Book Quotes About Life: 30 Lines From Classic Novels (With Chapters)
Contents
Why book quotes about life stay with us
A good line from a novel does something a self-help sentence can’t: it arrives inside a story, so you remember who said it and why. Below are thirty lines about life from classic books, grouped by what they’re really about — how to live, how to bear hard days, and how to see the world.
Every quote is copied word for word from the public-domain text on Project Gutenberg, with the chapter it comes from, so you can find it in your own copy. Page numbers differ between editions, so we give the chapter.
On how to live
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life”
Thoreau’s reason for two years in a cabin — and the most-quoted sentence in American nature writing.
“Our life is frittered away by detail.”
“Simplify, simplify.”
“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.”
The origin of “marching to the beat of a different drummer.”
“Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in.”
“I would always rather be happy than dignified”
“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
“It is in vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquillity: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.”
“I don’t like work—no man does—but I like what is in the work—the chance to find yourself.”
“To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.”
On hard days
“No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be.”
“There are darknesses in life, and there are lights”
“We learn from failure, not from success!”
“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching”
“Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears”
“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.”
“It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live.”
“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
On seeing the world
“It is not down in any map; true places never are.”
“Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent.”
“It has long been an axiom of mine that the little things are infinitely the most important.”
“I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Gatsby’s last line, about how hard it is to leave the past behind.
“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
“Everything’s got a moral, if only you can find it.”
“Nothing that we do, is done in vain.”
“Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
“Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure.”
“My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?”
Keep the lines that speak to you
Reading something right now? Don’t rely on lists like this one. With Eqtepas you snap a photo of the page (or highlight a PDF or ebook), select the line that stopped you, and it’s saved with the book title and page number of your edition. Every quote here also has a Share button — pick a card design and send it as an image to any app.
More quote collections: Quotes from books that hit hard · Book quotes about love · and full pages for Pride and Prejudice, The Great Gatsby, Jane Eyre and Walden.
FAQ
What is a good book quote about life?
One of the most quoted is Thoreau’s “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life” from Walden. For hard days, Bram Stoker’s line from Dracula — “No man knows till he has suffered from the night how sweet and how dear to his heart and eye the morning can be” — is a favourite.
Are these book quotes accurate?
Yes. Each one is copied word for word from the public-domain text on Project Gutenberg, with the chapter, so you can find it in your own copy.
How do I save quotes from the books I read?
Snap a photo of the page or highlight the line in a PDF or ebook with Eqtepas. It saves the quote with the book title and page number, and you can share it later as a designed card.
Keep the lines you love — with the page number
Eqtepas saves quotes from paper books (snap the page), PDFs, ebooks and the web, each one with its book and page — then turns any of them into a shareable card.
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