The collection / 61,965 fragments

Life.

Explore passages mentioning life, living. Topic suggestions use transparent word matching, not scholarly classification. Reviewed editorial meanings may also connect entries to this topic; those assignments are labelled separately from word matching.

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01c. 1591 AD

Reason is the life of the law; nay, the common law itself is nothing else but reason. . . . The law, which is perfection of reason.

Sir Edward Coke / quote

02c. 1576 AD

Full little knowest thou that hast not tride, What hell it is in suing long to bide: To loose good dayes, that might be better spent; To wast long nights in pensive discontent; To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow; To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow. . . . . . . . . . To fret thy soule with crosses and with cares; To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires; To fawne, to crowche, to waite, to ride, to ronne, To spend, to give, to want, to be undonne. Unhappie wight, borne to desastrous end, That doth his life in so long tendance spend!

Edmund Spenser / quote

03c. 1595 AD

Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea Loves t' have his sails fill'd with a lusty wind, Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack, And his rapt ship run on her side so low That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.

George Chapman / quote

04c. 1595 AD

As night the life-inclining stars best shows, So lives obscure the starriest souls disclose.

George Chapman / quote

05c. 1597 AD

When faith is kneeling by his bed of death, And innocence is closing up his eyes, Now if thou wouldst, when all have given him over, From death to life thou might'st him yet recover.

Michael Drayton / quote

06c. 1590 AD

Gon. Here is everything advantageous to life. Ant. True; save means to live.

William Shakespeare / quote

07c. 1590 AD

Our revels now are ended. These our actors, As I foretold you, were all spirits, and Are melted into air, into thin air: And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, The solemn temples, the great globe itself, Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff As dreams are made on; and our little life Is rounded with a sleep.

William Shakespeare / quote

08c. 1590 AD

The jury, passing on the prisoner's life, May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two Guiltier than him they try.

William Shakespeare / quote

09c. 1590 AD

The weariest and most loathed worldly life That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment Can lay on nature, is a paradise To what we fear of death.

William Shakespeare / quote

10c. 1590 AD

A needy, hollow-eyed, sharp-looking wretch, A living-dead man.

William Shakespeare / quote

11c. 1590 AD

What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living?

William Shakespeare / quote

12c. 1590 AD

I thank God I am as honest as any man living that is an old man and no honester than I.

William Shakespeare / quote

13c. 1590 AD

The idea of her life shall sweetly creep Into his study of imagination, And every lovely organ of her life, Shall come apparell'd in more precious habit, More moving-delicate and full of life Into the eye and prospect of his soul.

William Shakespeare / quote

14c. 1590 AD

You take my house when you do take the prop That doth sustain my house; you take my life When you do take the means whereby I live.

William Shakespeare / quote

15c. 1590 AD

Sweet are the uses of adversity, Which like the toad, ugly and venomous, Wears yet a precious jewel in his head; And this our life, exempt from public haunt, Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.

William Shakespeare / quote

16c. 1590 AD

The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.

William Shakespeare / quote

17c. 1590 AD

I am sure care 's an enemy to life.

William Shakespeare / quote

18c. 1590 AD

I love a ballad in print o' life, for then we are sure they are true.

William Shakespeare / quote

19c. 1590 AD

Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.

William Shakespeare / quote

20c. 1590 AD

This sickness doth infect The very life-blood of our enterprise.

William Shakespeare / quote

21c. 1590 AD

Honour pricks me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I come on,—how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no. Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is honour? a word. What is in that word honour; what is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it? he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no. Doth he hear it? no. 'T is insensible, then? yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I 'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon. And so ends my catechism.

William Shakespeare / quote

22c. 1590 AD

I have set my life upon a cast, And I will stand the hazard of the die: I think there be six Richmonds in the field.

William Shakespeare / quote

23c. 1590 AD

After my death I wish no other herald, No other speaker of my living actions, To keep mine honour from corruption, But such an honest chronicler as Griffith.

William Shakespeare / quote

24c. 1590 AD

Life's uncertain voyage.

William Shakespeare / quote