My poems are hymns of praise to the glory of life.
—Edith Sitwell
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
—Oscar Wilde
Don't you know that every perfect life would mean the end of art?
—Robert Musil
You only get one life. It's actually your duty to live it as fully as possible.
—Jojo Moyes in Me Before You
That's what happens to dreams, life gets in the way.
—Jodi Picoult in Handle With Care
There were so many people in the world who wasted their aliveness, who hung back when they should reach out, who sat out when they should join in, who hung on when they should let go.
—Jessie Evans in Betting on You
Life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.
—Jack London in White Fang
Life is full of so much that you refuse to let yourself experience. The blanketing comfort of love, the fulfillment of contagious laughter, the peace of finding true joy, the butterflies of uncontainable excitement… these are all things that make up life. They should never be taken for granted.
—L.B. Simmons in The Resurrection of Aubrey Miller
Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumbnail.
—Henry David Thoreau
Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.
—Novalis
When it's time to die, go ahead and die, and when it's time to live, live. Don't sort-of-maybe live, but live like you're going all out, like you're not afraid.
—Sue Monk Kidd in The Secret Life of Bees
Is there life before death?
—Graffito
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.
—Samuel Johnson in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
The first years of man must make provision for the last.
—Samuel Johnson in The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia
Buddhism is not a refuge from life. It is life stripped bare and known most intimately. Zen doesn't make you a "better person." It helps you become fully human. My mentor was no model for how to behave perfectly but for how to experience completely. He never told me how to live my life. He just helped me become alive.
—Shozan Jack Haubner in Zen Confidential: Confessions of a Wayward Monk