“It is, in short, unbearable to exist without some view of life as a whole, for one finds oneself daily in predicaments in which some sort of a pointer is absolutely necessary.”

Human beings need patterns and examples through which to interpret experience · The English Novel

• Life
• Literature
• Wisdom

“This is because the novel has become indispensable to the understanding of life.”

A concise statement of Ford’s belief in fiction as a means of understanding human experience · The English Novel

• Knowledge
• Life
• Literature

“We have enough working days; the comfort of life is worth more than thousands in silver and gold.”

Original: Mae digon o ddyddiau gwaith gennym; mae cysur bywyd yn fwy o werth na miloedd o arian ac aur. — Placing rest and the comfort of life above material wealth · Sermon, Sul y Blodau, 31 March 1903 (Welsh)

• Life
• Wisdom
• Work

“Or do I merely see things differently because I lack this kind of bravado, and can imagine and wish for another task in life than to let a shell tear me to pieces.”

Original: Oder sehe ich nur die Dinge anders, weil mir diese Art der Bravour abgeht und ich mir schließlich noch eine andere Aufgabe im Leben denke und wünsche, als mich von einer Granate in Stücke reißen zu lassen. — A stark statement of his desire for a life and purpose beyond warfare · Letter to Thea Sternheim from the front, early October 1914 (German)

• Life
• Mortality
• War

“Everywhere the body is worshipped. Beside them we are but unsubstantial spirits.”

A humorous cultural comparison prompted by German enthusiasm for food and drink · Letter to Anna Harte, Crefeld, 1878

• Humour
• Life

“What surprises me as much as anything else in life is that the more we read books and talk, the farther we get away from the truth.”

A provocative defence of experience over second-hand knowledge · Autobiography, Later Days

• Life
• Reading
• Truth

“Let us not judge life by its number of breaths, but by the number of times that breath is held, or lost, either under a deep emotion caused by love, or when we stand before an object of interest or beauty.”

Measuring a life by moments of wonder and deep feeling rather than mere duration · Autobiography, Later Days

• Beauty
• Life
• Love

“The first wealth is health. Sickness is poor-spirited, and cannot serve any one: it must husband its resources to live.”

Places physical vitality before conventional measures of wealth and success · Essay, Power, The Conduct of Life (1860)

• Hope
• Life

“Life, indeed, ought to be a constant state of preparation for death; but few make it so, and I feel I have not so done.”

A sober acknowledgement of mortality and the difficulty of living with it constantly in mind · Private reflection, 1834

• Death
• Life
• Mortality

“Life is a journey that must be travelled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.”

A wry acknowledgement that endurance matters more than comfortable circumstances · Prose work, commonly attributed to The Citizen of the World

• Hope
• Life

“Poetry is at bottom a criticism of life.”

Emphasising poetry’s power to examine human experience and values · The Study of Poetry (essay)

• Life
• Poetry
• Truth

“Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may be successful, it must be habitual and uninterrupted.”

Suggesting that sustaining illusions is part of the human art of living · Essay

• Life
• Truth

“The passions are the winds of life; the sails of the vessel are spread by them, and without them the vessel would scarcely move.”

Presenting emotion as a force that gives human life movement · Essay on the Passions

• Emotion
• Life

“Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same as it ever was. There is absolute and unbroken continuity.”

Finding continuity and meaning amid the disruption of death · Sermon, Death the King of Terrors

• Death
• Hope
• Life

“Life is not a spectacle or a feast; it is a predicament.”

A sober reminder that living involves difficulty as well as enjoyment · Philosophical essay

• Life
• Mortality
• Truth

“I have never done anything but dream. This, and this alone, has been the meaning of my life.”

Treating dreaming not as escape but as the central substance of existence · The Book of Disquiet, prose fragment

• Dreams
• Life

“The only failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”

Presenting integrity as the central measure of a life · Prose writing, commonly attributed

• Life
• Truth

“Life isn't one damn thing after another. It's the same damn thing again and again.”

Widely attributed to Millay, but the precise source is not securely established · Commonly attributed remark

• Despair
• Life

“Life is like an onion; you peel off one layer at a time and sometimes you weep.”

A wry image of experience as gradual, revealing and occasionally painful · Prose remark, commonly attributed to Sandburg

• Despair
• Life

“Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.”

Presenting love as the central condition of a fully lived life · As commonly attributed; source not securely identified

• Life
• Love