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Quotes about Life


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I don't know anything about the afterlife because I haven't been there yet. (Marina Abramovic)

I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I have just lived the length of it. I want to have lived the width of it as well. (Diane Ackerman)

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes, your easy smile is your museum. (Ansel Adams)

The great value of life is to spend it on something that will outlast it. (James Truslow Adams)

Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. (Stella Adler)

I drew my first breath and I became. / I will breathe my last and I will be. (AllanO)

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life. (James Allen)

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else. (Woody Allen)

There are three kinds of death in this world. There's heart death, there's brain death, and there's being off the network. (Guy Almes)

'Just living is not enough,' said the butterfly, 'One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.' (Hans Christian Andersen)

Every man's life is a fairy tale written by God's fingers. (Hans Christian Andersen)

My life is a lovely story, happy and full of incident. (Hans Christian Andersen)

Paradise is exactly like where you are right now... only much, much better. (Laurie Anderson)

I've learned that life sometimes gives you a second chance. (Maya Angelou)

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life. (Maya Angelou)

How else is life better undone than / By grasping at imagined shadows / More than butterflies or rainbows / The colors of life elude capture... (Tony Anony)

Kindness is the oil that takes the friction out of life. (Anonymous)

Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you stop pedaling. (Anonymous)

When people say, 'Life is short,' they don't realise that life is the longest thing anyone ever does! (Anonymous)

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some. (Jean Anouilh)

Life is an empty square unless one fills it up with matter. (Robin Antar)

Death not merely ends life, it also bestows upon it a silent completeness, snatched from the hazardous flux to which all things human are subject. (Hannah Arendt)

Human life is not made up of neutral moments simply waiting to be interpreted or transformed into art. Rather, each moment is a slice or microcosm of the worldview of the artist. (Juliette Aristides)

Life in the true sense is perceiving or thinking. (Aristotle)

Every moment is a dot in the painting of our lives. Each dot a circle that is never-ending, surrounding the gift of creation. (Kathleen Arnason)

When we speak the word 'life,' it must be understood we are not referring to life as we know it from its surface of fact, but to that fragile, fluctuating center which forms never reach. (Antonin Artaud)

You learn about equality in history and civics, but you find out life is not really like that. (Arthur Ashe)

Life is pleasant. Death is peaceful. It's the transition that's troublesome. (Isaac Asimov)

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. (Isaac Asimov)

It seems to me madness to wake up in the morning and do something other than paint, considering that one may not wake up the following morning. (Frank Auerbach)

The universe is transformation; our life is what our thoughts make it. (Marcus Aurelius)

You will give yourself relief, if you do every act of your life as if it were the last. (Marcus Aurelius)

Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark in one another. (Kenny Ausubel)

Life becomes meaningful and all activities are purposeful only on the basis of faith in the enduring reality. (Meher Baba)

Life is a song... sing it. Life is a game... play it. Life is a challenge... meet it. Life is a dream... realize it. Life is a sacrifice... offer it. Life is love... enjoy it. (Sathya Sai Baba)

You must be a lotus, unfolding its petals when the sun rises in the sky, unaffected by the slush where it is born or even the water which sustains it! (Sathya Sai Baba)

Life is a challenge, meet it! Life is a dream, realize it! Life is a game, play it! Life is Love, enjoy it! (Sathya Sai Baba)

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you're alive, it isn't. (Richard Bach)

If I didn't have to live, I'd never let any of it out. (Francis Bacon)

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. (Philip James Bailey)

Every person is born into life as a blank page and every person leaves life as a full book. (Christina Baldwin)

We live in story like a fish lives in water. We swim through words and images siphoning story through our minds the way a fish siphons water through its gills. (Christina Baldwin)

One of the dreariest spots on life's road is the point of conviction that nothing will ever again happen to you. (Faith Baldwin)

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living. (James Baldwin)

Live to paint, don't paint to live. (Darby Bannard)

Life deprived of beauty is not worthy of being called human. (Luis Barragan)

Life is a long lesson in humility. (James M. Barrie)

In life there are always these things happening if you can just get the joke. (Lynda Barry)

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them. (Bernard Baruch)

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)

Early on in my life I comprehended that death is the most tragic event in our life. Events of early Monday July 14, 1958 [Coup in Iraq] had convinced me that hate is the most destructive force in our life. (Ala Bashir)

Life is the journey between darkness of the womb and darkness of the grave. (Ala Bashir)

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain. (Mary Catherine Bateson)

You can only be what you are. (Jon Batiste)

As a small child, I felt in my heart two contradictory feelings, the horror of life and the ecstasy of life. (Charles Baudelaire)

There are no happy endings, because nothing ends. (Peter S. Beagle)

I want to see how life can triumph. (Romare Bearden)

The function of the artist is to organize the facets of life according to his imagination. (Romare Bearden)

-Molloy, 1951...
In me there have always been two fools, among others, one asking nothing better than to stay where he is and the other imagining that life might be slightly less horrible a little further on. (Samuel Beckett)

We spend our life, it's ours, trying to bring together in the same instant a ray of sunshine and a free bench. (Samuel Beckett)

You are a cosmic happening rooted in a local event, NOT the other way around. (Dr. Michael Beckwith)

In art, the moment is my true teacher. It is life expressing itself through me. Art, then, becomes effortless, which is the now-moment itself. (Philippe Benichou)

You have to live on this twenty-four hours of daily time. Out of it you have to spin health, pleasure, money, content, respect, and the evolution of your immortal soul. (Arnold Bennett)

From childhood on I have had the dream of life lived as a sacrament... the dream implied taking life ritually as something holy. (Bernard Berenson)

Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division. (Henri Bergson)

For life is tendency, and the essence of a tendency is to develop in the form of a sheaf, creating, by its very growth, divergent directions among which its impetus is divided. (Henri Bergson)

Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it. (Irving Berlin)

Each person designs his own life, freedom gives him the power to carry out his own designs, and power gives the freedom to interfere with the designs of others. (Eric Berne)

Life's impressions can be a long or short depending on what we are given. We should call it the walk through life, with open or closed eyes. (Lida van Bers)

The quality of life, which in the ardor of spring was personal and sexual, becomes social in midsummer. (Henry Beston)

Life is like photography. You use the negative to develop. (Swami Beyondananda)

If you think about the long term then you can really make good life decisions that you won't regret later. (Jeff Bezos)

Life is a flow of love; only your participation is requested. (Yogi Bhajan)

Life is a lie if truth is not found. Truth is just an idea if it is not lived. It is living that matters. (Yogi Bhajan)

-The Devil's Dictionary, 1911
calamity, n. A more than commonly plain and unmistakable reminder that the affairs of this life are not of our own ordering. Calamities are of two kinds: misfortune to ourselves, and good fortune to others. (Ambrose Bierce)

The great secret in life - not to open your letters for a fortnight. At the expiration of that period you will find that nearly all of them have answered themselves. (Arthur Binstead)

What began as imaginative escapism has led me full circle back to life. Maybe artists do pay attention to the important things. (Eleanor Blair)

For everything that lives is holy, life delights in life. (William Blake)

-Barley Broth, 18th century
Trifles make the sum of life. (Miss Susannah Blamire)

If all men lead mechanical, unpoetical lives, this is the real nihilism, the real undoing of the world. (Reginald H. Blyth)

-title of book, 1978...
If Life Is a Bowl of Cherries, What Am I Doing in the Pits? (Erma Bombeck)

It is not just nature that defies us. Human life is as overwhelming... If we spend time in it [the vast spaces of nature], they may help us to accept more graciously the great, unfathomable events that molest our lives and will inevitably return us to dust. (Alain de Botton)

I have been to Hell and back and let me tell you it was wonderful. (Louise Bourgeois)

If you look at life one way, there is always cause for alarm. (Elizabeth Bowen)

For me, it really is about a dialogue. Life can be really isolating or terrifying or euphoric - it's all these things. And while I'm here I want to have an exchange. I want something to vibrate. And I want to be really stimulated... (Shary Boyle)

Live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds. (Ray Bradbury)

Life is like riding a bike. It is impossible to maintain your balance while standing still. (Linda Brakeall)

So I've seen life as one long learning process. (Richard Branson)

Looking back on our lives, we invariably find that the person we pretended to be is the person we became. (Robert Brault)

