Quotes About Life

I keep saying, Shakespeare, Shakespeare, you are as obscure as life is.

Is it so small a thing To have enjoy'd the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done.

Round me too the night In ever-nearing circle weaves her shade. I see her veil draw soft across the day, I feel her slowly chilling breath invade The cheek grown thin, the brown hair sprent with grey; I feel her finger light Laid pausefully upon life's headlong train; -- The foot less prompt to meet the morning dew, The heart less bounding at emotion new, And hope, once crush'd, less quick to spring again.

What is the course of the life Of mortal men on the earth?-- Most men eddy about Here and there--eat and drink, Chatter and love and hate, Gather and squander, are raised Aloft, are hurl'd in the dust, Striving blindly, achieving Nothing; and, then they die-- Perish; and no one asks Who or what they have been, More than he asks what waves In the moonlit solitudes mild Of the midmost Ocean, have swell'd, Foam'd for a moment, and gone.

Know, man hath all which Nature hath, but more, And in that more lie all his hopes of good.

Business could not make dull, nor passion wild; Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole.

Yes: in the sea of life enisl'd, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone.

Poetry a criticism of life under the conditions fixed for such a criticism by the laws of poetic truth and poetic beauty.

Yes, in the sea of life enisled,With echoing straits between us thrown,Dotting the shoreless watery wild,We mortal millions live alone.

Oh, born in days when wits were fresh and clear,And life ran gaily as the sparkling Thames;Before this strange disease of modern life,With its sick hurry, its divided aims,Its heads o'ertaxed, its palsied hearts, was rife.

But often in the world's most crowded streets,But often, in the din of strife,There rises an unspeakable desireAfter the knowledge of our buried life.

Is it so small a thingTo have enjoyed the sun,To have lived light in the spring,To have loved, to have thought, to have done;To have advanced true friends, and beat down baffling foes?

This strange disease of modern life, with its sick hurry, its divided aims.

The world in which we live and moveOutlasts aversion, outlasts love:Outlasts each effort, interest, hope,Remorse, grief, joy.

But each day brings its petty dust Our soon-chok'd souls to fill, And we forget because we must, And not because we will.

THE THOUGHTS that rain their steady glow Like stars on life's cold sea, Which others know, or say they know — They never shone for me.   Thoughts light, like gleams, my spirit's sky,   5 But they will not remain. They light me once, they hurry by, And never come again.

Yes: in the sea of life enisl'd, With echoing straits between us thrown, Dotting the shoreless watery wild, We mortal millions live alone .

And they see, for a moment, Stretching out, like the desert In its weary, unprofitable length, Their faded ignoble lives. While the locks are yet brown on thy head, While the soul still looks through thine eyes, While the heart still pours The mantling blood to thy cheek, Sink, O Youth, in thy soul! Yearn to the greatness of Nature! Rally the good in the depths of thyself.

Is it so small a thing To have enjoy'd the sun, To have liv'd light in the spring, To have lov'd, to have thought, to have done; To have advanc'd true friends, and beat down baffling foes; That we must feign a bliss Of doubtful future date, And while we dream on this Lose our present state, And relegate to worlds yet distant our repose? Empedocles on Etna: Act I, Scene II

Is there no life, but these alone? Madman or slave, must man be one?

How generally, with how many of us, are the main concerns of life limited to these two: the concern for making money, and the concern for saving our souls!

For what wears out the life of mortal men? 'Tis that from change to change their being rolls: 'Tis that repeated shocks, again, again, Exhaust the energy of the strongest souls, And numb the elastic powers. Till having us'd our nerves with bliss and teen, And tir'd upon a thousand schemes our wit, To the just-pausing Genius we remit Our worn out life, and are -- what we have been. - The Scholar Gipsy

New world. New sound. New life. Everything felt so right. A huge, glowing, magical YES.

Horror is the awakening of repressed knowledge, something that you have known all along but kept at the periphery of awareness so that life can go on.