Quotes about Life

"And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It is the life in your years."
-- Abraham Lincoln

"Life is wasted on the living."
-- Douglas Adams

"Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it onto future generations."
-- George Bernard Shaw

"Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live."
-- Goethe

"Life is not anything, but an opportunity for something."
-- Goethe

"Trust yourself, then you will know how to live."
-- Goethe

"Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?"
-- Henry James

"I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time."
-- Jack London

"Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well."
-- Josh Billings

"The happiness of men consists in life. And life is in labor."
-- Leo Tolstoy

"True life is lived when tiny changes occur."
-- Leo Tolstoy

"Our life is made by the death of others."
-- Leonardo da Vinci

"While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die."
-- Leonardo Da Vinci

"Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry."
-- Mark Twain

"Life should begin with age and its privileges and accumulations, and end with youth and its capacity to splendidly enjoy such advantages."
-- Mark Twain

"As soon as there is life there is danger."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Life's like a play: it's not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters."
-- Seneca

"Sometimes even to live is an act of courage."
-- Seneca

"There is no adventure in life as great and as wonderful as discovering the New Life."
-- Vernon Howard

"Life is a great surprise. I don't see why death should not be an even greater one."
-- Vladimir Nabokov