Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“Since it is every man's interest to be happy through the whole of life, it is the wisdom of every one to employ philosophy in the search of felicity without delay; and there cannot be a greater folly, than to be always beginning to live.”
Epicurus (342–270 BC) said by 270 BC at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A people is but the attempt of many To rise to the completer life of one; And those who live as models for the mass Are singly of more value than they all.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) said by 1889 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“May you live all the days of your life.”
Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) said by 1745 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Live for the other life. Endure as seeing Him who is invisible. Work by faith; work by hope; work by love; work by courage; work by trust; work by the sweet side of your mind; and so be like Christ, until you dwell with Him.”
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A man is a fool who sits looking backward from himself in the past. Ah! what shallow, vain conceit there is in man! Forget the things that are behind. That is not where you live. Your roots are not there. They are in the present; and you should reach up into the other life.”
Henry Ward Beecher (1813–1887) said by 1887 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you. (Hays translation)”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Though thou be destined to live three thousand years and as many myriads besides, yet remember that no man loseth other life than that which he liveth, nor liveth other than that which he loseth.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“Mark how fleeting and paltry is the estate of man - yesterday in embryo, tomorrow a mummy or ashes. So for the hairsbreadth of time assigned to thee, live rationally, and part with life cheerfully, as drops the ripe olive, extolling the season that bore it and the tree that matured it.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The only thing that isn't worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don't. (Hays translation)”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee.”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To live your brief life rightly, isn't that enough? (Hays translation)”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you don’t have a consistent goal in life, you can’t live it in a consistent way.” (Hays translation)”
Marcus Aurelius (121–180) said by 180 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For me the only training in Swaraj we need is the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our natural life in perfect freedom, even though it may be full of defects. Good government is no substitute for self-government.”
Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Young India (2 September 1920) p. 1
“Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer. Only connect, and the beast and the monk, robbed of the isolation that is life to either, will die.”
E. M. Forster (1879–1970) said by 1970 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a good life, if I watch myself. Kind of like when I used to diet, but now instead of limiting calories, I will not allow negative self-talk. I cut out insults like I cut out carbs and it is hard as hell because I crave self-abuse like hot, fresh sourdough bread, but you know you have to be nice to you if you are going to live together.”
Margaret Cho (born 1968) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They [the wise spirits of antiquity in the first circle of Dante's Inferno] are condemned, Dante tells us, to no other penalty than to live in desire without hope, a fate appropriate to noble souls with a clear vision of life.”
George Santayana (1863–1952) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Obiter Scripta (1936)
“Here dead we lie because we did not choose To live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But young men think it is, and we were young.”
A. E. Housman (1859–1936) said by 1936 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In today's life, the world belongs only to the stupid, the insensitive and the agitated. The right to live and triumph is now conquered almost by the same means by which you conquer internment in an asylum: the inability to think, amorality and hiperexcitation.”
Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) said by 1935 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In theory, it matters little to me whether I live as whether I die; in practice, I am lacerated by every anxiety which opens an abyss between life and death.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Without the faculty of forgetting, our past would weigh so heavily on our present that we should not have the strength to confront another moment, still less to live through it. Life would be bearable only to frivolous natures, those in fact who do not remember.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live — moreover, the only one.”
Emil Cioran (1911–1995) said by 1995 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?”
George Eliot (1819–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Our deeds are like children that are born to us; they live and act apart from our own will. Nay, children may be strangled, but deeds never: they have an indestructible life both in and out of our consciousness;”
George Eliot (1819–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So to live is heaven: To make undying music in the world, Breathing a beauteous order that controls With growing sway the growing life of man.”
George Eliot (1819–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other? I cannot be indifferent to the troubles of a man who advised me in my trouble, and attended me in my illness.”
George Eliot (1819–1880) said by 1880 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The great characters of fiction live as truly as the memories of dead men. For the life after death it is not necessary that a man or woman should have lived.”
