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Life

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“The victim should have the right to end his life, if he wants. But I think it would be a great mistake. However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there's life, there is hope.”
Stephen Hawking (1942–2018) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On voluntary euthanasia as quoted in People's Daily Online (14 June 2006)
“The prime datum of the Universe is that life survives by eating life, and no other way. The expense of eating is, in great part, the resistance the second life offers to being eaten.”
Spider Robinson (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A person cries out against life because it's lonely, and because life's broken off from whatever created it. But no matter how much you hate life, you love it, too. It's like a caldron boiling with everything you have to have — but very painful to the lips.”
Frank Herbert (1920–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. That is what gives me the fundamental principle of morality, namely, that good consists in maintaining, promoting, and enhancing life, and that destroying, injuring, and limiting life are evil.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The life-giving Spirit is the very one who slays you; the first thing the life-giving Spirit says is that you must enter into death, that you must die to – it is this way in order that you many not take Christianity in vain. A life-giving Spirit – that is the invitation; who would not willingly take hold of it! But die first – that is the halt!”
Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) said by 1855 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our friends, how seldom visited, how little known — it is true; and yet, when I meet an unknown person, and try to break off, here at this table, what I call “my life”, it is not one life that I look back upon; I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am — Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life ... it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My life — I had lived in its heights and its depths, in bitter sorrow and ecstatic joy, in black despair and fervent hope. I had drunk the cup to the last drop. I had lived my life. Would I had the gift to paint the life I had lived! (chapter 56)”
Emma Goldman (1869–1940) said by 1940 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Architecture is life, or at least it is life itself taking form and therefore it is the truest record of life as it was lived in the world yesterday, as it is lived today or ever will be lived.”
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) said by 1959 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in An Organic Architecture (1970)
“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor.”
Walt Disney (1901–1966) said by 1966 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Show him who I am, so he will pity me instead of fearing me. And then we can turn pity into compassion, and compassion into understanding, and understanding into affection, and affection into love, and love into life, the life of our children, the life of the new self we will become together.”
Orson Scott Card (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The important thing for me, then, is not the "work," but my life. Life is not the means for the achievement of an esthetic ideal of perfection; on the contrary, the work is an ethical symbol of life.”
Thomas Mann (1875–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the as-yet-unborn, to all innocent wisps of undifferentiated nothingness: Watch out for life. I have caught life. I have come down with life. I was a wisp of undifferentiated nothingness, and then a little peephole opened quite suddenly. Light and sound poured in. Voices began to describe me and my surroundings. Nothing they said could be appealed.”
Kurt Vonnegut (1922–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Fascist accepts life and loves it, knowing nothing of and despising suicide; he rather conceives of life as duty and struggle and conquest, life which should be high and full, lived for oneself, but above all for others — those who are at hand and those who are far distant, contemporaries, and those who will come after.”
Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932)
“Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change of attitude.”
Katherine Mansfield (1888–1923) said by 1923 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in A. R. Orage, "Talks with Katherine Mansfield at Fontainebleau," The Century Magazine (November 1924)
“Here's my life, why not, it is one, if you like, if you must, I don't say no, this evening. There has to be one, it seems, once there is speech, no need of a story, a story is not compulsory, just a life, that's the mistake I made, one of the mistakes, to have wanted a story for myself, whereas life alone is enough.”
Samuel Beckett (1906–1989) said by 1989 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is not merely persistent, as Jock puts it; life is explosive. The basic theorem of population mathematics to which there has never been found an exception is that population increases always, not merely up to the extent of the food supply, but beyond it, to the minimum diet that will sustain life—the ragged edge of starvation.”
Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have something to offer, and through which you can realize something, realize the essence of this life. Even if you are a billionaire, you have to have one thing going for you, and that’s life. That is a key ingredient. You don’t have life going for you, you can have everything else going for you, and it won't make any difference.”
Prem Rawat (born 1957) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Washington, DC, USA, November 24, 1981
“All my life I have prayed, and all my life I have been refused answer. I scarcely believed in the gods anymore, or if I did, it was only to curse them for their indifference. They betrayed my father, who had served Them loyally all his life. They betrayed my mother, or They were powerless to save her, which was as bad or worse. If a god has come to me, He certainly hasn’t come for me!”
