One of the earliest adult realizations we make is that nothing comes free—it either costs you time, money, or both. However, things as such don’t make sense until we chance upon them ourselves. That’s why we call experience the mother of wisdom.
The same goes for life-changing quotes. Powerful quotes that can change one’s perspective don’t mean much if you can’t relate to them. But when you do, the jumble of words that make up these words of wisdom forever alter how we view them.
Depending on what you are currently going through, particular quotes will strike a chord with you, while others will vacate your mind the moment you lift your eyes off the screen. What’s so interesting about life is that we will stumble upon the same things repeatedly, yet there will come a day when we encounter something for the God-knows-what-number time, yet we will see it in a completely different light.
Quotes about being alone don’t hit home until you come to terms with your solitude. Trust quotes are just empty words until your trust has been broken by someone you truly care about. And quotes about truth start to ring true once you’ve been lied to. Inspirational quotes from books, movies, famous speeches, or historical figures will ring a different tune for everyone. And while some will fail to identify the song, others will be able to recognize every note of it.
Below, we’ve compiled a list of quotes that will change your life and perception of things, perhaps not today, but someday in the future. If going through the list, a particular life-changing quote strikes a chord with you, give it an upvote. And if you are looking for even more inspirational quotes to change your life, be sure to check out our article featuring more motivational quotes!
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“It’s easy to fool someone, it’s hard to convince them that they’ve been fooled.”
“Before you speak let your words pass through 3 gates, is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?”
“Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” — Sully Sullenberger
“I’ve had a lot of worries in my life. Most of which never happened.” — Mark Twain
“In order to empathize with someone’s experience you must be willing to believe them as they see it and not how you imagine their experience to be.” — Brené Brown
This really applies especially today online when everyone is so quick to discount other people's experience
“Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm.”
“When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” — C. S. Lewis
The poor man was so conflicted being brilliant but was "dragged kicking and screaming" (as he described) into Christianity. I read alot of his stuff: brilliant but sad that all the effort went to such an asinine cause as religion.
“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” — John A. Shedd
Ships are not built for safety. They are made for adventuring and discoveries
“Holding onto a grudge is like not pulling a thorn out of your foot because you were not the one who put it there.”
Hating someone is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
“When I was young, I admired clever people. Now that I am old, I admire kind people.” — A. J. Heschel
“Most people will not remember what you say to them, but they will remember how you made them feel.”
“We’re all going to die, all of us; what a circus! That alone should make us love each other, but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities. We are eaten up by nothing.” — Charles Bukowski
“Whatever you do today is very important: you are exchanging a day of your life for it.” ― Elizabeth George
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” — V. E. Frankl
“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.”
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” — Upton Sinclair
Hey wait a minute, that sounds like some politicians, senators and the like...
“Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.” — Terry Pratchett
“Never give up on a dream because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” — Earl Nightingale
"don't be afraid of moving slowly, be afraid of standing still" (Chinese proverb?)
“If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.” — Thomas Paine
Yes hopefully all my troubles will let my kid have a more peaceful existence somehow but I don't think the world works on
“We accept the love we think we deserve.” — Stephen Chbosky
And I am grateful for the fact that my family always made me believe I deserve all the love in this world
“It’s possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not weakness. That is life.” — C. J. Picard
That was said by Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek The Next Generation. I don't think C.J. Picard said this.
“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
It's so hard for people to be happy because they think happiness is a continuous feeling that can be maintained. But that's not true. Happiness is a fleeting feeling of the moment. It's not meant to stay. Contentment on the other hand is a reachable state of mind. But people destroy their contentment to chase an elusive happiness that cannot be reached the way they imagine and waste all the opportunities to enjoy the moments of happiness they are given because they don't understand their worth. They reject them because they're too short, not understanding that that's perfectly normal and not able to enjoy the more quiet contentment that life has to offer.
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift. That’s why they call it present.” — Master Oogway
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill
If you walk into a dark tunnel, the answer is to turn back not keep going. Sometimes, it's the right thing to turn back and out because some hells have no end
“If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”
“And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” — Dr. Seuss
Love is someone who knows all your faults but want to be with you anyways.
“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.” — G. W. F. Hegel
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.” — Terry Pratchett
“Never wrestle with a pig - you both get dirty, but the pig enjoys it.”
“Everyone you’ll ever meet knows something you don’t.”
“A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” — Kurt Vonnegut
“Smooth seas never made a skilled sailor.”
“Anxiety is a terrible predictor of what will actually go wrong in life.” — Megan Devine
Sometimes anxiety is a premonition or your gut instinct screaming at you so this is not necessarily true
“The only normal people are the ones that you don’t know very well yet.” — Alfred Adler
“People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” — R. W. Emerson
“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”
“Graveyards are full of irreplaceable people.”
What about the demotivational poster that says everyone is replaceable?
“To realize that you are not your thoughts is when you begin to awaken spiritually.” — Eckhart Tolle
“I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.” — Leonard Bernstein
“Chaos will always beat order, because it is better organized.”
Because the universe disorganizes everything. Toward chaos is the natural flow of the universe.
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.” — Anne Lamott
“Character is what you do when no one is looking.”
“There’s a lot of narcissism in self-hatred.” — D. F. Wallace
“He who despises himself still esteems himself as one who despises.” Nietzsche
“If life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade. And try to find someone whose life has given them vodka, and have a party.”
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.” — Mark Twain
“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.” —Nelson Mandela
“Worrying is like carrying an umbrella and waiting for it to rain.”
Umbrella rule: if you remember your umbrella, of course it won't rain. And vice versa.
“It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” — Walt Disney
Looks at central Florida. “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
“If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.” — Jean-Paul Sartre
“I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Thoughts are like clouds - they change, move, and pass. The sky behind it is the reality.”
No. The clouds are reality, the sky behind it is the blank emptiness the reality is built upon.
“Revenge... is like a rolling stone, which, when a man hath forced up a hill, will return upon him with a greater violence, and break those bones whose sinews gave it motion.” — Jeremy Taylor
Nope. The violence of the rolling stone can only be equivalent to the force required to push it up the hill. Conservation of energy.
“When the axe came to the woods the trees said: ‘At least the handle is one of us.’”
“You cannot convince people to love you. This is an absolute rule. No one will ever give you love because you want him or her to give it. Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.” — Cheryl Strayed
“Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.” — Aldous Huxley
“Today is the oldest you’ve ever been in your life and the youngest you’ll ever be again.”
“I don’t trust my inner feelings. Inner feelings come and go.” — Leonard Cohen
“Any thought you have about the future is a delusion.”
“You can make all the mistakes and still win.”
“Just because you lost me as a friend doesn’t mean you gained me as an enemy. I still want to see you eat just not at my table.”
“Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.” — Hanlon’s Razor
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” — Viktor Frankl
“A lion doesn’t concern himself with the opinion of a sheep.”
“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes it is a quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” — Mary Anne Radmacher
“A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” — Alan Wilson Watts
“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.” — William Morris
This is like what I say about plants. They should provide food, shade and beauty. If they provide none, then I don't want them in my yard. I have 4 fruit trees now, but only one big enough to give shade and food, the others are just beautiful while they grow up!
“If you look for the light, you will often find it, but if you look for the dark, it is all you will ever see.” — Uncle Iroh (Legend of Korra)
“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”
I think there are an infinite number of times between then and now, but I get your point!
