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.
The life that I aspire to live
No man proposeth me—
No trade upon the street
Wears its emblazonry.
People who see life as anything more than pure entertainment are missing the point.
Endure the hardships of your present state,
Live, and reserve yourselves for better fate.
I would not live alway: I ask not to stay
Where storm after storm rises dark o’er the way.
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.
What is it but a map of busy life,
Its fluctuations, and its vast concerns?
Like following life through creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.
"Life is not lost," said she, "for which is bought
Endlesse renowne."
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
Along the cool sequestered vale of life,
They kept the noiseless tenour of their way.