote
The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale. — Richard Dawkins · 1986Biology1 quote
Life exists in the universe only because the carbon atom possesses certain exceptional properties. — James Jeans · 1930Brevity of life1 quote
The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. — Vladimir Nabokov · 1951Death1 quote
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go... Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the hand with which we hold off death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in the winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset. — H. Rider Haggard · 1885Delusion1 quote
Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be. — Bob Dylan · 2004Dreams1 quote
What is life? A frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is of slight worth, as all life is a dream, and dreams are dreams. — Pedro Calderon de la Barca · 1635Evolution1 quote
The history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way. — Michael Crichton · 1953Feeling alive1 quote
If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real. — Jacques Barzun · 1959Ignorance1 quote
Life is one long struggle in the dark. — Lucretius · 55 BCImpermanence1 quote
The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless. — Alan Watts · 1982Inner life1 quote
Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day. — Ralph Waldo Emerson · 1847Learning from suffering1 quote
Life's hard. It's suppose to be. If we didn't suffer, we wouldn't learn a thing, you know? — Jesse · 2004Lies1 quote
Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be. — Bob Dylan · 2004Money1 quote
Life is a game... And you keep score with dollars. — Ted Turner · 1978Moral progress1 quote
Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. — Derek Parfit · 2017Passage of time1 quote
Oh, what a day-to-day business life is. — Jules Laforgue · 1885Permanence1 quote
The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless. — Alan Watts · 1982Pessimism1 quote
Life is an incurable disease. — Abraham Cowley · 1656Preciousness of life1 quote
One lives but once in this world. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe · 1774Progress1 quote
Life can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. — Derek Parfit · 2017Resignation1 quote
Oh yeah, life goes on long after the thrill of livin' is gone. — John Mellencamp · 1982Self-destruction1 quote
The secret is that only that which can destroy itself is truly alive. — Carl Jung · 1944Shortness of life1 quote
Out of the dark we came, into the dark we go... Life is nothing. Life is all. It is the hand with which we hold off death. It is the glow-worm that shines in the night-time and is black in the morning; it is the white breath of the oxen in the winter; it is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself at sunset. — H. Rider Haggard · 1885