Life Quotes
Livin' la vida loca.
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Life Quotes
Every person on earth is alive...or was once. That's a lot of living to talk about. Click on any life quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
"A sense of the fundamental decencies is parceled out unequally at birth"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Accursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even YOU turned from me in disgust?"Source: Frankenstein | Author: Mary Shelley
"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."Source: Blade Runner | Speaker: Roy Batty
"And I hold within my hand Grains of the golden sand"Source: A Dream within a Dream | Author: Edgar Allan Poe
"And I hope she'll be a fool—that's the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"And in that moment, I swear we were infinite."Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Author: Stephen Chbosky
"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"And that's how you play "Get the Guests.""Source: Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? | Speaker: George
"Are you gonna bark all day, little doggie, or are you gonna bite?"Source: Reservoir Dogs | Speaker: Mr. Blonde
"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."Source: Gone with the Wind | Author: Margaret Mitchell
"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."Source: The Fault in our Stars | Author: John Green
"As long as the heart beats, as long as body and soul keep together."Source: Journey to the Center of the Earth | Author: Jules Verne
"Ask her if she still keeps all her kings in the back row."Source: The Catcher in the Rye | Author: J. D. Salinger
"Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy be still a man."Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | Author: David Hume
"Because I could not stop for death — He kindly stopped for me —"Source: Because I could not stop for Death | Author: Emily Dickinson
"Because only one thing counts in this life: get them to sign on the line which is dotted."Source: Glengarry Glen Ross | Speaker: Blake
"Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are."Source: The Alchemist | Author: Paulo Coelho
"But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was."Source: Luke 10:30, 33-34 | Author: Luke
"But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore."Source: Slaughterhouse-Five | Author: Kurt Vonnegut
"But there is no joy in Mudville—mighty Casey has struck out."Source: Casey at the Bat | Author: Ernest Lawrence Thayer
"But this is a truth that applies to the human race and to no particular race of men."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"But you just gotta understand that that’s the way it is and keep on steppin'."Source: The Watsons Go to Birmingham | Author: Christopher Paul Curtis
"Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?"Source: The Book of Jeremiah | Speaker: The Prophet Jeremiah
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents"Source: Little Women | Author: Louisa May Alcott
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."Source: "Loving Your Enemies" Sermon, Christmas Day 1957 | Speaker: Martin Luther King Jr.
"Dave, stop. Stop, will you? Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave? Stop, Dave. I'm afraid."Source: 2001: A Space Odyssey | Speaker: HAL 9000
"Dead flies cause the ointment of the apothecary to send forth a stinking savour."Source: Ecclesiastes 10:1 | Author: Narrator
"Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."Source: The Catcher in the Rye | Author: J. D. Salinger
"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise."Source: Poor Richard's Almanack | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."Source: A Woman of No Importance | Author: Oscar Wilde
"Everybody in the whole cell block was dancing to the jailhouse rock!"Source: "Jailhouse Rock" | Speaker: Elvis Presley
"Faith is namely this paradox that the single individual is higher than the universal."Source: Fear and Trembling | Author: Søren Kierkegaard
"Flushed with his impassioned gibberish, he saw himself standing alone on the last barrier of civilization."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing."Source: The Plague | Author: Albert Camus
"From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."Source: Critique of the Gotha Program | Author: Karl Marx
"From my infancy I was imbued with high hopes and a lofty ambition."Source: Frankenstein | Author: Mary Shelley
"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Gatsby, who represented everything for which I have an unaffected scorn"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Good golly, Miss Molly, sure like to ball."Source: Good Golly Miss Molly | Speaker: Little Richard
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world"Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"Happiness can be found in the darkest of times."Source: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Speaker: Albus Dumbledore
"He ain't mean," said Slim. "I can tell a mean guy from a mile off."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish."Source: The Old Man and the Sea | Author: Ernest Hemingway
"He was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so peculiarly American"Source: The Great Gatsby | Speaker: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"He who spares his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him promptly."Source: Proverbs 13:24 | Speaker: Narrator
"I always come back, and in my heart I love her all the time."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I am one of the few honest people that I have ever known."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman."Source: Televised Press Conference | Speaker: Bill Clinton
"I do not wish any reward but to know I have done the right thing."Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"I get by with a little help from my friends."Source: With a Little Help from My Friends | Speaker: The Beatles
"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers."Source: A Streetcar Named Desire | Author: Tennessee Williams
"I have no notion of loving people by halves; it is not my nature."Source: Northanger Abbey | Author: Jane Austen
"I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I'll go to it laughing."Source: Moby-Dick | Author: Herman Melville
"I may have lost my heart, but not my self-control."Source: Emma (1996 adaptation) | Speaker: Emma Woodhouse
"I said you wanna be startin' somethin', you gotta be startin' something."Source: "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'" | Speaker: Michael Jackson
"I started Early—Took my Dog / and visited the Sea"Source: I started Early—Took my Dog | Author: Emily Dickinson
