Quotes: Life (04)

Life 31 What a fine comedy life would be if only one were not a part of the play. "What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it." Diderot. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 31 "Life is short, but its ills make it seem long." Publius Syrus. 1st century B.C. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 32 "Life is one long process of getting tired." Samuel Butler. 1912. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 37 If people were granted their wishes, life would not be any better. "It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish." Heraclitus. 500 B.C. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 38 When we think we have won the day, look out! "It is the favorite stratagem of our passions to sham a retreat, and to turn sharp round upon us at the moment we have made up our minds that the day is our own." George Eliot. 1859. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 39 "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." Pope. 1727. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 43 Opposites are vital to progress in life. "Without contraries is no progression; attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human existence." Blake. 1790-3. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.


Life 45 We ignore circumstances and they grow to require our involvement. "Circumstances are like clouds continually gathering and bursting--while we are laughing the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events--while we are laughing it sprouts, it grows, and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck." Keats. 1819. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 46 "Life is a maze...." Cyril Connolly. 1944. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life 46 Is life simply a maze without end? "How if there were no center at all [to the maze], but just one alley after another, and the whole world a labyrinth without end or issue?" Robert Louis Stevenson. 1881. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.