Lois McMaster Bujold (born 1949) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So life adapts to conditions. And at the same time, conditions are changed by life. That is one of the definitions of life: organism and environment change together in a reciprocal arrangement, as they are two manifestations of an ecology, two parts of a whole.”
Kim Stanley Robinson (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the mind-body connection was so strong—so strong that the distinction itself was probably false, a vestige of Cartesian metaphysics or earlier religious views of the soul. Mind was one body’s life. Memory was mind. And so, by a simple transitive equation, memory equaled life. So that with memory gone, life was gone.”
Kim Stanley Robinson (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My experience is that it's precisely the ones who don't know what to do with this life who are all hot and bothered about what they are going to do with another life. One sign that you're awakened is that you don't give a damn about what's going to happen in the next life. You're not bothered about it; you don't care. You are not interested, period.”
Anthony de Mello (1931–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The important thing is to get yourself born. You’re entitled to that. But you’re not entitled to life. Because if you were entitled to life, then the life would have to be quantified. How many years? Seventy? Sixty? Shakespeare was dead at fifty-two. Keats was dead at twenty-six. Thomas Chatterton at seventeen.”
Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) said by 1993 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I worship impersonal Nature, which is neither "good" or "bad", and who knows neither love nor hatred. I worship Life; the Sun, Sustainer of life. I believe in the Law of everlasting struggle, which is the law of life, and in the duty of the best specimens of our race — the natural élite of mankind — to rule the earth, and evolve out of themselves a caste of supermen, a people 'like unto the Gods'.”
Savitri Devi (1905–1982) first seen 1958 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Pilgrimage (Calcutta: Savitri Devi Mukherji, 1958, p. 327, http://www.savitridevi.org/pilgrimage-09.html)
“Nobody can possibly be so hungry that they need to take a life in order to feel satisfied – they don't after all, take a human life, so why take the life of an animal? Both are conscious beings with the same determination to survive. It is habit, and laziness and nothing else.”
Morrissey (born 1959) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The call for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is no cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now.”
Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy Of Religion (1951), Ch. 26: The Pious Man; Our Destiny is to Aid
“Life'll kill ya, That's what I said. Life'll kill ya, Then you'll be dead. Life'll find ya Wherever you go. Requiescat in pace That's all she wrote.”
Warren Zevon (1947–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man is called to a fullness of life which far exceeds the dimensions of his earthly existence, because it consists in sharing the very life of God. The loftiness of this supernatural vocation reveals the greatness and the inestimable value of human life even in its temporal phase.”
Pope John Paul II (1920–2005) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Encyclical Evangelium vitae, 25 March 1995
“It is mistaken law that leads you to sacrifice. Life, woman, life is God's most precious gift; no principle, however glorious, may justify the taking of it. I beg you, woman, prevail upon your husband to confess. Let him give his lie. Quail not before God's judgment in this, for it may well be God damns a liar less than he that throws his life away for pride.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) said by 2005 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Waiting your time, dreaming of a better life. Waiting your time, you're more than just a wife. You don't want to do what your mother has done, She has done. This is your life, this new life has begun. It's your day - a woman's day. It's your day - a woman's day.”
Peter Gabriel (born 1950) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'm not bitter. Why should I be bitter? I'm thrilled to death with life. Life is — the way God has given it to me was just a platter — a golden platter of life laid out there for me. It's been beautiful.”
Johnny Cash (1932–2003) said by 2003 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moral test of government is how it treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the aged; and those in the shadows of life, the sick, the needy and the handicapped.”
Hubert Humphrey (1911–1978) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks at the dedication of the Hubert H. Humphrey Building, November 1, 1977, Congressional Record, November 4, 1977, vol 123, p. 37287.
“Political ideological systems are based on conceptions of the natural life process. They may further or hinder the natural life process. They themselves, however, do not function at the roots of the social process. They may be democratic; in that case they further the natural human life process. They may be authoritarian and dictatorial; in that case they are its deadly enemy.”
Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) said by 1957 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every aspect of personal life is radically affected by the quality of general life, and yet the general life is seen at its most important in completely personal terms.”
Raymond Williams (1921–1988) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Realism and the Contemporary Novel (1961): The Long Revolution
“Just as he who gives his life to serve a great idea is admirable, he who avails himself of a great idea to serve his personal hopes of glory and power is abominable, even if he too risks his life. To give one's life is a right only when one gives it unselfishly.”
José Martí (1853–1895) said by 1895 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sometimes we get caught up in our troubles and our problems and we let life slip away, but life is precious, all of life, and one must try to take in as much of it as possible.”
Yanni (born 1954) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Next to the bestowal of life itself, the right to direct that life is God’s greatest gift to man.... Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any possession earth can give. It is inherent in the spirit of man. It is a divine gift to every normal being... Everyone has this most precious of all life’s endowments--the gift of free agency--man’s inherited and inalienable right.”
David O. McKay (1873–1970) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Improvement Era (February 1962) p. 86
“It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores.”
Margaret Fuller (1810–1850) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American Literature" in Papers on Literature and Art (1846), p. 122
“It is a curious situation that the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will continue to exist; the threat is rather to life itself.”
Rachel Carson (1907–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“After I had been in Canada painting the wide white barns along the Saint Lawrence river, I thought how different the life of the Canadian farmer was from life in Cebolla. So I painted [in 1945] the Cebolla church which is so typical of that difficult life. I have always thought it one of my very good paintings, though its message is not as pleasant as many of the others.”
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I … understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has primarily to do with distractions … Women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily — like a hermit crab. But I do not. I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and five children must make their way in the world. The life I have chosen as a wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications.”
Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I try, in my life, to follow my heart. I know what it feels like to do things that are soul-decaying. A large aspect of life in Hollywood, in a stereotypic way, I find unbelievably soul-decaying. And I choose, albeit frustratingly to other people in my life, not to expose myself too much to too much of that.”
Gillian Anderson (born 1968) first seen 2006 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hal Boedeker (January 21, 2006) "Agent of Change - Gillian Anderson , who found fulfilling work in England after `The X-Files,' returns to TV in a PBS miniseries", The Orlando Sentinel, p. E1.
“Politics is not my life. I have a career in radio and another career in film. I have a wife who is the sweetest person in the world and two kids who are growing up into terrific, well-rounded people. I don't want to spend the rest of my life in politics. When I'm finished with my term as governor, I'm going back to the life that's waiting for me in the private sector.”
Jesse Ventura (born 1951) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And here and there a human who saw the rightness of the proposition that Man could not, by mere self-assertion, be a special being; understanding that it was to his greater glory to take his place among the other things of life, as a simple thing of life, as a form of life that could lead and teach and be a friend rather than a thing that conquered and ruled and stood as one apart.”
Clifford D. Simak (1904–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All my life I have felt myself to be on the edge of things. All my life I have suffered from bad dreams. All my life I have had difficulty in knowing whether I am awake or in a nightmare.”
Tom Baker (born 1934) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I realized that there is nothing whatever outside of the life we have; that the "meaning of life" is nothing other than life itself, obstinately asserting itself against emptiness and nullity.”
Robert Hughes (1938–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophy—reduced, as we have seen, to philosophical discourse—develops from this point on in a different atmosphere and environment from that of ancient philosophy. In modern university philosophy, philosophy is obviously no longer a way of life, or a form of life—unless it be the form of life of a professor of philosophy.”
Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we walk in the Lord's presence, everything we see, hear, touch, or taste reminds us of Him. This is what is meant by a prayerful life. It is not a life in which we say many prayers but a life in which nothing, absolutely nothing, is done, said, or understood independently of Him who is the origin and purpose of our existence.”
Henri Nouwen (1932–1996) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ (1977)
“To me, writing, from the very beginning and right until this day, is a voyage of discovery. Of the mystery of life. I am one of those people who have no religious faith, I am an atheist. I believe there is only this life. But this life is so incredible.”
Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) said by 2014 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source