Pithy Sayings

Life

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Life is shit organised by bastards.
[From Grumpy Old Men by Stuart Prebble, 2004]

Life goes on. And on. And on. And if you don't believe me, try and stop it.
[From A Stranger Here Myself by Ian Pattison, 2000]

The meaning of life is that it ends.
[Franz Kafka, 1883 to 1924]

The strange thing about life is, no one gets out alive.
[Martin Leese, 1954 to ?]

Life is like a shit sandwich from which one is required to take a daily bite.
[Original author unknown]

Life is like a joss stick; it stinks and then it's over.
[Original author unknown]

My life has been simply unbearable.
[Bert Lahr as the Cowardly Lion, in the film The Wizard of Oz, 1939]

Life is a sexually transmitted disease.
[Graffiti described in A Scientific Romance by Ronald Wright, 1997]

In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.
[Andy Warhol, 1968]

Andy Warhol was wrong. In the future, we wouldn't all be famous for fifteen minutes; we'd be famous 24/7 to fifteen people.
[From Chaos Monkeys by Antonio García Martínez, 2016]

The best things in life aren't things.
[A bumper sticker]

The most precious things in life are not those one gets for money.
[Albert Einstein, 1946]

[O]n your death bed you will never wish you spent more time at the office.
[From The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari by Robin Sharma, 2007]

Favour moves that increase options; shy from moves that end well but require cutting off choices; work from strong positions that have many adjoining strong positions.
[The strategy for playing chess (and life), original author unknown]

Today is the first day of the rest of your life. But so was yesterday, and look how you messed that up.
[Original author unknown]

Life ... appears to be a game, but it isn't. In games the object is to win, but in life the object is not to win. The object of the whole world is to preserve the game board and the pieces, and there is no such game.
[Kurt Vonnegut in a New York Times interview, 1969]

Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!
[From Timequake by Kurt Vonnegut, 1997]

What can be the end [purpose] of human life except the enjoyment of it?
[From The Importance of Living by Lin Yutang, 1937]

I feel like a lost sock in the Laundromat of oblivion.
[Original author unknown]

A hour crawled by like a sick cockroach. I was a grain of sand on the desert of oblivion.
[From The Long Goodbye by Raymond Chandler, 1953]

I don't like to face problems head on.
I think the best way to solve problems is to avoid them.
This is a distinct philosophy of mine.
No problem is so big or so complicated that it can't be run away from!
[From a cartoon, copyright©Charlie Brown]

"It will be a lot worse," said the old man with gloomy certainty. In his experience, things generally got worse, and on the rare occasion when things actually seemed to get better, it was only as a dramatic prelude to a cataclysmic worsening.
[From And Another Thing ... by Eoin Colfer, 2009]

That's one of the remarkable things about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse.
[From The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson, 1990]

And isn't that the hellish thing about life: there is only underestimating the worst.
[From Trying to Float by Nicolaia Rips, 2016]

The Earth is degenerating today. Bribery and corruption abound. Children no longer obey their parents, every man wants to write a book, and it is evident that the end of the world is fast approaching.
[From an Assyrian tablet, written circa 2800 BC]

More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to dispare and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.
[From Side Effects by Woody Allen, 1980]

The truth is, it's much easier to fail than it is to succeed. Why not just sit back and coast all the way to mediocrity? It's that or neverending toil towards a meaningless goal. The choice is yours.
[From The Grumpy Guide to Life by the Grumpy Cat®, 2014]

Someone in the world has to have bad luck so that the rest of us can enjoy happy and fulfilled lives.
[Original author unknown]

Humor is the spiciest condiment in the feast of experience. Laugh at your mistakes but learn from them, joke over your troubles but gather strength from them, make a jest of your difficulties but overcome them.
[From Anne of the Island by Lucy Maud Montgomery, 1915]

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.
[From Walden by Henry David Thoreau, 1854]

Go outside. Membership is free.
[From www.GetAFirstLife.com, 2007]

'What is the point of life? What would a troll say?' ... 'Hunt, eat, sleep, screw—'
[From The Long Cosmos by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, 2016]

Is there life before death?
[An Hungarian saying, quoted in In Praise of Older Women by Stephen Vizinczey, 1965]

Mongo only pawn in game of life.
[Alex Karras, in the film Blazing Saddles, 1974, directed by Mel Brooks]

Why is there something rather than nothing?
[Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1646 to 1716, quoted in The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene, 2011]

From nowhere we came, into nowhere we go. What is life? It is a flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
[The last words of Crowfoot, 1830 to 1890, a Blackfoot Indian chief]