live quotes

  • We live ignorant and die in errancy as we lived.

    -Abu'l-'Ala   Al-Ma'arri
    c.1000  Luzu'  miyya'  t, stanza 4 (translated by R  A Nicholson in Studies in Islamic Poetry,1921).

  • Yif thou wolte lyve frely, lerne to dye gladly.

    -Anonymous
    c.1375  The Art of Dieing.

  • Well, there's no help for it. Ageing seems to be the only available way to live a long time.

    - Daniel-Fran c° ois-Esprit Auber
    Attributed, when a friend lamented that they were both getting older. Quoted in Clifton Fadiman The Faber Book of  Anecdotes (1985).

  • Encased in talent like a uniform, The rank of every poet is well known; They can amaze us like a thunderstorm, Or die so young, or live for years alone.

    -W(ystan) H(ugh) Auden
      'The Novelist'.

  • To live each day as though one's last, never flustered, neverapathetic, neverattitudinizinghere isperfection of character.

    -Aung San Suu Kyi
    c.  AD 170^180  Meditations, bk.7, no.69 (translated by M Staniforth).

  • For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?

    -Jane Austen
      Pride and Prejudice, ch.57.

  • For in him we live, and move and have our being.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Acts of the  Apostles17:28.

  • Whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Romans14:8.

  • For to me to live is Christ, and to die isgain.

    -Bible (NewTestament)
    Philippians1:21.

  • La eternidad rotativa puede parecer atroz al espectador; es satisfactoria para sus individuos. Libres de malas noticias y de enfermedades, viven siempre como si fuera la primera vez, sin recordar las anteriores. A circular eternity may seem atrocious to the spectator, but it is satisfactory to individuals inside. Free from bad news and disease, theyalways live as if it were the first time, and do not remember previous times.

    - Adolfo Bioy Casares
      La invencio  n de Morel ( The Invention of Morel,1964).

  • I am well as long as I live on horseback†sleep out-of- doors, or in a log cabin, and lead in all respects a completely unconventional life. But each time for a few days†I have become civilised, I have found myself rapidly going down again.

    - Isabella married name Isabella Bishop Bird
      A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains.

  • If I'd known I was gonna live this long, I'd have taken better care of myself.

    - EubieJames Hubert Blake
      Quoted in the Observer,13 Feb. He died 5 days after his 100th birthday.

  • Man that isbornof a womanhath but a short timeto live, and is full of misery.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Burial of the Dead,  Anthem.

  • Lord, let me know mine end, and thenumberof mydays: that I may be certified how long I have to live.

    -Book of Common Prayer
    Psalm 39:5.

  • Good, to forgive; Best, to forget! Living, we fret; Dying, we live.

    - Robert Browning
      La Saisiaz, prologue.

  • To live is like to loveall reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

    - Samuel Butler
    Collected in H F  Jones (ed)  The Notebooks of Samuel Butler (1912).

  • I live not in myself, but I become Portion of that around me; and to me, High mountains are a feeling, but the hum Of human cities torture.

    -Rochdale
    ^18  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, canto 3, stanza 72.

  • My sweetest Lesbia, let us live and love, And though the sager sort our deeds reprove, Let us not weigh them. Heaven's great lamps do dive Into their west, and straight again revive, But soon as once set is our little light, Then must we sleep one ever-during night. See Catullus 200:5.

    -Thomas Campion
    A Book of  Airs, no.1,'My Sweetest Lesbia', translation of a song by Catullus.

  •    Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus, rumoresque senum severiorum omnes unius aestimemus assis. Let us live, my Lesbia, and let us love! Let us not give one penny if old men protest and disapprove.

    -Catiline full name Lucius Sergius Catilina
    Roman conspirator, from an obscure senatorial family. In 63 BC, he  plotted to murder  Cicero  and other  hostile  senators,  and to seize power, but was arrested and executed.

  • So longe mote ye lyve, and alle proude, Til crowes feet be growen under youre y'.

    - Geoffrey Chaucer
    c.1385  Troilus and Criseyde, bk 2, l.402^3.

  • To begin to live in the present, we must first atone forour past and be finished with it, and we can onlyatone for it by suffering, by extraordinary, unceasing exertion.

    - Anton Chekhov
      The Cherry Orchard, act 2 (translated by Elisaveta Fen). English    colonial    administrator,    Governor    of    Queensland (1905^9)  and  of  New  South Wales  (1909^13), Viceroy  of  India (1916^21) and First Lord of the Admiralty (1924).