There are exactly as many special occasions in life as we choose to celebrate. (Robert Brault)

Do not fear death so much, but rather the inadequate life. (Bertolt Brecht)

To live means to finesse the processes to which one is subjugated. (Bertolt Brecht)

It is living and ceasing to live that are imaginary solutions. Existence is elsewhere. (Andre Breton)

The richness of human life is that we have many lives; we live the events that do not happen (and some that cannot) as vividly as those that do; and if thereby we die a thousand deaths, that is the price we pay for living a thousand lives. (Jacob Bronowski)

-Villette, 1853
Life is so constructed that the event does not, cannot, will not match the expectation. (Charlotte Bronte)

Life... is not simply a series of exciting new ventures. The future is not always a whole new ball game. There tends to be unfinished business. One trails all sorts of things around with one, things that simply won't be got rid of. (Anita Brookner)

Treat every moment before the easel as a quick and tender opportunity. Invest your most noble self. Give your most noble self. To be a painter is to enjoy a precious state of life. (Charles Philip Brooks)

Look, I don't want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you're alive you've got to flap your arms and legs, you've got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you're not alive. (Mel Brooks)

It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you. (Phillips Brooks)

Everything is Song. Everything is Silence. Since it all turns out to be illusion, perfectly being what it is, having nothing to do with good or bad, you are free to die laughing. (James Broughton)

Life is a copycat and can be bullied into following the master artist who bids it come to heel. (Heywood Broun)

It's a great life, and Margaret and I are going to stay put above the Arctic Circle where we're happy. (Bern Will Brown)

No one gets out of the game of life alive. You either die in the bleachers, or on the field. So, you might as well play out on the field, and go for it. (Les Brown)

Life is pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us. (Thomas Browne)

We mortals cross the ocean of this world / Each in his average cabin of a life. (Robert Browning)

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. (Jean de La Bruyere)

We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. (Charles Bukowski)

In life, as in whist, hope nothing from the way cards may be dealt to you. Play the cards, whatever they be, to the best of your skill. (Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton)

Life is a wretched gray Saturday, but it has to be lived through. (Anthony Burgess)

I mean, there's little enough in this life, really, and you only find it worth living for the odd moments, and if you think you're going to have those odd moments again, then it makes life wonderful and have a meaning. (Anthony Burgess)

Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion. (Leo Buscaglia)

Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here and right now. Don't miss it. (Leo Buscaglia)

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

To live is like love, all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it. (Samuel Butler, novelist)

Life isn't something you possess. It's something you take part in, and you witness. (Louis C.K.)

Living in the now is making each moment more delicious, living and absorbing, taking action without fear of consequence and putting in the effort for the sake of involvement, without worry as to whether we will get our just rewards. (Leanne Cadden)

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life. (John Cage)

The secret to life is to put yourself in the right lighting. (Susan Cain)

Most of us are tiptoeing through life so we can reach death safely. We should be praying, 'If I should wake before I die.' Life can get away from you. Don't be satisfied with just pumping blood. (Tony Campolo)

You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. (Albert Camus)

I would rather live my life as if there is a God, and die to find out that there is not, than live my life as if there is not and die to find that there is. (Albert Camus)

One should not confuse the craving for life with endorsement of it. (Elias Canetti)

Life is a moderately good play with a badly written third act. (Truman Capote)

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. (George Carlin)

There is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed. (Thomas Carlyle)

Youth is to all the glad season of life; but often only by what it hopes, not by what it attains, or what it escapes. (Thomas Carlyle)

Have little care that Life is brief, / And less that Art is long. / Success is in the silences / Though Fame is in the song. (Bliss Carman)

You can sing only what you are. You can paint only what you are. You must be what your experiences, your environment, and your heredity have made you. For better or for worse, you must play your own little instrument in the orchestra of life. (Dale Carnegie)

It's a pretty frantic world that we live in. (Mary Chapin Carpenter)

The quality of life is more important than life itself. (Alexis Carrel)

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead. (Johnny Carson)

No individual has any right to come into the world and go out of it without leaving behind him distinct and legitimate reasons for having passed through it. (George Washington Carver)

I look upon life as a gift from God. I did nothing to earn it. Now that the time is coming to give it back, I have no right to complain. (Joyce Cary)

I feel the capacity to care is the thing which gives life its deepest significance. (Pablo Casals)

To live is not enough; we must take part. (Pablo Casals)

Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. (Carlos Castaneda)

...life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose. (Willa Cather)

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts. (Louis-Ferdinand Celine)

I wish to die painting. (Paul Cezanne)

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot. (Charlie Chaplin)

Live each day like it's your last, 'cause one day you gonna be right. (Ray Charles)

The life so short, the craft so long to learn. (Geoffrey Chaucer)

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well. (Anton Chekhov)

Approach the present with your heart's consent. Make it a blessed event. (Gurumayi Chidvilasananda)

One must picture everything in the world as an enigma, and live in the world as if in a vast museum of strangeness. (Giorgio de Chirico)

- Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living...
Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both... One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together. (Pema Chodron)

To have passion, to have a dream, to have a purpose in life. And there are three components to that purpose. One is to find out who you really are, to discover God, the second is to serve other human beings because we are here to do that, and the third is to express your unique talents, and when you are expressing your unique talents you lose track of time. (Deepak Chopra)

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. (Winston Churchill)

- Life and How to Survive It...
Life is a terminal disease, and it is sexually transmitted. (John Cleese)

I learned a lot from the stories my uncle, aunts and grandparents told me: that no one is perfect but most people are good; that people can't be judged by their worst or weakest moments; that harsh judgements can make hypocrites of us all; that a lot of life is just showing up and hanging on; that laughter is often the best, and sometimes the only response to pain. (Bill Clinton)

As I live and am a man, this is an unexaggerated tale - my dreams become the substances of my life. (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)

What a wonderful life I've had! I only wish I'd realized it sooner. (Sidonie Gabrielle Colette)

-Good to Great...
For, in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work. (Jim Collins, author)

I don't intend to be menacing, but I do think of life as being essentially dangerous. We never know what's going to happen from one day to the next. (Alex Colville)

Real life seems to have no plots. (Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett)

Life is a maze in which we take the wrong turning before we have learnt to walk. (Cyril Connolly)

A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. (Joseph Conrad)

Tasmania has set the terms of my life... I had begun to wonder about what I had lost... this was not the life I wanted; somehow I'd been given the wrong one... we are all sundered, solitary, disowned. (Peter Conrad)

The Last American Man by Elizabeth Gilbert...
Show up for your own life... Don't pass your days in a stupor... The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity, which is about consciousness, so honor that consciousness. (Eustace Conway)

Life's complicated and people do things for a lot of reasons. (Bradley Cooper)

There is an art to living life fully and paying attention to the details. (Anne Copeland)

If you want to partake of life, you have to grab a big fork and dig in! (Anne Copeland)

Unlike a painting where we can go back and paint over it, when a day is spent, it is etched forever on the canvas. We start each day with a blank new canvas. (Anne Copeland)

Life is now in session. Are you present? (B. Copeland)

A perfect method for adding drama to life is to wait until the deadline looms large. (Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby)

Life gets in the way of art. (Carol Cottone-Kolthoff)

Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live. (Norman Cousins)

Variety is the very spice of life, that gives it all its flavor. (William Cowper)

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave. (Quentin Crisp)

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the winter time. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the Sunset. (Crowfoot)

What would it be like if you lived each day, each breath, as a work of art in progress? Imagine that you are a Masterpiece unfolding, every second of every day, a work of art taking form with every breath. (Thomas Crum)

Getting control of life is never easy, and sometimes it can be definitely painful. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

Find out what you like and what you hate about life. Start doing more of what you love, less of what you hate. (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

There was the presence only of essentials. It was an uncluttered kind of life, a simplicity deliberately constructed so that she could do her work. (Mason Currey)

The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work. (Mason Currey)

Life is meant to be enjoyed, not endured. (Anthony J. D'Angelo)

For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way. Something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life. (Alfred D'Souza)

Life is the most precious of all treasures. Even one extra day of life is worth more than ten million ryo of gold. (Nichiren Daishonin)

Without art, we're handicapped, and living a stifled, barren existence. (Ken Danby)

The first half of our lives are ruined by our parents and the second half by our children. (Clarence Darrow)

The purpose of life is living. Men and women should get the most they can out of their lives. (Clarence Darrow)

A man who dares to waste one hour of life has not discovered the value of life. (Charles Darwin)

My life is a creative act - like a painting, or a concerto. (Ram Dass)

I have my art to comfort me, but what have these wretched men and women to live for? (Honore Daumier)

Have a life for the rest of the day. (Jeff Davidson)

When you control the spaces in your life, control of your time and life tend to follow. (Jeff Davidson)

Without imagination and inspiration, expressed artistically, there is no life worth living. (Ginia A. Davis)

You have to be able to look back at your life and say, 'Yeah, that was fun.' (Sammy Davis, Jr.)

