“Difficult is it to obtain birth as a human being; difficult is the life of mortals.”
Buddha
GratitudePrecious Life
Life Quotes
100 FAMOUS QUOTES · LIFE
Life Quotes
Read the best life quotes on living well, time and meaning from Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Thiruvalluvar, Kabir, Basho, Emerson, Stevenson and more.
“The meanest folly is to think that what is fleeting will last forever.”
Thiruvalluvar
ImpermanenceWisdom
“Wealth comes like a crowd gathering at a theatre, and departs like the crowd after the show.”
Thiruvalluvar
WealthImpermanence
“Time, which seems so harmless, is a saw that cuts away at life.”
Thiruvalluvar
TimeAgeing
“Yesterday a man was, today he is not: this is the great wonder of the world.”
Thiruvalluvar
MortalityWonder
“Men make countless plans, not knowing if they will live another moment.”
Thiruvalluvar
UncertaintyPresent Moment
“The soul leaves the body as a bird flies from the shell it breaks.”
Thiruvalluvar
SoulMortality
“Death is like sleep; birth is like waking from sleep.”
Thiruvalluvar
Life And DeathPhilosophy
“The clay says to the potter, 'Why do you knead me? A day will come when I will knead you.'”
Kabir
HumilityMortality
“Like a bubble on the water is this human life.”
Kabir
ImpermanenceShort Quotes
“Life is fleeting like a ripple on the water.”
Bhartrihari
ImpermanenceTime
“Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength.”
Rabindranath Tagore
Self RelianceStrength
“The rose and the thorn, and sorrow and gladness are linked together.”
Saadi
Joy And SorrowBalance
“If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.”
Yoshida Kenko
ImpermanenceBeauty
“Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.”
Samuel Johnson
DesireHuman Nature
“To live is not merely to breathe; it is to act.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
ActionLiving Fully
“The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel.”
Horace Walpole
PerspectiveEmotions
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
Voltaire
OptimismResilience
“Life is but a day; a fragile dewdrop on its perilous way from a tree's summit.”
John Keats
FragilityPoetry
“Life is a festival only to the wise.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
WisdomJoy
“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.”
Henry David Thoreau
Self DiscoveryJourney
“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
George Bernard Shaw
PurposeLegacy
“My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle.”
The Bible (Job 7:6)
TimeBrevity
“All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.”
The Bible (Isaiah 40:6)
ImpermanenceFaith
“And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
The Bible (Genesis 2:7)
CreationSoul