  • Men will wrangle for religion; write for it; fight for itanything but live for it.

    - Charles Caleb Colton
      Lacon, vol.1, no.25.

  • We live, as we dreamalone.

    -Korzeniowski
      Heart of Darkness, pt.1 (first published in Blackwood's Magazine, collected inYouth:  A Narrative, and Two Other Stories, 1902).

  • Now we know nothing, nothing is richer now Because of all he was.O friend we have loved Must it be thus with you?and if it must be How can men bear laboriously to live?

    - Frances ne  e Darwin Cornford
      'Rupert Brooke'.

  • Comeonyousonsof bitches!Doyouwanttoliveforever? See Frederick the Great 335:33.

    - Daniel Daly
      Attributed, to his troops at Belleau  Wood, 4  Jun.

  • People in nutrition do get the idea that theyare going to live to be150. And they never do.

    - Adelle Davis
      Quoted in DanielYergin's'Supernutritionist', NewYork Times magazine, 20 May.

  • Si l'on vit assez longtemps, on voit que toute victoire se change un jour en de  faite. If you live long enough, you'll find that every victory turns into a defeat.

    - Simone de Beauvoir
      Tous les hommes sont mortels (All Men  Are Mortal).

  • I cannot live withYou It would be Life And Life is over there Behind the Shelf.

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    c.1862  Complete Poems, no.640 (first published1890).

  • A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.

    - Emily Elizabeth Dickinson
    ?1872  Complete Poems, no.1212 (first published1894).

  •    We tell ourselves stories in order to live.

    -Joan Didion
      The White Album,'The White  Album,1'.

  • Come live with me, and be my love, And we will some new pleasures prove Of golden sands, and crystal brooks: With silken lines, and silver hooks. See Marlowe 553:17, Raleigh 677:98.

    -John Donne
    c.1595^1605  'The Bait', collected in Songs and Sonnets (1633).

  • None would live past years again, Yet all hope pleasure in what yet remain; And, from the dregs of life, think to receive, What the first sprightly running could not give.

    -John Dryden
      Aureng-Zebe, act 4, sc.1.

  •    Sen for the deid remeid is none, Best is that we for dede dispone Eftir our deid that lif may we: Timor mortis conturbat me.

    - Alexandre, pe'  re Dumas
    c.1505  'Lament for the Makaris', stanza 25.

  • My wealth is health and perfect ease; My conscience clear my chief defence; I neither seek by bribes to please, Nor by deceit to breed offence. Thus do I live; thus will I die. Would all did so well as I!

    - Sir Edward Dyer
      'In Praise of a Contented Mind'.

  • If I could only live at the pitch that is near madness When everything is as it was in my childhood Violent, vivid and of infinite possibility.

    - Richard Ghormley Eberhart
      'If I Could Only Live at the Pitch That Is Near Madness'.

  • Life is too precious to be spent in this weaving and unweaving of false impressions, and it is better to live quietly under some degree of misrepresentation than to attempt to remove it by the uncertain process of letter- writing.

    - George pseudonym of  MaryAnn Evans Eliot
      Letter to Mrs Peter Taylor, 8  Jun. Collected in G S Haight (ed)  The George Eliot Letters (1954), vol.2.

  • Egbert, is it true that married people live longer? No, it just seems longer.

    -W C originally  William Claude Dukenfield Fields
      The Bank Dick.

  • Live and Let Die.

    - Ian Lancaster Fleming
       Title of novel.

  •    You cannot be absolutely dumb when you live with a person unless you are an inhabitant of the North of England or the State of Maine.

    - Ford Madox originally Ford Hermann Hueffer Ford
      The Good Soldier, pt.3, ch.4.

  • Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon.Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.

    - E(dward) M(organ) Forster
      Howards End, ch.22.

  •    We all live with the objective of being happy; our lives

    - Anne Frank

  • Rascals, would you live for ever? See Daly 251:76.

    - the Great Frederick II
       Attributed, to hesitant guards at the Battle of Kolin,18  Jun.

  • Cum studio bene vivendi semper conjunxi studium bene dicendi. I have always combined the study of how to live well with the study of how to speak well.

    -Gerbert later Pope Sylvester II
      Letter to Ebrard,  Abbot of  Tours.

