Robert Christy, comp. Proverbs, Maxims and Phrases of All Ages. 1887.
Life
A bad life, a bad end.German.
A good life enables us to despise calumnies.Cato.
A good life keeps off wrinkles.
A life in continual need is half death.German.
A life of leisure and a life of laziness are two things.Franklin.
A life without a friend is a life without a sun.German.
A long life hath long miseries.
All wish to live long, but not to be called old.Danish.
An ill life, an ill end.
Anything for a quiet life.French.
Arthur himself had but his time.
As a man lives so shall he die;
As a tree falls so shall it lie.
As the life so will be the language.
Better to live well than long.
Better to live without money than without friends.German.
Consider well and oft why thou comest into this world and how soon thou must go out of it.
Every man desires to live long, but no man would be old.Swift.
Every station in life has duties which are proper to it.Addison.
Few deserve happy life.Turkish.
For life is not to live but to be well.Martial.
He that is not gallant at twenty, strong at thirty, rich at forty or experienced at fifty, will never be gallant, strong, rich or prudent.
His is the happiest life who knows nothing.Latin.
I wept when I was born and every day shows why.
In childhood be modest, in youth temperate, in manhood just, in old age, prudent.Socrates.
In the short life of man, no lost time can be afforded.
It is a great journey to life’s end.
It is the principal rule of life not to be too much addicted to any one thing.Spectator.
Life and misery began together.
Life ain’t all beer and skittles.Sam Slick.
Life at court is often a short cut to hell.Danish.
Life gives nothing to men without great labor.Horace.
Life hath quicksands, life hath snares.Longfellow.
Life is a road beset with roses and thorns.
Life is a shuttle.Shakespeare.
Life is a state of warfare.Seneca.
Life is as tedious as a twice told tale,
Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.Shakespeare.
Life is but a span; I’ll every inch enjoy.Farquahar.
Life is ended when our honor ends.Goldsmith.
Life is half spent before one knows what life is.French.
Life is labor, death is rest.Archias’ Thracian view of life and death.
Life is not mere existence, but the enjoyment of health.Latin.
Life is not to be bought with heaps of gold.Homer.
Life is short, yet sweet.Euripides.
Life is too short to learn more than one business well.
Life is war,—eternal war with woe.Young.
Life lieth not in living, but in liking.
Life lives only in success.Bayard Taylor.
Life that is too short for the happy is too long for the miserable.
Life without a friend is death without a witness.Spanish.
Life without learning bears the stamp of death.Scribleomania.
Life would be too smooth if it had no rubs in it.
Life’s but a walking shadow.Shakespeare.
Lifeless, faultless.
Lives of great men all remind us,
We can make our lives sublime,
And departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.Longfellow.
Long life hath long misery.
Man comes into the world naked and bare,
He goes through the world with trouble and care,
When he dies he goes the Lord knows where,
But if he does well here, he does well there.Hindu.
Man’s life is moulded by the disposition of his soul.Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine.
No man believes his own life will be short.Dr. Johnson.
No occupation implants so speedy and so effective a love of peace as a country life.Plutarch.
Nor life nor death they deemed the happier state,
But life that’s glorious, or death that’s great.Greek.
Nor love thy life, nor hate, but what thou liv’st,
Live well, how long or short permit to Heaven.Milton.
Oh, life, how long to the wretched, how short to the happy!Publius Syrus.
Our life is but a span.New England Primer.
So long as the sick man has life, there is hope.Latin.
The experience of life—What a fool I’ve been.Punch.
The longest life is but a parcel of moments.
The only sure path to a tranquil life is through virtue.Juvenal.
The web of your life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
The youngest in the morning are not sure
That till the night their life they can secure.Duban.
There is but one way to enter this life, but the gates of death are without number.Turkish Spy.
’Tis very certain the desire of life prolongs it.Byron.
We are born crying, live complaining, and die disappointed.
We must not look for a golden life in an iron age.
We pass our lives in doing what we ought not, and leaving undone what we ought to do.Petrarch.
Whosoever valueth not his own life may be master of another’s.