This is simply a collection of quotes that have resonated with me in some way over the years. I will continue to add to them as I come across more.
Just living is not enough. One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
Hans Christian Andersen
Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.
Martin H. Fischer
What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
W. H. Davies
The healthiest response to life is joy.
Deepak Chopra
When you’re chewing on life’s gristle
Don’t grumble, give a whistle
And this’ll help things turn out for the best…
And…always look on the bright side of life…
Always look on the light side of life.
Monty Python’s Life of Brian
The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.
Chinese Proverb
What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. These are but trifles, to be sure; but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
Joseph Addison
We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.
Lillian Dickson
There is no wealth but life.
John Ruskin
The Best Things in Life are Free.
B.G. DeSylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson
Song from the Musical ‘Good News’.
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.
Oscar Wilde
Here’s to a long life and a merry one
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and an honest one
A cold beer and another one!
Irish Saying
The goal of life is living in agreement with nature.
Zeno
From Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers.
Where there is love there is life.
Indira Gandhi
To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.
Reba McEntire
Life is nothing without friendship.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.
Charles Dickens
Our Mutual Friend.
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.
Robert Herrick
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
Be nice to people on your way up because you’ll need them on your way down.
Wilson Mizner
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; But often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller
If you are going through hell, keep going.
Winston Churchill
The best of times is now.
Oprah Winfrey
Whatever you are be a good one.
Abraham Lincoln
Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning.
Albert Einstein
Do all things with love.
Og Mandino
Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.
Kahlil Gibran
Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rules.
J. D. Salinger
The Catcher in the Rye, spoken by Mr. Spencer.
Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is bliss, taste it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is too precious, do not destroy it.
Life is life, fight for it.
Mother Teresa
Meditate. Live purely. Be quiet. Do your work with mastery. Like the moon, come out from behind the clouds! Shine.
Buddha
If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you.
A. A. Milne
Winnie the Pooh.
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms;
Then the whining school-boy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress’ eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths, and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon’s mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slipper’d pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion;
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
William Shakespeare
As You Like It, 2. 7.
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.
Charlie Brown
Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.
Christopher Morley
Thunder on the Left
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
Emily Dickinson
Life is what happens to you
While you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon
Beautiful Boy
There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.
Oscar Wilde
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.
Marie Curie
My momma always said life was like a box of chocolates…you never know what you’re gonna get.
Forrest Gump
Spoken by Tom Hanks in movie Forrest Gump
Life is something that happens when you can’t get to sleep.
Fran Lebowitz
Life is something that everyone should try at least once.
Henry J. Tillman
Life is a long lesson in humility.
James M. Barrie
We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
Life is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you.
Wally ‘Famous’ Amos
How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.
George Washington Carver
I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.
Jack Handey
He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.
Epictetus
Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint on it you can.
Danny Kaye
The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved — loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo
I have a simple philosophy: Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch where it itches.
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
The purpose of life is a life of purpose.
Robert Byrne
Life is the sum of all your choices.
Albert Camus
Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
Samuel Butler
Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
Henry Van Dyke
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
Henry Miller
If in our daily life we can smile, if we can be peaceful and happy, not only we, but everyone will profit from it. This is the most basic kind of peace work.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
Thomas Carlyle
Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
Victor Hugo
The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values.
Norman Thomas
Life is like a ten-speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.
Charles Schulz
While we are postponing, life speeds by.
Seneca
There is no such thing in anyone’s life as an unimportant day.
Alexander Woollcott
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play.
Life is a Cabaret, old chum.
Come to the Cabaret.
Fred Ebb and John Kander
There are many things in life that will catch your eye. But only a few will catch your heart.
Ben Crenshaw
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
I find it fascinating that most people plan their vacations with better care than they do their lives.
Jim Rohn
Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.
Martin Luther King Jr.
Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.
Frederick Buechner
And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair.
Kahlil Gibran
Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
Ashley Smith
Everything happens for a reason, people change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so you can appreciate them when they’re right, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can come together.
Marilyn Monroe
Your time is limited so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Steve Jobs
Life is wasted on the living.
Douglas Adams
When life gives you lemons, cut them in half and squirt life in the eye!
Author Unknown
All the world’s a stage and most of us are desperately unrehearsed.
Sean O’Casey
Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass… It’s about learning to dance in the rain.
Author Unknown
We don’t live as we wish, but as we can.
Terence
Life isn’t tied with a bow, but it’s still a gift.
Regina Brett
Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.
Suzanne Weyn
How many lives we live in one,
And how much less than one, in all.
Alice Cary
You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
Author Unknown
Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching. and live like it’s heaven on earth.
Mark Twain
Born to be wild – live to outgrow it.
Lao-Tzu
However many ways there may be of being alive, it is certain that there are vastly more ways of being dead, or rather not alive.
Richard Dawkins
To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.
Jerry Seinfeld
Life is like an onion; you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.
Carl Sandburg
Life is too short, so kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly.
Author Unknown
That it will never come again Is what makes life so sweet.
Emily Dickinson
A beautiful flower begins its life in the dirt.
Author Unknown
About all you can do in life is be who you are.
Rita Mae Brown
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
Mark Twain
The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there’s no risk of accident for someone who’s dead.
Albert Einstein
We should always have our boots on, and be ready to leave.
Montaigne
People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering.
St. Augustine
I will not die an unlived life. I will not live in fear of falling or
catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which comes to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which comes to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.
Dawna Markova
Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive. And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
Howard Thurman
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury; and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable; and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common. This is to be my symphony.
William Ellery Channing
O, with what freshness,
what solemnity and beauty,
is each new day born;
as if to say to insensate man,
‘Behold!
thou hast one more chance!
Strive for immortal glory!’
Harriet Beecher Stowe
Here is a test to find out whether your mission in life is complete.
If you’re alive, it isn’t.
Richard Bach
Love the earth and sun and animals, Despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, Stand up for the stupid and crazy, Devote your income and labor to others … And your very flesh shall be a great poem.
Walt Whitman
Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow, grow.’
The Talmud
When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.
Cherokee Proverb
Never regret what made you smile. Just learn from the tears that followed.
Author Unknown
Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
Henry Van Dyke
Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have in a second edition to correct some faults in the first.
Benjamin Franklin
When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.
Mark Twain
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
Jim Carrey
Believe in yourself and you can achieve greatness in your life.
Judy Blume
Live every day as if it were your last, because one of these days you will be right.
Unknown author
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say “I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER.”
Willliam S. Burroughs
Life is just a phase you’re going through…you’ll get over it.
Author Unknown