Karma can either be your best ally or your worst enemy, depending on your course of action in life. As the popular saying goes, “What goes around comes around.” So whether you’re a believer in karma or not, may you find the following 120 karma quotes helpful in your personal reflection.
Karma Quotes
1. Karma is the destiny man weaves for himself. – L. H. Leslie-Smith
2. How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours. – Wayne Dyer
3. Karma comes after everyone eventually. You can’t get away with screwing people over your whole life, I don’t care who you are. What goes around comes around. That’s how it works. Sooner or later the universe will serve you the revenge that you deserve. – Jessica Brody
4. You can’t escape karma … It is what it is. It doesn’t judge, it’s neither good nor bad like most people think. It’s the result of all the actions, positive and negative–a constant balancing act of events–cause and effect–tit for tat–reaping and sowing–what goes around comes around … However you phrase it, it’s the same in the end. – Alyson Noël
5. Karma is like a bank deposit, from which one can draw depending upon the consequences of one’s actions. – P. Koslowski
6. Karma exists, chickens do come home to roost, and as my mother, Phyllis, liked to say, “There is always a day of reckoning.” – Donald Van de Mark
7. Karma is a cruel mistress. – Kelley York
8. Karma is a key that we may use to organize our lives, rather than endlessly agonizing over the seemingly unexplainable and often unexpected events forming the fabric of our lives…. Karma is not about fate, fatalism, or destiny; nothing is pre-ordained–rather everything is a sequential happening emerging logically from antecedents. Karma is a way of viewing existence that brings about a harmony of both fatalism and free will, resulting in increased mental health and self-responsibility. – Jonn Mumford
9. Karma is justice. It does not reward or punish. It shows no favoritism because we have to earn all that we receive. Karma doesn’t predestine anyone or anything. We create our own causes, and karma adjusts the effects with perfect balance. – Mary T. Browne
10. Karma is like an arrow which the archer has already discharged. It has left his hands. He cannot recall it. Therefore he must take the consequences of it. – Dittakavi Subrahmanya Sarma
11. Karma is like the patterns of a formal dance or a familiar song. No variation is possible, and the highest ideal is to move through the measures correctly. – Kij Johnson
12. Karma is like the fruit of a mango tree. The mango will yield the tree and the tree will yield the mango and the cycle continues. – Niruben Amin
13. Karma is like the vine that gathers strength through uninterrupted years, and which fastens its tendrils so closely that it is as strong as the structure to which it adheres. There is no way to destroy its power except by the separation of the parts, these parts renew themselves in other forms of life, but the structure is freed when its root is destroyed. – William Q. Judge
14. Whereas negative karma is like a stormy sea that batters our boat from all sides, good karma is like the fair wind in our sails that effortlessly propels us forward. – Elizabeth Clare Prophet & Patricia R. Spadaro
15. Karma is our teacher. It teaches us to refine our behavior–hopefully sooner rather than later. One way to tell a young soul from an old soul is to observe how quickly he learns karma’s lessons in life. – Editors of Hinduism Today
16. For the keynote of the law of Karma is equilibrium, and nature is always working to restore that equilibrium whenever through man’s acts it is disturbed. – Christmas Humphreys
17. The law of karma is the principle of cosmic justice that holds that all good actions will be rewarded and that all wicked actions will be punished. Sometime. Somehow. Somewhere. – Chanju Mun
18. I believe in Karma. If the good is sown, the good is collected. When positive things are made, that returns well. – Yannick Noah
19. As long as karma exists, the world changes. There will always be karma to be taken care of. – Nina Hagen
20. Karma moves in two directions. If we act virtuously, the seed we plant will result in happiness. If we act non-virtuously, suffering results. – Sakyong Mipham
21. I would never disrespect any man, woman, chick or child out there. We’re all the same. What goes around comes around, and karma kicks us all in the butt in the end of the day. – Angie Stone
22. There’s a natural law of karma that vindictive people, who go out of their way to hurt others, will end up broke and alone. – Sylvester Stallone
23. I try to live with the idea that karma is a very real thing. So I put out what I want to get back. – Megan Fox
24. As she has planted, so does she harvest; such is the field of karma. – Sri Guru Granth Sahib
25. If you give a good thing to the world, then over time your karma will be good, and you’ll receive good. – Russell Simmons
26. Belief in karma ought to make the life pure, strong, serene, and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us; only our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave the soul that by wisdom has gained power and uses both in love. – Annie Besant
27. Karma can be luggage or a magic carpet — carry it or let it carry you. – Terri Guillemets
28. I believe in karma, and I believe if you put out positive vibes to everybody, that’s all you’re going to get back. – Kesha
