WHAT IS LIFE?

 

          WHAT IS LIFE? 

Life is a mystery; so is death. The world, too, is a riddle, a conundrum, a puzzle.

Even the purpose of life is a problem, an enigma, a brain-teaser.

The span of life is not the same for all humans and other living beings.  

In spite of all these issues, life is both a dream and reality which is going to be there for aeons to come.

A lot of thinkers have expressed their thoughts about the nature of life. They are not only interesting but also illuminating.

Given below is a small selection of thoughts expressed by great thinkers from various fields of life. The names of these thinkers have been mentioned but not their particulars for want of space.

1.Every man’s life is a plan of God. – Horace Bushnell.

2.Every man’s life is a fairy tale, written by God’s fingers.---Hans Christian Andersen.

3. A little work, a little sleep, a little love and it is all over.---Mary Roberts Rinehart.

4. Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass, stains the white radiance of eternity. ---P.B.Shelley.

5. The book of life begins with a man and woman in a garden. It ends with Revelations. ---Oscar Wilde

6. Life is a long lesson in humility.---James M.Barrie.

7. We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.---Voltaire.

8. Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being. -----Ralph Waldo Emerson.

9. He lives long that lives well; and time misspent is not lived, but lost. God is better than his promise if he takes from him a long lease, and gives him a freehold of a better value. ----Margaret Fuller.

10. Life is the childhood of our immortality.---Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

11. Life does not count by years. Some suffer a lifetime in a day, and so grow old between the rising and the setting of the sun. --- Augusta Evans.

12. There are two lives to each of us, the life of our actions, and the life of our minds and hearts. ---History reveals men’s deeds and their outward characters, but not themselves. There is a secret self that has its own life, un-penetrated and un-guessed,--- Edward George Bulwer-Lytton.

            To conclude, here is a short quote: Life is a dream ---realize it.

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G.R.Kanwal

17th February 2025