QUOTES ABOUT LIFE
Life is a journey filled with moments of joy, struggle, growth, and reflection. The quotes that follow capture different perspectives on what it means to live, love, and learn. Together, they offer insight, inspiration, and reminders that life’s lessons often come from our shared experiences. ◀ Back
Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.
In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.
Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.
How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages.
...
The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.
Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born...Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole. - Vida Winter
- Diane Setterfield
The Thirteenth Tale
It's better this way, sister. There's more to life than staying safe...
- Stephanie Garber
Caraval
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them
- Denis Waitley
In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
Even though our time in this life is temporary, if we live well enough, our legacy will last forever.
-
Idowu KoyenikanAll You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business
Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.
It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.
- Anna Wintour
Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.
Even a snail will eventually reach its destination.
- Gail Tsukiyama
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.
- Charles deLint
Dreams Underfoot
And everyone is alive, somewhere in time.
- Amal El-Mohtar
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since "the rest of your life" won’t last forever.
- Omar Khayyám
Quatrains - Ballades
The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.
- Gautama Buddha
Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.
Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
- Katherine Paterson
Bridge to Terabithia
The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.
- Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed
Taking on too much of other people's drama is just a poor excuse for not taking ownership and control over your own life.
Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.
In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.
Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.
How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages.
...
The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.
Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born...Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole. - Vida Winter
- Diane Setterfield
The Thirteenth Tale
It's better this way, sister. There's more to life than staying safe...
- Stephanie Garber
Caraval
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them
- Denis Waitley
In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
Even though our time in this life is temporary, if we live well enough, our legacy will last forever.
-
Idowu KoyenikanAll You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business
Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.
It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.
- Anna Wintour
Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.
Even a snail will eventually reach its destination.
- Gail Tsukiyama
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.
- Charles deLint
Dreams Underfoot
And everyone is alive, somewhere in time.
- Amal El-Mohtar
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since "the rest of your life" won’t last forever.
- Omar Khayyám
Quatrains - Ballades
The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.
- Gautama Buddha
Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.
Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
- Katherine Paterson
Bridge to Terabithia
The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.
- Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed
Taking on too much of other people's drama is just a poor excuse for not taking ownership and control over your own life.
Maybe the truth was, it shouldn't be so easy to be amazing. Then everything would be. It's the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. When something's difficult to come by, you'll do that much more to make sure it's even harder--if not impossible--to lose.
In fact, it comes to this: nobody is capable of really thinking about anyone, even in the worst calamity. For really to think about someone means thinking about that person every minute of the day, without letting one’s thoughts be diverted by anything- by meals, by a fly that settles on one’s cheek, by household duties, or by a sudden itch somewhere. But there are always flies and itches. That’s why life is difficult to live.
Every last minute of my life has been preordained and I'm sick and tired of it.
How this feels is I'm just another task in God's daily planner: the Italian Renaissance penciled in for right after the Dark Ages.
...
The Information Age is scheduled immediately after the Industrial Revolution. Then the Postmodern Era, then the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Famine. Check. Pestilence. Check. War. Check. Death. Check. And between the big events, the earthquakes and the tidal waves, God's got me squeezed in for a cameo appearance. Then maybe in thirty years, or maybe next year, God's daily planner has me finished.
Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born...Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole. - Vida Winter
- Diane Setterfield
The Thirteenth Tale
It's better this way, sister. There's more to life than staying safe...
- Stephanie Garber
Caraval
I don't know how I look, but I know how I feel: Young. Goofy. Infinite.
There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them
- Denis Waitley
In the haunted house of life, art is the only stair that doesn't creak.
Even though our time in this life is temporary, if we live well enough, our legacy will last forever.
-
Idowu KoyenikanAll You Need Is a Ball: What Soccer Teaches Us about Success in Life and Business
Whoever said that the past isn't dead had it backward. It's the future that's already dead, already played out.
It’s always about timing. If it’s too soon, no one understands. If it’s too late, everyone’s forgotten.
- Anna Wintour
Do not forget that the value and interest of life is not so much to do conspicuous things...as to do ordinary things with the perception of their enormous value.
- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.
Even a snail will eventually reach its destination.
- Gail Tsukiyama
The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
People see stories everywhere...We take random events and we put them together in a pattern so we can comfort ourselves with a story, no matter how much it obviously isn't true...We have to lie to ourselves to live. Otherwise, we'd go crazy.
There are no happy endings... There are no endings, happy or otherwise. We all have our own stories which are just part of the one Story that binds both this world and Faerie. Sometimes we step into each others stories - perhaps just for a few minutes, perhaps for years - and then we step out of them again. But all the while, the Story just goes on.
- Charles deLint
Dreams Underfoot
And everyone is alive, somewhere in time.
- Amal El-Mohtar
This Is How You Lose the Time War
Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since "the rest of your life" won’t last forever.
- Omar Khayyám
Quatrains - Ballades
The Way is not in the sky; the Way is in the heart.
- Gautama Buddha
Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.
Sometimes it seemed to him that his life was delicate as a dandelion. One little puff from any direction, and it was blown to bits.
- Katherine Paterson
Bridge to Terabithia
The world is very lovely, and it's very horrible--and it doesn't care about your life or mine or anything else.
- Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed
Taking on too much of other people's drama is just a poor excuse for not taking ownership and control over your own life.
