I collect quotes. If I come across a line in a book that moves me, or a quotation online that really speaks to me, I always write it down. I refer back to these quotes frequently. When I’m feeling lost or stuck in life, or just a little down on myself, it helps to read the comforting words of someone wiser than me. They reassure me about the direction I’m going in life, and help me realize that everything isn’t as bad as it may seem.
Here are some of my favorite inspirational, motivational, uplifting, and simply thought-provoking quotes:
1. “Mistakes are a great educator when one is honest enough to admit them and willing to learn from them.” – Alexander Solzhenitsyn
2. “Never let anyone disturb your composure, deter your accomplishment, or destroy your happiness.” – Anonymous
3. “You can only try your best. And if they can’t appreciate that, it’s their fault, not yours.” – Anonymous
4. “Don’t ever let anyone ever make you feel like you don’t deserve what you want.” – 10 Things I Hate About You
5. “Do not dwell on the past. Your history cannot be erased, but your future has yet to be written, so make the most of what is going to happen instead of worrying about what you cannot change.”
6. “Begin somewhere; you cannot build a reputation on what you intend to do.” – Liz Smith
7. “Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.” – Hunter S. Thompson
8. “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 the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain
9. “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” – Mark Twain
10. “I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly.” – Oscar Wilde
11. “The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it.” – Oscar Wilde
12. “This is your world. It’s full of more potential for pleasure, love, glory, beauty and bliss that can be comprehended. It even surprises you with misfortune so you can experience the full range of your explosive emotions, and so the good things are that much sweeter. Even better, nothing great comes easily. That would be hopelessly boring. You have thrilling hurdles to overcome at every corner in order to achieve greatness in this life.”
13. “This above all: To thine own self, be true.” – Shakespeare
14. “Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” – Arnold Bennett
15. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.” – Maya Angelou
16. “If you are not willing to risk the usual you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
17. “What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.” – Oscar Wilde
18. “Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss in life is what dies inside us while we live.” – Norma Cousin
19. “Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.” – Mark Twain
20. “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities have crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day. You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
21. “We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – E.M. Forster
22.“Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.” – Cecil Beaton
23. “You must never behave as if your life belongs to a man. Your life belongs to you and you alone.” – Chimamanda Adichie
24. “If you bring forth what is within you, what is within you will save you. If you don’t bring forth what is within you, what is within you will destroy you.” – Jodi Picoult
25. “The happiest people don’t necessarily have the best of everything but they make the most of everything.” – Sam Cawthorn
26. “And yet, now that years have passed, I recall it and wonder that it could distress me so much. It will be the same thing, too, with this trouble. Time will go by and I shall not mind about this either.” – Leo Tolstoy
27. “Waiting around for someone else to make you happy is the best way to be sad.”
28. “If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.” – Nora Roberts
29. “Life goes by fast. Enjoy it. Calm down. It’s all funny.” – Joan Rivers
30. “The most beautiful people we have known are 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 compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
