Quotes About Life

Death: the only true emotion felt in an apathetic world

There are five people you meet in heaven," the Blue Man suddenly said. "Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.

"Ah." The Blue Man nodded. "Well people often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps. This, for me, is the second. And for you the first."

In the stories about life and death, the soul often floats above the goodbye moment, hovering over police cars at highway accidents, or clinging like a spider to hospital room ceilings. These are people who receive a second chance, who somehow, for some reason, resume their place in the world. Eddie, it appeared, was not getting a second chance.

When you learn how to die, you learn how to live.

All the people you meet here have one thing to teach you." Eddie was skeptical. His fists stayed clenched. "What?" he said. "That there are no random acts. That we are all connected. That you can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind.

One that hath wine as a chain about his wits, such a one lives no life at all.

Here halt, I pray you, make a little stay,O wayfarer, to read what I have writ,And know by my fate what thy fate shall be.What thou art now, wayfarer, world renowned,I was: what I am now, so shall thou be.The world's delight I followed with a heartUnsatisfied: ashes am I, and dust.

O quam dulcis vita fuit dum sedabamus in quieti . . . inter liborum copias. : 'Oh how sweet life was when we sat quietly . . . midst all these books.

A Poem About Miracles Why don't the records go blank the instant the singer dies? Oh, I know there are explanations, but they don't convince me. I'm still surprised when I hear the dead singing. As for orchestras, I expect the instruments to fall silent one by one as the musicians succumb to cancer and heart disease so that toward the end I turn on a disc labelled Gotterdammerung and all that comes out is the sound of one sick old man scraping a shaky bow across an out-of-tune fiddle.

The gospel writers did not simply tell stories for the sake of telling stories, but to touch the lives of their listeners in a saving way. Some of the differences between the gospels are simply due to the fact that human beings are involved in the process of handing on the tradition. But some differences are important, essential to the message the inspired writer wished to share.

Giornate che a metterle assieme e pigiarle tutte quante non ne uscirebbe una stilla di vita. Ma la vita è così: ammassata e secca, piena di avvenimenti sterili e ripetuti e sempre uguali e di cui si perde memoria. Spremi, e verrà fuori un pulviscolo di frustrazioni standard e un odore di fenolo, un polverizzarsi di garze faraoniche.

When I call to mind my earliest impressions, I wonder whether the process ordinarily referred to as growing up is not actually a process of growing down; whether experience, so much touted among adults as the thing children lack, is not actually a progressive dilution of the essentials by the trivialities of living.

It must be a poor life that achieves freedom from fear

There will always be pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights. Book-pigeons cannot dive out of a cloud to make the deer run for cover, or clap their wings in thunderous applause of mast-laden woods. Book-pigeons cannot breakfast on new-mown wheat in Minnesota, and dine on blueberries in Canada. They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather. They live forever by not living at all.

The real jewel of my disease-ridden woodlot is the prothonotary warbler. He nests in an old woodpecker hole, or other small cavity, in a dead snag overhanging water. The flash of his gold-and-blue plumage amid the dank decay of the June woods is in itself proof that dead trees are transmuted into living animals, and vice versa. When you doubt the wisdom of this arrangement, take a look at the prothonotary.

Land, then, is not merely soil; it is a fountain of energy flowing through a circuit of soils, plants, and animals.

Proverbs are always platitudes until you have personally experienced the truth of them.

A million million spermatozoa, All of them alive: Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah Dare hope to survive.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder.'

Perhaps it's good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he's happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

Art is one of the means whereby man seeks to redeem a life which is experienced as chaotic, senseless, and largely evil.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.