Life - christiansquoting.org.uk

It may be that your whole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

Life would be so much easier if everyone read the manual.

All the world's a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.

Between the wish and the thing life lies waiting.

Life can only be understood backwards but it must be lived forwards

Work as if you don't need the money,
love as if you've never been hurt,
dance as if nobody's watching,
sing as if nobody's listening,
and live as if it was already heaven on earth.

Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.

Life is a Lambourghini: it goes too fast and costs too much.

Enjoy life ... This is not a rehearsal.

Life is a ribbon. Are you tying yours in knots or bows?

Life is a bubble,
And full of trouble.

Life is much like Christmas--you are more apt to get what you expect than what you want.

Life is an onion and one peels it crying. - French proverb

The world is a pregnant woman.---Hausa proverb from Nigeria

Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life. Lauren Bacall (1924-____) In "Daily Mail" (London), 1 Nov 1990.

I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that.Lauren Bacall (1924-____)In "Daily Telegraph" (London), 2 Mar 1988.

Life pursues me like a fury. Everything, at all times, I am feeling, thinking, hoping, hating, loving, cheering. It is impossible to escape.-- W. N. P. Barbellion

Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.- Alan Bennett

Life begets life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.
Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)In "The Speaker's Electronic Reference Collection," AApex Software,1994.

Many factors contribute to who we become as human beings: our genes, our maturation, our unique biological potentials and limitations, our life experiences and the conclusions we draw from them, the knowledge and information available to us, and, of course, our premises or philosophical beliefs, and the thinking we choose to do or not to do. And even this list is an oversimplification. The truth, is we are far from understanding everything that goes into shaping the persons we become, and it is arrogant and stupid to imagine that we do.-
Nathaniel Branden, The Benefits and Hazards of the Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
John Mason Brown

Life is one long process of getting tired. --Samuel Butler

If life was fair, Elvis would be alive and all the impersonators would be dead. Johnny Carson (1925-____)

How far you go in life depends on you being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these. -George Washington Carver

Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!- Miguel de Cervantes (1547 1616)

If life had a second edition, how I would correct the proofs.John Clare (1793-1864) Letter to a friend; in "John Clare: A Life," by J. W. Tibble and Anne Tibble.

Life is short. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. --Robert Doisneau

It is not what I do that matters, but what a sovereign God chooses to do through me. God does not want worldly successes, He wants me. He wants my heart in submission to Him. Life is not just a few years to spend on self indulgence and career advancement. It is a privilege, a responsibility, a stewardship to be lived according to a much higher calling, God's calling. This alone gives true meaning to life. ELIZABETH DOLE

You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind? - Freeman Dyson

The pleasures of youth are flowers but of May;
Our Life's but a Vapour, our body's but clay;
Oh, let me live well though I live but one day.
Thomas Durfey's "Pills to Purge Melancholy," 1681,

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 Eckhart, c. 13th-14thC

Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.-- Albert Einstein

As soon as there is life, there is danger.... Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is a library owned by an author. It has a few books which he wrote himself, but most of them were written for him. - Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969)

Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.~Benjamin Franklin

In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It goes on.... Robert Frost, (1874-1963

We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed. --Thomas Fuller, M.D. (1654-1734)

We learn the rope of life by untying its knots.~ Gandhi

Life is ever
Since man was born,
Licking honey
from a thorn.
Louis Ginsberg

The journey of life is like a man riding a bicycle. We know he got on the bicycle and started to move. We know that at some point he will stop and get off. We know that if he stops moving and does not get off he will fall off. - William Golding (1911-1993) In "An Uncommon Scold," by Abby Adams, 1989.

God often gives nuts to toothless people. -Matt Groening

Thou hast no life to lose, because thou hast given it already to Christ, nor can man take away that without God's leave.--William Gurnall

As the light changed from red to green to amber and back to red again, I sat there thinking about life. Was it nothing more than a lot of honking and yelling? Sometimes it seemed that way.~Jack Handey

Momma always said 'life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.'
Forrest Gump (Tom Hanks)

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.Ernest Hemingway (1889-1961) In "The Peter Pyramid," by Laurence J. Peter.

The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit ~ Nelson Henderson ,1860

You don't want to work; you want to live like a king
But the big, bad world doesn't owe you a thing
Get over it ...
You wallow in the guilt; you wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag, you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter, bringin' everybody down
Complain about the present and blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick it's little ass.
Get over it"
Don Hennley

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles and smiles, with sniffles predominating. - O. Henry

Error, accident, and chaos are persistent principles of the universe. --Imperial Historical Annals, (chapter heading), _Dune: House Corrino_, Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson

Life cannot be captured in a few axioms. And that is just what I keep trying to do. But it won't work, for life is full of endless nuances and cannot be captured in just a few formulae. - Etty Hillesum (1914 &endash; 1943)

Any organisation is like a septic tank. The really big chunks rise to the top.~John Imhoff

It was not . . . that she was unaware of the frayed and ragged edges of life. She would merely iron them out with a firm hand and neatly hem them down. P. D. James (1920-____)

The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it. William James

The main of life is ... composed of small incidents and petty occurrences: of wishes for objects not remote, and grief for disappointments of no fatal consequence; of insect vexations, which sting us and fly away; impertinecies, which buzz a while about us, and are heard no more; of meteorous pleasures, which dance before us and are dissipated; of compliments, which glide off the soul like other music, and are forgotten by him that gave, and him that received them.--Samuel Johnson: Rambler #68

