"The things that we have and that we think are so solid - they're like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into ... nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever."
(Booth Tarkington)

"The way I look at life - we're all on the Hindenberg, so there's no use in arguing over the window seat."
(Richard Geni)

"The world is a playground, and life is pushing my swing."
(Natty Nats)

"The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs."
(Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, aka F. Scott Fitzgerald)

"There are certain queer times and occasions in this strange mixed affair we call life when a man takes this whole universe for a vast practical joke, though the wit thereof he but dimly discerns, and more than suspects that the joke is at nobody's expense but his own."
(Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Ch. 49)

"There are two rules in life: Rule #1: Don't sweat the small stuff. Rule #2: Everything is small stuff."
(Finn Taylor)

"This secret spoke Life herself unto me: 'Behold,' said she, 'I am that which must ever surpass itself.'"
(Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)

"Those who live, live off the dead."
(Antonin Artaud)

"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 Arthur William Russell, 1872-1970)

"To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist. And there is no decent or charted way of making a living at it. It is something you are, and not something you do."
(Christopher Hitchens, Letters to a Young Contrarian)