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lives quotes

  • Nuestro portero descubrio  , o creyo   descubrir, que su labor no se pod|a limitar a abrir la puerta del edificio, sino que e  l, el portero, era el sen‹  alado, el elegido, el indicado†para mostrarles a todas aquellas personas una puerta ma  s amplia y hasta entonces invisible o inaccesible; puerta que era la de sus propias vidas. Our doorman discovered (or thought he had discovered) that his tasks could not be limited to just opening the door of the buildingbut that he, the doorman, was the one chosen, elected, singled out†to show everyone who lived there a wider door, until then either invisible or inaccessible: the door to their own lives.

    - Reinaldo Arenas
      El portero (The Doorman,1961), pt.1, ch.1.

  •    More often than not, our lives resemble the stuff of eighteenth-century novels.

    - Paul pseudonym of  Paul Benjamin Auster
      Collected Prose,'The National Story Project'.

  •   Unrecorded, unrenowned, Men from whom my ways begin, Here I know you by your ground But I know you not within There is silence, there survives Not a moment of your lives.

    - Edmund Charles Blunden
      'Forefathers'.

  • It seems to methat there are statements about the world andourlivesthat havenoneedofformalproof procedures.

    -William Andrew Murray Boyd
      Brazzaville Beach,'Fermat's Last Theorem II'.

  • People are looking to other lives for answers to questions about their own.

    - Leo Beal Braudy
      On the increasing popularity of biography. Quoted by Alvin P Sarnoff in US News and World Report, 3  Aug.

  • And all their lives, like that, they'll have to rush Forwards in reverse, always holding their caps.

    - Douglas Eaglesham Dunn
      'Glasgow Schoolboys, Running Backwards'.

  • Science and technology, like all original creations of the human spirit, are unpredictable. If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either topushitforwardor tostop it, isgambling inhumanlives.

    - FreemanJ(ohn) Dyson
      Disturbing the Universe, ch.1.

  • One of the strongest motives that lead people to give their lives to art and science is the urge to flee from everyday life, with its drab and deadly dullness and thus to unshackle the chains of one's own transient desires, which supplant one another in an interminable succession so long as the mind is fixed on the horizon of daily environment.

    - Albert Einstein
      Prologue to Max Planck Where is Science Going? (1933).

  • I read about writers' lives with the fascination of one slowing down to get a good look at an automobile accident.

    - Kaye Gibbons
      In the NewYork Times,7  Jan.

  • Chaque instant de notreVie est essentiellement irrempla c° able: sache parfois t'y concentrer uniquement. Every instant of Life is essentially irreplaceable: concentrate on it fully from time to time.

    - Andre   Paul Guillaume Gide
      Les Nourritures terrestres, pt.4.

  •    God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason.

    - Dag HjalmarAgne Carl Hammarskjo«  ld
      Va«  gmarken (translated by L Sjsy«  berg and W H  Auden as Markings,1964).

  • 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).

  • O! men with sisters dear, O! men with mothers and wives! It is not linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives!

    -Honorius of Autun
      'The Song of the Shirt'.

  • We are nearer today to the ideal of the abolition of poverty and fear from the lives of men and women than ever before in any land.

    - Herbert Clark Hoover
      Presidential campaign speech, 22 Oct.

  • Man lives by science as well as bread.

    -William James
      Vivisection.

  • The Europeans have scarcely visited any coast, but to gratify avarice, and extend corruption; to arrogate dominion without right, and practice cruelty without incentive† But there isreason to hope†that the light of the gospel will at last illuminate the sands of Africa, and the deserts of America, though its progress cannot but be slow when it is so much obstructed by the lives of Christians.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Introduction to The World Displayed.

  • It mattersnot howa mandies,but how helives.Theact of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

    - Samuel known as Dr Johnson Johnson
      Remark, 26 Oct. Quoted in  James Boswell  The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791), vol.2.

  • Discrimination is a hellhound that gnaws at negroes in every waking moment of their lives, to remind them that the lie of their inferiority is accepted as truth in the society dominating them.

    - Martin LutherJr King
      Speech at the Christian leadership conference,  Atlanta, 16  Aug.

