Quotes About Life

I've always wanted to be an expert on tadpoles; I've always fancied being a tadpole expert. It's a wonderful life if you become an experty tadpoleous, as they are known in the trade. You get invited out to all the smart parties and social gatherings. When smart people are making out their lists for the dinner parties, they say, 'Now, who can we have to make up the ten? A tadpole expert would be very nice. He could sit next to Lady Sonia.

Heaven is only my next moment here. from "Nethering," Pleiades (vol. 34, no. 2, Summer 2014)

Doctors don't go through life mentally integrating trial results; but any automaton who had regulated his practice that way would have been in danger of underprescribing.

The Phanerozoic Carbon Cycle

While funerals are among the saddest events that we humans can participate in, at least they are definitive moments marking change: from living to dead. But perhaps even sadder is the life near its end, such as a human with a fatal malady given a highly definitive death sentence.

Nobel laureate Christian de Duve stated that once the ingredients were in place with the right amount of energy present in the early Earth stove, life would have emerged from nonlife very quickly. Perhaps in minutes.

To explore strange new worlds ... and assimilate them. To seek out new life forms ... and new civilizations ... and assimilate them. To boldly go where no Borg has gone before ... and assimilate them.

Thus it has always been: Only in death do worthless people have worth.

But poetry is my life. Poetry is what matters to me.

Poetry is composing for the breath.

Life is a zoo in a jungle

We live this life by a kind of conspiracy of grace: the common assumption, or pretense, that human existence is 'good' or 'matters' or has 'meaning,' a glaze of charm or humor by which we conceal from one another and perhaps even ourselves the suspicion that it does not, and our conviction in times of trouble that it is overpriced - something to be endured rather than enjoyed.

Man is inconsolable, thanks to that eternal "Why?" when there is no Why, that question mark twisted like a fishhook in the human heart. "Let there be light," we cry, and only the dawn breaks.

The superficial and the slipshod have ready answers, but those looking this complex life straight in the eye acquire a wealth of perception so composed of delicately balanced contradictions that they dread, or resent, the call to couch any part of it in a bland generalization.

He was absurd, but then who isn't.

Indeed, the more void the universe may be of meaning, the more precious the lanterns by which man picks his little way through it.

They never understood his ministry, the meaning of his life: that he had come to call, not sinners, but the righteous to repentance

Could any of these things be happening because they're fallen women?' I asked, drawing on another of the cliches we were given like a quiverful of arrows with which to face a life cursed by sin. Doc sat a moment with his hand on the door handle before getting out. 'Well now, it's interesting that you ask. I had a woman recently who fell, not just one flight of stairs, but two. She had a baby as perfect as a pool ball.

La búsqueda de sentido está condenada al fracaso de antemano porque la vida no tiene "sentido", pero eso no significa que no valga la pena vivirla.

Progress doubles our tenure in a vale of tears.

The discovery of a new interest as the years roll on is one of life's good surprises.

Life is not about receiving. It is about giving, knowing that someone might learn, understand or grow that little bit from the experience

Wisdom isn't about finding a quick answer key to life—like turning to the index, finding your problem, and turning to the right page so it all works out. Wisdom is about learning how to work through the unpredictable, uncontrollable messiness of life so you can figure things out on your own in real time. Both

The life of Christian faith is more than agreeing with a set of beliefs about Christ, morality, or how to read the Bible. It means being so intimately connected to Christ that his crucifixion is ours, his death is our death, and his life is our life—which is hardly something we can grasp with our minds. It has to be experienced. It is an experience.