Living life to the fullest takes a lot of dedication and work. However, it can be extremely difficult to maintain a high level of inspiration, especially when the going gets tough. Whenever things don’t go as planned, I developed the habit to relax for a couple of minutes, take a step back and have a look at my handpicked selection of the most inspiring quotes about life, love, happiness and growth. Often times, that’s all it takes to re-enlighten the burning fire of inspiration within me. It’s really astonishing what a few very wise words can do to your overall well-being and the way you perceive the world. Sometimes you’re just so caught up with your daily life that it appears to be a grim and ruthless world you’re living in. Inspiration from so many different sources allows us to remember the true beauty of life. It makes us see opportunities where others only see problems.
Reading through the quotes of some of the wisest men and women helps us to get our positive outlook on life back, even in times of great trouble. Life can be tough, it can be difficult, but with the right source inspiration, you have everything you need to face the challenges of your daily life.
If we have the courage to pay close attention to the wisdom that can be found within each quote, if we truly digest it and act upon it, we can profoundly change our lives.
100 Inspirational Quotes about Life
Let’s begin. The quotes are in no specific order.
Truly Inspirational Quotes about Life
1. “When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.”
John Lennon
2. “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
Jack Canfield
3. “The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.”
Arthur C. Clarke
4. “The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.”
Marcel Pagnol
5. “Some men see things as they are and say why—I dream things that never were and say why not.”
George Bernard Shaw
6. “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.”
Kahlil Gibran
7. “Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
Thomas Edison
8. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
Mark Twain
9. “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”
Aristotle
10. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.”
Maya Angelou
11. “Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
Will Rogers
12. “Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”
Charles Swindoll
13. “When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
Sydney Harris
14. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.”
Steve Jobs
15. “Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.”
Bruce Lee
16. “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
Albert Einstein
17. “Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.”
Harvey Fierstein
18. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.”
Helen Keller
19. “There is no royal road to anything. One thing at a time, all things in succession. That which grows fast, withers as rapidly. That which grows slowly, endures.
Josiah Gilbert Holland
20. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.”
Les Brown
21. “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
Lao Tzu
22. “Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
Ray Kroc
23. “Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.”
Benjamin Disraeli
24. “Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.”
John Wooden
25. “Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first, it is ridiculed. In the second, it is opposed. In the third, it is regarded as self-evident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
26. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”
Joshua J. Marine
27. “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go do it. Because what the world needs are more people who have, life.”
Howard Thurman
28. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
29. “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”
Albert Einstein
30. “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happened when you don’t have a plan.”
Larry Winget
31. “When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that it would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.”
Erma Bombeck
32. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Napoleon Hill
33. “The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”
Vince Lombardi
34. “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”
Pablo Picasso
35. “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
36. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.”
Helen Keller
37. “Though no one can go back and make a brand-new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand-new ending.”
Carl Bard
38. “You may find the worst enemy or best friend in yourself.”
English proverb
39. “Life is about making an impact, not making an income.”
Kevin Kruse
40. “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.”
Henry Ford
41. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
Michael Jordan
42. “You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.”
Christopher Columbus
43. “Live each day as if your life had just begun.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
44. “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.”
Leonardo da Vinci
45. “Look at the sparrows; they do not know what they will do in the next moment. Let us literally live from moment to moment.”
Mahatma Gandhi
46. “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it over and put it back in your pocket.”
Will Rogers
47. “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
48. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
Amelia Earhart
49. “There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.”
Roger Staubach
50. “If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough.”
Oprah Winfrey
51. “The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving.”
Oliver Wendell Holmes
52. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sales. Explore, dream, discover.”
Mark Twain
53. “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side-by-side can grow if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”
Rainer Maria Rilke
54. “I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.”
Benjamin Franklin
55. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got them.”
Tony Robbins
56. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”
Albert Einstein
57. “Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.”
W. Clement Stone
58. “If you hear a voice within you say, ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”
Vincent van Gogh
59. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by deceits you plant.”
Robert Louis Stevenson
60. “Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.”
Booker T. Washington
61. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, ‘I’m possible!’”
Audrey Hepburn
62. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Anne Frank
63. “Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.”
John Allen Paulos
64. “Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.”
Jamie Paolinetti
65. “I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”
Arthur Rubinstein
66. “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
Chinese proverb
67. “Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see.”
Confucius
68. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.”
Steve Jobs
69. “The mind is everything. What you think you become.”
Buddha
Heartwarming Quotes about Love
70. “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.”
Lao Tzu
71. “People were created to be loved. Things were created to be used. The reason the world is in chaos is because things are being loved, and people are being used.”
