Life quotes are probably one of the best ways to get out of your head.
Because when you feel like things aren’t gonna work because:
- You’re kind of in a job you hate.
- That person you thought was a friend isn’t really a friend.
- You see that one person from high school who looks like they’re living a better life.
- Your car is making yet another mysterious noise.
- And that dream you’ve had for the last 5 years still hasn’t happened.
It feels like it’s always gonna be like this.
Like nothing will ever get better.
But that’s just a feeling. I promise.
With the right tools for motivation, making goals, and using inspiring life quotes, you can start taking the right steps to get out of that negative space and make some amazing changes in life.
Related: 240+ Positive Quotes to Help DESTROY Your Bad Days
199 Quotes About Life
If you want to level up in your life, then I’m all for it and more than happy to help.
And these quotes on life should be a great way to get started when it comes to changing your mindset about where you’re at and what you’re capable of.
Because all life change happens when your mindset shifts.
1. “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
2. “If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.” – Tallulah Bankhead
3. “No more overthinking. Take the leap. Make your life one you want to exist in.” – Anonymous
4. “Your level of courage will either shrink or expand your life.” – Anonymous
5. “Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.” – Les Brown
6. “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.” – Benjamin Franklin
7. “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
8. “My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life, but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.” – Oprah Winfrey
9. “Every birthday is a gift. Every day is a gift.” – Aretha Franklin
10. “Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.” – Charles R. Swindoll
Related: 99+ New Beginning Quotes for When You (REALLY) Need a Fresh Start
11. “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – Dalai Lama
12. “Ignore your mistakes. The number one thing to worry about is: Am I doing what I’m good at?” – Max Levchin
13. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius
14. “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” – Robert Frost
15. “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
16. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey
17. “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
18. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” – Maya Angelou
19. “Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.” – Nikki Giovanni
20. “The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.” – Leonard Sweet
Related: 101 Kindness Quotes That Are Perfectly Good
21. “Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet.” – Sarah Louise Delany
22. “Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.” – Oliver Goldsmith
23. “Take the time to enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” – Robert Brault
24. “Your time is limited, don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
25. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” – Winston Churchill
26. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein
27. “Life has got those twists and turns. You’ve got to hold on tight and off you go.” – Nicole Kidman
28. “You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.” – Maya Angelou
29. “Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass…It’s about learning to dance in the rain.” – Vivian Greene
30. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Related: 150 Inspirational Quotes to Remind You That You Can Do Incredible Things
31. “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
32. “Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.” – Lao Tzu
33. “Life is a balance between what we can control and what we cannot. I am learning to live between effort and surrender.” – Danielle Orner
34. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
35. “You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” – Oprah Winfrey
Related: 127 Positive Affirmations You’ll Wanna Use EVERY Day
36. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu
37. “Failure is a great teacher and, if you are open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.” – Oprah Winfrey
38. “If you can do what you do best and be happy, you are further along in life than most people.” – Leonardo DiCaprio
39. “Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.” – Marilyn Monroe
40. “There are so many great things in life; why dwell on negativity?” – Zendaya
41. “Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.” – Annette Funicello
42. “Love the life you live. Live the life you love.” – Bob Marley
43. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
44. “You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.” – Maya Angelou
45. “Life is a long lesson in humility.” – James M. Barrie
Related: 200 Motivational Quotes To Inspire & Help You Take On 2024
46. “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” – Charles Dickens
47. “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
48. “Life is very interesting…in the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.” – Drew Barrymore
49. “We become what we think about most of the time.” – Earl Nightingale
50. “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
51. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” – Maya Angelou
52. “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln
53. “Dream big and dare to fail.” – Norman Vaughan
54. “There are no regrets in life. Just lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston
55. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua J. Marine
56. “It’s a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.” – Danny Boyle
57. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville
58. “Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston
59. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
60. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Elliot
61. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
62. “Don’t make up excuses to try tomorrow. Those days add up to a lifetime of regret.” – Anonymous
63. “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” – Duke Ellington
64. “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” – Will Rogers
65. “You have what it takes to make your life meaningful. Ignore the voices that tell you otherwise.” – Anonymous
66. “Keep your face towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” – Walt Whitman
67. “The best way out is through.” – Robert Frost
68. “Start taking control of life. If you don’t, it’ll take control of you.” – Anonymous
69. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failures are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” – Dale Carnegie
70. “Success is falling nine times and getting up 10.” – Jon Bon Jovi
71. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That can be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” – Sara Blakely
72. “True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.” – Mortimer J. Adler
73. “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall
74. “We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
