Oftentimes, the quotes you read give inspiration and guidance. However, some quotes you encounter can be confusing and can make you think twice. And by reading between the lines, only then that the real message is revealed. So here are 200 deep quotes for you to think deeply about and share.
Deep Quotes
1. Life is just a chance to grow a soul. – A. Powell Davies
2. Rest in reason; move in passion. – Kahlil Gibran
3. The past is never dead. It’s not even past. – William Faulkner
4. Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. – Martin Luther
5. Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour. – Victor Hugo
6. The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master. – Robin Sharma
7. Leave no stone unturned. – Euripides
8. To do two things at once is to do neither. – Publilius Syrus
9. What worries you, masters, you. – John Locke
10. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
11. The darker the night, the brighter the stars. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
12. Our lives are like a candle in the wind. – Carl Sandburg
13. No one can be sad when they have a balloon. – Winnie The Pooh
14. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. – Oscar Wilde
15. Don’t stumble over something behind you. – Unknown
16. Life is a constant process of dying. – Arthur Schopenhauer
17. Genius is the recovery of childhood at will. – Arthur Rimbaud
18. The wind howls, but the mountain remains still. – Japanese proverb
19. The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes. – Dejan Stojanovic
20. A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
21. If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company. – Jean-Paul Sartre
22. I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship. – Michelle Williams
23. When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you. – Friedrich Nietzsche
24. Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots. – Rumi
25. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. – Sigmund Freud
26. It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe. – Muhammad Ali
27. Sometimes you have to shut your eyes, so you can see the real beauty. – Kilian Jornet
28. A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory. – Mark Twain
29. Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast. – William Shakespeare
30. You can tell a pioneer by the arrows in his back. – Beverly Rubik
31. The harder you fall, the heavier your heart; the heavier your heart, the stronger you climb; the stronger you climb, the higher your pedestal. – Criss Jami
32. The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. – Charles Dickens
33. Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. – Rabindranath Tagore
34. Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. – Voltaire
35. To be radical is to grasp things by the root. – Karl Marx
36. Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears. – Albert Camus
37. Passion is born deaf and dumb. – Honoré de Balzac
38. Of all lies, art is the least untrue. – Gustave Flaubert
39. Sin is geographical. – Bertrand Russell
40. A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. – Henrik Ibsen
41. The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power. – Nikola Tesla
42. Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real. – Neils Bohr
43. All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream. – Edgar Allan Poe
44. He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace. – Leo Tolstoy
45. The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer. – Terence McKenna
46. If it is not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide. – Lord Acton
47. Understand that half the game is keeping quiet, and carefully watching those around you. – Robert Greene
48. To be sane in a world of madman is in itself madness. – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
49. Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion. – Edward Abbey
50. Every strength is also a weakness. The opposite is true as well. – Neil Strauss
51. It’s not how well you play the game, it’s deciding what game you want to play. – Kwame Appiah
52. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it. – Margaret Atwood
53. All that you are seeking is also seeking you. – Franz Kafka
54. The only reason we get lost in thought, is because it is unfamiliar territory. – Ashton Leinen
55. Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids. – John Steinbeck
56. If you haven’t found something strange during the day it hasn’t been much of a day. – John Wheeler
57. The task is not so much to see what no one has yet seen; but to think what nobody has yet thought, about that which everybody sees. – Erwin Schrödinger
58. Begin at once to live, and count each separate day as a separate life. – Seneca
59. If you trip while running down a hallway, you’ll get a nosebleed. If you trip in life, you cry. – Minori
60. It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to has power over you. – Leon Brown
61. Turning your back on the darkness didn’t mean the darkness would turn it’s back on you. – Jennifer Donnelly
62. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you. – Stephanie Perkins
63. You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. – Buddha
64. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglass
65. I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread. – Mitch Hedberg
66. You might want someone else to save you, or might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really, not from yourself. – Ava Dellaira
67. It is only in our darkest hours that we may discover the true strength of the brilliant light within ourselves that can never, ever, be dimmed. – Doe Zantamata
68. What matters most in life is often invisible. – Duane Elgin
69. Knowing what must be done does away with fear. – Rosa Parks
70. Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures. – Jackson Brown Jr.
71. You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses. – Tom Wilson
72. If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. – Toni Morrison
73. Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend? – Abraham Lincoln
74. There is pleasure in the pathless woods, there is rapture in the lonely shore, there is society where none intrudes, by the deep sea, and music in its roar; I love not Man the less, but Nature more. – Lord Byron
75. There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love. – Washington Irving
76. The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep. – Robert Frost
77. All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. – J. R. R. Tolkien
78. Transformation is a process, and as life happens there are tons of ups and downs. It’s a journey of discovery – there are moments on mountaintops and moments in deep valleys of despair. – Rick Warren
79. Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life. – Samuel Ullman
80. Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. – Søren Kierkegaard
81. We don’t see things the way they are. We see them the way we are. – Talmud
82. A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. – Lao Tzu
83. Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it. – Harper Lee
84. If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from the inside. – Jim Kwik
85. An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. – Mahatma Gandhi
86. I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words. – Ann Hood
87. Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose. – John Stossel
88. The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise man grows it under his feet. – James Oppenheim
89. There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. – Aldous Huxley
90. Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. – Grace Hansen
91. Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights. – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
92. Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life. – Sophia Loren
93. Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. – Jonathan Swift
94. Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude. – Anne Frank
95. Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. – Plato
96. Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make the profit is without value. – Arthur Miller
97. In the end, it’s not going to matter how many breaths you took, but how many moments took your breath away. – Shing Xiong
98. I truly believe that everything that we do and everyone that we meet is put in our path for a purpose. There are no accidents; we’re all teachers if we’re willing to pay attention to the lessons we learn, trust our positive instincts and not be afraid to take risks or wait for some miracle to come knocking at our door. – Marla Gibbs
99. Better to do something imperfectly than to do nothing flawlessly. – Robert Schuller
100. And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. – Abe Lincoln
101. Anger clouds the mind. Turned inward, it is an unconquerable enemy. – Splinter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
102. Prejudices are rarely overcome by argument; not being founded in reason they cannot be destroyed by logic. – Tryon Edwards
103. Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. – Pablo Picasso
104. What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it. – Salvador Dalí
105. The struggle between ‘for’ and ‘against’ is the mind’s worst disease. – Sent ts’an, c. 700 C. E.
106. You could not step twice into the same river. – Heraclitus
107. The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance. – Alan W. Watts
108. Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect. – Margaret Mitchell
109. If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are. – Zen Proverb
110. Sitting quietly, doing nothing, Spring comes and grass grows by itself. – Zenrin Kushû
111. The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness. – John Muir
112. Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. – Hermann Hesse
113. The wise man knows that it is better to sit on the banks of a remote mountain stream than to be emperor of the whole world. – Zhuangzi
114. We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders. – G.K. Chesterton
115. The earth has music for those who listen. – George Santayana
116. We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning. – Jean Baudrillard
117. I don’t necessarily agree with everything that I say. – Marshall McLuhan
118. People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within. – Ursula K. Le Guin
119. I’ve often lost myself, in order to find the burn that keeps everything awake. – Federico García Lorca
120. The menu is not the meal. – Alan W. Watts
121. A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure. – Lee Segall
122. Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop. – Lewis Carroll
123. Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. – André Gide
124. Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow. – Aesop
125. I am a part of all that I have met. – Alfred Lord Tennyson
126. The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. – Edward R. Murrow
127. Gazing at the stars will not save you from the abyss at your feet. – Dr. Idel Dreimer
128. If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky? – Stanislaw J. Lec
129. We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it. – Albert Szent-Györgyi
130. Sometimes it’s necessary to go a long distance out of the way in order to come back a short distance correctly. – Edward Albee
131. When the student is ready, the master appears. – Buddhist Proverb
132. A gun gives you the body, not the bird. – Henry David Thoreau
133. I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying. – Charles C. Finn
134. What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite. – Thomas Carlyle
135. Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought. – Henri Louis Bergson
136. You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep. – Navajo Proverb
