True Life quotes
73 quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"We live on the brink of disaster because we do not know how to let life alone. We do not respect the living and fruitful contradictions and paradoxes of which true life is full."
"True life is lived when tiny changes occur."
"Even if you achieve your outer purpose, it will never satisfy you if you haven't found your inner purpose, which is awakening, being present, being in alignment with life. True power comes out of the presence; it is the presence."
"Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it."
"In poverty and other misfortunes of life, true friends are a sure refuge."
Explore further
Browse quotes that often appear alongside true life — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
Quote collection
Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.
"Life is a language in which certain truths are conveyed to us; if we could learn them in some other way, we should not live."
"This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Real. We must go to the Real. Renunciation will take us to It. Renunciation is the very basis of our true life; every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves."
"The reason some portraits don't look true to life is that some people make no effort to resemble their pictures."
"Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted. Spicy court-memoirs, the lives of gallant ladies, recollections of an ex-nun, a monk's confession, an atheist's repentance, true-to-life accounts of prostitution and bastardy gave our ancestors a penny peep into the forbidden room."
"All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon."
"We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future."
"It has nothing to do with age, it's not our languages, religion, gender, coulour of our skin; It's a soul within a well, that echoes deep beneath the ego's shell. True life can't ever start, until we offer up our heart."
"I do like Canadian poetry. Christian Bök, Anne Carson, Carmine Starnino, and Don McKay are a few of the Canadian poets whose work has been important to me. But I'm not sure that I do see poetry as a world apart. Some of my metaphors are based in the fantastic, but I try to be true to life as I understand it. That understanding is affected by my Canadianness, my Americanness, my whiteness, my gender, my age, my education, my experience...everything about me affects my view of reality. But I try to wrestle against those partialities, not embrace them."
"I think that any story that intends on being culturally authentic and true to life experiences will be a great story. Even if that culture isn't a hip-hop-centric one."
"Life is neither to be wept over nor to be laughed at but to be understood."
"Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video."
"You can't lead a true life without suffering"
"In life, in true life, there can be nothing better than what is. Wanting something different than what is, is blasphemy."
"We are the dead. Our only true life is in the future. We shall take part in it as handfuls of dust and splinters of bone. But how far away that future may be, there is no knowing."
"The thing I loved about this movie [Waitress] when I read the script was that it was exactly the kind of film that I love to watch. It's not just funny, it's serious, just when you need it to be and true to life in a way."
"To be true to life, a novel must have an ending that is inevitable given the specific personalities of the characters involved. The novelist must not impose an ending upon them."
