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Quotes about life, verified at the source

Updated on How we verify quotes

What to do with one’s life, and how to look at it? The authors gathered here answer in a sentence, grave or smiling. Every quote has been checked word for word in the original work, with its source.

To copy for a speech, a notebook, a card or a message of encouragement.

Contents

Formal

Originally in Arabic · English translation

I have seen death strike like a blind she-camel: it kills whom it hits, and whom it misses lives to grow old.

Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, معلقة زهير بن أبي سلمى, من أبيات الحكمة في ختام المعلقة Sourced text Read the original and its meaning
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The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, “Economy”, 1854 Verified quote Read its story
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Heartfelt

Originally in Arabic · English translation

A night like the waves of the sea lowered its curtains over me, bringing every kind of care to try me.

Imru’ al-Qays, معلقة امرئ القيس Sourced text Read the original and its meaning
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Originally in Arabic · English translation

I came without knowing from where, but I came.

Elia Abu Madi, الطلاسم, مطلع القصيدة Sourced text Read the original and its meaning
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We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act IV, scene 1 (Prospero), 1611 Verified quote Read its story
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Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V, scene 5 (Macbeth), 1606 Verified quote Read its story
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Never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII, 1624 Verified quote Read its story
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Inspiring

I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley, Invictus, last lines; written in 1875, first published untitled in A Book of Verses (1888), 1888 Verified quote Read its story
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Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, A Psalm of Life (Voices of the Night), stanza 2, 1839 Verified quote Read its story
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Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, the last of life, for which the first was made.

Robert Browning, Rabbi Ben Ezra (Dramatis Personae), opening lines, 1864 Verified quote Read its story
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Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity!

Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, 1854 Verified quote Read its story
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I went to the woods because I wished to 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, Where I Lived, and What I Lived For, 1854 Verified quote Read its story
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Traveller, there is no road; the road is made by walking.

Antonio Machado, Proverbios y cantares, XXIX (Campos de Castilla), 1912 Verified quote Read its story
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Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (Mountain Interval), 1916 Verified quote Read its story
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What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?

George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter 72 (Dorothea), 1872 Verified quote Read its story
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All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.

William Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, scene 7 (Jaques), 1599 Verified quote Read its story
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Short

Originally in Arabic · English translation

Be patient and steadfast through every misfortune, and know that a human being is not immortal.

Abu al-Atahiya, تفسير القرطبي (الجامع لأحكام القرآن), أبيات أوردها القرطبي منسوبة إلى أبي العتاهية، عند تفسير الآيتين 156 و157 من سورة البقرة Sourced text Read the original and its meaning
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Originally in Arabic · English translation

I am weary of life’s burdens; whoever lives eighty years, indeed, grows weary.

Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma, معلقة زهير بن أبي سلمى, من أبيات الحكمة في ختام المعلقة؛ البيت كما أورده المعري في رسالة الغفران Sourced text Read the original and its meaning
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Originally in Arabic · English translation

The days will show you what you did not know, and news will come from one you did not provision for the journey.

Tarafah ibn al-Abd, معلقة طرفة بن العبد, من أبيات الحكمة في المعلقة Sourced text Read the original and its meaning
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I am a part of all that I have met.

Alfred Tennyson, Ulysses, 1842 Verified quote Read its story
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To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man under Socialism, 1891 Verified quote Read its story
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The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden; or, Life in the Woods, “Economy”, 1854 Verified quote Read its story
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