"I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay, watching the tide roll away."Source: (Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay | Speaker: Otis Redding
"I've got all my life to live and I've got all my love to give"Source: I Will Survive | Speaker: Gloria Gaynor
"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger."Source: Wuthering Heights | Author: Emily Brontë
"If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?"Source: "Free Bird" | Speaker: Lynyrd Skynyrd
"If I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an' work, an' no trouble."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"If one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another."Source: Mansfield Park | Author: Jane Austen
"If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price."Source: Rabbit, Run | Author: John Updike
"If you want to know what a man's like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals."Source: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | Author: J. K. Rowling
"In recognizing the humanity of our fellow beings, we pay ourselves the highest tribute."Source: Furman v. Georgia | Author: Thurgood Marshall
"In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart."Source: The Diary of Anne Frank | Author: Anne Frank
"In the beginning there was faith—which is childish; trust—which is vain; and illusion—which is dangerous."Source: Night | Author: Elie Wiesel
"In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes."Source: 1789 Letter | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"In vain have I struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you."Source: Pride and Prejudice | Author: Jane Austen
"Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?"Source: A Clockwork Orange | Author: Anthony Burgess
"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."Source: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | Author: J. K. Rowling
"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known."Source: A Tale of Two Cities | Author: Charles Dickens
"It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels."Source: Mrs. Dalloway | Author: Virginia Woolf
"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."Source: Pride and Prejudice | Author: Jane Austen
"It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied."Source: Utilitarianism | Author: John Stuart Mill
"It is with considerable difficulty that I remember the original era of my being"Source: Frankenstein | Author: Mary Shelley
"It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be."Source: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | Author: J.K. Rowling
"It occurred to me that there was no difference between men, in intelligence or race, so profound as the difference between the sick and the well."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"It was many and many a year ago, In a kingdom by the sea"Source: Annabel Lee | Author: Edgar Allan Poe
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times."Source: A Tale of Two Cities | Author: Charles Dickens
"It's been a hard day's night."Source: "A Hard Day's Night" | Speaker: John Lennon and Paul McCartney
"It's better to look at the sky than live there."Source: Breakfast at Tiffany's | Author: Truman Capote
"James Gatz—that was really, or at least legally, his name."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch."Source: Matthew 15:14 | Author: Matthew
"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper."Source: Essay Concerning Human Understanding | Author: John Locke
"Life is pain. Anybody that says different is selling something."Source: The Princess Bride | Author: William Goldman
"Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Source: The Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Logic is no doubt unshakable, but it can't withstand a person who wants to live."Source: The Trial | Author: Franz Kafka
"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains."Source: The Social Contract | Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing."Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Author: Ken Kesey
"Mrs Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself."Source: Mrs Dalloway | Author: Virginia Woolf
"My bone cleaveth to my skin and to my flesh, and I am escaped with the skin of my teeth."Source: Job 19:20 | Author: Job
"My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind."Source: Declaration of Sentiments, The Liberator Magazine | Author: William Lloyd Garrison
"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die."Source: The Princess Bride | Speaker: Inigo Montoya
"My own house was an eyesore, but it was a small eyesore"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"My soul has grown deep like the rivers."Source: The Negro Speaks of Rivers | Author: Langston Hughes
"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."Source: Game of Thrones | Speaker: Tyrion Lannister
"No, Lennie, I ain't mad. I never been mad, and I ain' now. That's a thing I want ya to know."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"Nothing is hopeless; we must hope for everything."Source: A Wrinkle in Time | Author: Madeleine L'Engle
"Now what the hell ya suppose is eatin' them two guys?"Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"O my Luve's like a Red, Red Rose That's newly sprung in June"Source: A Red, Red Rose | Author: Robert Burns
"Oh, the things you can find if you don't stay behind!"Source: On Beyond Zebra! | Author: Dr. Seuss
"Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo"Source: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man | Author: James Joyce
"One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them."Source: Brave New World | Author: Aldous Huxley
"One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought"Source: Frankenstein | Author: Mary Shelley
"One must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can't do anything about them"Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Put the sword back into its place. All those who use the sword will die by the sword."Source: Matthew 26:52 | Speaker: Jesus
"Rage, rage against the dying of the light"Source: Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night | Author: Dylan Thomas
"Real courage is [...] when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Religion is the opium of the people."Source: A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right (Unfinished) | Author: Karl Marx
"Saturday night's alright for fighting."Source: Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting | Speaker: Elton John
"Serving on a jury forces a man to make up his mind and declare himself about something. Men don't like to do that. Sometimes it's unpleasant."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."Source: "A Girl I Knew" | Author: J.D. Salinger
