One’s mind suffers only when one is young and while one is ignorant of the world. When one has lived for some time one learns that the young think too little and the old too much, and one grows careless about both. Horace Walpole, 1772
Life is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel. Horace Walpole, attributions & variations
Do what you like. Francois Rabelais, Gargantua, 1534
Oh, isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God? Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood, 1954
Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves? Andy Warhol
The most wonderful thing about living is to be dead. Andy Worhol
My darling, it’s all been rather lovely. John le Mesurier, deathbed to wife
I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against. Damon Runyan
Life is something to do when you can’t get to sleep. Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life, 1978
Never contradict
Never explain
Never apologise. John Arbuthnot Fisher, letter to The Times 5th September 1919
No, you lost your chance, me old son. You contributed absolutely nothing to this life. A waste of time you being here at all. No plaque for you in Westminster Abbey. The best you can expect is a few daffodils in a jam-jar. A rough-hewn stone bearing the legend, He came and he went, and in between nothing. Tony Hancock, Hancock’s Half Hour
Life has no meaning a priori. Before you come alive, Life is nothing. It’s up to you to give it a meaning and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose. Jean-Paul Sartre
One always dies too soon – or too late. And yet one’s whole life is complete at that moment, with a line drawn neatly under it, ready for the summing up. You are – your life. And nothing else. Jean-Paul Sartre
Existence precedes and rules essence. Jean-Paul Sartre, L'Etre et le Neant, 1943
We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are – that is the fact. Jean-Paul Sartre
Man is nothing else but what he purposes. He exists only in so far that he realises himself. He is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions. Jean-Paul Sartre
Everything has been figured out, except how to live. Jean-Paul Sartre
Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees. Jean-Paul Sartre
We are our choices. Jean-Paul Sartre
Life begins on the other side of despair. Jean-Paul Sartre
All that I know about my life, it seems, I have learned in books. Jean-Paul Sartre
Man is condemned to be free. Condemned because he did not create himself, yet is nevertheless at liberty, and from the moment he is thrown into this world he is responsible for everything he does. Jean-Paul Sartre
What is life? A Frenzy. What is life? An illusion, a shadow, a fiction. And the greatest good is of slight worth, as all life is a dream, and dreams and dreams. Pedro Calderon de la Barca
Life is an incurable disease. Abraham Cowley, 1618-67
They’ll be no tears out of me for this poxy life. Rab C Nesbitt s4e2: Mother, BBC 1994
What if I don’t want to go on, boy? What if I don’t want to sit shivering in my fluffy slippers, sucking on angina tablets and peering through my cataracts watching some stinking episode of Home and Away, eh? Rab C Nesbitt s4e4: Test
We’re not going to take this any more. We’re as mad as Hell [cf. Network 1976]. Rab C Nesbitt s5e5: Racket, BBC 1996
We’re just humdrum ordinary people, Mary. And the sooner we get used to that the better, you know. ibid.
The world is a veil of hopeless misery. Marriage nothing but institutionalised boredom. Rab C Nesbitt s6e3: Growth, BBC 1997
You are so paranoid. Can you not see what’s in it for you? A chance to broaden your mind, a chance to meet people from all sorts of life, and shag them. Rab C Nesbitt s7e1: New, Jamesie to Rab, BBC 1998
We kid ourselves we’re rational beings but what we really are is open wounds on legs. See, if you want to stay rational, don’t live. Rab C Nesbitt s7e4: Property
There’s nothing like cheap working class sentimentality to disguise the fact that our lives are fundamentally bleak and meaningless. Rab C Nesbitt s8e2: Heat, Dan to Rab, BBC 1999
To complain of the age we live in, to murmur at the present possessors of power, to lament the past, to conceive extravagant hopes of the future, are the common dispositions of the greatest part of mankind. Edmund Burke
The one remains, the many change and pass;
Heaven’s light forever shine, Earth’s shadows fly;
Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of Eternity. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Adonis st52, 1821
To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than death or night;
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prometheus Unbound
Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life. Percy Bysshe Shelley, Sonnet, 1824
As our life is very short, so it is very miserable, and therefore it is well it is short. Jeremy Taylor, The Rule and Exercise of Holy Dying, 1651
Life is a top which whipping Sorrow driveth. Fulke Greville, 1554-1628, Caelica
I wish the future were over ... The one cheerful thing about living is that every day one lives you know it’s one less. Gilbert Harding, interview BBC
Life is only worth living if one has friends. ibid.
… There are bad times just around the corner,
There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky
And it's no good whining
About a silver lining.
For we know from experience that they won’t roll by … Noel Coward, There are Bad Times Just Around the Corner, song 1953
... There are bad times just around the corner,
The horizon’s gloomy as can be;
There are black birds over
The greyish cliffs of Dover,
And the rats are preparing to leave the BBC ...
We’re an unhappy breed
And very bored indeed
When reminded of something that Nelson said
While the press and the politicians nag nag nag
We’ll wait until we drop down dead … ibid.
... There are bad times just around the corner,
We can all look forward to despair,
It’s as clear as crystal
From Bridlington to Bristol
That we can’t save democracy and we don’t much care ... ibid.
A tragic irony of life is that we so often achieve success or financial independence after the chief reason for which we sought it has passed away. Ellen Glasgow