Quotes about Life

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

And as to you corpse I think you are good manure, but that does not offend me, I smell the white roses sweetscented and growing, I reach to the leafy lips . . . . I reach to the polished breasts of melons.

Enough to live, enough to merely be.

Death and immortality were but two aspects of the same blessed hope to this man, who poured out his life in a turgid fount of ecstatic joy in living:

Here I sit gossiping in the early candle-light of old age—and my book—casting backward glances over our travel'd road.

O while I live to be the ruler of life, not a slave, To meet life as a powerful conqueror... And nothing exterior to me will ever take command of me.

seems to me that everything in the light and air ought to be happy; Whoever is not in his coffin and the dark grave, let him know he has enough.

AS THE TIME DRAWS NIGH As the time draws nigh, glooming, a cloud, A dread beyond, of I know not what, darkens me. I shall go forth, I shall traverse The States awhile—but I cannot tell whither or how long; Perhaps soon, some day or night while I am singing, my voice will suddenly cease. O book, O chants! must all then amount to but this? Must we barely arrive at this beginning of us?… And yet it is enough, O soul! O soul! we have positively appear'd—that is enough.

Easter will soon be here. Life breaks into beauty again and we realize that man may bring hell itself into the world, but that Nature ever patiently waits to be his natural paradise.

Quicksand years that whirl me I know not whither, Your schemes, politics, fail, lines give way, substances mock and elude me, Only the theme I sing, the great and strong-possess'd soul, eludes not, One's-self must never give way—that is the final substance— that out of all is sure, Out of politics, triumphs, battles, life, what at last finally remains? When shows break up what but One's-Self is sure?

When I read the book, the biography famous, And is this then (said I) what the author calls a man's life? And so will some one when I am dead and gone write my life? (As if any man really knew aught my life, Why even I myself I often think know little or nothing of my real life, Only a few hints, a few diffused faint clews and indirections I seek for my own use to trace out here.)

The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, And ceas'd the moment life appear'd.