Life, Death and Absurdity

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
-- Douglas Adams

The future you shall know when it has come; before then, forget it.
-- Aeschylus

Time is the best teacher. Unfortunately, it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector-Louis Berlioz

If you live to be one hundred, you've got it made. Very few people die past that age.
-- George Burns (1896-1996)

The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
-- James Branch Cabell

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.
--Albert Camus

After I'm dead, I'd rather have people ask why I have no monument than why I have one.
-- Cato the Elder

None meet life honestly and few heroically.
--Clarence Darrow

The first half of our lives is ruined by our parents, and the second half by our children.
--Clarence Darrow

I think; therefore I am.
-- Rene Descartes

It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.
-- Rene Descartes

The cost of living hasn't affected it's popularity.
-- Freeman Dyson

The principle of maximum diversity operates both at the physical and at the mental level. It says that the laws of nature and the initial conditions are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Always when things are dull, something new turns up to challenge us and to stop us from settling into a rut. Examples of things which make life difficult are all around us: comet impacts, ice ages, weapons, plagues, nuclear fission, computers, sex, sin and death. Not all challenges can be overcome, and so we have tragedy. Maximum diversity often leads to maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth.
-- Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions (1988)

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-- A. Einstein

The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.
-- Albert Einstein

How I wish that somewhere there existed an island for those who are wise and of good will.
-- Albert Einstein

If I had my life to live over again, I'd be a plumber.
-- Albert Einstein

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. ... I get most joy in life out of music.
-- Albert Einstein

My life is a simple thing that would interest no one. It is a known fact that I was born and that is all that is necessary.
-- Albert Einstein

As far as I'm concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.
-- Albert Einstein

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.
-- Albert Einstein

The devil has put a penalty on all things we enjoy in life. Either we suffer in health or we suffer in soul or we get fat.
-- Albert Einstein

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.
-- Albert Einstein

A table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin; what else does a man need to be happy.
-- Albert Einstein

The fear of death is the most unjustified of all fears, for there's no risk of accident for someone who's dead.
-- Albert Einstein

The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with the joy of living are goodness, beauty, and truth. To make a goal of comfort or happiness has never appealed to me; a system of ethics built on this basis would be sufficient only for a herd of cattle.
-- Albert Einstein

The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self.
-- Albert Einstein

Understanding of our fellow human beings...becomes fruitful only when it is sustained by sympathetic feelings in joy and sorrow.
-- Albert Einstein

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.
-- Albert Einstein

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others.
-- Albert Einstein

Two things inspire me to awe -- the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.
-- Albert Einstein

It is a magnificent feeling to recognize the unity of complex phenomena which appear to be things quite apart from the direct visible truth.
-- Albert Einstein

I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.
-- Albert Einstein

Only a life lived for others is worth living.
-- Albert Einstein

For the want of a nail, the shoe was lose; for the want of a shoe the horse was lose; and for the want of a horse the rider was lost, being overtaken and slain by the enemy, all for the want of care about a horseshoe nail.
--Benjamin Franklin

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that's the stuff life is made of.
--Benjamin Franklin

All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
--Benjamin Franklin

To lengthen thy Life, lessen thy meals.
--Benjamin Franklin

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
-- Mahatma Gandhi

What you do is of little significance. But it is very important that you do it.
--Mahatma Gandhi

The supreme irony of life is hardly anyone ever gets out of it alive.
-- Robert A. Heinlein

This is the fourth?
- Thomas Jefferson's last words,
( he died on the 4th of July )

Good wine is a necessity of life for me.
--Thomas Jefferson

Life is what happens while you are making other plans.
-- John Lennon

Living right doesn't make you live longer, it just seems longer.
I must confess, I was born at a very early age.
-- Groucho Marx

Go on, get out. Last words are for fools who haven't said enough.
-- Karl Marx, last words to his housekeeper

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
-- Mencken, H[enry] L[ouis] (1880-1956)

Life is very strange said Jeremy.
Compared with what? replied the spider.
-- Norman Moss

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is complex. It has real and imaginary components.
-- Tom Potter

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.
-- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.
-- Bertrand Russell (Autobiography)

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, most do.
-- Bertrand Russell

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
-- Jean-Paul Sartre

A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.
-- Josef Stalin

May you live all the days of your life.
-- Jonathan Swift

Ivan Ilych's life was most simple, and most ordinary, and therefore most terrible.
-- Leo Tolstoy

No one on his deathbed ever said, I wish I had spent more time on my business.
-- Paul E. Tsongas

Let us live so that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-- Mark Twain

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.
-- Voltaire

Life resembles the banquet of Damocles; the sword is ever suspended.
-- Voltaire

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.
-- Voltaire (1694-1778)

Paradoxically though it may seem, it is none the less true that life imitates art far more than art imitates life.
-- Oscar Wilde

Ordinary riches can be stolen, real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.
-- Oscar Wilde

Life is far too important to be taken seriously.
-- Oscar Wilde

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
-- Oscar Wilde

The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life. And the body is born young and grows old. That is life's tragedy.
-- Oscar Wilde

I am in a duel to the death with this wallpaper, one of us has got to go. (One month before he died on the same bed.)
-- Oscar Wilde

Alas, I am dying beyond my means.
-- Oscar Wilde (as he sipped champagne on his deathbed)

The hypochondriac's epitaph: NOW will you believe me?
-- anon