Life

": May he live, fife, pipe, drink."

"What is life? For the happy a pleasure, for the poor a torture, and to all an expectation of death."

"I bargained with Life for a penny, And Life would pay no more, However I begged at evening When I counted my scanty store; For Life is a just employer, He gives you what you ask, But once you have set the wages, Why, you must bear the task. I worked for a menial's hire, Only to learn, dismayed, That any wage I had asked of Life, Life would have paid."

"Many people ask, for example: What is the purpose of my life? Meaning: What am I meant to do? but the purpose of your life, and each life, is in its being. That being may include certain actions, but the acts themselves are only important in that they spring out of the essence of your life, which simply by being is bound to fulfill its purposes."

"The way to recover the meaning of life and the worthwhileness of life is to recover the power of experience, to have impulse voices from within, and to be able to hear these impulse voices from within — and make the point: This can be done."

"What counts in life is not the mere fact that we have lived. It is what difference we have made to the lives of others that will determine the significance of the life we lead."

"While man is growing, life is in decrease, And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb: Our birth is nothing but our death begun."

"Still seems it strange, that thou shouldst live forever? Is it less strange, that thou shouldst live at all? This is a miracle; and that no more."

"Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans."

"Life is a kind of flower, its blooms dying but exquisite."

"I have very strongly this feeling... that our everyday life is at one and the same time banal, overfamiliar, platitudinous and yet mysterious and extraordinary."

"When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back! Get mad! I don’t want your damn lemons, what the hell am I supposed to do with these? Demand to see life’s manager! Make life rue the day it thought it could give Cave Johnson lemons! Do you know who I am? I’m the man who’s gonna burn your house down! With the lemons! I’m gonna get my engineers to invent a combustible lemon that burns your house down!"

"Everything has contributed to your greatness; you ought to do the rest, God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us."

"But growing up was just a part of the process of living, which he realized now was mostly about dying."

"To believe in a God means to understand the question about the meaning of life. To believe in a God means to see that the facts of the world are not the end of the matter. To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning."

"What is the meaning of life? That was all — a simple question; one that tended to close in on one with years. The great revelation had never come. The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark; here was one."

""In the midst of life we are in death," said one; it is more true that in the midst of death we are in life. Life is the only reality; what men call death is but a shadow — a word for that which cannot be — a negation, owing the very idea of itself to that which it would deny. But for life there could be no death. If God were not, there would not even be nothing. Not even nothingness preceded life. Nothingness owes its very idea to existence."

"Life is a hideous thing, and from the background behind what we know of it peer daemoniacal hints of truth which make it sometimes a thousandfold more hideous."

"You know life is cruel; life is never kind."

"My life, I live to the limit and I love it."

"This life of ours is a wild æolian harp of many a joyous strain, But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail, as of souls in pain."

"Jigsaw: Congratulations. You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you. Not anymore."

"The essence of life is change, he said, and the essence of eternal life is eternal change."

"For what are men who grasp at praise sublime, But bubbles on the rapid stream of time, That rise, and fall, that swell, and are no more, Born, and forgot, ten thousand in an hour?"

"Row, row, row your boat, Gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream."

"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well."

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."

"Life is a game and true love is a trophy."

"Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do."

"What shall we call this undetermin'd state, This narrow isthmus 'twixt two boundless oceans, That whence we came, and that to which we tend?"

"Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself."

"Living should be perpetual and universal benediction."

"A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it."

"Back home where life leaves us blind Love keeps us kind [...] When life leaves us blind Love keeps us kind"

"Durate, et vosmet rebus servate secundis."

"Life — a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter."

"Hey, hey, hey. A life. A life, Jimmy. Do you know what that is? It's the shit that happens while you're waiting for moments that never come."

"Life is an ulcer on the body of universe."

"Vivite felices, quibus est fortuna peracta Jam sua: nos alia ex aliis in fata vocamur."

"Lo! on a narrow neck of land, 'Twixt two unbounded seas, I stand. Secure, insensible."

"The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced."

"Time means a lot to me because, you see, I, too, am also a learner and am often lost in the joy of forever developing and simplifying. If you love life, don't waste time, for time is what life is made up of."

"Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles."

"Certain broad facts are always put before men in some form or other. They are explained even to savage tribes by their medicine-men, and to the rest of mankind by various religious teachers and in all kinds of scriptures. It is very true that scriptures and religions differ, but the points in which they all agree have to be accepted by a man before he can understand life sufficiently to live happily. One of these facts is the eternal Law of Cause and Effect. If a man lives under the delusion that he can do anything that he likes, and that the effect of his actions will never recoil upon himself, he will most certainly find that some of these actions eventually involve him in unhappiness and suffering. If, again, he does not understand that the object of his life is progress, that God’s Will for him is that he shall grow to be something better and nobler than he is now, then also he will bring unhappiness and suffering upon himself, because he will be likely to live for the lower side of life only, and that lower side of life never finally satisfies the inner man."

"This is a school in which no pupil ever fails; every one must go on to the end. He has no choice as to that; but the length of time which he will take in qualifying himself for the higher examinations is left entirely to his own discretion. The wise pupil, seeing that school-life is not a thing in itself, but only a preparation... endeavours to comprehend as fully as possible the rules of his school, and shapes his life in accordance with them as closely as he can, so that no time may be lost in the learning of whatever lessons are necessary."

"Well, what was life but the difference between what you planned and what you got?"

"Life is totally about losing everything. As life goes on, we lose more than we acquire."

"Every one of us has a long line of... physical lives behind him... Each of such lives is a day at school. The ego puts upon himself his garment of flesh and goes forth into the school of the physical world to learn certain lessons. He learns them, or does not learn them, or partially learns them, as the case may be, during his school day of earth-life; then he lays aside the vesture of the flesh and returns home to his own level for rest and refreshment. In the morning of each new life he takes up again his lesson at the point where he left it the night before. Some lessons he may be able to learn in one day, while others may take him many days. If he is an apt pupil and learns quickly what is needed, if he obtains an intelligent grasp of the rules of the school, and takes the trouble to adapt his conduct to them, his school-life is comparatively short..."

"Yes! Life is a banquet, and most poor sons-of-bitches are starving to death! Live!"

"I think my philosophy basically is there has to be something to this. I mean we just can't be put here for the sake of living our 60, 70, 80, 90, 100 years, whatever it might be, and just end up with nothing at the end of that time after all the combat, and I really look at life to a certain extent as combat. There has to be something. I mean we have to be in a test period or there has to be something after this. Otherwise, it just seems so futile."