Quotes: Life (20)

Life and death 357 Goals still matter, even near death. "It is important what a man still plans at the end." Elias Canetti. 1978. Gross, ed. Oxford Book of Aphorisms.

Life and Death 55 Why do we groan about life, yet are sorry when people are relieved from it by death? "Thus we groan under life, and bewail those who are relieved from it." Sir Richard Steele, “On Recollections of Childhood; Death of Parents; First Love.” 1710. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and death 315 Who would even want to begin to live if all he thought about was death? "Who would find heart enough to begin to live, if he dallied with the consideration of death?" Robert Louis Stevenson, “Aes Triplex.” 1878. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and death 409 A day moth's day of living. "It was a pleasant morning, mid-September, mild, benignant, yet with keener breath than that of the summer months...possibilities of pleasure seemed that morning so enormous and so various that to have only a moth’s part of life and a day moth’s at that, appeared a hard fate, and his zest in enjoying his meager opportunities to the full, pathetic...it seemed as if a fiber, very thin but pure, of the enormous energy of the world had been thrust into his frail and diminutive body...he was little or nothing but life...was as if someone had taken a tiny bead of pure life and decking it as lightly as possible with down and feathers, had set it dancing and zig zagging to show us the true nature of life." Virginia Woolf. “The Death of the Moth.” 1942. [Posthumous] Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and death 221 Why is the desire to live strongest as we grow old and closer to death? Metchnikoff "...it is necessary to find out...why [man] must grow old and die when his desire to live is strongest." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Life and death 221 We live in good health and then we crave to die. Metchnikoff "--the thing to do is to find a way to live long enough in good health until we shall really crave to die." DeKruif, Microbe Hunters.

Life and death 471 I finally got to know him, and then he was a meaningless corpse. "For the first time he bridged the distance between his few contacts with Hearn and the last glimpse he had had of him, the bloody meaningless corpse." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

Life and death 529 Even though he was dead, he was very much alive to us. "Dead, he was as much alive to them as he had ever been." Mailer, The Naked and the Dead.

Life and the universe 447 A view of the universe as a frost flower. "Not the shapeless stone which seems to be merely waiting to be acted upon but the snow flake or the frost flower is the true representative of the lifeless universe as opposed to ours…represent plainly, as the stone does not, the fixed and perfect system of organization which includes the sun and its planets, includes therefore the earth itself, but against which life has set up its seemingly puny opposition." Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.

Life and the universe 448 The eternal laws of the inanimate. "The snow flake eternally obeys its one and only law: ‘Be thou six pointed’; the planets their one and only: ‘Travel thou in an ellipse.’ " Joseph Wood Krutch. “The Colloid and the Crystal.” 1950. Gross, ed. Essays.