Life Is Good Quotes, Quotations, and Sayings
Is life good? I think it is, and there are many famous people who agree with me. We’re going to look at some inspiring quotes and quotations that make you want to laugh and live and love, even when there’s not much to laugh about.
It’s not just one thing that makes life good, it’s the accumulation of the small things, the quiet things, the natural things. Crowfoot asks, “What is life? It is the 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.” (1890, as quoted in Catch the Whisper of the Wind.)
Samuel Taylor Coleridge agrees. He said:
“The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions — the little, soon forgotten charities of a kiss or smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment, and the countless infinitesimals of pleasurable and genial feeling.”
William Wordsworth also had a word on the subject:
“The best portion of a good man’s life is the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love.”
We can make someone else’s life better when we remember to follow that Golden Rule, treating others the way we like to be treated. The benevolence of others to us in a smile, a cheerful attitude, or a gentle word is long remembered and treasured in the heart, to be pulled out and cherished again and again. They may soon forget what they said or did, but we value their kindness forever.
As George Washington Carver wisely put it:
“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.”
A last word on doing good being an essential component of the good life comes from John Wesley:
“Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as ever you can.”
It is not wealth or fame, or leisure, which makes a man happy and makes life good. In every life—no matter how banal, how boring, or how lackluster we feel that our life is—we still have glorious sunsets, ethereal rainbows, the sweet curving cheeks of little children, their chubby fingers lovingly patting mud pies, the flash of a butterfly’s wings, or the trill of a bluebird’s song. Beauty and goodness is out there, just waiting to be seen, heard and felt.
Nikos Kazantzakis equates these simple things of life with happiness when he says:
“How simple and frugal a thing is happiness: a glass of wine, a roast chestnut, a wretched little brazier, the sound of the sea. All that is required to feel that here and now is happiness is a simple, frugal heart.”
Who of us has not felt happiness and contentment while experiencing these small joys? Matthew Arnold said:
“Is it so small a thing, To have enjoy’d the sun, To have lived light in the spring, To have loved, to have thought, to have done…”
In the doing is goodness and pleasure, too. Thomas Jefferson, a man who contributed much to his world and to ours, understood the integrity and delight of work. He was a prodigious thinker and an innovative farmer who enjoyed life. He was of the opinion that:
“It is neither wealth nor splendor, but tranquility and occupation, which give happiness.”
Mark Twain concurred when he said that:
“Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.”
The work that we do should bring us pleasure, and a feeling of contributing to the society in which we live. Whether it’s the joy of performing music or creating art, the pleasure that a manager feels in organizing the myriad details of a business, or the satisfaction that a teacher feels when children’s faces light with understanding of a new concept, our work should be a source of happiness and fulfillment in our lives. Life is not good if our work is not pleasing to our inner being.
One of my favorite writers, Robert Louis Stevenson, had a word to say about work and life, too.
“The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.”
I like Grandma Moses take on life:
“Life is what you make of it. Always has been, always will be.”
Whether life brings us riches or poverty, we still have the choice in ourselves to whine, snivel and complain, or to face up to it, and make the best of it. Martha Washington nailed it when she said:
“I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have also learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances.”
She may have been learning from St. Paul, who said in Philippians 4:11
“For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.”
Henry Van Dyke also wrote:
“Be glad of life because it gives you the chance to love, to work, to play, and to look up at the stars.”
Life is precious, and there is so much good in it that we must be glad. Agatha Christie said:
”I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing.”
Mark Twain looked at life with an unclouded eye. He saw both the good and the bad, but he loved life, and packed a lot of experience into his. This is sage advice from him for living a good life.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Take a chance on doing something new, especially if your job feels like drudgery, and it’s not work that fills you with joy or satisfaction.
For most of us a vital element of the good life is love, both the giving and receiving. Oscar Wilde had this to say:
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. The consciousness of loving and being loved brings a warmth and richness to life that nothing else can bring.”
Let’s end our discussion on “Life is good” with a favorite quote from that great humorist and philosopher Mark Twain.
“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.”
This post was originally published, in a somewhat different form, on Funny Quotes about Life, in 2009.
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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 15th, 2011 at 4:59 am and is filed under Humor, Quotations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.