Life Quotes
“Life” is a smaller page than you might expect, and an older one. Seneca is the most-quoted of the classical writers, and the sourced entries run from Emerson’s journals in 1822 to Carl Jung’s memoir in 1963. Reading it is closer to browsing a shelf of moralists than scrolling a feed of captions.
One entry needs a warning. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced” is credited to Søren Kierkegaard all over the internet. The earliest appearance anyone has located is in a 1976 book about Jack Kerouac, which is a long way from nineteenth-century Copenhagen. We keep it listed, with its flag, because people search for it. We would not put his name under it.
O life! thou art a galling load,
Along a rough, a weary road,
To wretches such as I!
No one has lived a short life who has performed its duties with unblemished character.
Nor has he spent his life badly who has passed it in privacy.
Content with his past life, let him take leave of life like a satiated guest.
Only deeds give strength to life, only moderation gives it charm.
'Tis not the mere stage of life but the part we play thereon that gives the value.
This body is not a home, but an inn; and that only for a short time.