Life Quotes

It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen's case, whereby somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else's thorns in addition to his own. ~ Hard Times by Charles Dickens "I could die for you. But I couldn't, and wouldn't, live for you." ~ The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand "But you see, I have, let's say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I've chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I'm only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards--and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one." ~ The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand "Man came into this world, not to sit down and muse, not to befog himself with vain subtleties, but to gird up his loins and to work." ~ The Confidence-Man by Herman Melville "It's as large as life, and twice as natural!" ~ Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." ~ The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. Tolkien She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life--one scratched on the wall. ~ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. ~ Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf "Hardships make or break people." ~ Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines? How many pend their whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, in tending them by night and day? Is it not plain that the machines are gaining ground upon us, when we reflect on the increasing number of those who are bound down to them as slaves, and of those who devote their whole souls to the advancement of the mechanical kingdom? ~ Erewhon by Samuel Butler