Samuel Butler (novelist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Alas, the strange varieties or life ! We live 'mid perils and pleasures, like Characters 'graven on the sand, or hues Colouring the rainbow. Wild as a sick fancy And changeful as a maiden, is this dream, This brief dream on earth - - - -”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1822 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (7th September 1822) Poetical Sketches. Third series - Sketch the First. The Mine
“Where had thy life been at this hour, Had not my Love been more than my Power ? — Away, if thou fearest, — love never must, Never can live with one shade of distrust.”
Letitia Elizabeth Landon (1802–1838) first seen 1825 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1825-2) Antony and Cleopatra. An Anecdote from Plutarch
“It's not lost on me that I'm so busy recording life, I don't have time to really live it.”
David Sedaris (born 1956) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One does not live half a life in Asia without return. When it would be I did not know, nor even where it would be, or to what cause. In our changing world nothing changes more than geography. The friendly country of China, the home of my childhood and youth, is for the time being forbidden country. I refuse to call it enemy country. The people in my memory are too kind and the land too beautiful.”
Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Bridge for Passing (1962)
“They talk about a life of brotherly love? Show me someone who knows how to live it.”
“I live in another world, where life and death are memorized.”
“There are no mistakes in life, some people say And it's true, sometimes you can see it that way People don't live or die, people just float She went with the man in the long black coat.”
“Neither a person nor a nation can exist without some higher idea. And there is only one higher idea on earth, and it is the idea of the immortality of the human soul, for all other "higher" ideas of life by which humans might live derive from that idea alone.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821–1881) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Writer's Diary, Vol. 1: 1873-1876, ed. Kenneth Lantz (1994), p. 734
“A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That's where we live. That's home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life.”
Carl Sagan (1934–1996) said by 1996 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I feel my belief in sacrifice and struggle getting stronger. I despise the kind of existence that clings to the miserly trifles of comfort and self-interest. I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.”
Fidel Castro (1926–2016) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter from prison (19 December 1953)
“Thus each successive epoch of theology found its own thoughts in Jesus; that was, indeed, the only way in which it could make Him live. But it was not only each epoch that found its reflection in Jesus; each individual created Him in accordance with his own character. There is no historical task which so reveals a man's true self as the writing of a Life of Jesus.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Also quoted by: Historical Jesus
“Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me. It is an uncomfortable doctrine which the true ethics whisper into my ear. You are happy, they say; therefore you are called upon to give much.”
Albert Schweitzer (1875–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can make our minds so like still water that beings gather about us that they may see, it may be, their own images, and so live for a moment with a clearer, perhaps even with a fiercer life because of our quiet.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) first seen 1893 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Earth, Fire and Water" from The Celtic Twilight (1893)
“I am content to live it all again And yet again, if it be life to pitch Into the frog-spawn of a blind man's ditch, A blind man battering blind men; Or into that most fecund ditch of all, The folly that man does Or must suffer, if he woos A proud woman not kindred of his soul.”
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939) said by 1939 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of life...is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Foreword (January 1960)
“But man is a Noble Animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting Ceremonies of Bravery, in the infamy of his nature. Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible Sun within us.”
Thomas Browne (1605–1682) said by 1682 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience.”
Thomas Browne (1605–1682) said by 1682 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ah! where shall weary man take sanctuary, where live his little span of life secure? and 'scape of Heav'n serene th' indignant storms that launch their thunders at us earthen worms?”
Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) said by 1890 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that's the end of you.”
Richard Feynman (1918–1988) said by 1988 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We may enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life and speak the real language.”
Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) said by 1941 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One set of circumstances does not complete you. Maybe nothing ever does. So you work on your life and you work on your 'work' and you try to live every single day like it's your last. And you try to be better, to yourself and to others. I don't always succeed. But I try and it's my goal.”
Madonna (entertainer) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many will there be who will give up work and labour and poverty of life and goods, and will go to live among wealth in splendid buildings, declaring that this is the way to make themselves acceptable to God.”
Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) said by 1519 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.”
Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) said by 1974 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Lindbergh: Flight's Enigmatic Hero (2002) by Von Hardesty
“I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.”
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) said by 1987 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source