75. “There are still many causes worth sacrificing for, so much history yet to be made.” – Michelle Obama
76. “Your life is precious, no more taking it for granted.” – Anonymous
77. “Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.” – Eckhart Tolle
78. “Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.” – Kobe Bryant
79. “Learn to master life before it masters you.” – Anonymous
80. “Everybody wants to be famous, but nobody wants to do the work. I live by that. You grind hard so you can play hard. At the end of the day, you put all the work in, and eventually it’ll pay off. It could be in a year, it could be in 30 years. Eventually, your hard work will pay off.” – Kevin Hart
81. “No more overthinking. Take the leap. Make your life one you want to exist in.” – Anonymous
82. “Life isn’t fair, but the sooner you realize that the sooner you can start finding solutions for the problems that aren’t fair.” – Anonymous
83. “Your level of courage will either shrink or expand your life.” – Anonymous
84. “We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.” – Winston Churchill
85. “The sooner you start to see life as a blessing, the sooner you can start to see the solutions to problems.” – Anonymous
86. “Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.” – Philip Dormer Stanhope
87. “Do, or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda
88. “Your life is not a mistake. You have what it takes to turn things around to work in your favor.” – Anonymous
89. “Our humanity is worth a little discomfort, it’s actually worth a lot of discomfort.” – Ijeoma Oluo
90. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” – Michael Jordan
91. “Your life is worth loving.” – Anonymous
92. “When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” – Malala Yousafzai
93. “There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.” – Indira Gandhi
94. “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” – Martin Luther
95. “No one’s going to come and save you, it’s time to take control of your life and make things right.” – Anonymous
96. “There’s a myth that time is money. In fact, time is more precious than money. It’s a nonrenewable resource. Once you’ve spent it, and if you’ve spent it badly, it’s gone forever.” – Neil A. Fiore
97. “Don’t settle for what life gives you; make life better and build something.” – Ashton Kutcher
98. “If you’re always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be.” – Maya Angelou
99. “Be your own hero, don’t wait for others to come and save you.” – Anonymous
100. “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” – Dolly Parton
101. “If you do not have courage, you may not have the opportunity to use any of your other virtues.” – Samuel L. Jackson
102. “Take the first step today. Even if it’s small, take that small step.” – Anonymous
103. “If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way.” – Napoleon Hill
104. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” – Oprah Winfrey
105. “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” – Katharine Hepburn
106. “You’re not a failure, you just need to take a bit of time to fix the problems that were created.” – Anonymous
107. “If we don’t discipline ourselves, the world will do it for us.” – William Feather
108. “The most powerful control we can ever attain, is to be in control of ourselves.” – Chris Page
109. “If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” – Erica Jong
110. “Don’t wait another day, month, or year to create a life you want to exist in. It’s waiting, it’s there, you can do this.” – Anonymous
111. “Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.” – Napoleon Hill
112. “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – Dalai Lama
113. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” – Stephen King
114. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West
115. “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” – Albert Einstein
116. “The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates
117. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” – Thomas A. Edison
118. “Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.” – Seneca
119. “In order to write about life first you must live it.”- Ernest Hemingway
120. “Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.” – Will Smith
121. “The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.”– Frank Sinatra
122. “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” – Leo Burnett
123. “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
124. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.” – Steve Jobs
125. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Soren Kierkegaard
126. “I like criticism. It makes you strong.” – LeBron James
127. “Life is never easy. There is work to be done and obligations to be met – obligations to truth, to justice, and to liberty.” – John F. Kennedy
128. “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.”- Henry Ford
129. “You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.” – George Clooney
130. “Live for each second without hesitation.” – Elton John
131. “Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” – Lao-Tze
132. “When we do the best we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life or the life of another.” – Helen Keller
133. “Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.” – Lillian Dickson
134. “Life is a flower of which love is the honey.” – Victor Hugo
135. “The best portion of a good man’s life is his little nameless, unencumbered acts of kindness and of love.” – Wordsworth
136. “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
137. “Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” – Grandma Moses
138. “The greatest pleasure of life is love.” – Euripides
139. “The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain
140. “When you focus on making other people’s lives better, you start to see yours become so much better.” – Anonymous
141. “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
142. “When I was 5 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
143. “I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.” – Neil Armstrong
144. “When you start to believe that you deserve a better life, everything changes.” – Anonymous
145. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” – Les Brown
146. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou
147. “Most folks are about as happy as they make their minds up to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
148. “The true test of a character is to face hard conditions with the determination to make them better.” – Helen Keller
149. “We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. It may even be necessary to encounter the defeat, so that we can know who we are.” – Maya Angelou
150. “Today, you have 100% of your life left.” – Tom Landry
151. “I enjoy life when things are happening. I don’t care if it’s good things or bad things. That means you’re alive.” – Joan Rivers
152. “Make every effort to change things you do not like. If you cannot make a change, change the way you have been thinking. You might find a new solution.”– Maya Angelou
153. “Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
154. “Leave nothing for tomorrow which can be done today.”– Abraham Lincoln
155. “The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.” – Doctor Who
