“Art is the Tree of Life. Science is the Tree of Death.”

A stark pairing of living image against a knowledge that kills vision · Inscriptions on the Laocoön plate

• Art
• Life
• Science

“Bread is more useful than poetry.”

Original: Le pain est plus utile que la poésie. — The deliberately provocative comparison stresses poetry's relationship with the concrete necessities of human life. · L’Évidence poétique, 1936 (French)

• Life
• Poetry
• Utility

“Three states or manifestations of life: body, mind, over-mind.”

Distinguishing physical, intellectual and visionary dimensions of human consciousness · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Life
• Mind
• Understanding

“Perhaps so we cannot have the spirit without body, the body of nature, or the body of individual men and women.”

Rejecting a simple separation between spiritual life and material existence · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Belief
• Life
• Nature

“Nothing shows a lack of philosophy and wisdom more than wanting the whole of life to be wise and philosophical.”

Original: Nessun maggior segno d'essere poco filosofo e poco savio, che volere savia e filosofica tutta la vita. — A witty warning against allowing reflection and seriousness to crowd ordinary life out altogether. · Pensieri, XXVII, published posthumously in 1845 (Italian)

• Humour
• Life
• Wisdom

“There is really nothing more to tell of my life, which at present appears to have settled into a placid groove.”

A quiet late-life reflection after years of controversy and upheaval · The Autobiography of Lord Alfred Douglas, 1929

• Age
• Life
• Peace

“Happiness, like air and water, the other two great requisites of life, is composite.”

Happiness as a complex necessity · Conversation / essay (as commonly attributed)

• Complexity
• Happiness
• Life

“The sacred domain of your life is far more extensive than your measurement. Neither your house nor your banker's are its confines.”

Reminding a friend that worth transcends material circumstance · Letter to Kossuth

• Dignity
• Life
• Values

“Existence is not itself a good thing, that we should spend a lifetime securing its necessaries.”

Distinguishing the preservation of life from the purposes that make life worthwhile · Introductory Lecture, University College London, 1892

• Happiness
• Life
• Wisdom

“Whatever may be said to the contrary by others, to me life has been a battle-field, and I believe always will be; but is the soldier necessarily unhappy because he is fighting?”

Separating struggle from unhappiness and finding purpose within difficulty · Letter to Mrs. Condict, 7 November 1875

• Courage
• Life
• Struggle

“Modern poetry fails to express the real aspirations of life.”

Judges contemporary verse by its distance from living need · Essay, The Future of Poetry, The Poetry Review, 1912

• Criticism
• Life
• Poetry

“All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?”

A wistful meditation on ageing, lost time and the uncertainty of wishing life backwards · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

• Age
• Life
• Time

“Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part.”

A deliberately comic reversal of conventional ideas about war and ordinary life · Letter to Marlene Dietrich, 27 June 1950

• Humour
• Life
• War

“The affairs of our lives follow a mysterious course that cannot be calculated.”

Original: Die Angelegenheiten unseres Lebens haben einen geheimnisvollen Gang, der sich nicht berechnen läßt. — Life resists complete prediction, leaving room for mystery and unforeseen change. · Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years (German)

• Fate
• Life
• Mystery

“I have all my life regretted that I did not keep a regular Journal.”

Reflecting on memory and the value of recording a life · Journal, 20 November 1825

• Life
• Memory
• Writing

“When any man says his life is worthless, it is because he has eyes and sees not, and ears and hears not.”

Rejecting the idea that life lacks value or possibility · Essay, Optimism

• Life
• Perception
• Value

“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

“We cannot have the heat without the lump of coal.”

Emphasising that spiritual or creative intensity depends upon physical existence · Essay, Notes on Thought and Vision

• Body
• Creativity
• Life

“Human suffering is inscrutable to me—my own suffering is intolerable; yet I thank God for life.”

Holding gratitude for life alongside an inability to explain suffering · Essay, David Gray and Other Essays

• Gratitude
• Life
• Suffering

“It is full of interest, and rich with opportunities for usefulness.”

Defining life by its possibilities for engagement and service · Essay, Optimism

• Life
• Opportunity
• Service

“What we have to consider is the brevity of life.”

His reason for neglecting the farm and attending to wonder instead · Conversation, reported in Time magazine, 1958

• Life
• Mortality
• Time

“I call my verses only semi-poetry, and my realities, subject to the laws of ordinary mortal life, I dare call nothing more than possibility.”

Original: Yo no llamo a mis versos sino semi-poesía, y a mis realidades, que obedecen a la ley de vida de los simples mortales, no oso llamar otra cosa que posibilidad. — Characterising his work with modesty and an awareness of human limitation · Academy address, Semi-poesía y posibilidad, 1938 (Spanish)

• Humility
• Life
• Poetry

“The senses and the heart, if they are not exercised, atrophy and languish.”

Original: Los sentidos y el corazón que no se ejercen, se atrofian y languidecen. — Arguing that feeling and perception must be exercised through life · Letter to Juan Ramón Jiménez, Autocrítica (Spanish)

• Emotion
• Experience
• Life

“Be alive, from crown to toe.”

A brisk exhortation towards physical and mental vitality · Essay, Let the Past Go

• Attitude
• Life
• Vitality