For neither birth, nor wealth, nor honors, can awaken in the minds of men the principles which should guide those who from their youth aspire to an honorable and excellent life, as Love awakens them
—Plato
I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I’m awake, you know?
—Ernest Hemingway
It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.
—Julius Caesar
Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death.
—Heraclitus
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.
—Henry David Thoreau
The present state of the world and the whole of life is diseased. If I were a doctor and were asked for my advice, I should reply, ‘Create silence’.
—Søren Kierkegaard
In Christ, justice and mercy embrace, suffering is the road to glory, the cross points to a crown, and the timber of the cross becomes the tree of life.
—Herman Bavinck
How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.
—Henry David Thoreau
The secret of man’s being is not only to live but to have something to live for.
—Fyodor Dostoevsky
Be of good cheer about death, and know this of a truth, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.
—Socrates
Art is to console those who are broken by life.
—Vincent Van Gogh
So dear I love him, that with him all deaths I could endure, without him live no life.
—John Milton
“You shall know that he is with you, you shall be sure of it, for his life shall touch your life, his spirit shall flood and overflood your spirit; and then, but not till then, shall you be fit to speak in his name.”
– Charles Spurgeon
Do every act of your life as though it were the very last act of your life.
—Marcus Aurelius
I say to the universe, Mighty One! thou art not my mother. Return to chaos if thou wilt. I shall still exist. I live.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Just as a candle only burns when the wax from which it is made is expended, so life is only real when it is expended for others.
—Leo Tolstoy
The art of war is of vital importance to the State.
It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin.
Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.
—Sun Tzu
The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.
—Mark Twain
Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.
—Henry David Thoreau
It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another’s property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need.
—Thomas Aquinas
Death may beget life, but oppression can beget nothing other than itself.
—Charles Dickens
Sanctification notes an holy dedication of heart and life to God: our becoming the temples of the living, God, separate from all profane sinful practices, to the Lord’s only use and service.
—John Flavel
God alone is the Author of life; and if you are to be born again, it must be God’s work. You cannot save yourself.
—D. L. Moody
We learn not in the school, but in life.
—Seneca
Every person has a right to risk their own life for the preservation of it.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In order to write about life first you must live it.
—Ernest Hemingway
The love for all living creatures is the most noble attribute of man.
—Charles Darwin
Life is a beautiful magnificent thing, even to a jellyfish.
—Charlie Chaplin