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- That life is brief hath seemed a piteous thing
- Since the first mortal watched it glide away.
- And sad it is that flowers have but one day,
- And sad that birds have little time to sing;
- That joy is fleeting as the bloom of Spring;
- That youth so soon is startled from its play,
- And manhood from its labor, to essay
- The old vain struggle with the shadowy King.
- But sadder far it is that life is long;
- Ay, long enough for bliss to turn to bale,
- For innocence to lose the dread of wrong,
- For hearts to harden, love itself to fail;
- And faith be wearied out (O, sad and strange!)
- Unless Death save us from the deathly change.
Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh ... without destroying that moment.
For disappearing acts, it's hard to beat what happens to the eight hours supposedly left after eight of sleep and eight of work.
DOUG LARSON, attributed, Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored
Every life is many days, day after day. We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.
The hearts of all men dwell in the same wilderness.
FRANK HERBERT, Dune Messiah
To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you.
ANAIS NIN, diary, Mar. 6, 1936
When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, My Day
Life is exponential. Two becomes four, becomes ten thousand, becomes a plague.
PAOLO BACIGALUPI, The Windup Girl
No man has ever known what he would meet around the next corner; if life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, Tomorrow Is Now
The joy of living, its beauty, is all bound up in the fact that life can surprise you.
FRANK HERBERT, Children of Dune
I think computer viruses should count as life ... I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
STEPHEN HAWKING, The Daily News, Aug. 4, 1994
- Let us pounce
- upon this red prey,
- let us tear life
- that passes throbbing
- and lift together
- our wild flight.
PABLO NERUDA, "The Condor"
Life is a game whose rules you learn if you leap into it and play it to the hilt. Otherwise, you are caught off balance, continually surprised by the shifting play. Non-players often whine and complain that luck always passes them by. They refuse to see that they can create some of their own luck.
FRANK HERBERT, Chapterhouse: Dune
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT, preface, Autobiography
Real life was messier than fiction, and in it you didn't always have time to do or say the right things.
BENTLEY LITTLE, The Resort
Life is the great teacher.
Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments.
ANAIS NIN, diary, Winter, 1931-32
- Lives of great men all remind us
- We can make our lives sublime,
- And, departing, leave behind us
- Footprints on the sands of time.
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW, "A Psalm of Life"
Life cannot find reasons to sustain it, cannot be a source of decent mutual regard, unless each of us resolves to breathe such qualities into it.
FRANK HERBERT, Heretics of Dune
Life is composed of lights and shadows, and we would be untruthful, insincere, and saccharine if we tried to pretend there were no shadows. Most things are good, and they are the strongest things; but there are evil things too, and you are not doing a child a favor by trying to shield him from reality. The important thing is to teach a child that good can always triumph over evil.
WALT DISNEY, Deeds Rather Than Words
If it is life that you feel you are missing I can tell you where to find it. In the law courts, in business, in government. There is nothing occurring in the streets. Nothing but a dumbshow composed of the helpless and the impotent.
One's life should be sufficiently interesting to furnish entertainment in the record.
AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT, Table Talk
A life is a moment in season. A life is one snowfall. A life is one autumn day. A life is the delicate, rapid edge of a closing door's shadow. A life is a brief movement of arms and of legs.
ALAN LIGHTMAN, Einstein's Dreams
Each life creates endless ripples.
FRANK HERBERT, Chapterhouse: Dune
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