Have you come across quotes that make you think and inspire you to step back and to reflect the kind of life you’re living in? Some quotes are so powerful that they can help you transform your life. They make you question everything and help you see what else you can do to live a successful life. If you already have a list of quotes you hold dear to your heart, you may also want to add these meaningful quotes we compiled here for an extra boost of inspiration.
Quotes That Make You Think
1. Happiness is an uphill battle. Wear the good shoes. – Kurt Vonnegut
2. Without ice cream, there would be chaos and darkness. – Don Kardong
3. When things go wrong, don’t go with them. – Elvis Presley
4. Happiness is a warm puppy. – Charles M. Schulz
5. Happiness never decreases by being shared. – Buddha
6. Happiness is like jam. You can’t spread even a little without getting some on yourself.
7. For every minute you are angry you lose 60 seconds of happiness. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
8. Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures. – Jackson Brown Jr.
9. Perfect happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness. – Chuang-Tse
10. The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. – Thich Nhat Hanh
11. I freed 1000 slaves. I could have freed 1000 more if only they knew they were slaves. – Harriet Tubman
12. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. – Oscar Wilde
13. The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. – Albert Einstein
14Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. – Soren Kierkegaard
15. Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. – Joshua Marine
16. Together we can face any challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky. – Sonia Gandhi
17. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. – Martin Heidegger
18. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. – Omar Khayyam
19. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. – Maya Angelou
20. I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. – Anne Frank
21. Turning your back on the darkness didn’t mean the darkness would turn it’s back on you. – Jennifer Donnelly
22. Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared. – Robert Greene
23. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. – Robert Louis Stevenson
24. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you. – Stephanie Perkins
25. You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain
26. What matters in life is what you care about and what you will continue to make effort toward caring about it. – Nokwethemba Nkosi
27. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill
28. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. – Anaïs Nin
29.If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are a slave. – Dr. Wayne Dyer
30. Life is too deep for words, so don’t try to describe it, just live it. – C. S. Lewis
31. I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship. – Michelle Williams
32. A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. – Henrik Ibsen
33. Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude. – Anne Frank
34. Could I have been anyone other than me? – Dave Matthews
35. You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. – Buddha
36. Take life one step at a time look forward to your future, stop looking back and regretting the past, the past is the past because it does not last. – Abhishek Tiwari
37. Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful. – Martin Yan
38. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglass
39. I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread. – Mitch Hedberg
40. Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. – Kahlil Gibran
41. The longer I go about living, I see it’s the relationship that is most meaningful. – William Shatner
42. Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other. – Bell Hooks
43. Sometime, when you least expect it, you’ll realize that someone loved you. And that means that someone can love you again! And that will make you smile. – Homer Simpson
44. It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. – Epicurus
45. If I love myself I love you. If I love you I love myself. – Rumi
46. Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. – Erich Fromm
47. The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for. – Bob Marley
48. Good friends help you to find important things when you have lost them…your smile, your hope, and your courage. – Doe Zantamata
49. Don’t walk in front of me, I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me, I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend. – Albert Camus
50. The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart. – Helen Keller
51. 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
52. It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life. – Bryant H. McGill
53. The fullness of life is only accessible in the present moment. – Eckhart Tolle
54. Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth. – Albert Camus
55. Life is in ourselves and not in the external. – Fyodor Dostoevsky
56. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it. – Alexandre Dumas
57. Today me will live in the moment, unless it is unpleasant, in which case I will eat a cookie. – Cookie Monster
58. Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell
59. With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. – William Wordsworth
60. 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
61. Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it. – Harper Lee
62. What matters most in life is often invisible. – Duane Elgin
63. For every minute you are angry you lose 60 seconds of happiness. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
64. The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. – Stephen Furtick
65. Knowing what must be done does away with fear. – Rosa Parks
66. 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. – Michel Angelo
67. You must do the things you think you cannot do. – Eleanor Roosevelt
68. The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom. – Isaac Asimov
69. Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is not to stop questioning. – Albert Einstein
70. You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses. – Tom Wilson
71. No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying. – Tony Robbins
72. Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself. – George Bernard Shaw
73. If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it. – Toni Morrison
74. Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend? – Abraham Lincoln
75. Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years. – Bill Gates
76. If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought. – Peace Pilgrim
77. Everything you can imagine is real. – Pablo Picasso
78. If you’re not comfortable enough with yourself or with your own truth when entering a relationship, then you’re not ready for that relationship. – Steve Maraboli
79. We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be. – Jane Austen
80. Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave. – G.I. Gurdijieff
81. A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don’t know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox’s or bear’s, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there. – Meister Eckhart
82. The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing. – Voltaire
83. It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself. – Francis Bacon
84. To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; not to realize that you do not understand is a defect. – Lao Tzu
85. Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. – Lao Tzu
86. There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness. – Friedrich Nietzche
87. You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. – Dr. Seuss
88. Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own. – Robert Heinlein
89. Certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul. – Pablo Neruda
90. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind. And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. – William Shakespeare
91. The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference. – Elie Wiesel
92. Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen. – Leonardo da Vinci
93. A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
94. Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. – Thomas Merton
95. Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth. – Pablo Picasso
96. Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious. – Oscar Wilde
97. The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. – Albert Einstein
98. Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. – Chuck Klosterman
99. If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself. – Rick Riordan
100. Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone, we find it with another. – Thomas Merton
101. The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things in life like love, meaning, motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize, that in life they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. – Neil deGrasse Tyson
102. Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning. – Maya Angelou
103. Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. – Albert Camus
104. I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value. – Hermann Hesse
105. The language of friendship is not words, but meanings. – Henry David Thoreau
106. Most people would sooner die than think, in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell
107. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. – Oscar Wilde
108. Never to suffer would never to have been blessed. – Edgar Allan Poe
109. Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. – Kahlil Gibran
110. Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time”, is like saying, “I don’t want to”. – Lao Tzu
111. To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work. – Mary Oliver
112. Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. It means they learned it by reading.
113. Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. – Martin Luther
114. As long as I am breathing, in my eyes, I am just beginning. – Criss Jami
115. Sometimes you have to shut your eyes, so you can see the real beauty. – Kilian Jornet
116. To be truly positive in the eyes of some, you have to risk appearing negative in the eyes of others. – Criss Jami
117. God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh. – Voltaire
118. Take time like the river that never grows stale. Keep going and steady. No hurry, no rush. – Rumi
119. Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots. – Rumi
120. Do not be lured by the need to be liked, better to be respected, even feared. – Robert Greene
121. There’s always some truth behind “just kidding”, knowledge behind every “I don’t know”, emotions behind “I don’t care” and pain behind “it’s okay”.
122. I don’t care that they stole my idea. I care that they don’t have any of their own. – Nikola Tesla
123. You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love, is to live by it. – Victor Hugo
124. The wind howls, but the mountain remains still. – Japanese Proverb
125. What makes night within us may leave stars. – Victor Hugo
126. Nothing is forever. Everything goes to 0 eventually. – Naval Ravikant
127. It is not I who am strong, it is reason, it is truth. – Emile Zola
128. If you’ve never eaten while crying you don’t know what life tastes like. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
129. Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work. – Gustave Flaubert
130. A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live. – Lao Tzu
131. To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. Not to dare is to lose oneself. – Soren Kierkegaard
132. Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions. – Gustave Flaubert Click to tweet
133. Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely. – William Faulkner
134. Don’t handicap your children by making their lives easy. – Robert A. Heinlein
135. Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong. – Oscar Wilde
136. Genius is the recovery of childhood at will. – Arthur Rimbaud
137. Men must live and create. Live to the point of tears. – Albert Camus
138. A clear conscience is the sure sign of a bad memory. – Mark Twain
139. Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one. – Voltaire
140. Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters. – Victor Hugo
141. Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. – Voltaire
142. The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear. – Rumi
143. Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. – Rumi
144. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. – Robert Louis Stevenson
145. Do or do not, there is no try. – Yoda
146. Cleverness is not wisdom. – Euripides
147. Life is the flower for which love is the honey. – Victor Hugo
148. All human wisdom is summed up in two words, wait and hope. – Alexandre Dumas
149. All generalizations are dangerous, even this one. – Alexandre Dumas
150. Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough. – Gustave Flaubert
151. Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. – Soren Kierkegaard
152. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. – Soren Kierkegaard
153. I would rather die on my feet than live on my knees. – Euripides
154. he hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn. – Bertrand Russell
155. The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. – William Faulkner
156. Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them so much. – Oscar Wilde
157. I can resist anything except temptation. – Oscar Wilde
158. Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself. – Leo Tolstoy
159. A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
160. Wisely and slow, they stumble that run fast. – William Shakespeare
161. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. – Mark Twain
162. I have never let my schooling interfere with my education. – Mark Twain
163. Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect). – Mark Twain
164. He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know. – Lao Tzu
165. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. – Lao Tzu
166. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. – Seneca
167. The wound is the place where the light enters you. – Rumi
168. Whatever purifies you is the right path. – Rumi
169. If you trip while running down a hallway, you’ll get a nosebleed. If you trip in life, you cry. – Minori
170. Worrying about rejection may be the same as rejecting yourself. – Kaga Kouko
171. Real depression is when you stop loving the things you love.
172. It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to has power over you. – Leon Brown
173. Yes, I’m smiling, but deep down I’m crying.
174. Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
175. Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form. – Rumi
176. Melancholy is the happiness of being sad. – Victor Hugo
177. The most common form of despair is not being who you are. – Soren Kierkegaard
178. The most painful state of being is remembering the future, particularly the one you’ll never have. – Soren Kierkegaard
179. If you dig a pit for others to fall into, you will fall into it yourself. – Rumi
180. When you’re happy you enjoy the music, when you’re sad you understand the lyrics.
181. The pain of parting is nothing to the joy of meeting again. -Charles Dickens
182. Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. – Edgar Allan Poe
183. I remained too much inside my head and ended up losing my mind. – Edgar Allan Poe
184. Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things. – Arthur Schopenhauer
185. Anger clouds the mind. Turned inward, it is an unconquerable enemy. – Splinter of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
186. Solitude is fine, but you need someone to tell you that solitude is fine. – Honoré de Balzac
187. hose who do not weep, do not see. – Victor Hugo
188. A writer is a world trapped in a person. – Victor Hugo
189. Every blade has two edges; he who wounds with one wounds himself with the other. – Victor Hugo
190. Man is sometimes extraordinarily, passionately, in love with suffering. – Fyodor Dostoyevsky