A. Powell Davies:
Life is just a chance to grow a soul.


Abraham Lincoln:
And in the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.




Adrienne Rich:
Life on the planet is born of woman.


Alan Bennett:
Life is rather like a tin of sardines - we're all of us looking for the key.


Albert Einstein:
True religion is real living; living with all one's soul, with all one's goodness and righteousness.




Albert Einstein:
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.




Albert Schweitzer:
There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: music and cats.


Albert Schweitzer:
Ethics, too, are nothing but reverence for life. This 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.

Civilization and Ethics, 1949




Alice Walker:
Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn't matter. I'm not sure a bad person can write a good book. If art doesn't make us better, then what on earth is it for.




Alice Walker:
Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.




Amelia Burr:
Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.


Anais Nin:
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.




Anais Nin:
People living deeply have no fear of death.




Anais Nin:
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.




Anais Nin:
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.




Annie Dillard:
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.




Ben Jonson:
A good life is a main argument.




Benjamin Disraeli:
Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.




Benjamin Franklin:
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that the stuff life is made of.




Bertrand Russell:
Three passions have governed my life:
The longings for love, the search for knowledge,
And unbearable pity for the suffering of [humankind].

Love brings ecstasy and relieves loneliness.
In the union of love I have seen
In a mystic miniature the prefiguring vision
Of the heavens that saints and poets have imagined.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge.
I have wished to understand the hearts of [people].
I have wished to know why the stars shine.

Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens,
But always pity brought me back to earth;
Cries of pain reverberated in my heart
Of children in famine, of victims tortured
And of old people left helpless.
I long to alleviate the evil, but I cannot,
And I too suffer.

This has been my life; I found it worth living.

adapted




Buddha:
If we could see the miracle of a single flower clearly, our whole life would change.




Captain Jean-Luc Picard:
Time is a companion that goes with us on a journey. It reminds us to cherish each moment, because it will never come again. What we leave behind is not as important as how we have lived.

played by Patrick Stewart, from the film "Star Trek: Generations"




Carl Sandburg:
Our lives are like a candle in the wind.




Carl Sandburg:
Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.




Charlotte Bronte:
Life is so constructed that an event does not, cannot, will not, match the expectation.




Chinese proverb:
When you have only two pennies left in the world, buy a loaf of bread with one, and a lily with the other.




Colette:
I love my past. I love my present. I'm not ashamed of what I've had, and I'm not sad because I have it no longer.




Colette:
Life is nothing but a series of crosses for us mothers.




Corita Kent:
Love the moment. Flowers grow out of dark moments. Therefore, each moment is vital. It affects the whole. Life is a succession of such moments and to live each, is to succeed.




Corita Kent:
Life is a succession of moments. To live each one is to succeed.




Dorothy Thompson:
Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.




Dorothy Thompson:
Only when we are no longer afraid do we begin to live.