  • As in a month you've got to die If Ko-Ko tells us true, 'Twere empty compliment to cry 'Long life to Nanki-Poo!' But as one month you have to live As fellow-citizen, This toast with three times three we'll give 'Long life to youtill then!'

    - Sir W(illiam) S(chwenck) Gilbert
      Pooh-Bah's solo, The Mikado, act1.

  • Man cannot live on the human plane, he must be either above or below it.

    - (Arthur) Eric Rowton Gill
      Autobiography, closing words.

  • You lost yourability for doing things in childhood† It all beganwithyourinability toputonyoursocksand ended by your inability to live.

    - Ivan Alexandrovich Goncharov
      Oblomov, pt.4, ch.2 (translated by David Magarshak).

  • Glasgow, the sort of industrial city where most people live nowadays but nobody imagines living.

    - AlasdairJames Gray
    Lanark, bk.3, ch.11.

  • I believe that the scientist is trying to expand absolute truth and the artist absolute beauty, so that I find in art and science, and in an attempt to live a good life, all the religion I want.

    -J(ohn) B(urdon) S(anderson) Haldane
    Living Philosophies.

  • I always divide people into two groups. Those who live by what they know to be a lie, and those who live by what they believe, falsely, to be the truth.

    - Christopher Hampton
      The Philanthropist.

  • He had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive.

    -Joseph Heller
      OfYossarian. Catch-22, ch.3.

  • But thou liv'st fearless; and thy face ne'er shows Fortune when she comes, or goes.

    - Robert Herrick
      'A Country Life:  To His Brother, M. Tho. Herrick'.

  • Annapurna, towhichwehadgone empty-handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our lives. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins. There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.

    - Maurice Herzog
      Quoted in  Annapurna: Conquest of the First 8000-metre Peak (translated by Nea Morin and Janet  Adam Smith).

  • He who battles with the immortals does not live long, nor do his children prattle about his knees when he has returned from battle.

    -Homer   8c
    c.700  BC  Iliad, bk.5, l.407 (translated by Martin Hammond).

  • We live half our lives in England†there can't have been anything quite like this sincethe Roman colonists settled in Britain: not the hanging on with one hand, and the other hand full of seas.

    - Robin pseudonym of IrisGuiver Wilkinson Hyde
      The Godwits Fly, ch.8.

  • The bird, the beste, the fisch eke in the see, They lyve in fredome, euerich in his kynd, And I, a man, and lakkith libertee!

    -James I
    c.1435  The Kingis Quair, stanza 27.

  • Live all you can; it's a mistake not to. It doesn't so much matter what you do in particular, so long as you have your life. If you haven't had that what have you had?

    - Henry James
      Lambert Strether. The Ambassadors, bk.5, ch.11.

  • I thought that writing a detective story would be a wonderful apprenticeship because, whatever people tell you, a crime novel is not easy to write well. As I continued with my craft I became increasingly fascinated by the form and realized that you can use the formula to say something true about men and women and the society in which they live.

    -Baroness
      'Series Detectives', collected in Brown and Munro (eds) Writers Writing (1993).

  • It's better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life.

    - Randall Jarrell
      Pictures from an Institution, pt.4, ch.9.

  •    The wing trails like a banner in defeat, No more to use the sky forever but live with famine And pain a few days. 436

    - (John) Robinson Jeffers
      Cawdor,'Hurt Hawks'.

  • The stage but echoes back the public voice. The drama's laws the drama's patrons give, For we, who live to please, must please to live.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Prologue, written for David Garrick on the occasion of the opening of his management of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

  • All the arguments which are brought to represent povertyasno evil, show ittobe evidentlyagreatevil.You never find people labouring to convince you that you may live very happily upon a plentiful fortune.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, 20  Jul. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.1.

  • I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government rather than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, 31 Mar. Quoted in  James Boswell The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • What should I do, But cocker up my genius, and live free To all delights my fortune calls me to?

    - Ben Jonson
      Volpone, act1, sc.2.

  • But then they danced down the street like dingle- dodies, and Ishambled afteras I've beendoing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'

    -Jack (John) Kerouac
      On The Road, pt.1, ch.1.

  • Never anticipate tomorrow's sorrow; Live always in this paradisal now.

    - Omar Khayya m
    c.1100  Ruba  iya  t, stanza 21 (translated by Robert Graves and Omar  Ali-Shah,1972).

  •    The thing is to find a truth for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.

    - So«  ren Aabye Kierkegaard
       Journal entry (translated by Alexander Dru,1938).