Unknown
72. “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is merely living death.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
73. “Happiness is like a butterfly. The more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it comes and sits softly on your shoulder.”
Henry David Thoreau
74. “Love is the ultimate outlaw. It just won’t adhere to any rules. The most any of us can do is sign on as its accomplice.”
Tom Watson
75. “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
76. “We all know how important love is, yet how often is it really emoted or exhibited? What so many sick people in this world suffer from—loneliness, boredom, and fear—can’t be cured with a pill.”
Albert Schweitzer
77. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
Lucille Ball
Thoughtful and Inspiring Happiness Quotes
78. “Happiness depends upon ourselves.”
Aristotle
79. “Be happy with what have and are, be generous with both, and you won’t have to hunt for happiness.”
William E. Gladstone
80. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”
Buddha
81. “We tend to forget that happiness doesn’t come as a result of getting something we don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
Frederick Koenig
82. “Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
Herman Cain
83. “The moments of happiness we enjoy take us by surprise. It’s not that we seize them, but that they seize us.”
Ashley Montagu
84. “Happiness is not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
85. “Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”
Stacy Charter
86. “The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”
Albert Ellis
87. “It’s not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.”
Charles Spurgeon
88. “For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.”
Seneca
89. “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.”
James Oppenheim
90. “Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude.”
Denis Waitely
91. “We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want to suffer. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one’s own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursing your own happiness.”
Dalai Lama
92. “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.”
Oscar Wilde
93. “The most beautiful people we have known of those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity and an understanding of life that fills them with compassions, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
94. “Happiness is something that comes into our lives through the doors we don’t even remember leaving open.”
Rose Lane
95. “I am determined to be cheerful and happy in whatever situation I may find myself. For I have learned that the greater part of our misery or unhappiness is determined not by our circumstance but by our disposition.”
Martha Washington
96. “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.”
Dalai Lama
97. “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Mahatma Gandhi
98. “There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of your will.”
Epictetus
99. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”
Marcus Aurelius
100. “Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chances placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”
Thomas Jefferson
What do these quotes teach us?
The wisdom within these quotes encourages us to seize the day and to have the courage to make the most out of our lives. These wise men and women tell us not to allow our fear of failure to stop us from pursuing our dreams. But they also hint at the fact that we ourselves are responsible for our own happiness and that true happiness can only be found within, never outside.
I hope you enjoyed the article. Feel free to share your favorite quote in the comment section below and we will include it into the article.
20 Comments
don’t look at the number of times you’ve succeed but look at the number of times you’ve fallen and quickly waken up to continue with your ambitions
Indeed! You are absolutely correct.
I still easily slump into negative thinking patterns. However, I’ve gotten very good at lifting myself out of negativity. Just being alive and breathing is sufficient for happiness and regardless of any other fact. The reward for your effort might be amazing too. Just adjust your attitude, choose life.
WoW, guys u all gave me a piece of what i needed… U left me filled with caurage & conquer, it will be me next time. BIG UP
These quotes could be applied to so many diff life situations! I run a relationships website and each and every quote here should be heard by a heartbroken-devastated-depressed-sad person. Those who feel like they are stuck in an unhappy relationship should understand that it is THEM who can make that change!
nice quotes
Great collection. Thank you!
They say aim at the sun to land on the moon but one day my teacher told me to say my target in maths Exam, “I shouted,80!” Exam came out,I scored 79 but he call me failure,I learned that aiming at moon to land at the sun is achieving your GOAL
Great Information and Huge collection of Quotes
Success is not the key to
happiness. Happiness is the key to
success. If you love what you are doing,
you will be successful.
Wonderful quotes! This can be used in our daily lives. Just like what we can learn in almentor website.
Such a nice article about motivation. Very beautiful thoughts you collected over here. This happened to be very useful to me in many ways such as motivating me while I am in the tension of life and confused what to do. I wish you to keep doing the good work. thanks for sharing such a nice collection of beautiful thought
Jesus, really i must progress because of these quotes
Thank you for this article. Very useful for when I have no motivation at all. Be sure to bookmark it!
Nanik Udassi says very nice collection
Excellent quotes Steve, Thanks a lot for sharing these amazing quotes.
Very nice Inspirational quotes.
“Happiness is finding peace within yourself.”
great collection of quotes.
thank you for sharing
amazing words
thank you for sharing
Look at what we have and we have more than enough. Look at what we do not have then we don’t have enough. Count our blessings and we can be happy. The quotes lifted me up at times when I need it. Thank you.