“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde · Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892
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Life Quotes
LifeLife Lessons
266 quotes on life and the lessons it teaches — from the classics to the everyday.
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
Oscar Wilde · The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1891
“Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.”
Oscar Wilde · Lady Windermere's Fan, 1892
“With freedom, books, flowers, and the moon, who could not be happy?”
Oscar Wilde · attributed, widely documented
“The books one reads in childhood, and perhaps most of all the bad and good bad books, create in one's mind a sort of false map of the world.”
Oscar Wilde · De Profundis, 1905
“The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.”
Oscar Wilde · A Woman of No Importance, 1893
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves.”
Oscar Wilde · The Ballad of Reading Gaol, 1898
“Some things are worth more after they've been broken. The repair is the evidence that they were worth saving.”
Original
“The break is part of the object's story. Making it invisible doesn't heal it. It just makes you carry it alone.”
Original
“Keep close to nature's heart and break clear away, once in a while, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods.”
John Muir · John of the Mountains, 1938
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
Ovid · Ars Amatoria, Book II
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson · Letter to his daughter, 1865
“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”
John Lubbock · The Use of Life, 1894
“An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.”
Henry David Thoreau · Journal, 1856
“Dum differtur vita transcurrit.”
Seneca · Letters to Lucilius, Letter I
“Do not look where you fell, but where you slipped.”
African Proverb
“A tree is straightened while it is young.”
African Proverb