29. Karma bides it’s time. You will always have to watch out. Karma is unforgiving and always gets payback. – Benjamin Bayani
30. You win some, you lose some, let Karma takes its course. – Cocoy McCoy
31. Karma can be seen as a curse or a gift because it keeps us attached to this world. – Abdullah Fort
32. Your karma should be good, and everything else will follow. Your good karma will always win over your bad luck. – Rohit Shetty
33. Karma is karma. Karma is in life. You do the wrong things, you get the wrong things out of it. – Antonio Brown
34. Karma is not just about the troubles, but also about surmounting them. – Rick Springfield
35. Karma, when properly understood, is just the mechanics through which consciousness manifests. – Deepak Chopra
36. Figure out what you’re good at and start helping other people with it; give it away. Pay it forward. Karma sort of works because people are very consistent. On a long enough timescale, you will attract what you project. – Naval Ravikant
37. Problems or successes, they all are the results of our own actions. Karma. The philosophy of action is that no one else is the giver of peace or happiness. One’s own karma, one’s own actions are responsible to come to bring either happiness or success or whatever. – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
38. This is your karma. You do not understand now, but you will understand later. – H. Raven Rose
39. Things don’t just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don’t live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be. – Sharon Salzberg
40. Karma, simply put, is an action for an action, good or bad. – Stephen Richards
41. Karma means that through your thoughts and feelings and actions, you are generating a state of mind. That state of mind has a view. That view will cause things to happen to you or not happen to you. – Frederick Lenz
42. Karma is not something complicated or philosophical. Karma means watching your body, watching your mouth, and watching your mind. Trying to keep these three doors as pure as possible is the practice of karma. – Thubten Yeshe
43. Karma is often wrongly confused with the notion of a fixed destiny. It is more like an accumulation of tendencies that can lock us into particular behavior patterns, which themselves result in further accumulations of tendencies of a similar nature… But is is not necessary to be a prisoner of old karma. – Jon Kabat-Zinn
44. Can you be compassionate even to those who have no compassion? If so, there is no finer karma that you can create. – Gary Zukav
45. If karma doesn’t catch up, God will surely pick up the slack. – Anthony Liccione
46. Karma means that all actions have consequences. Grace means that in a moment of atonement -taking responsibility, making amends, asking for forgiveness – all karma is burned. – Marianne Williamson
47. We are the makers of our own lives. There is no such thing as fate. Our lives are the result of our previous actions, our karma, and it naturally flows that, having been ourselves the makers of our karma, we must also be able to unmake it. – Swami Vivekananda
48. One who previously made bad karma, but who reforms and creates good karma, brightens the world like the moon appearing from behind a cloud. – Gautama Buddha
49. It’s karma, baby. And it goes around. – Alicia Keys
50. Narrative stories are nothing but models of karma and causality – how one thing leads to another. And a lot of narrative fiction is about causality that we don’t immediately understand. – Jess Row
51. You can’t get there alone. People have to help you, and I do believe in karma. I believe in paybacks. You get people to help you by telling the truth, by being earnest. – Randy Pausch
52. Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. Bodhidharma
53. Just try to do the right thing, and that’s immediate karma: ‘I feel good about myself.’ – Linda Thompson
54. I’m a believer in karma, and I’m also a believer that things happen for a reason. – Bill Goldberg
55. Karma isn’t fate. Nor is it a punishment imposed on us by some external agent. We create our own karma. Karma is the result of the choices that we make every moment of every day. – Tulku Thondup
56. Karma has a surprising way of taking care of situations. All you have to do is to sit back and watch. – Author Unknown
57. Karma is a balance sheet of life which debits and credit all your deeds. Which is audited by our creator and actions are based on what we accumulated in it. – Abhysheq Shukla
58. Karma is extremely efficient, if one is extremely patient. – Efrat Cybulkiewicz
59. Stop blaming others for the pains and sufferings you have. They are because of you, your karma, and your own disposition. – Girdhar Joshi
60. Contrary to popular misconception, karma has nothing to do with punishment and reward. It exists as part of our holographic universe’s binary or dualistic operating system only to teach us responsibility for our creations-and all things we experience are our creations. – Sol Luckman
61. Karma is like a boomerang, whatever you give out… will come back to you. – Rashida Rowe
62. The results of karma, whether good or bad, may not manifest right away. In may happen in the same lifetime or in a future life. We may even receive both positive and negative reactions at the same time. – Benjawan Poomsan