  • A man lives well and happily until he begins to feel unwell. Then he feels worse because the climate allows him no chance of pulling himself togetherand then he dies.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Of life in Singapore. From Sea to Sea.

  • He would surprise them out of their jumpsome lives.

    - (Joseph) Rudyard Kipling
      Just So Stories,'How the Leopard Got His Spots'.

  •    We're all going to go crazy, living this epidemic every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it'slike, what we'regoing through.We're living through war, but where they're living it's peacetime, and we're all in the same country.

    - Larry (Lawrence) Kramer
      Ned speaking of gay men with  AIDS. The Normal Heart, act 2, sc.11.

  • La plupart des hommes emploient la meilleure partie de leur vie a'   rendre l'autre mise  rable. Most people spend the greater part of their lives making others miserable.

    -Jean de La Bruye'  re
      Les Caracte'  res ou les m½urs de ce sie'  cle,'De l'homme', no.102.

  • We breathe, we think, we conceive of our lives as narratives.

    - Christopher Charles Herbert Lehmann-Haupt
      On Peter Brooks Reading for thePlot (1984). In the NewYork Times,11  Jul.

  • Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

    - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
      'A Psalm of Life', stanza 7. In Knickerbocker or NewYork Monthly Magazine, Sep. Collected in Voices of the Night (1839).

  • For books are more than books, they are the life The very heart and core of ages past, The reason why men lived and worked and died, The essence and quintessence of their lives.

    - Amy Lowell
      'The Boston  Atheneum'.

  • So this is what our lives have been given to find, A language that can serve our purposes, A marvellous lucidity, a quality of fieryaery light, Flowing like clear water, flying like a bird Burning like a sunlit landscape.

    -Grieve
      'The Task'.

  • Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv'ryTay! Alas! I am very sorry to say That ninety lives have been taken away On the last Sabbath day of1879, Which will be remember'd for a very long time.

    -William McGonagall
      Poetic Gems,'The Tay Bridge Disaster', stanza1.

  • What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it.

    - Henry Valentine Miller
      Tropic of Capricorn.

  • Do such moments really mean, as they seem to, that we have a life of happiness with whichwe onlyoccasionally, knowingly, intersect? Do theyshed such light beforeand after that all that has happened in our livesor that we've made to happencan be dismissed?

    - Alice ne  e Laidlaw Munro
      The Progress of Love,'The Moon in the Orange Street Skating Rink'.

  • Look at the poor lives we lead.It is a wonder that we are so good as we are, not that we are so bad.

    - Florence Nightingale
      'Cassandra' pt.2, part of an unpublished work  Suggestions for Thought to Searchers after Religious Truth (revised and privately printed1859). Published as an appendix in Ray Strachey The Cause:  A Short History of the Women's Movement in Great Britain (1928).

  • Women Whose Lives Are Food, Men Whose Lives Are Money.

    -Myles na Gopaleen
       Title of poetry collection.

  • Strange interlude! Yes, our lives are merely strange dark interludes in the electrical display of God the Father!

    - Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
      Nina. Strange Interlude, pt.2, act 9.

  • Thus our twin souls in one shall grow, And teach the world new love, Redeem the age and sex, and show A flame fate dares not move: And courting death to be our friend, Our lives, together too, shall end.

    - Katherine ne  e Fowler Philips
      'To Mrs. M. A. at Parting'.

  • All political lives, unless they are cut off in mid-stream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.

    - (John) Enoch Powell
      Joseph Chamberlain.

  • Si notre vie est vagabonde, notre me  moire est se  dentaire. Even though our lives wander, our memories remain in one place.

    - Marcel Proust
    ' 1927  A la recherche du temps perdu,'LeTemps retrouve ' .

  • There may have been disillusionments in the lives of the medieval saints, but they would scarcely have been better pleased if they could have foreseen that their names would be associated nowadays chiefly with racehorses and the cheaper clarets.

    -Saki pseudonym of  Hector Hugh Munro
      Reginald,'Reginald at the Carlton'.

  • Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows. In the great hour of destiny they stand, Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows. Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives. Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.

    - Siegfried Louvain Sassoon
      'Dreamers'.

