Men are what their mothers made them.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
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1. "When you jumped in here, you were my enemy and I was afraid of you. But you?re just a man like me, and I killed you. Forgive me, comrade."
Maxwell Anderson, "All Quiet On The Western Front"
Other categories: Friendship and Hostility
2. "Life is not a dress rehearsal."
Rose Tremain
3. "Life for me has been exactly what I thought it would be - a cake, which I have eaten and had too."
Margaret Anderson, "The Fiery Fountains"
4. "The secret of a long life is knowing when it's time to go."
Michele Shocked
Other categories: Youth and Age
5. "The life of the wealthy is one long Sunday."
Georg Büchner, "The Hessian Messenger"
Other categories: Richness and Money
6. "Death is the most blessed dream."
Georg Büchner, "Leonce and Lena"
Other categories: Dreams and Desires
7. "In childhood, death stirred me not; in middle age, it pursued me like a prowling bandit on the road; now, grown an old man, it boldly leads the way, and ushers me on."
Herman Melville, "Mardi"
8. "Immortality without eternity is a rope with only one end. "
Multatuli (Eduard Douwer Dekker), "The Oyster and the Eagle"
Other categories: Time and Passing
9. "The death clock is ticking slowly in our breast, and each drop of blood measures its time, and our life is a lingering fever."
Georg Büchner, "Leonce and Lena"
10. "Life is a long lesson in humility."
James M. Barrie
Other categories: Manners and Ethics
11. "Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within sleep."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Essays, Second Series"
Other categories: Reality and Imagination
12. "Most suicides are committed with a knife and fork."
Swedish proverb
Other categories: Health and Alcohol
13. "The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death."
Blaise Pascal, "Pensées"
Other categories: Success and Fame
14. "Art is uncompromising and life is full of compromises."
Günther Grass
Other categories: Art and Culture
15. "Religion is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern, a concern which qualifies all other concerns as preliminary and which itself contains the answer to the question of a meaning of our life."
Paul Tillich, "Christianity and the Encounter of the World Reli"
Other categories: God and Religion
16. "Life is not meant to be easy, my child; but take courage: it can be delightful."
George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"
17. "Death is a harbor of peace for the just, but is believed a shipwreck for the wicked."
St. Ambrose, "De bono mortis"
Other categories: Justice
18. "We are all of us resigned to death: it's life we aren't resigned to."
Graham Greene, "The Heart of the Matter"
19. "Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent."
George Bernard Shaw, "Man and Superman"
20. "Work is life, you know, and without it, there's nothing but fear and insecurity."
John Lennon
Other categories: Work and Laziness
21. "Life begins at forty."
Walter B. Pitkin, "Life begins at forty"
Other categories: Youth and Age
22. "The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
Thomas Gray, "Poetical Works"
Other categories: Success and Fame
23. "Truth sits upon the lips of dying men."
Matthew Arnold, "Sohrab and Rustum"
Other categories: Truth and Falsity
24. "Life is a series of sensations connected to different states of consciousness."
Rémy De Gourmont, "Selected Writings"
25. "A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain."
William James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience"
26. "We die of too much life."
Herman Melville, "Mardi"
27. "The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten."
Cesare Pavese, "The Burning Brand: Diaries 1935-1950"
Other categories: Memory
28. "We are all conceived in close prison; in our mothers’ wombs, we are close prisoners all; when we are born, we are born but to the liberty of the house; prisoners still, though within larger walls; and then all our life is but a going out to the place of execution, to death."
John Donne, "Eighty Sermons"
Other categories: Freedom and Servitude
29. "Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage."
George Bernard Shaw, "Back to Methuselah"
Other categories: Health and Alcohol
30. "We do not live to think, but, on the contrary, we think in order that we may succeed in surviving."
Jose Ortega y Gasset, "In Search of Goethe from Within"
Other categories: Intellect, Judgement
31. "Life is a petty thing unless it is moved by the indomitable urge to extend its boundaries. Only in proportion as we are desirious of living more do we really live."
Jose Ortega y Gasset, "The Dehumanization of Art"
Other categories: Dreams and Desires
32. "There is only one thing that a man really wants to do, all his life; and that is, to find his way to his God, his Morning Star, salute his fellow man, and enjoy the woman who has come the long way with him."
David Herbert Lawrence, "The Plumed Serpent"
33. "Only the person who has experienced light and darkness, war and peace, rise and fall, only that person has truly experienced life."
Stefan Zweig, "The World of Yesterday"
34. "The drama of life begins with a wail and ends with a sigh."
Minna Antrim, "Naked Truth and Veiled Allusions"
Other categories: Pain and Tears
35. "Wherever art appears, life disappears."
Francis Picabia
Other categories: Art and Culture
36. "[...] parables are unnecessary for recognizing the blatant absurdity of everyday life. Reality is lesson enough."
Jane O?Reilly, "The Girl I Left Behind"
Other categories: Reality and Imagination
37. "Until the day of his death, no man can be sure of his courage."
Jean Anouilh, "Becket"
Other categories: Bravery and Fear
38. "The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well."
Horace Walpole
Other categories: Various
39. "I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."
Lauren Bacall
40. "A man may be born, but in order to be born he must first die, and in order to die he must first awake."
G. I. Gurdjieff
Other categories: Human
41. "Take the life-lie away from the average man and straight away you take away his happiness."
Henrik Ibsen, "The Wild Duck"
Other categories: Happiness
42. "See in what peace a Christian can die."
Joseph Addison, (last words)
Other categories: God and Religion
43. "I still understand a few words in life, but I no longer think they make a sentence."
Jean Rostand, "The Substance of Man"
Other categories: Human
44. "Authority forgets a dying king."
Alfred Tennyson, "Idylls of the King"
Other categories: Authority, Government
45. "For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?"
Jane Austen, "Pride and Prejudice"
Other categories: Joy and Sadness
46. "Time is shortening. But every day that I challenge this cancer and survive is a victory for me."
Ingmar Bergman
Other categories: Health and Alcohol -:- Time and Passing
47. "Life is like a game of cards. The hand you are dealt is determinism; the way you play it is free will."
Jawaharial Nehru
Other categories: Destiny and Fate
48. "The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself."
John Fowles
Other categories: Question and Problem
49. "Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact."
William James
50. "The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it."
James M. Barrie, "The Little Minister"
2007, collected and compiled by Kazimierz Matan
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