Life Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Bertolt Brecht

Marcel Proust

Samuel Johnson

Charles Darwin

Socrates

Bertrand Russell

Alexandre Dumas

No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.

Theodore Roosevelt

The great danger for family life, in the midst of any society whose idols are pleasure, comfort and independence, lies in the fact that people close their hearts and become selfish.

Pope John Paul II

There are misfortunes in life that no one will accept; people would rather believe in the supernatural and the impossible.

Alexandre Dumas

The second half of a man's life is made up of nothing but the habits he has acquired during the first half.

Variant translation: It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man's life is usually made up of nothing but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

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

Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. The true neighbor will risk his position, his prestige and even his life for the welfare of others.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

But Goethe tells us in his greatest poem that Faust lost the liberty of his soul when he said to the passing moment: "Stay, thou art so fair." And our liberty, too, is endangered if we pause for the passing moment, if we rest on our achievements, if we resist the pace of progress. For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

John F. Kennedy

The greenhorn is the ultimate victor in everything; it is he that gets the most out of life.

G. K. Chesterton

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

J. R. R. Tolkien

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life's path.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life.

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

Charlie Chaplin

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious effort.

Henry David Thoreau

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so life well used brings happy death.

Leonardo da Vinci

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate - he has little success in this - but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins, for he sees different (and more) things than do the others; after all, dead as he is in his own lifetime, he is the real survivor. This assumes that he does not need both hands, or more hands than he has, in his struggle against despair.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Emily Dickinson

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Change your life today. Don't gamble on the future, act now, without delay.

Quoted by Beauvoir as the watchword of the new feminism

Simone de Beauvoir

What sweetness is left in life, if you take away friendship? Robbing life of friendship is like robbing the world of the sun.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

Variant translation: The seeker after truth must, once in the course of his life, doubt everything, as far as is possible.

René Descartes

Face your deficiencies and acknowledge them; but do not let them master you. Let them teach you patience, sweetness, insight. True education combines intellect, beauty, goodness, and the greatest of these is goodness. When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.