63. Karma is intertwined in the fabric of our life, and training ourselves to be aware of this can transform how we live. We become more mindful and thoughtful, making choices with care, understanding that our past actions, present experiences, and future circumstances originate in our minds. – Thubten Chodron
64. Karma is a tricky thing. To serve Karma, one must repay good Karma to others. To serve Karma well, one must sometimes deliver bad Karma where it is due. – M.R. Mathias
65. What you read is fate, what you write is karma – Dr.P.S. Jagadeesh Kumar
66. It never hurts to have karma in your corner. – Max Hawthorne
67. Karma is real. – George Troy
68. Karma usually find those it’s meant to once we no longer need it to. – Daniel V Chappell
69. You don’t have to believe in karma for her to exist… if it is your turn, she will find you. – Nyki Mack
70. We generate our own Karma with our thoughts, words and deeds. It would be quite true to say that our thoughts create our karma – good, bad or indifferent. – Dada J. P. Vaswani
71. Karma is never punishment or retribution. It is a Law as impersonal as gravity. When you choose to experience the pain in your life as karma, you must then accept that you have done something of an equally distasteful nature. – J. Earp
72. I see a lot of people talking about karma almost as if it is a form of revenge. When you get into that revenge-seeking mindset of those who have harmed me will pay for it in the future, we begin to attract negative karma to ourselves. We should be focusing on the positive effects that our positive actions have on our life. When you think with anger and revenge, you lose your abilities of forgiveness, compassion, and love for the people around you. – Avina Celeste
73. No one can escape karma. Two events which may, at first, seem disconnected can be karmically connected. After all, karma works on a spiritual level which may manifest itself physically in a myriad of seemingly unrelated ways. – Charbel Tadros
74. There is no amount of bad karma that can compete with a contrite spirit and God’s forgiveness. – Shannon L. Alder
75. Karma is not a sentence already printed. It is a series of words that authors can arrange as she chooses. – Sara Gran
76. Karma and manifestation work 24/7 to balance the scales. Do justice, in due time. – T.F. Hodge
77. In other words, if you’re not motivated to be nice because of the good karma, be motivated to be nice because ultimately it saves time – Jocelyn K. Glei
78. Karma does never return to punish. Its role is to assist with solving what has been left uncompleted. It always returns to you, when you are strong enough to look at it. You never are asked to deal with more than you can handle. So relax and accept what is being offered to you. Accept it as a gift of love. – Raphael Zernoff
79. Karma has to be done, to the last moment, there is no way of escaping the world once one is in it. – Aporva Kala
80. Before you act, find your center. Ground yourself in Spirit. Set ego aside. Ask yourself, “How do I want to be about this? What would love do?” Then do that. With good intention and inspired action, good results follow. It’s karma. – Annette Vaillancourt
81. It’s these small differences in people’s karma that determine if we get up or remain lying on the ground. – Peter Høeg
82. Karma is not an inviolate engine of cosmic punishment. Rather, it is a neutral sequence of acts, results, and consequences. – Vera Nazarian
83. Karma is real, it balances the universe. – Ronnie Radke
84. Karma is the tension of the thread in the human tapestry. – Jeffery Taylor
85. Karma is your survival and your bondage. And if you handle it right, it can also be your liberation. – Jaggi Vasudev
86. I never kill insects. If I see ants or spiders in the room, I pick them up and take them outside. Karma is everything. – Holly Valance
87. Even chance meetings are the result of karma… Things in life are fated by our previous lives. That even in the smallest events there’s no such thing as coincidence. – Haruki Murakami
88. Karma can be positive, neutral and negative! Those doing positive karma create abundance and leave something behind, with neutral you merely survive and with negative one, you leave a negative impact behind you. – Sandeep Sahajpal
89. You must acknowledge and experience this part of the universe. Karma is intricate, too vast. You would, with your limited human senses, consider it too unfair. But you have tools to really, truly love. Loving the children is very important. But love everyone as you would love your children. – Kuan Yin
90. I believe in letting karma do its thing. What comes around goes around. – Tim Gunn
91. Dear Karma, I really hate you right now, you made your point. – Ottilie Weber
92. I want revenge, but I don’t want to screw up my karma. – Susan Colasanti
93. I heard that karma is vengeful and is also a light sleeper. – Rudy Francisco
94. You have to be very careful when involving yourself with someone else’s karma. – Brownell Landrum
95. I’m saving up all of my karma for a rainy day. – Andrew James Pritchard
96. I believe in a lot of karma. Your actions make your future. – Shallu Jindal
97. I guess one of the ways that karma works is that it finds out what you are most afraid of and then makes that happen eventually. – Cheech Marin
98. I’m a true believer in karma. You get what you give, whether it’s bad or good. – Sandra Bullock
99. I believe in luck and fate and I believe in karma, that the energy you put out in the world comes back to meet you. – Chris Pine