We are all prompted by the same motives, all deceived by the same fallacies, all animated by hope, obstructed by danger, entangled by desire, and seduced by pleasure.-- Samuel Johnson: Rambler #60

The truth is, that no man is much regarded by the rest of the world. He that considers how little he dwells upon the condition of others will learn how little the attention of others is attracted by himself. While we see multitudes passing before us, of whom perhaps not one appears to deserve our notice or excite our sympathy, we should remember, that we likewise are lost in the same throng, that the eye which happens to glance upon us is turned in a moment on him that follows us, and that the utmost which we can reasonably hope or fear, is to fill a vacant hour with prattle and be forgotten. - Samuel Johnson: Rambler #159

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.... Samuel Johnson

Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed. -- Samuel Johnson: Rasselas [said by the character Imlac]

Every man lives behind bars, which he carries within him. --Franz Kafka (1883-1924) _Encounter_ [1971], "Conversations with Kafka"

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men. --Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968) _Strength to Love_ [1963]

Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep. Fran Lebowitz

The game of life is not so much in holding a good hand as in playing a poor hand well.-- H. T. Leslie

The process of living seems to consist in coming to realize truths so ancient and simple that, if stated, they sound like barren platitudes. They cannot sound otherwise to those who have not had the relevant experience: that is why there is no real teaching of such truths possible and every generation starts from scratch. C S Lewis - Letters, May 1939

I walk in wonders beyond myself. --C. S. Lewis

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.
Longfellow (1819-1892)

This life therefore is not righteousness but growth in righteousness; not health but healing, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not what we shall be but we are growing toward it; the process is not yet finished but it is going on; this is not the end but it is the road. All does not yet gleam in glory but all is being purified. MARTIN LUTHER

Better to love God and die unknown than to love the world and be a hero; better to be content with poverty than to die a slave to wealth; better to have taken some risks and lost than to have done nothing and succeeded at it.... Erwin W. Lutzer

The great mystery is not that we should have been thrown down here at random between the profusion of matter and that of the stars; it is that from our very prison we should draw, from our own selves, images powerful enough to deny our nothingness.- Andre Malraux

. . the circumference of life cannot be rightly drawn until the center is set. Benjamin E. Mays (1895-1984)

Life is managed; it is not cured. Phil McGraw

If you don't like life, its the way you're livin' A little less takin', a bit more givin'; A little less hatin', a little more lovin'; A little more helpin', not o much shovin'; A little more smilin', not so much strife, And soon you will be in love with life.--- J. W. T. Meehan

Life's a voyage that's homeward bound. --Herman Melville (1819-1891)

The value of life lies, not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them: a man may live long, yet live very little. Satisfaction in life depends not on the number of your years, but on your will."--Michel de Montaigne

The only ultimate disaster that can befall us, I have come to realize, is to feel ourselves at home here on earth.... Malcolm Muggeridge (1903-1990)

St. Teresa of Avila described our life in this world as like a night at a second-class hotel. Malcolm Muggeridge

Life is filled with meaning as soon as Jesus Chrst enters into it.-- Stephen Neill in The Lion Christian Quotation Collection, 1997

It's not just the ups and downs that make life difficult. It's the jerks. Alfred E. Neuman

Most of life is routine - dull and grubby, but routine is the momentum that keeps a man going. If you wait for inspiration you'll be standing on the corner after the parade is a mile down the street.--- Ben Nicholas

Life is a hard fight, a struggle, a wrestling with the principle of evil, hand to hand, foot to foot. Every inch of the way is disputed. The night is given us to take breath, to pray, to drink deep at the fountain of power. The day, to use the strength which has been given us, to go forth to work with it till the evening.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910)

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or very foolishimagine otherwise. -George Orwell

Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.-George Orwell

It is arrogance to expect that life will always be music...Harmony, like a following breeze at sea, is the exception. In a world where most things wind up broken or lost, our lot is to tack and tune. Harvey Oxenhorn

Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song,
A medley of extemporanea;
And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
And I am Marie of Romania.
Dorothy Parker

The truest end of life is to know that life never ends. - William Penn

God always has another custard pie up his sleeve. -Lynn Redgrave in "Georgy Girl"

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction. - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

A baby is God's opinion that life should go on. Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)

Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use. "Peanuts", Charles M. Schulz

There must be more to life than having everything. Maurice Sendak

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. Seneca (B.C. 3-65 A.D.)

The trip doesn't exist that can set you beyond the reach of cravings, fits of temper, or fears. If it did, the human race wold be off there in a body.
Seneca, _Epistles_, 1stC

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together. --William Shakespeare (1564-1616)_All's Well That Ends Well_ [1602-1604], Act IV, Scene III, Line 83

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.
'Macbeth', V, v

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
William Shakespeare. King John. Act iii. Sc. 4

Look at everything as though you were seeing it for the first time or the last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory. Betty Smith

Life improves slowly and goes wrong fast, and only catastrophe is clearly visible. - Edward Teller (1908 &endash; 2003)

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. Henry David Thoreau, Walden(1854),I,Economy

All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.--James Thurber (1894-1961)_Fables for Our Time_ [1940], "The Shore and the Sea"

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God. LEO TOLSTOY

The problem of the meaning of life is intractable, but life's purpose becomes very simple when we ask ourselves what we should do. -Tolstoy

There is still vitality under the winter snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead. ~ Agnes Sligh Turnbull, The Rolling Years (1936)

Good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life. Mark Twain