Here are the 109 best famous quotes about life.
The famous, short, and thoughtful quotes inspire us to be and do more!
Famous quotes about life
The best quotes about life are as diverse as life itself. The quotes I collected in this article deal with the ups and downs of life and will help you get to know yourself better.
In addition, these life quotes are an excellent gift for special occasions.
Whether it’s about moral values, failed dreams, or purely philosophical thoughts, being aware of the negative aspects of life makes you appreciate the positives more.
For this reason, the following famous quotes about life are suitable for helping people out of a situation from which they can only emerge by changing their view of life.
You often can’t do anything concrete yourself in these instances, but you can support people with thoughtful words, phrases, and quotes. These quotes can be expressed through a simple text message, postcard, or letter.
Read more: How to be a good friend.
Famous quotes to think about
When creating this repertoire of famous quotes about life, I paid particular attention to present you with a diverse range of citations on the most interesting aspects of life, values, and thoughts.
It was also important to me to find famous life quotes, which on the one hand, make you think, and on the other hand, inspire you, the reader.
Do not hesitate. Take some time and browse through this great compilation with various meaningful words, quotes, and phrases about the human condition: Life itself!
For more, read 75 Best Life Quotes or join HowHabit Pro to create your dream life!
109 Famous Quotes About Life:
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou 
“Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.”
— George Addai- “Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.”
— Seneca - “Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right!”
— Henry Ford - “When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’”
— Sydney Harris - “When you change your thoughts, you change your world.”
— Norman Vincent Peale 
“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”
― Mark Twain- “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
— Mahatma Gandhi - “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
― Oscar Wilde - “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
― Anne Frank, Anne Frank’s Tales from the Secret Annex - “You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.”
― John Lennon - “The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life.”
— Muhammad Ali - “I’m the one that’s got to die when it’s time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to.”
― Jimi Hendrix - “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 
“The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.”
— Anthony Robbins- “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”
― Herbert Bayard Swope - “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 - “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
― Martin Luther King Jr. 
“Luck is a dividend of sweat. The more you sweat, the luckier you get.”
– Ray Kroc- “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”
― John Milton, Paradise Lost - “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
– Lao Tzu - “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
― Maya Angelou - “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”
— Benjamin Franklin - “Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity.”
― George Carlin
For More Read: The 129 Best Inspirational Love Quotes - “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
― Leonardo da Vinci - “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.”
– Will Rogers - “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
― George Bernard Shaw 
“If you are going to spend your life running you might as well be chasing your dreams.”
— J.B. Bernstein- “Without music, life would be a mistake.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche - “You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh - “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
— William Shakespeare - “Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow
Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead
Walk beside me… just be my friend.”
― Albert Camus - “You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
― Virginia Woolf - “The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.”
— Frank Sinatra - “Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
― Calvin Coolidge - “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”
— Eleanor Roosevelt - “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.”
— Forrest Gump 
“I don’t believe in magic. I believe in hard work.”
— Richie McCaw- “If you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - “First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”
― Nicholas Klein - “There is nothing more dreadful than the habit of doubt. Doubt separates people. It is a poison that disintegrates friendships and breaks up pleasant relations. It is a thorn that irritates and hurts; it is a sword that kills.”
― Gautama Buddha - “We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.”
― Stephen Hawking - “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
For More Read: 100 Best Inspirational Quotes - “Love the life you live. Live the life you love.”
— Bob Marley - “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
― Oscar Wilde, Lady Windermere’s Fan - “Get busy living or get busy dying.”
― Stephen King - “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
— Søren Kierkegaard - “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!”
― Audrey Hepburn - “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Mother Night - “We become what we think about.”
– Earl Nightingale - “My mother said to me, ‘If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.’ Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.”
— Pablo Picasso - “There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
― Maya Angelou 
“Life has two rules: #1 Never quit #2 Always remember rule # 1.”
– Unknown- “I’d rather be hated for who I am, than loved for who I am not.”
― Kurt Cobain - “Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt 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 - “Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
― Marilyn Monroe - “There is only one way to avoid criticism. Do nothing. Be nothing. Say nothing.”
— Aristotle
For More Read: 100 Best Motivational Work Hard Quotes - “Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.”
― Dalai Lama XIV - “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
― L.M. Montgomery - “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes - “A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”
― Charles Darwin - “If you want to be happy, be.”
― Leo Tolstoy - “Nobody ever wrote down a plan to be broke, fat, lazy, or stupid. Those things are what happen when you don’t have a plan.”
– Larry Winget 
“Eighty percent of success is showing up.”
– Woody Allen- “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”
― Stephen Chbosky - “I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
– Stephen Covey - “If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”
― Albert Einstein - “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
― Steve Martin - “Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life.”
— John Wooden - “I hope she’ll be a fool — that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby - “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there”
― George Harrison - “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
For More Read: 75 Best Life Quotes - “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. “
– Edmund Hillary - “Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.”
— D. H. Lawrence - “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.”
— Oscar Wilde - “Don’t worry about failures, worry about the chances you miss when you don’t even try.”
– Jack Canfield - “The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
– John Maxwell - “The most important thing is to enjoy your life — to be happy — it’s all that matters.”
— Audrey Hepburn - “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
― Marianne Williamson - “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”
― Mark Twain - “Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.”
— Grandma Moses - “We’re all human, aren’t we? Every human life is worth the same, and worth saving.”
― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - “In order to write about life first you must live it.”
— Ernest Hemingway - “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
For More Read: 100 Best Encouraging Quotes - “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”
― Margaret Mead - “Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.”
– William James 
“Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”
— Babe Ruth- “Two wrongs don’t make a right, but they make a good excuse.”
― Thomas Szasz - “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
― Mahatma Gandhi - “Rule #1 of life. Do what makes YOU happy.”
– Unknown - “I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that from now on I can’t believe you.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche - “You can’t change how people treat you or what they say about you. All you can do is change how you react to it.”
— Mahatma Gandhi - “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland - “The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live the present moment wisely and earnestly.”
― Bukkyo Dendo Kyokai, The Teaching of Buddha - “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson - “Never ruin an apology with an excuse.”
— Benjamin Franklin - “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
— Abraham Lincoln - “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.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr., P.S. I Love You 
Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.
— Judy Garland- “I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.”
― Whitney Young - “The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
― Mark Twain - “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
— Confucius - “Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”
― Barack Obama - “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
― Albert Einstein - “May you live every day of your life.”
― Jonathan Swift - “If not us, who? If not now, when?”
– John F. Kennedy 
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.”
— Helen Keller
Now, learn how to change your life or how to change any habit you want.
What is your favorite quote about life?
Which quote makes you think?
Which famous quote about life inspires you to do more than you have done till now?
Engaging with life and all its facets helps you to get to know yourself and your view of the world a little better.
But it can also benefit others if you help them through challenging times by offering a few kind words or reinforcing them in their decisions by having an appropriate quote ready.
Do you have more famous quotes about life? Please share them with all of us!
For More Read: 100 Best Motivational Quotes or join HowHabit Pro now!
