Quotes
Quotes about Life
May you live all the days of your life.
I 'm weary of conjectures,--this must end 'em.
Thus am I doubly armed: my death and life,
My bane and antidote, are both before me:
This in a moment brings me to an end;
But this informs me I shall never die.
The soul, secured in her existence, smiles
At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and Nature sink in years;
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the war of elements,
The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
Creation sleeps! 'T is as the general pulse
Of life stood still, and Nature made a pause,--
An awful pause! prophetic of her end.
The chamber where the good man meets his fate
Is privileg'd beyond the common walk
Of virtuous life, quite in the verge of heaven.
While man is growing, life is in decrease;
And cradles rock us nearer to the tomb.
Our birth is nothing but our death begun.
That life is long which answers life's great end.
Think naught a trifle, though it small appear;
Small sands the mountain, moments make the year,
And trifles life.
Awake, my St. John! leave all meaner things
To low ambition and the pride of kings.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us, and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never is, but always to be blest.
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.
Behold the child, by Nature's kindly law,
Pleased with a rattle, tickled with a straw;
Some livelier plaything gives his youth delight,
A little louder, but as empty quite;
Scarfs, garters, gold, amuse his riper stage,
And beads and prayer-books are the toys of age.
Pleased with this bauble still, as that before,
Till tired he sleeps, and life's poor play is o'er.
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate'er is best administer'd is best.
For modes of faith let graceless zealots fight;
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right.
In faith and hope the world will disagree,
But all mankind's concern is charity.
Like following life through creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.
'T is from high life high characters are drawn;
A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn.
Friend to my life, which did not you prolong,
The world had wanted many an idle song.
But touch me, and no minister so sore;
Whoe'er offends at some unlucky time
Slides into verse, and hitches in a rhyme,
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,
And the sad burden of some merry song.
Then marble soften'd into life grew warm,
And yielding, soft metal flow'd to human form.
I never knew any man in my life who could not bear another's misfortunes perfectly like a Christian.
Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold:
Not all Apollo's Pythian treasures hold,
Or Troy once held, in peace and pride of sway,
Can bribe the poor possession of a day.
To labour is the lot of man below;
And when Jove gave us life, he gave us woe.
The life which others pay let us bestow,
And give to fame what we to nature owe.
In death a hero, as in life a friend!
For fate has wove the thread of life with pain,
And twins ev'n from the birth are misery and man!
Note 61.Ampliat ætatis spatium sibi vir bonus; hoc est
Vivere bis vita posse priore frui
(The good man prolongs his life; to be able to enjoy one's past life is to live twice).--Martial, x. 237.
See Cowley, Quotation 21.
While there is life there's hope, he cried.
