This life, which had been the tomb of his virtue and of his honour, is but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

What is called genius is the abundance of life and health.

Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what life brings to me.

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America’s really large shadow and that’s not all that bad.

Is life not a thousand times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

To not to have entirely wasted one’s life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

Virtue cannot separate itself from reality without becoming a principle of evil.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

I’ve been fortunate to have had the life I had prior to Hollywood. I wasn’t starving; I was going to eat the next day.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

What do we live for, if not to make life less difficult for each other?

Life’s like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.

Art is the proper task of life.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

The loss of life will be irreplaceable.

I am 55 years old now. It takes three years to write one book. I don’t know how many books I will be able to write before I die. It is like a countdown. So with each book I am praying – please let me live until I am finished.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

I never felt settled or calm. You can’t really commit to life when you feel that.

I’m a showgirl, as you can tell. I’m ever ready.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive.

One reason I don’t want to play in England again is because we don’t have any personalities.

There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about.

The first virtue in a soldier is endurance of fatigue; courage is only the second virtue.

There are only two tragedies in life: one is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

If you don’t live your life, then who will?

Europe has what we do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life’s possibilities.

There is no substitute for talent. Industry and all its virtues are of no avail.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

Life well spent is long.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

I like the good life too much, I’m not good at going on stage night after night and on wet Wednesday afternoons.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

Baseball is a universe as large as life itself, and therefore all things in life, whether good or bad, whether tragic or comic, fall within its domain.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.