156. “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” – Maya Angelou
157. “The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.” – Confucius
158. “The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.”- Seneca
159. “I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.” – Maya Angelou
160. “The secret of happiness, you see is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.” – Socrates
161. “To keep on trying in spite of disappointment and failure is the only way to keep young and brave. Failures become victories if they make us wise-hearted.” – Helen Keller
162. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default.” – Anonymous
163. “Stepping onto a brand-new path is difficult, but not more difficult than remaining in a situation, which is not nurturing to the whole woman.” – Maya Angelou
164. “You choose the life you live. If you don’t like it, it’s on you to change it because no one else is going to do it for you.” – Kim Kiyosaki
165. “And in the end it is not the years in your life that count, it’s the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln
166. “If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.” – Gail Sheehy
167. “I believe that nothing in life is unimportant every moment can be a beginning.” – John McLeod
168. “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” – Maya Angelou
169. “As you know, life is an echo; we get what we give.” – David DeNotaris
170. “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” – Oprah Winfrey
171. “Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully.” – Albert Camus
172. “Adhere to your purpose and you will soon feel as well as you ever did. On the contrary, if you falter, and give up, you will lose the power of keeping any resolution, and will regret it all your life.” – Abraham Lincoln
173. “Many of us delude ourselves with the thought that if we could stand in the lot of our more fortunate neighbor, we could live better, happier and more useful lives. . . . It is my experience that unless we can succeed in our present position, we could not succeed in any other.” – Helen Keller
174. “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” – Maya Angelou
175. “Once you figure out who you are and what you love about yourself, I think it all kinda falls into place.” – Jennifer Aniston
176. “You’re not defined by your past; you’re prepared by it. You’re stronger, more experienced, and you have greater confidence.” – Joel Osteen
177. “Find people who will make you better.” – Michelle Obama
178. “No matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow.” – Maya Angelou
179. “The human being is born with an incurable capacity for making the best of things.” – Helen Keller
180. “Don’t allow your past or present condition to control you. It’s just a process that you’re going through to get you to the next level.” – T.D. Jakes
181. “Every man’s happiness is his own responsibility.” – Abraham Lincoln
182. “There are no regrets in life, just lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston
183. “You only pass through this life once, you don’t come back for an encore.” – Elvis Presley
184. “Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.” – Helen Keller
185. “In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.” – Anne Frank
186. “I believe you make your day. You make your life. So much of it is all perception, and this is the form that I built for myself. I have to accept it and work within those compounds, and it’s up to me.” – Brad Pitt
187. “There may be people who have more talent than you, but there’s no excuse for anyone to work harder than you do – and I believe that.” – Derek Jeter
188. “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” – Maya Angelou
189. “A lot of people give up just before they’re about to make it. You know you never know when that next obstacle is going to be the last one.” – Chuck Norris
190. “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 which has been opened for us.” – Helen Keller
191. “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to success is more important than any other thing.” – Abraham Lincoln
192. “It’s never too late – never too late to start over, never too late to be happy.” – Jane Fonda
193. “Don’t be afraid to fail. It’s not the end of the world, and in many ways, it’s the first step toward learning something and getting better at it.” – Jon Hamm
194. “Life is very interesting… in the end, some of your greatest pains, become your greatest strengths.” – Drew Barrymore
195. “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.” – Abraham Lincoln
196. “Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.” – Henry David Thoreau
197. “When it is obvious that goals can’t be reached, don’t adjust the goals, but adjust the action steps.” – Confucius
198. “One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.” – Helen Keller
199. “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.” – Helen Keller
How to Make These Inspiring Quotes About Life Work for You
It’s SO easy to just get a few inspiring quotes, move on with your day, and forget about them.
Or maybe they help move you forward in motivation for a few hours, or a few days, but then life gets busy.
And if you wanna make sure this doesn’t happen to you, then here’s my idea:
- Go through this list, and write down the ones that inspire you the most. 20 at the very least.
- Dedicate one of the quotes to inspire you for the day or whole week.
- Make sure to intentionally come back to the quote throughout the day to remind yourself of what’s really important in your life.
- Do at least one actionable thing every day that’s going to move you closer to your goal (even if it’s small).
- Rotate these quotes every day or every week so that you can keep yourself in a constant state of inspiration and motivation.
What is the Best Quote About Life
And lastly, I know this is subjective, but I feel that it’s good to discuss what might be the best quote about life and what it can mean to you.
“It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously, that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case you fail by default.” – Anonymous
It can be so easy to look at a change that needs to happen or a dream you have, and suddenly feel overwhelmed. There are so many steps that need to be taken, and so much work to be done.
But a year from now is still gonna happen, and so is 5 years and 10 years.
You’re still gonna be here, so where do you want to be in a year, 5 years, or 10 years?
At your goal, or still in the same place you are now because you failed to take action?
It’s up to you!
Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed these life quotes and found them helpful for staying inspired!
I know that so much can pop up in life and it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but it’s really important to not let it push you back from the life you want to have.
You have what it takes to move forward and create a life you love existing in!
Chasing Foxes was started in 2016 as a way for Grace and her husband, Silas, to start traveling. However, they started to realize that they had a passion for improving themselves, and wanted to help others level up their lives as well. So whether it's with cooking, travel, or staying healthy, they want to help you better your life bit by bit, as they do the same.