  • I have a dream. I have a dream that my four little children will oneday liveinanationwherethey will not bejudged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.

    - Martin LutherJr King
       Washington civil rights rally,15  Jun.

  • If a man hasn't discovered something he will die for, he isn't fit to live.

    - Martin LutherJr King
      Speech in Detroit, 23  Jun.

  • Je vis, je meurs; je me br u" le et me noie. I live, I die; I am on fire and I drown.

    - Louise Labe 
      Sonnets, no.8.

  • Il n'y a pour l'homme que trois e  ve  nements: na|"tre, vivre et mourir. Il ne se sent pas na|"tre, il souffre a'   mourir, et il oublie de vivre. There are only three great events for a person: to be born, to liveand to die.He doesnot feel his own birth, he suffers upon death and he forgets to live.

    -Jean de La Bruye'  re
      Les Caracte'  res ou les m½urs de ce sie'  cle,'De l'homme', no.48.

  • What are days for? Days are where we live. They come, they wake us Time and time over. Theyare to be happy in: Where can we live but days?

    - Philip Arthur Larkin
      'Days'.

  • Thus did they live:Thus did they love, Repeating only joys above; And Angels were, but with clothes on, Which they would put off cheerfully, To bathe them in the galaxy, Then gird them with the Heavenly zone.

    - Richard Lovelace
      Lucasta,'Love Made in the First  Age'.

  •    That would have been a nice place, inside an idea, but it wasn't a place to live. It was necessary to live where the idea and the fact collided.

    -William Angus McIlvanney
      The Big Man, ch.8.

  • Traditions are lovely thingsto create traditions, that is, not to live off them.

    - Franz Marc
    ^15  Aphorisms.

  •    Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damned perpetually! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. Fair nature's eye, rise, rise, again, and make Perpetual day; or let this hour be but Ayear, a month, a week, a natural day, That Faustus may repent and save his soul! O lente, lente currite, noctis equi: The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned. Oh, I'll leap up to my God!Who pulls me down? See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament! One drop would save my soul, half a drop, ah, my Christ.

    - Christopher Marlowe
    c.1592  Doctor Faustus (published1604), act 5, sc.2.

  • Difficilis facilis, iucundus acerbus es idem: Nec tecum possum vivere nec sine te. Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same: I cannot live with youor without you.

    -Martial full name MarcusValerius Martialis
    Epigrams, bk.12, no.46.

  • What one wants in this world isn't so much to'live' as to†be lived, to be used by life for its own purposes.

    -James Ingram Merrill
    Quoted in the NewYorker, 27 Mar1995.

  • To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      Sunday  After The War,'Reunion in Brooklyn'.

  •    Glaubt es mir!das Geheimnis, um die gr o« Þte Fruchtbarkeit und den gr o« Þten Genuss vom Dasein einzuernten, heiÞt: gef a« hrlich leben! For believe me: the secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment isto live dangerously.

    - FriedrichWilhelm Nietzsche
      Die fro«  hliche Wissenschaft ( The Gay Science), section 283 (translated by W Kaufmann).

  • Razors pain you Rivers are damp; Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp. Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

    - Dorothy ne  e Rothschild Parker
      Not So Deep as AWell,'Re  sume ' .

  • We live and learn, but not the wiser grow.

    -John Pomfret
      'Reason'. French  mistress  of  Louis  XV.  Installed  at Versailles  (1745),  she assumed  control  of   public   affairs   and   swayed   state   policy, appointing  her  favourites.  She  was  a  lavish  patron  of  the  arts and literature.

  • Oh Happiness! our being's end and aim! Good, pleasure, ease, content! whate'er thy name: That something still which prompts th'eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die.

    - Alexander Pope
      An Essay on Man, epistle 4, l.1^4.

  • Il vaut mieux re"  ver sa vie que la vivre, encore que la vivre ce soit encore la re"  ver. It's better to dream your life than to live it, and even though you live it, you will still dream it.

    - Marcel Proust
      Les Plaisirs et les jours.

  • If we live inside a bad joke, it is up to us to learn, at best and worst, to tell it well.

    -Jonathan Raban
      Coasting, ch.6.

  • ThepoorestHethat isinEnglandhathalifetoliveaswellas the greatest He, and therefore, truly Sirs,Ithink that every man that is to live under a Government ought first, by his own consent, to put himself under that Government.

    -Thomas Rainborowe
      Said to Cromwell during theArmy Debates, Putney, 29 Oct.

