Quotes on Life

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

He has all of the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

I cannot think of a single field in biology or medicine in which we can claim genuine understanding, and it seems to me the more we learn about living creatures, especially ourselves, the stranger life becomes.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

It is always wise to look ahead, but difficult to look further than you can see.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

My most brilliant achievement was my ability to be able to persuade my wife to marry me.

We are not creatures of circumstance; we are creators of circumstance.

Only the fairy tale equates changelessness with happiness...Permanence means paralysis and death. Only, in movement, with all its pain, is life.

It is not enough to take steps which may someday lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.

Life is a festival only to the wise.

Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

The expectation that every neurotic phenomenon can be cured may, I suspect, be derived from the layman's belief that the neuroses are something quite unnecessary which have no right whatever to exist. Whereas in fact they are severe, constitutionally fixed illnesses, which rarely restrict themselves to only a few attacks but persist as a rule over long periods throughout life.

Laws just or unjust may govern men's actions. Tyrannies may restrain or regulate their words. The machinery of propaganda may pack their minds with falsehood and deny them truth for many generations of time. But the soul of man thus held in trance or frozen in a long night can be awakened by a spark coming from God knows where and in a moment the whole structure of lies and oppression is on trial for its life.

The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.

They never open their mouths without subtracting from the sum of human knowledge.

The sure way of knowing nothing about life is to try to make oneself useful.

Dancing is a very crude attempt to get into the rhythm of life.

With the intellect I always have always shall overcome, but that is not the half of the work. The life, the life Oh my God! shall the life never be sweet!

We do not live an equal life, but one of contrasts and patchwork; now a little joy, then a sorrow, now a sin, then a generous or brave action.