"so much depends upon a red wheel barrow"Source: The Red Wheelbarrow | Author: William Carlos Williams
"So we drove on toward death through the cooling twilight."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it."Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"That the sun will not rise tomorrow implies no more contradiction than that it will rise."Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding | Author: David Hume
"The average man don't like trouble and danger."Source: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"The Brain—is wider than the Sky—"Source: The Brain—is wider than the Sky— | Author: Emily Dickinson
"The eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg are blue and gigantic—their irises are one yard high"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The hell with the rabbits. That's all you can ever remember is them rabbits."Source: Of Mice and Men | Author: John Steinbeck
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven."Source: Paradise Lost | Author: John Milton
"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."Source: Dune | Author: Frank Herbert
"The officer nodded, as if a question had been answered."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"The one thing that doesn't abide by majority rule is a person's conscience."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars."Source: On the Road | Author: Jack Kerouac
"The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on."Source: The Old Curiosity Shop | Author: Charles Dickens
"The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination."Source: Unknown | Speaker: Albert Einstein
"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."Source: A Farewell to Arms | Author: Ernest Hemingway
"The world, that understandable and lawful world, was slipping away."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"There are few people whom I really love and still fewer of whom I think well."Source: Pride and Prejudice | Author: Jane Austen
"There are just some kind of men who—who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one"Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"There are places I remember all my life, though some have changed."Source: "In My Life" | Speaker: The Beatles
"There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment."Source: The Truth About Forever | Author: Sarah Dessen
"They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God | Author: Zora Neale Hurston
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."Source: The Second Coming | Author: William Butler Yeats
"Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair"Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper."Source: The Hollow Men | Author: T.S. Eliot
"Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."Source: In Memoriam | Author: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."Source: The Soul of Man Under Socialism | Author: Oscar Wilde
"To the rolling of the bells- Of the bells, bells, bells"Source: The Bells | Author: Edgar Allan Poe
"Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."Source: The Pride of the Yankees | Speaker: Lou Gehrig
"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference."Source: The Road Not Taken | Author: Robert Frost
"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"Very superstitious, writing's on the wall. Very superstitious, ladder's 'bout to fall."Source: Superstition | Speaker: Stevie Wonder
"Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink."Source: The Rime of the Ancient Mariner | Author: Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"We accept the love we think we deserve."Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower | Author: Stephen Chbosky
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."Source: Lady Windermere's Fan | Author: Oscar Wilde
"We just got to go on, that's all. That's what grownups would do."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"We've got to have rules and obey them. After all, we're not savages. We're English, and the English are best at everything."Source: Lord of the Flies | Author: William Golding
"What a treacherous thing to believe a person is more than a person."Source: Paper Towns | Author: John Green
"What is the point of worrying oneself too much about what one could or could not have done to control the course one's life took?"Source: The Remains of the Day | Author: Kazuo Ishiguro
"What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder."Source: Matthew 19:6 | Speaker: Jesus
"Whatever we had missed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past."Source: My Ántonia | Author: Willa Cather
"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"When people ask me if I went to film school, I tell them, "No, I went to films.""Source: Interview with Andrew Walker of BBC News | Speaker: Quentin Tarantino
"When Pilate saw that he could prevail nothing, but that rather a tumult was made, he took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this just person: see ye to it."Source: Matthew 27:24 | Author: Matthew
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show."Source: David Copperfield | Author: Charles Dickens
"Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"Who was I? What was I? Whence did I come? What was my destination?"Source: Frankenstein | Author: Mary Shelley
"Whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."Source: John 3:16 | Speaker: Jesus
"Why are there beings at all, instead of nothing?"Source: Introduction to Metaphysics | Author: Martin Heidegger
"Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing."Source: Spoken at Packers' Training Camp | Speaker: Vince Lombardi
"You can't live forever; you can't live forever."Source: The Great Gatsby | Speaker: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"You don't love someone because they're perfect, you love them in spite of the fact that they're not."Source: My Sister's Keeper | Author: Jodi Picoult
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do."Source: You Learn by Living: Eleven Keys for a More Fulfilling Life | Author: Eleanor Roosevelt
"You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from."Source: No Country for Old Men | Author: Cormac McCarthy
"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view […] until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."Source: To Kill a Mockingbird | Author: Harper Lee
"You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope...I have loved none but you."Source: Persuasion | Author: Jane Austen
"You're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, so...get on your way!"Source: Oh, the Places You'll Go! | Author: Dr. Seuss
"You're worth the whole damn bunch put together."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald