Life

"If it wasn’t disappointing, you wouldn’t know it was life."

"Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease."

"A dream! What is a dream? And is not our life a dream? I will say more. Suppose that this paradise will never come to pass (that I understand), yet I shall go on preaching it. And yet how simple it is: in one day, in one hour everything could be arranged at once! The chief thing is to love others like yourself, that's the chief thing, and that's everything; nothing else is wanted — you will find out at once how to arrange it all. And yet it's an old truth which has been told and retold a billion times — but it has not formed part of our lives! The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of the laws of happiness is higher than happiness — that is what one must contend against. And I shall. If only everyone wants it, it can be arranged at once."

"Life's a garden, dig it!"

"They don't mind it: its a reg'lar holiday to them — all porter and skittles."

"Life is an urge of the Universe to understand itself."

"[T]he only meaning of life worth caring about is one that can withstand our best efforts to examine it."

"Every living movement is a sliding toward death. But if they are willing to look it in the face they also discover that every movement toward death is life."

"In life, if not in literature, there is always anticlimax."

"One is born, one runs up bills, one dies."

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."

"What is it but a map of busy life, Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?"

"Still ending, and beginning still."

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."

"Life is but a flicker shouting into the jaws of eternity. But it seems so damned unfair!"

"You try your damnedest, but something always goes wrong. That’s life. If you’re smart, you plan for it."

"To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life."

"We think a happy life consists in tranquility of mind."

"How few philosophers are to be found who are such in character, so ordered in soul and in life, as reason demands; who regard their teaching not as a display of knowledge, but as the rule of life; who obey themselves, and submit to their own decrees!"

"Undoubtedly, as it seems to me at least, satiety of all pursuits causes satiety of life. Boyhood has certain pursuits: does youth yearn for them? Early youth has its pursuits: does the matured or so-called middle stage of life need them? Maturity, too, has such as are not even sought in old age, and finally, there are those suitable to old age. Therefore as the pleasures and pursuits of the earlier periods of life fall away, so also do those of old age; and when that happens man has his fill of life and the time is ripe for him to go."

"Life's race-course is fixed; Nature has only a single path and that path is run but once, and to each stage of existence has been allotted its own appropriate quality; so that the weakness of childhood, the impetuosity of youth, the seriousness of middle life, the maturity of old age—each bears some of Nature's fruit, which must be garnered in its own season."

"O philosophy, life’s guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life."

"Since life is but a continuous series of experiences, everything ultimately helps me towards my final enlightenment."

"In our lives there is a simple colour, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the colour of love."

"Thank you life, I don't know anything about you. When I found all the questions, all the answers were lost to me.~~ March 8, 2025"

"Forget the financial angle and consider rather which is the best outlet for the greatest contribution you can make towards making the world a better place in which to live. Efforts should never be expended purely for mercenary reasons. Pecuniary gains should come as a result of the entity's using his abilities in the direction of being helpful."

"Woman: What is my true life work? Cayce: Encouraging the weak and the faint; giving strength and courage to those who have faltered."

"They cut me down And I leapt up high; I am the life That'll never, never die; I'll live in you If you'll live in me — I am the Lord Of the Dance, said he."

"Well, as you know, there are many things in life that are not fair, that wealthy people can afford and poor people can't. But I don't believe that the Federal Government should take action to try to make these opportunities exactly equal, particularly when there is a moral factor involved."

"The history of life on earth has been a history of interaction between living things and their surroundings. To a large extent, the physical form and the habits of the earth's vegetation and its animal life have been molded by the environment. Considering the whole span of earthly time, the opposite effect, in which life actually modifies its surroundings, has been relatively slight. Only within the moment of time represented by the present century has one species-man-acquired significant power to alter the nature of his world."

"As human beings, we are part of the whole stream of life."

"It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself."

"People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point."

"The realization that life is absurd and cannot be an end, but only a beginning. This is a truth nearly all great minds have taken as their starting point. It is not this discovery that is interesting, but the consequences and rules of action drawn from it."

"Life is very marvelous … and to the wonders of the earth there is no end appointed."

"Life is a pageant that passes very quickly, going hastily from one darkness to another darkness with only ignes fatui to guide; and there is no sense in it. I learned that, Kerin, without moiling over books. But life is a fine ardent spectacle; and I have loved the actors in it: and I have loved their youth and high-heartedness, and their ungrounded faiths, and their queer dreams, my Kerin, about their own importance and about the greatness of the destiny that awaited them, — while you were piddling after, of all things, the truth!"

"Everything in life is miraculous. For the sigil taught me that it rests within the power of each of us to awaken at will from a dragging nightmare of life made up of unimportant tasks and tedious useless little habits, to see life as it really is, and to rejoice in its exquisite wonderfulness. If the sigil were proved to be the top of a tomato-can, it would not alter that big fact, nor my fixed faith."

"Lives matter in the sense that they assume physical form within the sphere of appearance; lives matter because they are to be valued equally."

"Reason is Life's sole arbiter, the magic Laby'rinth's single clue: Worlds lie above, beyond its ken; what crosses it can ne'er be true."

"I suppose—one has to suppose—that to the AIs, love is just one more quantifiable entity in a universe of quantifiable entities. Probably it’s as basic to them as a bit of clockwork; the right neurons firing, a few chemicals in the right combination. But then again, the same can be said of life itself. The sweet, living Earth, with all its countless green fronds and numberless beating hearts, is all just clockwork and chemistry, all eminently quantifiable and understandable. That doesn’t stop it from being something amazing and magical, measureless and infinite."

"For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, And hope and fear (believe the aged friend), Is just our chance o' the prize of learning love,— How love might be, hath been indeed, and is."

"Everything in our life should be based on love."

"Life is built up by the sacrifice of the individual to the whole. Each cell in the living body must sacrifice itself to the perfection of the whole; when it is otherwise, disease and death enforce the lesson. ...Harmony is the law of life, discord its shadow; whence springs suffering, the teacher, the awakener of consciousness. ...The discovery and right use of the true essence of Being — this is the whole secret of life."