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70+ quotes about life from acclaimed authors

70+ quotes about life from acclaimed authors

life (noun): "the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body"

Though it's hard to argue with Merriam-Webster, we all know that life means so much more than the standard dictionary definition—or, at least, we want it to. If you're searching for insights into the meaning of life, or words of inspiration for living your life more meaningfully, there's no better source than authors of great works of literature.

From Shakespeare to Saul Bellow, from Jane Austen to Alice Walker, from Charles Dickens to Kazuo Ishiguro, from Ralph Ellison to Stephen King, outstanding authors have a lot to say about life—its contradictions, challenges. joys, and lessons. Below, we've gathered 70+ of the best quotes about life from authors of some of the best books ever written.

On life's paradoxes and mysteries

On finding purpose and meaning in life

  • "You must live life with the full knowledge that your actions will remain. We are creatures of consequence." -Zadie Smith, White Teeth

  • "You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live." -Becky Chambers, A Psalm for the Wild-Built

  • "Wasn't that the story of her life? ... You make the wrong choices, you make mistakes, you disappear for a decade, you marry the wrong man. You get hurt. You lose sight of who you are, or of who you want to be, and then you remember, and if you’re lucky you have sisters or friends who remind you when you forget your best intentions. You come back to yourself, again and again. You try, and fail, and try again." -Jennifer Weiner, Mrs. Everything

  • "Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever." -Amy Tan, The Joy Luck Club

  • "Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat." -Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

  • "To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation." -Yann Martel, Life of Pi

  • "Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty. Maybe that was the only meaning that mattered. To be the world, witnessing itself." -Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

  • "Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it." -Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

  • "Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand." -Margery Williams, The Velveteen Rabbit

  • "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire." -Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List

  • "A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." -Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan

  • "Unexpected intrusions of beauty. This is what life is." -Saul Bellow, Herzog

  • "You endure what is unbearable and you bear it. That is all." -Cassandra Clare, The Clockwork Princess

  • "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? Surely it is enough that the likes of you and I at least try to make our small contribution count for something true and worthy. And if some of us are prepared to sacrifice much in life in order to pursue such aspirations, surely that in itself, whatever the outcome, cause for pride and contentment." -Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day

  • "A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well—or ill?" -John Steinbeck, East of Eden

  • "What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" -George Eliot, Middlemarch

  • "The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42." -Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

On living life to the fullest

On life and death

  • "Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living." -Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

  • “Even death has a heart.” -Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

  • "He felt at times as if his life were something he was only waiting to use up, so that, at the end of each day, he would settle into bed with a sigh, knowing he had worked through a small bit more of his existence and had moved another centimeter toward its natural conclusion." -Hanya Yanagihara, To Paradise

  • "In my mind are all the tides, their seasons, their ebbs and their flows." -Susanna Clarke, Piranesi

  • "We always think there’s enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if.'" -Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

  • "This is your life and it's ending one minute at a time." -Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

  • "All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts." -William Shakespeare, As You Like It

  • "Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever." -Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

  • "We try to preserve life, even when we know it has no chance of enduring its body. We feed it, keep it comfortable, bathe it, medicate it, caress it, even sing to it. We tend to these basic functions not because we are brave or selfless but because, like breath, it is the most fundamental act of our species: to sustain the body until time leaves it behind." -Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

  • "Anyone ... who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight." -Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

  • "Appreciate what you have now, because there may be no tomorrow." -Jodi Picoult, The Book of Two Ways

  • "No one said living isn't a pretty chancy business ... No one gets out of here alive." -Chris Bohjalian, Midwives

  • "What I'm not sure about, is if our lives have been so different from the lives of the people we save. We all complete. Maybe none of us really understand what we've live through, or feel we've had enough time." -Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

  • "The same substance composes us—the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star—we are all one, all moving to the same end." -P. L. Travers, Mary Poppins

  • "We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep." -William Shakespeare, The Tempest

  • "You can cling to this world for a thousand years and still be plucked out of it in a breath." -Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

  • "Somewhere, you see, in the river of time, I am already alive." -Akwaeke Emezi, The Death of Vivek Oji