If you believe this is the only life you're going to get, it's a precious life. We should live to the full. Where if you believe in another life, you don't live this life to the full because you think you're going to get another one. That's an awfully negative way to live a life. (Richard Dawkins)

Dream as if you will live forever; / live as if you will die today. (James Dean)

I live in company with a body, a silent companion, exacting and eternal. (Eugene Delacroix)

Every living thing is, from the cosmic perspective, incredibly lucky simply to be alive. Most, 90 percent and more, of all the organisms that have ever lived have died without viable offspring, but not a single one of your ancestors, going back to the dawn of life on Earth, suffered that normal misfortune. You spring from an unbroken line of winners... (Daniel Dennett)

Life itself is just a thin coat of paint on the planet, and we hold the paintbrush. (Daniel Dennett)

Trifles make the sum of life. (Charles Dickens)

To live a very long time... is supposed to be the desired object of all human life. But it is not. The main thing is to ride the flood tide... How glorious it is to create! For those few moments of a lifetime when the stream is running full and deep: those are the justification for everything. (James Dickey)

If I can stop one Heart from breaking / I shall not live in vain / If I can ease one Life the Aching / Or cool one Pain / Or help one fainting Robin / Unto his Nest again / I shall not live in Vain. (Emily Dickinson)

To live is so startling it leaves time for little else. (Emily Dickinson)

Life is a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you can only spend it once. (Lillian Dickson)

What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it! (Denis Diderot)

It is not a matter of painting life. It's a matter of giving life to a painting. (Richard Diebenkorn)

I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. (Annie Dillard)

-Pilgrim at Tinker Creek...
The extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. (Annie Dillard)

Life is a succession of lessons enforced by immediate reward, or, oftener, by immediate chastisement. (Ernest Dimnet)

Grief is the agony of an instant. The indulgence of grief the blunder of a life. (Benjamin Disraeli)

Mind training matters. It is not just a luxury, or a supplementary vitamin for the soul. It determines the quality of every instant of our lives. (Norman Doidge)

The public is a part of my real life. (Placido Domingo)

Don't let appearances fool you / Life's not what the rule book tells. (Donovan)

Life should be lived so vividly and so intensely that thoughts of another life, or of a longer life, are not necessary. (Marjory Stoneman Douglas)

We have been sold a lifestyle, when what our soul desired was life. (Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

You will find as you look back upon your life that the moments when you have truly lived are the moments when you have done things in the spirit of love. (Henry Drummond)

To die is landing on some distant shore. (John Dryden)

Life is short, the art is long, the problems pressing. (Rene Dubos)

- The Count of Monte Cristo...
It's necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live. (Alexandre Dumas)

Enjoy going through life as yourself. (Lena Dunham)

Act like a 'kid in a candy store' towards life. There is so much sweetness for us to experience. (Christine Dunmire)

History is an endless repetition of the wrong way of living. (Lawrence Durrell)

And when this grand canvas, our life, is finished, may the world in some small or large way be a better place. (Robert Regis Dvorak)

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of your state of mind. (Dr. Wayne Dyer)

-quoted and illustrated by Tom Thomson...
Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, and to work and to play, and to look up at the stars. (Henry van Dyke)

At all times love and discipline have led to a beautiful environment and a good life. (Charles Eames)

I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. (Roger Ebert)

Only the thinking man lives his life; the thoughtless man's life passes him by. (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)

One person who has mastered life is better than a thousand persons who have mastered only the contents of books, but no one can get anything out of life without God... (Meister Johann Eckhart)

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face. (George Eliot)

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone. (George Eliot)

I had seen birth and death but had thought they were different. (T. S. Eliot)

The past can not be cured. (Queen Elizabeth I)

Life is to be lived, not controlled, and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. (Ralph Ellison)

Life is a festival only to the wise. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Life is a train of moods like a string of beads; and as we pass through them they prove to be many colored lenses, which paint the world their own hue, and each shows us only what lies in its own focus. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

We are always getting ready to live, but never living. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

There is just one life for each of us: our own. (Euripides)

We are all born into the world with nothing. Everything we acquire after that is profit. (Sam Ewing)

Life is human relationships. (Moh Faris)

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again, since it is life. (William Faulkner)

One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure. (William Feather)

Life is a combination of magic and pasta. (Federico Fellini)

Life is not easy, but death is no fun. (Tomm Fennell)

Many artists have said that when life itself becomes fully conscious, art as we know it will vanish. (Marilyn Ferguson)

Life is too short to be small. (Timothy Ferriss)

-last words as quoted in Genius: The Life and Science of Richard Feynman by James Gleick, 1992...
I'd hate to die twice. It's so boring. (Richard Feynman)

I began to have an idea of my life, not as slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know. (Joanna Field)

-Jewels: A Secret History...
Human life is fragile: we live in the space between one breath and the next. We often try to maintain an illusion of permanence, through what we do, say... how we enjoy ourselves... Yet it is an illusion that is constantly being undermined by change and death. (Victoria Finlay)

I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art. (Carrie Fisher)

I am a spy in the house of me. I report back from the front lines of the battle that is me. I am somewhat nonplused by the event that is my life. (Carrie Fisher)

I don't want to live – I want to love first, and live incidentally. (Zelda Fitzgerald)

Life is so horrible that one can only bear it by avoiding it. And that can be done by living in the world of art. (Gustave Flaubert)

Golf without bunkers and hazards would be tame and monotonous. So would life. (B. C. Forbes)

Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice... (E. M. Forster)

Life is the power that's greater than I can ever comprehend. The way life runs through everything, even the tiniest elements of nature - that makes me humble. (Michael J. Fox)

Live as if you were living a second time, and as though you had acted wrongly the first time. (Viktor Frankl)

Life is just a blank slate, what matters most is what you write on it. (Christine Frankland)

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first. (Benjamin Franklin)

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. (Benjamin Franklin)

It is easier to live through someone else than to become complete yourself. (Betty Friedan)

To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable. (Erich Fromm)

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on. (Robert Frost)

We do not live in centred space anymore, but have to create our own centres. (Northrop Frye)

The examined life is no picnic. (Robert Fulghum)

Life is the spirit incarnate in time. (Buckminster Fuller)

Life is rapid, art is slow, occasion coy, practice fallacious and judgment partial. (Henry Fuseli)

All men have one entrance into life, and the like going out. (Solomon Ibn Gabirol)

The tightrope of elegance: how do you walk it without falling off? ...That's what real life is about anyway. (Charles Gagnon)

Life is always going to be stranger than fiction, because fiction has to be convincing, and life doesn't. (Neil Gaiman)

-Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life...
Living the focused life is not about trying to feel happy all the time... rather, it's about treating your mind as you would a private garden and being as careful as possible about what you introduce and allow to grow there. (Winifred Gallagher)

There is more to life than increasing its speed. (Mahatma Gandhi)

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser. (John W. Gardner)

Life, I love you. All is groovy. (Simon and Garfunkel)

An amateur at LIFE is an amateur at ART. (Laurence Gartel)

Life is a series of collisions with the future. (Jose Ortega Y Gasset)

-to high school grads...
Life is not fair - get used to it. (Bill Gates)

Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge. (Paul Gauguin)

I take life as it happens. And I give myself a lot of freedom. (Jean Paul Gaultier)

Life stands before me like an eternal spring with new and brilliant clothes. (Karl Freiderich Gauss)

I used to be very concerned about making art, about my painting turning out 'right.' Now I feel that the life you make is the art; making a painting is just one part of that life. (Judy Gehrlein)

Life is a passage through a museum of beauty. (Robert Genn)

As long as I live I will have control over my being. (Artemesia Gentileschi)

Great people have a vision of their lives that they practice emulating each and every day. They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives. (Michael Gerber)

With no clear picture of how you wish your life to be, how on earth are you going to live it? (Michael Gerber)

Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit. (Kahlil Gibran)

It would be wisest not to worry too much about the sterile periods. They ventilate the subject and instill into it the reality of daily life. (Andre Gide)

When we are mindful of every nuance of our natural world, we finally get the picture: that we are only given one dazzling moment of life here on Earth, and we must stand before that reality both humbled and elevated, subject to every law of our universe and grateful for our brief but intrinsic participation with it. (Elizabeth Gilbert)

You can live a long life, making and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence. (Elizabeth Gilbert)

I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try. (Nikki Giovanni)

The flower is the poetry of reproduction. It is an example of the eternal seductiveness of life. (Jean Giraudoux)

No life is so hard that you can't make it easier by the way you take it. (Ellen Glasgow)

Make your life a mission – not an intermission. (Arnold H. Glasow)

Life sucks order from a sea of disorder. (James Gleick)

Life is but a preparation for what there is to come. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)

My aim in life is to make pictures and drawings, as many and as well as I can; then, at the end of my life... looking back with love and tender regret, and thinking, 'Oh, the pictures I might have made!' But this does not exclude making what is possible... (Vincent van Gogh)

- unsourced...
Paintings have a life of their own that derives from the painter's soul. (Vincent van Gogh)

The harder you chase something, the faster you go and the less you're able to let life meet life. If you're having difficulty coming up with new ideas, then slow down... (Natalie Goldberg)

Life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all. (William Goldman)

Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations. (Oliver Goldsmith)

I don't think anyone should write their autobiography until after they're dead. (Samuel Goldwyn)

The Last Jew...
Life is glorious, but it can be counted on to be cruel. (Noah Gordon)

Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life. (Elizabeth Goudge)

-The Wind in the Willows, 1908...
Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it! (Kenneth Grahame)

-The Fault in Our Stars...
If you don't live a life in service of a greater good, you've gotta at least die a death in service of a greater good, you know? And I fear that I won't get either a life or a death that means anything. (John Green)

Our life is a book that writes itself and whose principal themes sometimes escape us. We are like characters in a novel who do not always understand what the author wants of them. (Julien Green)

Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass... it's about learning how to dance in the rain. (Vivien Greene)

It is better to die living, than to live dying. (Hap Hagood)

Don't play safe... Destroy and construct. That's life. (Stacha Halpern)

- journal entry 1925-1930, published in Markings, 1964...
Life only demands from you the strength that you possess. Only one feat is possible - not to have run away. (Dag Hammarskjold)

-Tess of the d'Urbervilles...
This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don't you think so? (Thomas Hardy)

The primary function of art is not to imitate or represent or interpret, but to create a living thing; it is the reduction of all life to a perfectly composed and dynamic miniature – a microcosm where there is perfect balance of emotion and intellect, stress and strain resolving itself, form rhythmically poised in three dimensions. (Lawren Harris)

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard,' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?' (Sydney J. Harris)

I harp always on the 'idea' of life as I dwell perpetually on the existence of the moment. (Marsden Hartley)

Many a man gets weary of clamping down on his rough impulses, which if given occasional release would encourage the living of life with salt in it, in place of dust. (Henry S. Haskins)

Our portion of life is the whole thing for us. (Henry S. Haskins)

Life would be tragic if it weren't funny. (Stephen Hawking)

Life is made up of marble and mud. (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

-from Islands in the Stream...
You must hold hard to life and do it. But life is a cheap thing beside a man's work. The only thing is that you need it. Hold it tight. (Ernest Hemingway)

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without. (Ernest Hemingway)

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit. (Nelson Henderson)

Life is finding yourself. It is a spirit development. (Robert Henri)

I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living. (Robert Henri)

Today must not be a souvenir of yesterday, and so the struggle is everlasting. Who am I today? What do I see today? How shall I use what I know, and how shall I avoid being victim of what I know? Life is not repetition. (Robert Henri)

Life's like a movie; write your own ending. Keep believing; keep pretending. (Jim Henson)

Living well is the best revenge. (George Herbert)

Life is half spent before we know what it is. (George Herbert)

My life and art have not been separated. They have been together. (Eva Hesse)

My real self wanders elsewhere, far away, wanders on and on invisibly and has nothing to do with my life. (Hermann Hesse)

It takes half your life before you discover life is a do-it-yourself project. (Napoleon Hill)

The life so short, the craft so long to learn. (Hippocrates)

Life isn't a science. We make it up as we go. (Al Hirschfeld)

The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. (Damien Hirst)

Drama is life with all the dull bits cut out. (Alfred Hitchcock)

No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. (Thomas Hobbes)

Life itself, when understood and utilized for what it is, is sweet. (Benjamin Hoff)

Life is a grindstone. Whether it grinds us down or polishes us up depends on us. (Thomas L. Holdcroft)

Some people 'go' through life; other people 'grow' through life... shift happens. (Robert Holden)

In life learn art, in the artwork learn life. If you see the one correctly you see the other also. (Friedrich Holderlin)

I've come out of seeing death and chosen to focus on the life that's sprouting everywhere, like flowers. And I want to help feed the flowers. (Gary Holland)

Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum. (Oliver Wendell Holmes)

Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. (Sherlock Holmes)

Having just enough life to enjoy being dead. (Jim Holt)

A man dies even if he has done nothing, the same as one who has done much. (Homer)

Art, music, religion, higher education: none are biologically necessary for human life to continue, but how dreary our lives would be without them! (Pastor Richard Hordern)

The best thing about living... Is the chance to keep on doing it! (Lena Horne)

Life is good when we think it's good. Life is bad when we don't think. (Douglas Horton)

Life is just one damned thing after another. (Elbert Hubbard)

It's not any more unusual to be born twice than it is to be born once. (Ray Wylie Hubbard)

I am not dead yet! I can still call forth a piece of soul and set it down in color, fixed forever. (Keri Hulme)

If you mock life, it doesn't mock you. (Natalka Husar)

Life is a nonstop circle; learn to live it from the first round. (Lucero Isaac)

The fabric of existence weaves itself whole. (Charles Ives)

Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had? (Henry James)

To take what there 'is,' and use it, without waiting forever in vain for the preconceived - to dig deep into the actual and get something out of that - this doubtless is the right way to live. (Henry James)

It is art that makes life, and I know of no substitute whatsoever for the force and beauty of its process. (William James)

Life feels like a real fight – as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem. (William James)

- Love Is Letting Go of Fear...
The best way to navigate through life is to give up all of our controls. (Gerald G. Jampolsky)

The tides are in our veins, we still mirror the stars, / Life is your child, but there is in me / Older and harder than life and more impartial, / The eye that watched before there was an ocean. (Robinson Jeffers)

Life is work: it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. I love to keep it by me: the idea of getting rid of it nearly breaks my heart. (Jerome K. Jerome)

Sometimes life is going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. (Steve Jobs)

The good ole days weren't always good, and tomorrow ain't as bad as it seems. (Billy Joel)

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. (Samuel Johnson)

Almost every man wastes part of his life in attempts to display qualities which he does not possess and to gain applause which he cannot keep. (Samuel Johnson)

I am disappointed by that stroke of death, which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure. (Samuel Johnson)

For we that live to please must please to live. (Samuel Johnson)

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do. (Angelina Jolie)

Life is pain, art is redemption. (Brian Lee Jones)

We get so caught up with 'doing life' that we forget to stop and breathe into the moment and simply take stock of how good it is to be alive. (Dennis Merritt Jones)

Be a life long or short, its completeness depends on what it was lived for. (David Starr Jordan)

Emerson said, 'Write it on your heart that every day is the best day of the year.' Knowing this... to be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life. (George Joseph)

We encourage people to believe that there is only one identity, one role, one way for them to be, one value for them to fulfill, rather than a host of possible 'incarnations' to be lived in a lifetime. (Sidney Jourard)

- It Chooses You...
All I ever really want to know is how other people are making it through life - where do they put their body, hour by hour, and how do they cope inside of it. (Miranda July)

Man's real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites – day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. If it were not so, existence would come to an end. (Carl Gustav Jung)

Be simple and always take the next step. You needn't see it in advance, but you can look back at it afterwards.There is no 'how' of life, one just does it. (Carl Gustav Jung)

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. (Carl Gustav Jung)

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth. (Franz Kafka)

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person. (Abdul Kalam)

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law. (Immanuel Kant)

One does afford oneself the luxury to come into the studio and all day, every day, spend one's life making aesthetic propositions. What an immense luxury. (Anish Kapoor)

You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood. (Byron Katie)

Life is a great big canvas, and you need to throw all the paint on it you can. (Danny Kaye)

You can know what's in your life when you know what's in your heart. (Sam Keen)

It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars. (Garrison Keillor)

The place between your comfort zone and your dream is where life takes place. (Helen Keller)

We all have stories. We go through our careers and things happen to us. Those experiences made me what I am. (Thomas Keller)

The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intensive application and intense discipline. (John F. Kennedy)

The courage of life is often a less dramatic spectacle than the courage of a final moment; but it is no less a magnificent mixture of triumph and tragedy. (John F. Kennedy)

Life isn't a matter of milestones but of moments. (Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy)

Life is the freedom to paint with abandon and aplomb that which the heart sees when the heart seizes it. (Valerie Kent)

All of life is a foreign country. (Jack Kerouac)

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars. (Jack Kerouac)

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life. (Jack Kerouac)

You can always create your own experience of life in a beautiful and enjoyable way if you keep your love turned on within you - regardless of what other people say or do. (Ken S. Keyes Jr.)

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. (Soren Kierkegaard)

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. (Soren Kierkegaard)

You needn't die happy when your day comes, but you must die satisfied, for you have lived your life from beginning to end. (Stephen King)

That hunger of the flesh, that longing for ease, that terror of incarceration, that insistence on tribal honour being obeyed: all of that exists, and it exists everywhere. (Ben Kingsley)

If you want sweet dreams, you've got to live a sweet life. (Barbara Kingsolver)

The art of mastering life is the prerequisite for all further forms of expression, whether they are paintings, sculptures, tragedies, or musical compositions. (Paul Klee)

Life is a farce if a person does not serve truth. (Hilma af Klint)

Even the best computer in the world has no idea that it exists. You do. No one knows what creates that ineffable awareness that we're here... (Jeffrey Kluger)

Look at life with the eyes of a child. (Kathe Kollwitz)

This life isn't bad for a first draft. (Joan Konner)

Something in us knows that we live on two different levels: the level of the narrative of our lives - events, objects, feelings, ideas that are 'separate' - those come and go. And another level, which is somehow whole, that witnesses all these changes: that is our true nature. (Gillian Pederson Krag)

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life. (Jiddu Krishnamurti)

I'm living my life, not buying a lifestyle. (Barbara Kruger)

My life is a dot lost among thousands of other dots. (Yayoi Kusama)

You don't have to call it God or Jesus. That's religious humbug to a lot of people, but you've gotta believe that nature and spiritual things surround us. That is what put us here! I thank the universe for that every day of my life. (Jack LaLanne)

Whether we live just a few years or a whole century, it would be truly regrettable and sad if we were to spend that time aggravating the problems that afflict other people, animals, and the environment. The most important thing is to be a good human being. (Dalai Lama)

It's a great time to be alive. (Anne Lamott)

Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead, that is where your future lies. (Ann Landers)

There is no easy path leading out of life, and few easy ones that lie within it. (Walter Savage Landor)

To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable... But I have only touched it, just touched it. (Dorothea Lange)

Even the fear of death is nothing compared to the fear of not having lived authentically and fully. (Frances Moore Lappe)

A home is not dead, but living, and like all living things must obey the laws of nature by constantly changing. (Carl Larsson)

- The Culture of Narcissism...
We demand too much of life, too little of ourselves. (Christopher Lasch)

Life, we learn too late, is in the living, the tissue of every day and hour. (Stephen Leacock)

Life is about having a good time, and it was a good time. We did some things well and some things poorly, but that was always the case. (Norman Lear)

The ultimate goal of a more effective and efficient life is to provide you with enough time to enjoy some of it. (Michael Leboeuf)

We can all agree that the unexamined life is not worth living, but if all you're doing is examining, you're not living. (Adam Leipzig)

Preparation for my storms in life will keep me alive. (John Di Lemme)

Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans. (John Lennon)

If you die in an elevator, be sure to push the 'up' button. (Sam Levenson)

You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough. (Joe Lewis)

I am always grieved when a man of real talent dies. The world needs such men more than Heaven does. (Georg Christoph Lichtenberg)

Where there is life there is wishful thinking. (Gerald F. Lieberman)

He that will make good use of any part of his life must allow a large part of it to recreation. (John Locke)

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear? (Jack London)

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well. (Jack London)

Love is sunshine, hate is shadow, / Life is checkered shade and sunshine. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Life is real! Life is earnest! / And the grave is not its goal; / Dust thou art, to dust returnest, / Was not spoken of the soul. (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

Life gives to every man a staff and scale of notes. The song he sings is one of his own fashioning. (Alma Lonsdale)

You can't take life for granted. (Jennifer Lopez)

Life is a sheet of paper white / Whereon each one of us may write / His word or two, and then comes night. (James Russell Lowell)

As life runs on, the road grows strange with faces new - and near the end. / The milestones into headstones change, / Neath every one a friend. (James Russell Lowell)

I am learning to look at life sideways in any light. (Richard Lush)

I shall fill my life with line, colour and joy. (Leza MacDonald)

Between living and dreaming there is a third thing. Guess it. (Antonio Machado)

How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation. (Niccolo Machiavelli)

Nobody said life would be easy, they just promised it would most likely be worth it. (Harvey Mackay)

'Life' is the leaves which shape and nourish a plant, but 'art' is the flower which embodies its meaning. (Charles Rennie Mackintosh)

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be. (Archibald MacLeish)

Plan to live a life of character and values. Values are the pigment of our art; what we do with them is our masterpiece or kitsch. (Mary Madsen)

-quoted and illustrated by Tom Thomson and given to his parents...
It is well to have visions of a better life than that of every day, but it is the life of every day from which elements of a better life must come. (Maurice Maeterlinck)

Many people have the right aims in life. They just never get around to pulling the trigger. (Sunshine Magazine)

Every moment of one's existence one is growing into more or retreating into less. One is always living a little more or dying a little bit. (Norman Mailer)

There was that law of life, so cruel and so just, that one must grow or else pay more for remaining the same. (Norman Mailer)

Life is too short not to create, not to love, and not to lend a helping hand to our brothers and sisters. (Eric Maisel)

See life passing by like watching a video tape from a glass cover, hearing voices... As a record sound track. (Ashgan Makarem)

Your whole life is a rehearsal for the moment you are in now. (Judith Malina)

Thinking about death forces us to zero in on what's actually important in our lives and what's just frivolous and distracting. (Mark Manson)

Life doesn't get easier or more forgiving; we get stronger and more resilient. (Steve Maraboli)

Life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be experienced. (Gabriel Marcel)

The waste of life occasioned by trying to do too many things at once is appalling. (Orison Swett Marden)

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)

Truly appreciate life, and you'll find that you have more of it. (Ralph Marston)

Beatrice and Virgil...
Just as music is noise that makes sense, a painting is colour that makes sense, so a story is life that makes sense. (Yann Martel)

Life isn't long enough for love and art. (W. Somerset Maugham)

Life doesn't do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit. (John C. Maxwell)

Life is a bunch of neuroses. (Robert McBryde)

We all live in suspense from day to day; in other words, you are the hero of your own story. (Mary McCarthy)

Today is opening day; it's not a dress rehearsal. (Charles McConville)

Life is a one ending script of unspecified length. (Francis McCrossan)

You don't waste your entire life waiting to go back to dust. (Reba McEntire)

Do you realize that you can't play the game of life with sweaty palms? (Phil McGraw)

What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want. (Mignon McLaughlin)

The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist. (Marshall McLuhan)

Definition of a victim: a person to whom life happens. (Peter McWilliams)

Is there life before death? – that is the question! (Anthony de Mello)

We live, not as we wish to, but as we can. (Mencius)

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas. (H. L. Mencken)

Life is thirst. (Leonard Michaels)

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. (James A. Michener)

-in a letter to Aruthur Davison Ficke...
It's not true that life is one damn thing after another - it's one damn thing over and over. (Edna St. Vincent Millay)

One has to pass beyond the sphere and influence of art. Art is only a means to life, to a life more abundant. (Henry Miller)

Whatever work you undertake to do in your lifetime, it is very important that first you have a passion for it - you know, get excited about it - and second, that you have fun with it. That's important. Otherwise, you see, your work becomes nothing but an idle chore. Then, you hate the life you live. (Julius Sumner Miller)

I'm not afraid of dying I just don't want to be there when it happens. (Spike Milligan)

-Epicurean Simplicity
A life alert to simple pleasures, with perception cultivated and attuned to beauty, and a large capacity for friendship can serve us well come what may... (Stephanie Mills)

I used to worry about what life was for - now being alive seems sufficient reason. (Marion Milner)

My music is evidence of my soul's will to live. (Charles Mingus)

Live by your aphorisms. (Damar Minyak)

The more ignoble I find life, the more strongly I react by contradiction, in humour and in an outburst of liberty and expansion. (Joan Miro)

For me an object is something living. This cigarette or this box of matches contains a secret life much more intense than that of certain human beings. When I see a tree, I receive an impact as if it were somebody breathing, somebody speaking. A tree, too, is something human. (Joan Miro)

I've looked at life from both sides now / From win and lose and still somehow / It's life's illusions I recall / I really don't know life at all. (Joni Mitchell)

You are not alive unless you know you are living. (Amedeo Modigliani)

What we are dealing with is a living experience. An experience that requires all our gifts and faculties and we bring that to the painting. (Guido Molinari)

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer. (Baron de Montesquieu)

One puts into one's art what one has not been capable of putting into one's existence. (Henri de Montherlant)

The consciousness and life force do what they want... one minute they put energy to repairing the damaged wing of a butterfly and the next minute they send a whole town crushing with tremendous force... who can work it out?" (Mooji)

Life's not fair... if it was, it wouldn't be lived. (Kenneth Moore)

The art of living does not consist in preserving and clinging to a particular mood of happiness, but in allowing happiness to change its form without being disappointed by the change; for happiness, like a child, must be allowed to grow up. (Charles Langbridge Morgan)

This is the strangest life I've ever known. (Jim Morrison)

Actually, I don't remember being born. It must have happened during one of my black-outs. (Jim Morrison)

You make a life out of what you have, not what you're missing. (Kate Morton)

I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday... I look back on my life as a good day's work, it was done and I feel satisfied with it. I made the best out of what life offered. (Grandma Moses)

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. (Grandma Moses)

Give us the luxuries of life, and we will dispense with its necessaries. (Bill Moyers)

As long as I live, I'll hear waterfalls and birds and winds sing. (John Muir)

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life. (Lewis Mumford)

Life is an art... a score that we play at sight even before we have mastered our instruments. (Lewis Mumford)

Was it because she took my first kiss, that she took away my life's breath? Was it that she lied – she deceived – that one day suddenly the scales fell from my eyes and I saw a Medusa's head and I saw life as a thing of terror. (Edvard Munch)

Life would be grand if it weren't for the people. (Alice Munro)

It's just life. You can't beat life. (Alice Munro)

We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give. (Rev. W.A. Nance)

Life is not having been told that the man has just waxed the floor. (Ogden Nash)

You can't live in the past and there's nothing you can do about it. (Martina Navratilova)

It's been fun. I've had a lucky life. Art has made me pull the best out of myself. (LeRoy Neiman)

Someday, somewhere - anywhere, unfailingly, you'll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life. (Pablo Neruda)

Many people are alive but don't touch the miracle of being alive. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

Life is very fleeting. It's important to be gentle and optimistic. We look behind and think what we've done in this life has been good. It was simple; it was modest. Everyone creates their own story and moves on. That's it. (Oscar Niemeyer)

Art is the proper task of life. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think. (Friedrich Nietzsche)

We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within. (Earl Nightingale)

Dreams are necessary to life. (Anais Nin)

Life is easier than you'd think; all that is necessary is to accept the impossible, do without the indispensable, and bear the intolerable. (Kathleen Norris)

The painting is like a thread that runs through all the reasons for all the other things that make one's life. (Georgia O'Keeffe)

For me, life has either been a wake or a wedding. (Peter O'Toole)

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? (Mary Oliver)

Art is a little bit larger than life - it's an exhalation of life and I think you probably need a little touch of madness. (Sir Laurence Olivier)

I don't live for poetry. I live far more than anybody else does. (Charles Olson)

I'd rather go out in a decent crack-up than in a hospital. (Toni Onley)

-Look Back in Anger...
Why don't we have a little game? Let's pretend that we're human beings, and that we're actually alive. (John James Osborne)

Life is not a tragedy, it is a comedy. To be alive means to have a sense of humor. (Osho)

The true poetry of life: the poetry of the commonplace, of the ordinary man, of the plain, toil-worn woman, with their loves and their joys, their sorrows and their griefs. (Sir William Osler)

Your life can be what you want it to be... You'll make it through whatever comes along. Within you are so many answers. Understand, have courage, be strong. (Douglas Pagels)

Life is the greatest art of all, and the master-artist is the man who is living the beautiful life! (John Edgar Park)

I have been born again and again and each time, I have found something to love. (Gordon Parks)

It's not about how to achieve your dreams. It's about how to lead your life. (Randy Pausch)

What sets worlds in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions; life is plurality, death is uniformity. (Octavio Paz)

If you have zest and enthusiasm, you attract zest and enthusiasm. Life does give back in kind. (Norman Vincent Peale)

Life is like riding a bicycle. You don't fall off unless you plan to stop peddling. (Claude Pepper)

Between me and life is a faint glass. No matter how sharply I see and understand life, I cannot touch it. (Fernando Pessoa)

I always live in the present. The future I can't know. The past I no longer have. (Fernando Pessoa)

You see, it's actually very good that a human activity is performed very close to death, because that's where life is. Life is, at its most valuable and most full, very close to the boundary of life. (Philippe Petit)

The quality of life to be enjoyed or the existence to be survived by our children and future generations is in our hands now. (Prince Philip)

Remember, we are creating the lives we're about to enter into. (Jan Phillips)

One must go through life, be it red or blue, stark naked and accompanied by the music of a subtle fisherman, prepared at all times for a celebration. (Francis Picabia)

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. (Pablo Picasso)

I believe it is impossible to make sense of life in this world except through art. (Daniel Pinkwater)

Dying / Is an art, like everything else. / I do it exceptionally well. (Sylvia Plath)

Life must be lived as play. (Plato)

Being is desirable because it is identical with Beauty, and Beauty is loved because it is Being. (Plotinus)

A person's tragedy does not make up their entire life. A story carves deep grooves into our brains each time we tell it. But we aren't one story. We can change our stories. We can write our own. (Amy Poehler)

I am a firm believer that every few years one needs to shake one's life through a sieve, like a miner in the Yukon. The gold nuggets remain. The rest falls through like the soft earth it is. (Amy Poehler)

And die of nothing but a rage to live. (Alexander Pope)

-The War of Art
Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. (Steven Pressfield)

We come this way but once. We can either tiptoe through life and hope that we get to death without being too badly bruised or we can live a full, complete life achieving our goals and realizing our wildest dreams. (Bob Proctor)

The biggest gap in your life is between what you know and what you do. (Bob Proctor)

Life is filled with tedious work, delayed gratification, challenges, and responsibilities. It is mostly about doing what is needed to get what is wanted. (Victoria Prooday)

You have to take it as it happens, but you should try to make it happen the way you want to take it. (German proverb)

Be serious in what you do. (Latin proverb)

Look to this day, for it is life, the very life of life. In its brief course lie all the realities and verities of existence. The bliss of growth, the splendor of action, the glory of power. (Sanskrit proverb)

You've gotta dance like there's nobody watching, / Love like you'll never be hurt, / Sing like there's nobody listening, / And live like it's heaven on earth. (William W. Purkey)

Do not bury me. I have fought the dirt all my life. I refuse to be buried under it in my death. (Tanya Radic)

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness. (Gilda Radner)

One of the marks of a life well lived has to be reaching a state of finally getting it, of not needing more, and of being able to sign off with something approaching peace of mind. (David Rakoff)

