Famous Quotes & Sayings

Wallace Stevens

Life is the elimination of what is dead.

Wallace Stevens

Life is not free from its forms.

Vittorio Alfieri

Ofttimes the test of courage becomes rather to live than to die.

Vivien Leigh

Life is too short to work so hard.

Virgil

All these souls, after they have passed away a thousand years, are summoned by the divine ones in great array, to the lethean river. . . . In this way they become forgetful of the former earthlife, and re-visit the vaulted realms of the world, willing to return again into living bodies.

William Henry Hudson

Bear in mind that the children of life are the children of joy; that the lower animals are only unhappy when made so by man; that man alone of all the creatures, has "found out many inventions", the chief of which appears to be the art of making himself miserable, and of seeing all Nature stained with that dark and hateful colour.

Willa Cather

life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

Washington Irving

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.

Walter Lippmann

Our life is managed from behind the scenes: we are actors in dramas that we cannot interpret. Of almost no decisive event can we say: this was our own choosing. We happen upon careers, necessity pushing, blind inclination pulling. If we stop to think we are amazed that we should be what we are.

Walter Lippmann

Without order or authority in the spirit of man the free way of life leads through weakness, disorganization, self-indulgence, and moral indifference to the destruction of freedom itself. The tragic ordeal through which the Western world is passing was prepared in the long period of easy liberty, during which men . . . forgot that their freedom was achieved by heroic sacrifice. . . . They forgot that their rights were founded on their duties. . . . They thought it clever to be cynical, enlightened to be unbelieving, and sensible to be soft.

Walter Lippmann

Nothing is easier than to simplify life and them make a philosophy about it. The trouble is that the resulting philosophy is true only of that simplified life.

Voltaire

Who are you, Nature? I live in you; for fifty years I have been seeking you, and I have not found you yet.

Voltaire

My life's dream has been a perpetual nightmare.

Voltaire

Monsieur l'abbé, I detest what you write, but I would give my life to make it possible for you to continue to write.

Voltaire

To enjoy life we must touch much of it lightly.

Voltaire

This is no time to make new enemies.

Voltaire

Shun idleness. It is rust that attaches itself to the most brilliant metals.

Voltaire

There is only one morality, as there is only one geometry.

Voltaire

You see, Mademoiselle, I have experience, I know the world. To pass the time, why don't you ask every passenger to tell you his life's story? And if there is a single one among them who has never cursed his life, who has not often told himself that he was the unhappiest of men, then you may throw me overboard, headfirst!

Voltaire

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Voltaire

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

Voltaire

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Voltaire

My life is a struggle.

Voltaire

You have no control over the hand that life deals you, but how you play that hand is entirely up to you.

Voltaire

Liberty of thought is the life of the soul.

Voltaire

Common sense is not so common.

Voltaire

The greatest consolation in life is to say what one thinks.

Voltaire

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

William Ernest Hocking

Art is life, plus caprice.

William Ernest Henley

Life - life - let there be life!

William Ernest Henley

Life - life - let there be life! Better a thousand times the roaring hours When wave and wind, Like the Arch-Murderer in flight From the Avenger at his heel, Storm through the desolate fastnesses And wild waste places of the world!

William Ernest Henley

Life - life - life! 'Tis the sole great thing This side of death, Heart on heart in the wonder of Spring!

William Ernest Henley

And lo, the Hospital, gray, quiet, old, Where life and death like friendly chafferers meet.