  • We live in the great indoors: the vacuum cleaner grazes over the carpet, lowing, its udder a swollen wobble. SeeAusten 43:88.

    - Craig Anthony Raine
      'An Inquiry intoTwo Inches of Ivory'.

  • If all the world and love were young, And truth in every shepherd's tongue These pretty pleasures might me move To live with thee and be thy love. See Marlowe 553:17.

    - Sir Walter Raleigh
    c.1592  'The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd', a response to Marlowe's 'The Passionate Shepherd to His Love', attributed to Raleigh.

  • Si nolueris habitare cum turpidis, non habitatis Londonie. If you do not want to live among wicked people, do not live in London.

    -Richard of Devizes   fl.c.1190
    c.1192  Chronicle of Richard of Devizes of theTime of King Richard I.

  • She can talk beautifully about democracy but doesn't know how to live democracy.

    - (Anna) Eleanor Roosevelt
    Of Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Recalled on Mrs Roosevelt's death,7 Nov1962.

  • Men don't and can't live by exchanging articles, but by producing them. They don't live by trade, but by work. Give up that foolish and vain title of Trades Unions; and take that of Labourers' Unions.

    -John Ruskin
      Open letter to EnglishTrades Unions, 29 Sep.

  • All decent people live beyond their incomes nowadays, and those who aren't respectable live beyond other peoples'. A few gifted individuals manage to do both.

    -Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
    The Chronicles of Clovis,'The Match-Maker'.

  •    The people will live on. The learning and blundering will live on. They will be tricked and sold and again sold And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds.

    - Carl Sandburg
      The People,Yes.

  • If I were fierce and bald and short of breath I'd live with scarlet Majors at the Base, And speed glum heroes up the line to death.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Base Details'.

  • En toi je vis, o  u' que tu sois absente; En moi je meurs, o  u' que je sois pre  sent. Tant loin sois-tu, toujours tu es pre  sente; Pour pre'  s que sois, encore suis-je absent. I live in you, wherever you are, when you are absent; I die in myself wherever I am. No matter how faraway you are, you are always present; And no matter how near you are, I am always absent.

    - Maurice Sce'  ve
      De  lie, no.144.

  • Look not thou on beauty's charming, Sit thou still when kings are arming. Taste not when the wine-cup glistens, Speak not when the people listens, Stop thine ear against the singer, From the red gold keep thy finger, Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, Easy live and quiet die.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      The Bride of Lammermoor, ch.3 (LucyAshton's song).

  • 'I am a brigand: I live by robbing the rich.' 'I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.'

    - George Bernard Shaw
      Mendoza andJohnTanner. Man and Superman, act 3.

  • [This] much curse I must send you, in the behalf of all poets, that while you live, you live in love, and never get favour for lacking skill of a sonnet, and, when you die, your memorydie fromthe earth for want of an epigraph.

    - Sir Philip Sidney
      The Defence of Poetry.

  • Artists are the only people in the world who really live. The others have to hope for heaven.

    -John French Sloan
    Recalled on his death,7 Sep1951, and quoted in the Smithsonian, Apr1988.

  • Most people sell their souls, and live with a good conscience on the proceeds.

    - Logan Pearsall Smith
    Afterthoughts,'Other People'.

  •    Why does my Muse only speak when she is unhappy? She does not, I only listen when I am unhappy When I am happy I live and despise writing For my Muse this cannot but be dispiriting.

    - Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
      Selected Poems,'My Muse'.

  • People who are always praising the past And especially the times of faith as best Ought to go and live in the Middle Ages And be burnt at the stake as witches and sages.

    - Stevie (Florence Margaret) Smith
      NotWaving but Drowning,'The Past'.

  • They have no education, no taste for reading, no housewifery, nor, indeed, any earthly occupation but that ofdressingtheirhair, andadorningtheirbodies.Theyhate walking, and would never go abroad, if they were not stimulated by the vanityof being seen† Nothing can be more parsimonious than the economy of these people. They live upon soup and bouille, fish and salad.

    -Tobias George Smollett
      Of the nobility of Boulogne.Travels through France and Italy.

  • It is best to live anyhow, as one may; do not be afraid of marriage with your mother! Many have lain with their mothers in dreams too. It is he to whom such things are nothing who puts up with life best.

    -Sophocles
    Jocasta to Oedipus, her son and husband, before they both discover the truth of the prophecy. OedipusTyrannus, 979^83 (translated by H Lloyd-Jones,1994).