100. I don’t have any reason to hate anybody; I believe in good karma and spreading good energy. – Vanilla Ice
101. Karma is nothing more than a reminder that we are one. Harming others we ultimately end up harming ourselves. – Gordana Biernat
102. We have to be nice to ourselves and others in order for life to run smoothly. This is just how it goes: a fun little game of the universe we like to sometimes call karma. – Tara Stiles
103. Karma means action. So things change through action not by prayer… not by wish. – Dalai Lama XIV
104. One has to reap the fruits of his karma. The law of karma is inevitable and is accepted by all the great philosophies of the world: ‘As you sow, so shall you reap.’ – Rama Swami
105. Karma never loses an address. – Sai Baba of Shirdi
106. Karma is a Sanskrit term. It means action or deed. Any physical or mental action is Karma. Thinking is mental Karma. Karma is the sum total of our acts, both in the present life and in the preceding births. – Swami Sivananda
107. It is not easy to get rid of karma, and every man is subject to it. The more you push a pendulum to the right, the more it will swing to the left, then again to the right- action and reaction. No action in life goes unpaid and you can’t hide anything from yourself. You are your own witness and observer. You know what you think, feel and do and you know your real intentions. By observing yourself, you can control your karma. – Swami Satyananda
108. The meaning of karma is in the intention. The intention behind action is what matters – The Gita
109. Nature expresses karma through the elements. The heat of fire is the karma of fire. Expansiveness of space is the karma of space. The movement of the wind is the karma of air. The liquid nature of water is the karma of water. The solidity of earth is the karma of soil. Desires, expectations and thoughts are karmas of the mind. The expressions of the senses are karmas of the body. In fact, we are homogeneous karma. The whole world is homogeneous karma, the whole of creation is homogeneous karma. – Swami Niranjana
110. Give up the sense of doership. Karma will go on automatically. Or karma will drop away automatically. – Ramana Maharishi
111. Don’t try to analyse karma because you cannot fathom the depth of karma. Just do your duty and keep moving ahead with love and prayer in your heart. – Sri Sri Ravi Shankhar
112. The law of karma exists only for the unconscious man; for the conscious man there exists no law of karma. It is really unconsciousness that makes you suffer. If you do something unconsciously then you will suffer, then karma will be created. ‘Karma’ means unconscious action. If you do something consciously, fully alert, no karma is created. – Osho
113. Karma is the memory of life. You are able to build this body the way it is built only because there is memory of life, right from that single-celled animal to every other form. The basis of your existence right now in the physical body is your karma. If all your karma is taken away, this moment you will shed your body. It is like pulling the plug on you. Karma is the glue, karma is that which has cemented you to the body. – Sadhguru
114. The universal law of karma … is that of action and reaction, cause and effect, sowing and reaping. In the course of natural righteousness, man, by his thoughts and actions, becomes the arbiter of his destiny. – Paramahansa Yogananda
115. Mukti cannot be attained as the result of any karma or action, however good and noble and meritorious. It cannot be conferred upon a man as a favour by any person, howsoever enlightened and possessed of yogic powers. – Mahayogi Gambhirnath
116. When you understand the concept of karma, you will see that whatsoever is happening to you is really of your own doing. Nothing happens to you from outside of you. You create whatever happens to you. Of course, most of the time you are not conscious of your actions. So you are not able to see yourself doing it. – Swami Nithyananda
117. Karma does not mean merely the actions that we perform with the limbs of our body; even the process of breathing constitutes karma. Eating, drinking, walking, sitting —all are various types of action that man performs. So, it is not possible to know the consequences of our actions. We should enquire about the nature of karma before performing. – Sathya Sai Baba
118. Your believing or not believing in karma has no effect on its existence, nor on its consequences to you. Just as a refusal to believe in the ocean would not prevent you from drowning. – F. Paul Wilson
119. Debts that must be paid … that sums up the concept of karma. But I would add that karma is not a burden that you have to carry. It is also an opportunity to learn, a chance to practice love and forgiveness, a chance to learn lessons that are valuable to us. Karma offers us the chance to wipe our dirty slate clean, to erase the wrong doings of the past. – J. P. Vaswani
120. Karma is not something you can control, something you can turn on and off. It’s not what you do; it’s who you are. Karma extends throughout our entire life experience. If you are pleasant and give off positive energy, others will pick on that, and feed off that. If you’re a grouch who is always upset, always complaining, always wishing for something to be different, be better, then you will for the rest of your life find yourself in situations that could be different, be better. You will never be satisfied, just frustrated and angry. – Kevin Chappell