  • The question that isso clearly in many potential parents' minds: 'Why should we stunt our ambitions and impoverish our lives in order to be insulted and looked down upon in our old age?'

    -Joseph Alois Schumpeter
      Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, ch.14.

  • It's no fish ye're buyingit's men's lives.

    - Sir Walter Scott
      Maggie Mucklebackit to Oldbuck.TheAntiquary, ch.11.

  • The South African police would leave no stone unturned to see that nothing disturbed the even terror of their lives.

    -Tom (Thomas Ridley) Sharpe
      Indecent Exposure, ch.1.

  •    He lives, he wakes,'tis Death is dead, not he.

    - Percy Bysshe Shelley
    Adonais, stanza 41.

  • Time that is moved by little fidget wheels Is not myTime, the flood that does not flow. Between the double and the single bell Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells From the dark warship riding there below, I have lived many lives, and this one life Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

    - Adam Skirving
      Five Bells, title poem.The poem was written as an elegy for Joe Lynch, a friend who fell overboard from a Sydney ferry.

  • The names of those who in their lives fought for life, Who wore at their hearts the fire's centre. Born of the sun they travelled a short while towards the sun, And left the vivid air signed with their honour.

    - Sir Stephen Harold Spender
      'I Think Continually ofThose'.

  • Yet never can he die, but dying lives, And doth himself with sorrow new sustain, That death and life attonce unto him gives, And painful pleasure turns to pleasing pain.

    - Edmund Spenser
      The Faerie Queen, bk.3, canto10, stanza 60.

  • To live out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most complete and free.

    - Robert Louis Stevenson
      Travels with a Donkey,'A Night Among the Pines'.

  • If love were what the rose is, And I were like the leaf, Our lives would grow together In sad or singing weather, Blown fields or flowered closes, Green pleasure or grey grief.

    - Algernon Charles Swinburne
      Poems and Ballads,'A Match'.

  • There are some lives duller Than dusty glass

    - Ishikawa Takuboku
      Ichiaku no Suna (translated by Sakanishi Shio).

  • The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

    - Henry David Thoreau
      Walden, or Life in theWoods,'Economy'.

  • The national sport of England is obstacle-racing. People fill their rooms with useless and cumbersome furniture, and spend the rest of their lives trying to dodge it.

    - Sir Herbert (Draper) Beerbohm Tree
    Quoted in Hesketh Pearson Beerbohm (1956).

  • For sheer courage and endurance, physical and mental, the two men stand together as examples of what toughness the body will find, if the spirit within it is tough; and as very worthy representatives of our national capacity for individual enterprise, which it is hoped even themodern craze for regulating everydetail of our lives will never stifle.

    - Archibald Percival, 1st Earl Wavell
      Of F Spencer Chapman andT E Lawrence. Quoted in foreword to F Spencer Chapman TheJungle is Neutral (1950).

  • The Life and Loves of a She-Devil.

    - Fay originally Franklin Birkinshaw Weldon
      Title of novel.

  •    The events in our lives happen in a sequence in time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarilyperhaps not possiblychronological† It isthe continuousthread of revelation.

    - Eudora Welty
      OneWriter's Beginnings, II.'Learning to See'.

  • Miss Farish, who was accustomed, in the way of happiness, to such scant light as shone through the cracks of other people's lives.

    - Edith Newbold ne  e Jones Wharton
      The House of Mirth, bk.1, ch.14.

  • And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, None knew so well as I: For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.

    - Oscar Fingal O'FlahertieWills Wilde
      The Ballad of Reading Gaol, pt.3, stanza 37.

  • I am not interested in the ephemeralsuch subjects as the adulteries of dentists. I am interested in those things that repeat and repeat in the lives of the millions.

    -Thornton Niven Wilder
      In the NewYorkTimes, 6 Mar.

  • These people in the senseless hurry of their idle lives do not read books, they merely snatch a glance at them that they may talk about them. And even if this were not so, never forget what I believe was observed by Coleridge, that every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great or original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.

    -William Wordsworth
      Letter to Lady Beaumont, 21 May, on his Poems inTwo Volumes (1807). In The Letters ofWilliamWordsworth edited by Alan G Hill (1984).

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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