  •    Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.

    - Robert Southey
      The Doctor, ch.130.

  • One's prime is elusive.You little girls, when you grow up, must be onthealertto recognise your primeat whatever time of your life it may occur.You must live it to the full.

    - Dame Muriel Sarah ne  e  Camberg Spark
    The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, ch.1.

  • Who live under the shadow of war, What can I do that matters?

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'Who Live Under the Shadow'.

  •    One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washe'  d it away; Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. 'Vain man,'said she,'that doest in vain assay A mortal thing so to immortalise, For I my self shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wipe'  d out likewise.' 'Not so,'quod I,'let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, And in the heavens write your glorious name. Where when as death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.'

    - Edmund Spenser
      Amoretti, sonnet 75.

  • We live thetime that a match flickers; we pop the corkof a ginger-beer bottle, and the earthquake swallows us on the instant. Is it not odd, is it not incongruous, is it not, in the highest sense of human speech, incredible, that we should think so highly of the ginger-beer, and regard so little the devouring earthquake?

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
    Virginibus Puerisque,'AesTriplex'.

  • Every man desires to live long; but no manwould be old.

    -Jonathan Swift
      Thoughts onVarious Subjects (enlarged edn).

  • Sleep; and if life was bitter to thee, pardon, If sweet, give thanks; thou hast no more to live; And to give thanks isgood, and to forgive.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads (2nd edn),'AveAtqueVale', stanza17.

  • Live and lie reclined On the hills like Gods together, careless of mankind. For they lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world.

    -Tennyson
      Poems,'The Lotos^Eaters', Choric Song, stanza 8, l.154^8.

  • Ask me no more: what answer should I give? I love not hollow cheek or faded eye: Yet,O my friend, I will not have thee die! Ask me no more, lest I should bid thee live.

    -Tennyson
      The Princess, pt.7, added song, stanza 2.

  • How to Live Well on Nothing aYear.

    -William Makepeace Thackeray
    ^8  Vanity Fair, ch.36, title of chapter.

  • As long as possible live free and uncommitted. It makes but little differencewhether youare committedtoa farm or the county jail.

    - Henry David Thoreau
      Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Where I Lived, andWhat I Lived For'.

  • Iwenttothewoodsbecause Iwishedto live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

    - Henry David Thoreau
      Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Where I Lived, andWhat I Lived For'.

  • We live and learn, and big mountains are stern teachers.

    - Bill (Harold William) Tilman
      Two Mountains and a River.

  • Les femmes et les hommes ne vivent pas sur le me"  me plan. Women and men do not live according to the same design.

    - Boris Vian
      L'Arrache-c½ur.

  • But we live like our names and you would have to be colonial to know the difference, to know the pain of history words contain.

    - Derek Alton Walcott
      The Star-Apple Kingdom,'The Schooner Flight', pt.6.

  • Let us all be happy, and live within our means, even if we have to borrow the money to do it with.

    - Artemus pseudonym of  Charles Farrar Browne Ward
      ArtemusWard in London, and Other Papers,'Science and Natural History'.

  • I am happiest when I am idle. I could live for months without performing any kind of labour, and at the expiration of that time I should feel fresh and vigorous enough togo right on inthesame way for numerous more months.

    - Artemus pseudonym of  Charles Farrar Browne Ward
      ArtemusWard in London, and Other Papers,'Pyrotechny', 3.

  • But there comes a time in everybody's life when he must decide whether he'll live among human beings or nota fool among fools or a fool alone.

    -Thornton Niven Wilder
      The Matchmaker, act 4.

  • DerTod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. DenTod erlebt man nicht. Death isnot an event in life: we do not liveto experience death.

    - LudwigJosef Johann Wittgenstein
    Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, prop 6.4311 (translated by Pears and McGuinness).

  • The horse that comes from the road, The rider, the birds that range From cloud to tumbling cloud, Minute by minute they change; A shadow of cloud on the stream Changes minute by minute; A horse-hoof slides on the brim, And a horse plashes within it; The long-legged moor-hens dive, And hens to moor-cocks call; Minute by minute they live: The stone's in the midst of all.

    -W(illiam) B(utler) Yeats
      'Easter1916', l.45^56. Collected in Michael Robartes and the Dancer (1921).

Webster's New World Dictionary of Quotations Copyright © 2010 by Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ. Used by arrangement with John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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