Quotes about life

This is what is sad when one contemplates human life, that so many live out their lives in quiet lostness; they outlive themselves, not in the sense that life's content successively unfolds and is now possessed in the unfolding, but they live, as it were, away from themselves and vanish like shadows. Their immortal souls are blown away, and they are not disquieted by the question of its immortality, because they are already disintegrated before they die.

No one ever comes back from the dead, no one ever enters the world without weeping; no one is asked when he wishes to enter life, no one is asked when he wishes to leave.

Life has become a bitter drink to me, and yet I must take it like medicine, slowly, drop by drop.

We fall from womb to tomb, from one blackness and toward another, remembering little of the one and knowing nothing of the other...except through faith.

Life isn't a support system for art. It's the other way around.

Life seemed to flow along more swiftly than thoughts. And before he even made a decision he was an old man.

I don’t value my life enough.

Teeth outlast everything. Death is nothing to a tooth. Hundreds of years in acidic soil just keeps a tooth clean. A fire that burns away hair and flesh and even bone leaves teeth dazzling like daisies in the ashes. Life is what destroys teeth. Undiluted apple juice in a baby bottle, sourballs, the pH balance of drinking water, tetracycline, sand in your bread if you were in the Roman army, biting seal-gut thread if you are an Eskimo woman, playing the trumpet, pulling your own teeth with a pliers. In their hearts, most dentists are certain that their patients can’t be trusted with their teeth, but you can’t grieve for every tooth, every mouth. You can’t even grieve for the worst of them; you can only send the patient home with as many of the teeth he came in with as possible.

There is a way in which the collective knowledge of mankind expresses itself, for the finite individual, through mere daily living: a way in which life itself is sheer knowing.

Life is its own journey, presupposes its own change and movement, and one tries to arrest them at one's eternal peril.

“It’s a trick!” he said, without thinking.

“Not so loud,” snapped Nawi, glancing back at the shore. “Of course it’s a trick. Building a canoe is a trick. Throwing a spear is a trick. Life is a trick, and you get one chance to learn it.”

Life is not meant to be easy, my child but take courage: it can be delightful.