137. To learn something new, take the path that you took yesterday. – John Burroughs
138. The map is not the territory. – Alfred Korzybski
139. Seeking is not always the way to find. – Augustus William
140. You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather. – Pema Chödrön
141. Tomorrow always comes, and today is never yesterday. – S.A. Sachs
142. See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking. – W.H. Auden
143. Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. – Dr. Seuss
144. Who depends on another man’s table often dines late. – John Ray
145. The tighter you squeeze, the less you have. – Zen Saying
146. When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor. – Mignon McLaughlin
147. May your passion be the kernel of corn stuck between your molars, always reminding you there’s something to tend to. – Jeb Dickerson
148. The throat thinks of more than just thirst. – Terri Guillemets
149. We become aware of the void as we fill it. – Antonio Porchia
150. When you’re climbing the ladder, don’t forget the rungs. – Author Unknown
151. The silkworm spins out his life, and, wrapping himself in his labor, dies. – Phineas Parkhurst Quimby
152. Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there. – Eric Hoffer
153. Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light? – Maurice Freehill
154. Ask not the grass to give you green, and later walk all over it. – Anthony Liccione
155. The moment a little boy is concerned with which is a jay and which is a sparrow, he can no longer see the birds or hear them sing. – Eric Berne
156. Will localizes us; thought universalizes us. – Henri-Frédéric Amiel
157. We are spirits clad in veils. – Christopher P. Cranch
158. If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. – Francis Bacon
159. To believe with certainty we must begin with doubting. – Stanislaus I of Poland
160. One does what one is; one becomes what one does. – Robert von Musil
161. Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought. – Matsuo Basho
162. One epitaph is sufficiently comprehensive for most persons:—Here lies A MORTAL. In that word is comprised a brief space of trivial joys, and trivial sorrows. The rest is a phantom. – William Benton Clulow
163. Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth. – Ludwig Börne
164. It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos. – John L. McClenahan
165. A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for. – John A. Shedd
166. Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily. – William of Ockham
167. I freed 1000 slaves. I could have freed 1000 more if only they knew they were slaves. – Harriet Tubman
168. The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it but that it is too low and we reach it. – Michelangelo
169. You don’t drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there. – Edwin Louis Cole
170. Arm yourself, my heart: the thing that you must do is fearful, yet inevitable. – Euripides
171. Life’s burdens are lighter when I laugh at myself. – Jonathan Lockwood Huie
172. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you. – Mary Tyler Moore
173. A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love. – St. Basil
174. Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good. – Vaclav Havel
175. Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true. – Honoré de Balzac
176. People spend too much time doing and not enough time thinking about what they should be doing. – Naval Ravikant
177. First, see clearly. Next, act correctly. Finally, endure and accept the world as it is. – Ryan Holiday
178. There are no weeds and no worthless men. There are only bad farmers. – Victor Hugo
179. Never forget that you are one of a kind. Never forget that if there weren’t any need for you in all your uniqueness to be on this earth, you wouldn’t be here in the first place. And never forget, no matter how overwhelming life’s challenges and problems seem to be, that one person can make a difference in the world. In fact, it is always because of one person that all the changes that matter in the world come about. So be that one person. – R. Buckminster Fuller
180. You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches. – Dita Von Teese
181. When we encounter another individual truly as a person, not as an object for use, we become fully human. – Martin Buber
182. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer
183. One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, “Is it half full or half empty?” So I drank the water. No more problem. – Alejandro Jodorowsky
184. When it hurts – observe. Life is trying to teach you something. – Anita Krizzan
185. Each new chapter of our lives requests an old part of us to fall and a new part of us to rise. – Jenna Galbut
186. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist. – Oscar Wilde
187. In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety. – Abraham Maslow
188. If it scares you, it might be a good thing to try. – Seth Godin
189. Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life. – J.K. Rowling
190. Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. – Albert Schweitzer
191. We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are. – Anais Nin
192. The flower doesn’t dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes. – Mark Nepo
193. If it doesn’t open, it’s not your door. – Unknown
194. Trust the wait. Embrace the uncertainty. Enjoy the beauty of becoming. When nothing is certain, anything is possible. – Mandy Hale
195. The trouble is, you think you have time. – Buddha
196. Those who have a voice must speak for those who are voiceless. – Bishop Oscar Romero
197. Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness. – Katherine Henson
198. And at the end of the day, your feet should be dirty, your hair messy and your eyes sparkling. – Shanti
199. Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be? – Charles Bukowski
200. Our bravest and best lessons are not learned through success, but through misadventure. – Amos Bronson Alcott