Live in the world like a waterfowl. The water clings to the bird, but the bird shakes it off. Live in the world like a mudfish. The fish lives in the mud, but its skin is always bright and shiny. (Ramakrishna)

Achieving life is not the equivalent of avoiding death. (Ayn Rand)

- about the impact of our lives on our creativity...
If you ain't driving it, it's driving you. (Darylynn Starr Rank)

Life and art are so inextricably interwoven that any change in life leads to a new movement in art. (G. Nagaswara Rao)

Painting relates to both art and life. Neither can be made. I try to act in the gap between the two. (Robert Rauschenberg)

Life constantly sends dilemmas our way, and how we respond to each determines what the outcome will be. (Laury Ravenstein)

Once you learn what life is about, there is no way to erase that knowledge. If you try to do something else with your life, you will always sense that you are missing something. (James Redfield)

Life is like Sanskrit read to a pony. (Lou Reed)

If you want to live your dreams, you need to find your heart's song and follow it. (Barb Rees)

No matter what you may think, life is a timed event. (Morris Reese)

You play the hand you're dealt. I think the game's worthwhile. (Christopher Reeve)

All things must die, and great art must be a living thing, or it is not art at all. (Bill Reid)

I need to feel the excitement of life stirring around me, and I will always need to feel that. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

Tragedy by far speaks to the human condition more than the other arts, because we recognize the fatality of life from its outset. 'Birth' is tragedy, for birth ends in death. 'Love' is tragedy, for it ends in betrayal or, at best, in faint memories of what was. (Ron Resnick)

-The Most Famous Man You've Never Heard Of, by David Carlyon
Well, I guess I am about the livest dead man you ever saw; although I was once asked to accept a coffin. (Dan Rice)

An artist may leave this world having made a mark, but is that enough? (Alice Rich)

-in a letter to Mr. Kappus...
What keeps you from... living your life as a painful and lovely day in the history of a great pregnancy? (Rainer Maria Rilke)

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it's all over. (Mary Roberts Rinehart)

Life is hard if you think it's hard. (Tom Robbins)

In life you need either inspiration or desperation. (Tony Robbins)

Live life fully while you're here. Experience everything. (Tony Robbins)

Shake the tree of life itself and bring down fruits unheard of. (Edwin Arlington Robinson)

A man either lives life as it happens to him, meets it head-on and licks it, or he turns his back on it and starts to wither away. (Gene Roddenberry)

By daily dying, I have come to be. (Theodore Roethke)

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction, not a destination. (Carl Rogers)

Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save. (Will Rogers)

There are only about a half dozen things that make 80% of the difference in any area of our lives. (Jim Rohn)

I've learned... that life is tough, but I'm tougher. (Andy Rooney)

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. (Theodore Roosevelt)

-The Professor Of Desire...
How easy life is when it's easy, and how hard when it's hard. (Philip Roth)

-American Pastoral...
Life is just a short period of time in which you are alive. (Philip Roth)

Death is just life's next big adventure. (J. K. Rowling)

I must learn to love the fool in me... the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool. (Theodore Rubin)

Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now. (Don Miguel Ruiz)

Our lives teach us who we are. (Salman Rushdie)

To be happy in the world, it is necessary to feel oneself part of the stream of life flowing from the first germ to the remote and unknown future. (Bertrand Russell)

A single event can awaken within us a stranger totally unknown to us. To live is to be slowly born. (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

Life goes before we know what it is. / One fool is enough in any house. / Even God gets tired of too much hallelujah. / Take it easy and live long as brothers. (Carl Sandburg)

-Remembrance Rock...
Life is an onion - you peel it year by year and sometimes cry. (Carl Sandburg)

Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament. (George Santayana)

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval. (George Santayana)

I'm blindsided by the realization that very little of the most important occurrences in my life were planned by me. (Larry E. Santucci)

What the painter adds to the canvas are the days of his life. The adventure of living, hurtling toward death. (Jean-Paul Sartre)

We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home. (Australian Aboriginal saying)

Everything is dead while it lives. (Egon Schiele)

What is life without the radiance of love? (Johann Friedrich von Schiller)

After your death you will be what you were before your birth. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

It is only in the microscope that our life looks so big. It is an indivisible point, drawn out and magnified by the powerful lenses of Time and Space. (Arthur Schopenhauer)

The game of life is a game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later with outstanding accuracy. (Florence Schovel)

I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it. (Charles Schulz)

In the book of life, the answers aren't in the back. (Charles Schulz)

For me life is continuously being hungry. The meaning of life is not simply to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer. (Arnold Schwarzenegger)

If my life was a movie, no one would believe it. (Arnold Schwarzenegger)

Vacant heart and hand, and eye – Easy live and quiet die. (Sir Walter Scott)

Art and music shine a light of meaning on ordinary life, and through them we are able to confront the things that trouble us and to find consolation and peace in their presence. (Roger Scruton)

Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect. (Chief Seattle)

Every so often my life will feel like a story. It doesn't have to be a big thing; in fact, most often, it's just the opposite. (David Sedaris)

When well-being comes from engaging our strengths and virtues, our lives are imbued with authenticity. (Martin Seligman)

Just as the good life is something beyond the pleasant life, the meaningful life is beyond the good life. (Martin Seligman)

Live your Life. Live your Life. Live your Life. (Maurice Sendak)

Life is the fire that burns and the sun that gives light. Life is the wind and the rain and the thunder in the sky. Life is matter and is earth, what is and what is not, and what beyond is in Eternity. (Seneca)

The trouble is, if you don't spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you. (Peter Shaffer)

All the world's a stage, / And all the men and women merely players; / They have their exits and their entrances; / And one man in his time plays many parts, / His acts being seven ages. (William Shakespeare)

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage / And then is heard no more: it is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing. (William Shakespeare)

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. (William Shakespeare)

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. (George Bernard Shaw)

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh. (George Bernard Shaw)

No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in. (Gail Sheehy)

Life is like a cash register, in that every account, every thought, every deed, like every sale, is registered and recorded. (Fulton J. Sheen)

I don't live in the fast lane I live on the off ramp. (Fred Shero)

I adore life but I don't fear death. I just prefer to die as late as possible. (Georges Simenon)

Life is an experiment where failure teaches as much as success. (Peter Sims)

You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough. (Frank Sinatra)

Life and career are the same thing. Every life has to have a plot and a plan. You have to recognize this early and be quite cold-blooded in the discovery and articulation of that plot. (Iain Sinclair)

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it. (Samuel Smiles)

Making your life is ultimately an extraordinarily creative endeavor. (Anna Deavere Smith)

The hardest thing is remembering that you have some complicity in the things that happen to you in your life. (Kiki Smith)

Beware the barrenness of a busy life. (Socrates)

It's hard to be something you are not, and easy to be that which you are. (Alan Soffer)

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are. (Susan Sontag)

I am a vessel of experience in a motion picture called life. (William Carmen Soyak III)

It's a sad man, my friend, who's livin' in his own skin and can't stand the company. (Bruce Springsteen)

Strange to find the calendar of my enemy and scared that when I die so will the things I think about. (Toad the Wet Sprocket)

Life often seems like a long shipwreck, of which the debris are friendship, glory, and love; the shores of existence are strewn with them. (Madame de Stael)

I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along. (William Stafford)

One life is an absurdly small allowance. (Freya Stark)

The lessons of life amount not to wisdom but to scar tissue and callus. (Wallace Stegner)

To be alive at all is to have scars. (John Steinbeck)

The artist ought to know that a thousand painful deaths always lead into greater life. (David Steindl-Rast)

Life proceeds amid an incessant network of signals. (George Steiner)

To regard the imagination as metaphysics is to think of it as part of life, and to think of it as part of life is to realize the extent of artifice. We live in the mind. (Wallace Stevens)

Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits. (Robert Louis Stevenson)

How can we live and die and never know the difference? (Clyfford Still)

Life is a gamble at terrible odds; if it were a bet, you would not take it. (Tom Stoppard)

A life is not sufficiently elevated for poetry, unless, of course, the life has been made into an art. (Mark Strand)

Life makes writing poetry necessary to prove I really was paying attention. (Mark Strand)

Without water there would be no watercolor painting. Water's kinetic energy mirrors the flowing quality of life – indeed, without it there would be no life. (Carol P. Surface)

