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Life: Quotations from Burning Words

Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.— O. W. HOLMES

Life is before you, - not earthly life alone, but life - a thread running interminably through the warp of eternity.— J. G. HOLLAND

O thou child of many prayers ! Life hath quicksands, Life hath snares ! Care and age come unawares !— LONGFELLOW

It is not possible to set out in the Christian profession with a more instructive or impressive idea than this - Life is the seed-time for eternity.— JOHN ANGEL JAMES

The grand question of life is, Is my name written in heaven?— D. L. MOODY

The end of life is to be like unto God; and the soul following God, will be like unto Him.— SOCRATES

Life is an outliving of world after world. Where is now what the world was to you at ten years old ? God help us! it is a foolish little thing, this human life, at the best; and it is half ridiculous and half pitiful to see what importance we ascribe to it, and to its little ornaments and distinctions.— JEFFREY

The feeling of life's nothingness argues a mind capable of heavenly grandeur, and if capable, then made for it, There is no life so humble that, if it be true and genuinely human and obedient to God, it may not hope to shed some of His light. There is no life so meager that the greatest and wisest of us can afford to despise it. We cannot know at what moment it may flash forth with the life of God.— PHILLIPS BROOKS

Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life; a man is not completely born till he has passed through death.— FRANKLIN,

Brethren, it is the prismatic halo and ring of eternity round this poor glass of time that gives it all its dignity, all its meaning. The lives that are lived before God cannot be trifles. As one climbs a mountain roadway, and looks off on the landscape through the forest trees or from some overtopping crag, at each step he sees more and more of the outlying beauty of field and lake and forest and hill and river, till he reaches the summit, where the whole vast scene opens to the view, and enthuses his soul with delight. So life should be a constant lookout, through the gray mists, through the falling shadows, through the running tears, till he comes to the shining top of life in God Himself, where the fogs lift, and the shadows fall, and the view is all undisturbed.— T. B. ROMEYN

A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on.— ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Life is great if properly viewed in any aspect; it is mainly great when viewed in connection with the world to come.— ALBERT BARNES

There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.— JAMES MARTINEAU

Life and religion are one, or neither is any thing.— GEORGE MACDONALD

Let the current of your being set towards God, then your life will be filled and calmed by one master-passion which unites and stills the soul. -— ALEXANDER MACLAREN

Man's life is so interwoven with the grand life of his Maker that it admits of no adequate or rational interpretation except when the Creator as Supreme and the creatures of His hand as subordinate, are seen working in unison.— CHARLES H. ANTHONY

I believe that we cannot live better than in seeking to become better.— SOCRATES

Making their lives a prayer.— WHITTIER

While we seek to fill up life in a way that will best secure the ends of our existence here, our whole plan and course of action should be such as will not hinder but serve our preparation for a future world.— ALBERT BARNES

Pray for and work for fullness of life above every thing; full red blood in the body; full honesty and truth in the mind; and the fullness of a grateful love for the Saviour in your heart.— PHILLIPS BROOKS

I find death perfectly desirable; but I find life perfectly beautiful. Every day that is born into the world comes likes a burst of music, and rings itself all the way through; and thou shalt make of it a dance, a dirge, or a grand life-march as thou wilt.— LADIES' REPOSITORY

Act as if you expected to live a hundred years, but might die to-morrow.— ANN LEE

Nor love thy life, nor hate; but what thou livest, Live well; how long, or short, permit to Heaven.— MILTON

We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. -— P. J. BAILEY

I would not choose to go where I would be afraid to die, nor could I bear to live without a good hope for hereafter.— C. H. SPURGEON

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain, and judgment difficult.— HIPPOCRATES

A few years hence and he will be beneath the sod; but those cliffs will stand, as now, facing the ocean, incessantly lashed by its waves, yet unshaken, immovable; and other eyes will gaze on them for their brief day of life, and then they, too, will close.— H. P. LIDDON

- They waste life in what are called good resolutions partial efforts at reformation, feebly commenced, heartlessly conducted, and hopelessly concluded. It is infamy to die, and not be missed.— MATURIN

And thus does life go on, until death accomplishes the catastrophe in silence, takes the worn frame within his hand, and, as if it were a dried-up scroll, crumbles it in his grasp to ashes. The monuments of kingdoms, too, shall disappear. Still the globe shall move; still the stars shall burn; still the sun shall paint its colors on the day, and its colors on the year. What, then, is the individual, or what even is the race in the sublime recurrings of Time? Years, centuries, cycles, are nothing to these. The sun that measures out the ages of our planet is not a second-hand on the great dial of the universe. -— HENRY GILES

Oh, I believe that there is no away; that no love, no life, goes ever from us; it goes as He went, that it may come again, deeper and closer and surer, and be with us always, even to the end of the world.— GEORGE MACDONALD

The highest life is a broken column; the fairest life, a tar nished gem; the richest life, an unripened fruit.— JOHN HUMPSTONE

This earth will be looked back on like a lowly home, and this life of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to duty.— WM. MOUNTFORD

This is life's greatest moment, when the soul unfolds capacities which reach beyond earth's boundaries.— I. T. HECKER

Life! we've been long together Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; 'Tis hard to part when friends are dear,- Perhaps 'twill cost a sigh, a tear. Then steal away, give little warning, Choose thine own time, Say not "Good-night," but in some brighter clime, Bid me "Good-morning."— A. L. BARBAULD