Quotes
Quotes about Life
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
Life is not so short but that there is always time enough for courtesy.
When Shakespeare is charged with debts to his authors, Landor replies, "Yet he was more original than his originals. He breathed upon dead bodies and brought them into life."
But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day, and the race a life.
Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
"Life is but an empty dream!"
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.
Life is real! life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.
Into each life some rain must fall,
Some days must be dark and dreary.
O thou child of many prayers!
Life hath quicksands; life hath snares!
There is no death! What seems so is transition;
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life elysian,
Whose portal we call Death.
Ships that pass in the night and speak each other in passing;
Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;
So on the ocean of life we pass and speak one another,
Only a look and a voice; then darkness again and a silence.
She knew the life-long martyrdom,
The weariness, the endless pain
Of waiting for some one to come
Who nevermore would come again.
Alas! it is not till time, with reckless hand, has torn out half the leaves from the Book of Human Life to light the fires of passion with from day to day, that man begins to see that the leaves which remain are few in number.
Life is ever lord of Death
And Love can never lose its own.
For death and life, in ceaseless strife,
Beat wild on this world's shore,
And all our calm is in that balm--
Not lost but gone before.
Knowledge by suffering entereth,
And life is perfected by death.
Oh would I were a boy again,
When life seemed formed of sunny years,
And all the heart then knew of pain
Was wept away in transient tears!
When every tale Hope whispered then,
My fancy deemed was only truth.
Oh, would that I could know again,
The happy visions of my youth.
As for a future life, every man must judge for himself between conflicting vague probabilities.
Mohammed's truth lay in a holy Book,
Christ's in a sacred Life.
No life that breathes with human breath
Has ever truly longed for death.
Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,--
These three alone lead life to sovereign power.
Ah, why
Should life all labour be?
The long mechanic pacings to and fro,
The set, gray life, and apathetic end.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use,--
As tho' to breathe were life!
Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might;
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, passed in music out of sight.
So dear a life your arms enfold,
Whose crying is a cry for gold.
