Quotes
Quotes about Life
A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten.
Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.
O philosophy, life's guide! O searcher-out of virtue and expeller of vices! What could we and every age of men have been without thee? Thou hast produced cities; thou hast called men scattered about into the social enjoyment of life. [Lat., O vitae philosophia dux! O virtutis indagatrix, expultrixque vitiorum! Quid non modo nos, sed omnino vita hominum sine et esse potuisset? Tu urbes peperisti; tu dissipatos homines in societatum vitae convocasti.]
Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.
Let sleep itself be an exercise in piety, for such as our life and conduct have been, so also of necessity will be our dreams.
When Shakespeare is charges 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." - Ralph Waldo Emerson,
The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real estate, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.
The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.
In our amusements a certain limit is to be placed that we may not devote ourselves to a life of pleasure and thence fall into immorality. [Lat., Ludendi etiam est quidam modus retinendus, ut ne nimis omnia profundamus, elatique voluptate in aliquam turpitudinem delabamur.]
Pleasure for one hour, a bottle of wine. Pleasure for one year a marriage; but pleasure for a lifetime, a garden.
The rule of my life is to make business a pleasure, and pleasure my business.
For there is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man; also, it may be said, there is no life of a man, faithfully recorded, but is a heroic poem of its sort, rhymed or unrhymed.
Children and lunatics cut the Gordian knot which the poet spends his life patiently trying to untie.
Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat.
A poet is a man who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.
Hold, there is forty ducats. Let me have A dram of poison, such soon-speeding gear As will disperse itself through all the veins That the life-weary taker may fall dead, And that the trunk may be discharged of breath As violently as hasty powder fired Doth hurry from the fatal cannon's womb.
What a crazy world we live in! Trying to treat addiction as a legal problem, and trying to treat criminal misbehaviors using guns as a medical problem! Beam me up, Scotty. Ain't no intelligent life down here.
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life; but only a fool trusts either of them.
Rousseau had it backwards. We are NOT born free. We are born in the chains of the random and the reflexive, and are ignorant and unreasonable by simple nature. We must learn to be free, to organize the random and detect the reflexive, to acquire the knowledge of particulars and the powers of reason. The examined life is impossible if we cannot examine, order, classify, define, distinguish, always in minute particulars.
An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life. - Beyond the Horizon, 1942.
The first duty of society is to give each of its members the possibility of fulfilling his destiny. When it becomes incapable of performing this duty it must be transformed. - Reflections on Life.
People cut themselves off from their ties of the old life when they come to Los Angeles. They are looking for a place where they can be free, where they can do things they couldn't do anywhere else.
A family on the throne is an interesting idea. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life.
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
We trained hard - but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.
