These fellow-mortals, every one, must be accepted as they are: you can neither straighten their noses, nor brighten their wit, nor rectify their dispositions; and it is these people--amongst whom your life is passed--that it is needful you should tolerate, pity, and love: it is these more or less ugly, stupid, inconsistent people whose movements of goodness you should be able to admire--for whom you should cherish all possible hopes, all possible patience.
~
Adam Bede
by
George Eliot
"The natur o' things doesn't change, though it seems as if one's own life was nothing but change. The square o' four is sixteen, and you must lengthen your lever in proportion to your weight, is as true when a man's miserable as when he's happy; and the best o' working is, it gives you a grip hold o' things outside your own lot."
~
Adam Bede
by
George Eliot
But paying is part of the game of life: it is the joy of buying that we crave.
~
The Battle Of The Strong
by
Gilbert Parker
Man is born in a day, and he dies in a day, and the thing is easily over; but to have a sick heart for three-fourths of one's lifetime is simply to have death renewed every morning; and life at that price is not worth living.
~
The Translation of a Savage
by
Gilbert Parker
"The real business of life is trying to understand each other."
~
Northern Lights
by
Gilbert Parker
"We do keep looking ahead to things as if they'd finish something, but when we get TO them, they don't finish anything. They're just part of going on."
~
Alice Adams
by
Booth Tarkington
The old couple had come round to that tragic imitation of the dawn of life when husband and wife, having lost or scattered all those who were their intimates, find themselves face to face and alone once more, their work done, and the end nearing fast. Those who have reached that stage in sweetness and love, who can change their winter into a gentle, Indian summer, have come as victors through the ordeal of life.
~
The Brown Hand
by
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
For the first time she was vaguely perceiving that life is everlasting movement.
~
Alice Adams
by
Booth Tarkington
The whole scene impressed Venters as a wild, austere, and mighty manifestation of nature. And as it somehow reminded him of his prospect in life, so it suddenly resembled the woman near him, only in her there were greater beauty and peril, a mystery more unsolvable, and something nameless that numbed his heart and dimmed his eye.
~
Riders of the Purple Sage
by
Zane Grey
"Love of man for woman--love of woman for man. That's the nature, the meaning, the best of life itself."
~
Riders of the Purple Sage
by
Zane Grey