May you live every day of your life. (Jonathan Swift)

Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf. (Rabindranath Tagore)

Life has loveliness to sell, / All beautiful and splendid things, / Blue waves whitened on a cliff, / Soaring fire that sways and sings, / And children's faces looking up / Holding wonder like a cup. (Sara Teasdale)

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible. (Edward Teller)

We bring into the world with us a poor, needy, uncertain life, short at the longest and unquiet at the best. (Sir William Temple)

Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a promise, fulfil it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is life, fight for it. (Mother Teresa)

Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art. (Paul Theroux)

The best things in life are invisible. Laughter, love, the wind, and life itself – all are visible only through the things they animate. (Timothy R. Thies)

Oh, isn't life a terrible thing, thank God? (Dylan Thomas)

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts. (Henry David Thoreau)

I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and to suck out all the marrow of life, to put to rout all that was not life, and not, when I had come to die, discover that I had not lived. (Henry David Thoreau)

-Art and Courage
Through art, people may transform into their highest selves at vital points in their life story. (John Paul Thornton)

Cynically speaking, one could say that it is true to life to be cynical about it. (Paul Tillich)

As the wings of the world flutter, may our lives dance in the silence of the stars. (Paula Timpson)

Every canvas that can awaken us more exquisitely and accurately to the infinite and various surface of our experience does that much to sharpen life, and thereby render it more alive. (Alton S. Tobey)

-The Lost Road
'I wish life was not so short,' he thought. 'Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.' (J. R. R. Tolkien)

Life is the dancer and you are the dance. (Eckhart Tolle)

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret to life is to 'die before you die' - and find that there is no death. (Eckhart Tolle)

Why live an ordinary life when you don't have to. (Robert R. Toth)

Every great leap forward in your life comes after you have made a clear decision of some kind. (Brian Tracy)

Life is like a combination lock; your goal is to find the right numbers, in the right order, so you can have anything you want. (Brian Tracy)

We cannot avoid our lives. We have to face our lives, young or old, rich or poor. Whatever happens, we cannot save ourselves from our lives at all... the more you understand, the more you will realize your own responsibility. (Chogyam Trungpa)

Life is a straight drink - straight pleasure, straight pain, straightforward, one hundred percent. (Chogyam Trungpa)

I know what I'm having 'em put on my tombstone: 'I have nothing more to say.' (Ted Turner)

A life of wholeness does not depend on what we experience. Wholeness depends on how we experience our lives. (Desmond Tutu)

Life is more than breath and a heartbeat; meaning and purpose are the life of life. (Desmond Tutu)

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries of life disappear and life stands explained. (Mark Twain)

-poem Silentium...
Live in your inner self alone / within your soul a world has grown... (Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev)

The true man breathes with his heels. (Chuang Tzu)

Being is born of not being. (Lao Tzu)

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. (Lao Tzu)

The best way to live / is to be like water / For water benefits all things / and goes against none of them. (Lao Tzu)

All life is a manifestation of the spirit, the manifestation of love. (Morihei Ueshiba)

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. (Samuel Ullman)

Life is like an overlong drama through which we sit being nagged by the vague memories of having read the reviews. (John Updike)

Life is a nacho. It can be yummy-crunchy or squishy-yucky. It just depends on how long it takes for you to start eating it. (John Updike)

I've fallen in love with the idea of living. Because we don't do what we want to do, do we? We do what we have to do and pretend that it's what we want to do. (Shirley Valentine)

To achieve great things we must live as though we were never going to die. (Marquis de Vauvenargues)

Inherited aptitudes and traits of temperament count for quite as much as length of habituation in deciding what range of habits will come to dominate any individual's scheme of life. (Thorstein Veblen)

Our life is made by the death of others. (Leonardo da Vinci)

While I thought I was learning to live, I have been learning to die. (Leonardo da Vinci)

Death twitches in my ear. 'Live,' he says. 'I am coming.' (Virgil)

I'll tell you what is the highest work of art – it's of the soul – listen to this: A truly beautiful life is the highest work of art in the world. (Boris Volkoff)

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well. (Voltaire)

Life, like everything else, could be art, but to know whether it is an art, one must invest time to develop his or her sensibilities, and it means to enjoy looking around weighing various peers, though best are those from the past. (Milos Vujasinovic)

The realization that our relationship with a departed loved one does in some way endure will not erase the grief we feel at their death but it counterweights that grief with the heft of meaning. (Stewart Wachs)

Life is the movie you see through your own unique eyes. It makes little difference what's happening out there. It's how you take it that counts. (Denis Waitley)

Life is not accountable to us. We are accountable to life. (Denis Waitley)

Being on the wire is living; everything else is waiting. (Kurt Wallenda)

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. (Andy Warhol)

Death means a lot of money, honey. Death can really make you look like a star. (Andy Warhol)

Go somewhere. Do something. If you don't have a life, how are you going to tell a story about one? (Glynn Washington)

Life, like art, is a continual lesson. It demands that we pay attention, keeping pace with the changes that stimulate us and hopefully educate us. In the end, all we can hope for is the ability to continually appreciate and experience those priceless lessons. (Kirk Wassell)

All experiences in life affect the way we leave our mark on the page. (Annette Waterbeek)

Living should be perpetual and universal benediction. (Wei Wu Wei)

There are three intolerable things in life - cold coffee, lukewarm champagne, and overexcited women... (Orson Welles)

Life begins perpetually... Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars. (H. G. Wells)

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. (Mae West)

-The Shoes of the Fisherman
It takes so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price... One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying. (Morris West)

Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope. (Edith Wharton)

Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances. (Margaret J. Wheatley)

Life's accumulation is more discouraging than life itself, when stirred up. (E. B. White)

Life is an offensive, directed against the repetitious mechanism of the Universe. (Alfred North Whitehead)

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. (Alfred North Whitehead)

Use your precious moments to live life fully every single second of every single day. (Marcia Wieder)

Life is too important to be taken seriously. (Oscar Wilde)

One's real life is often the life that one does not lead. (Oscar Wilde)

The secret of life is in art. (Oscar Wilde)

Life! Life! Don't let us go to life for our fulfilment or our experience. Life makes us pay too high a price for its wares, and we purchase the meanest of its secrets at a cost that is monstrous and infinite. (Oscar Wilde)

Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets. (Oscar Wilde)

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all. (Oscar Wilde)

-famous last words...
This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do. (Oscar Wilde)

Death is one moment, and life is so many of them. (Tennessee Williams)

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going. (Tennessee Williams)

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here. (Marianne Williamson)

Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask, 'What the hell is wrong with the projector?' and go up to the control room, you find it's empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time. (Colin Wilson)

Turn things around sometimes and look at life from a different perspective. (Jean Wilson)

Ten out of ten people die, so don't take life too seriously. (Henry Winkler)

I could easily live in a world populated with disjunctive, bizarre things... (Joel Peter Witkin)

I sit astride life like a bad rider on a horse. I only owe it to the horse's good nature that I am not thrown off at this very moment. (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Is this not the true romantic feeling; not to desire to escape life, but to prevent life from escaping you? (Tom Wolfe)

The very freedom and expressiveness we find missing in life we find present in art. (Nicholas Wolterstorff)

Is there not an art, a music, and a stream of words that shalt be life, the acknowledged voice of life? (William Wordsworth)

The little unremembered acts of kindness and love are the best parts of a person's life. (William Wordsworth)

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn, / a cool breeze in summer, snow in winter. / If your life isn't clouded by unnecessary things, / this is the best season of your life. (Wu-Men)

I feel that it would be tedious for a person to have only one life. It would be much better to have two or three lives going on simultaneously... (Mu Xin)

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens. (William Butler Yeats)

Life moves out of a red flare of dreams / Into a common light of common hours, / Until old age bring the red flare again. (William Butler Yeats)

Life is here to Enjoy! (Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)

There are bookends of life, but what really matters is what goes on in the middle. That we are passionate people. That we are caring people. That we live! (Miles Patrick Yohnke)

Live in a state of being, believing that tomorrow you will find your paradise. (Miles Patrick Yohnke)

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards. They try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want. (Margaret Young)

It is not when he is working in his office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, 'Life is beautiful.' (Lin Yutang)

When you are tough on yourself, life is going to be infinitely easier on you. (Zig Ziglar)