We compiled these deep quotes about life to help you find a greater purpose and a greater sense of meaning to your life. Each of us live our lives differently, reading these quotes will help you understand other people’s definition of life as well as encourage you to make the most of every moment and live your life to the fullest.
1. If I were a tree, I would have no reason to love a human. – Maggie Stiefvater
2. Once someone’s hurt you, it’s harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn’t stop you from wanting them. – Holly Black
3. I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship. – Michelle Williams
4. The splendid thing about falling apart silently is that you can start over as many times as you like. – Sanober Khan
5. When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn’t climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened. – Criss Jami
6. There is an ocean of silence between us and I am drowning in it. Your memory feels like home to me. So whenever my mind wanders, it always finds it’s way back to you. – Ranata Suzuki
7. Some things scratch the surface while others strike at your soul. – Gianna Perada
8. It’s painful, loving someone from afar. Watching them – from the outside. The once familiar elements of their life reduced to nothing more than occasional mentions in conversations and faces changing in photographs. They exist to you now as nothing more than living proof that something can still hurt you … with no contact at all. – Ranata Suzuki
9. I just don’t know how to think less. If you know how then teach me. – Aishah Madadiy
10. Being able to depend on someone doesn’t mean you’re dependent on them. – Sarah Rees Brennan
11. Don’t get too deep, it leads to overthinking, and over thinking leads to problems that don’t even exist in the first place. – Jayson Engay
12. She avoids deep thought like an empty restaurant, not out of stupidity, but a canny resolve to be happy. – Alex Shakar
13. I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past. – Ann Brashares
14. “How is your book doing?” or “How many copies have you sold?” are the questions for a salesman. To a writer, you better ask “What did you write today?”. – Shubham Choudhary
15. Like almost every truly horrible thing that has ever happened in the history of our world, the end also began with a kiss. – Dennis Sharpe
16. There’s nothing scarier than loving someone. – Emily Henry
17. She wondered If I had woken up, would I have smelled his sadness, his desperation, and his detachment? His death, her breath. He told her once, she remembers, these two words have no other rhyme but each other. If she could go back, she thinks, she would open her eyes, instead of her heart. – Rachel Thompson
18. If you’re in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at the enemy, throw one of those small pumpkins. Maybe it’ll make everyone think how stupid war is, and while they are thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. – Jack Handy
19. You are only as free as you think you are and freedom will always be as real as you believe it to be. – Robert M. Drake
20. Very deep. You should send that into the Reader’s Digest. They’ve got a page for people like you. – Douglas Adams
21. We do not create life, we create death. – Marie Symeou
22. She was one of the few souls that made me wonder what’s it to live. – Markus Zusak
23. You can’t go home again” ─ isn’t necessarily that places change but people do. – Lauren Oliver
24. The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes. – Dejan Stojanovic
25. Can a person who has been brought up in the heart of a thick dark forest, where one has to beat a path through multiple layers of trees just to take a letter to the post office, have any conception of what it’s like to spend one’s entire childhood waiting for a single tree to grow? – Audur Ava Olafsdottir
26. Lies hurt people, imagination makes life more fun. – Dean Koontz
27. It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a bigger man to laugh at that man. – Jack Handy
28. Could I have been anyone other than me? – Dave Matthews
29. My surface is myself. Under which to witness, youth is buried. Roots? Everybody has roots. – William Carlos Williams
30. Your voice is a place I want to take shelter in, a place that makes me feel safe and soft. – Zaeema J. Hussain
31. I don’t really wanna know what makes you leave, or when you’ll be back. I just wanna know what will make me cry at your arrival. – Ade Santi
32. The evenings are meant for deep reflection. – Avijeet Das
33. Whenever a soul leaves the body, a void is felt across the world.
34. Man can be master of nothing while he fears death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself. The hardest thing is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To unite all? Pierre asked himself. “No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need! Yes, one must harness them, must harness them. – Leo Tolstoy
35. When the sun and the moon will be identically seen together. When the wind and the water will meet in the alliance. When the stars will shine as bright as your emotions. You will find her holding your hands and taking you towards the eternal love of the miraculous world. – J. Sarraf
36. Deepest place in my mind is my thinking and thoughts. Do not try to understand me. Otherwise, you will drown in me. – Maryum Ahsam
37. You might want someone else to save you, or might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really, not from yourself. – Ava Dellaira
38. Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. – Oscar Wilde
39. The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking. – Albert Einstein
40. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. – Soren Kierkegaard
41. Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. – Joshua Marine
42. Together we can face any challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky. – Sonia Gandhi
43. Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one. – Martin Heidegger
44. Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. – Omar Khayyam
45. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. – Maya Angelou
46. I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. – Anne Frank
47. Turning your back on the darkness didn’t mean the darkness would turn it’s back on you. – Jennifer Donnelly
48. Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared. – Robert Greene
49. Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well. – Robert Louis Stevenson
50. The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you. – Stephanie Perkins
51. You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain
52. What matters in life is what you care about and what you will continue to make an effort toward caring about it. – Nokwethemba Nkosi
53. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill
54. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. – Anaïs Nin
55. If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are a slave. – Dr. Wayne Dyer
56. Life is too deep for words, so don’t try to describe it, just live it. – C. S. Lewis
57. I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship. – Michelle Williams
58. A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed. – Henrik Ibsen
59. Dead people receive more flowers than living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude. – Anne Frank
60. Could I have been anyone other than me? – Dave Matthews
61. You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. – Buddha
62. Take life one step at a time look forward to your future, stop looking back and regretting the past, the past is the past because it does not last. – Abhishek Tiwari
63. Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful. – Martin Yan
64. It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men. – Frederick Douglass
65. I find that a duck’s opinion of me is very much influenced over whether or not I have bread. – Mitch Hedberg
66. Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. – Kahlil Gibran
67. The longer I go about living, I see it’s the relationship that is most meaningful. – William Shatner
68. Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other. – Bell Hooks
69. Sometime, when you least expect it, you’ll realize that someone loved you. And that means that someone can love you again! And that will make you smile. – Homer Simpson
70. It is not so much our friends’ help that helps us as the confident knowledge that they will help us. – Epicurus
71. If I love myself I love you. If I love you I love myself. – Rumi
72. Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love. – Erich Fromm
73. The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for. – Bob Marley
74. Good friends help you to find important things when you have lost them…your smile, your hope, and your courage. – Doe Zantamata
75. Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend. – Albert Camus
76. The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard but must be felt with the heart. – Helen Keller
77. You might want someone else to save you, or might want to save someone so badly. But no one else can save you, not really, not from yourself. – Ava Dellaira
78. It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life. – Bryant H. McGill
79. The fullness of life is only accessible in the present moment. – Eckhart Tolle
80. Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth. – Albert Camus
81. Life is in ourselves and not in the external. – Fyodor Dostoevsky
82. Happiness is like those palaces in fairy tales whose gates are guarded by dragons: we must fight in order to conquer it. – Alexandre Dumas
83. Today I will live in the moment, unless it is unpleasant, in which case I will eat a cookie. – Cookie Monster
84. Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so. – Bertrand Russell
85. With an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things. – William Wordsworth
86. It is only in our darkest hours that we may discover the true strength of the brilliant light within ourselves that can never, ever, be dimmed. – Doe Zantamata
87. Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it. – Harper Lee
88. What matters most in life is often invisible. – Duane Elgin
89. For every minute you are angry you lose 60 seconds of happiness. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
90. The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. – Thich Nhat Hanh
91. The reason why we struggle with insecurity is that we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. – Stephen Furtick
92. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity. – Albert Einstein
93. Mistakes are part of the dues that one pays for a full life. – Sophia Loren
94. I believe that everything happens for a reason. People change so that you can learn to let go, things go wrong so that you can appreciate them when they’re right, you believe lies so you eventually learn to trust no one but yourself, and sometimes good things fall apart so better things can fall together. – Marilyn Monroe
95. For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone. – Audrey Hepburn
96. The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart. – Mencius
97. Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is the eternity. – Henry Van Dyke
98. Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful. – Martin Yan
99. An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. – Mahatma Gandhi
100. Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own. – Barbara Kingsolver
101. Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. – Confucius
102. 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
103. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. – Winston Churchill
104. There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living. – Nelson Mandela
105. I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words. – Ann Hood
106. You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful. – Annie Lennox
107. Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. – A.A Milne
108. What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience? – Adam Smith
109. Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. – Grace Hansen
110. Happiness comes when we test our skills towards some meaningful purpose. – John Stossel
111. I just want people to take a step back, take a deep breath and actually look at something with a different perspective. But most people will never do that. – Brian McKnight
112. Hurting someone can be as easy as throwing a stone in the sea. But do you have any idea how deep that stone can go?
113. Life is like a piano. The white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness. But as you go through life’s journey, remember that the black keys also make music.
114. Life’s burdens are lighter when I laugh at myself. – Jonathan Lockwood Huie
115. You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you. – Mary Tyler Moore
116. You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things; to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals. Sir – Edmund Hillary
117. Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for. – Epicurus
118. The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise man grows it under his feet. – James Oppenheim
119. What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful. – Joshua Foer
120. Some things scratch at the heart, while other things can strike at the soul.
121. People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost. – Dalai Lama
122. I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness. – Mother Teresa
123. It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life. – Bryant H. McGill
124. There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self. – Aldous Huxley
125. Don’t be afraid your life will end; be afraid that it will never begin. – Grace Hansen
126. If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. – Maya Angelou
127. The loneliest people are the kindest. The saddest people smile the brightest.
128. The most damaged people are the wisest. All because they do not wish to see anyone else suffer the way they do.
129. One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful. – Sigmund Freud
130. Many are stubborn in pursuit of the path they have chosen, few in pursuit of the goal. – Friedrich Nietzsche
131. We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. – Anais Nin
132. Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it’s there if you look deep. – Taraji P. Henson
133. The thinking that got us to where we are is not the thinking that will get us to where we want to be. – Albert Einstein
134. The longer I go about living, I see it’s the relationship that is most meaningful. – William Shatner
135. 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
136. Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards. – Kierkegaard
137. What we have done for ourselves alone, dies with us. What we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal. – Albert Pike
138. You were meant to be yourself. So do not hide or change yourself for anyone. Get out there and show the world who you really are. This is a role that you were born for.
139. Never be bullied into silence, never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life, define yourself. – Robert Frost
140. The great thing about falling apart is that you always have the chance to start over once piece at a time.
141. Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed. – Jonathan Swift
142. I believe in taking a positive attitude toward the world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better than when I got here. – Jim Henson
143. Life is difficult. Not just for me or other ALS patients. Life is difficult for everyone. Finding ways to make life meaningful and purposeful and rewarding, doing the activities that you love and spending time with the people that you love I think that’s the meaning of this human experience. – Steve Gleason
144. When you are your own best friend, you don’t endlessly seek out relationships, friendships, and validation from the wrong sources because you realize that the only approval and validation you need is your own. – Mandy Hale
145. Life is the most exciting opportunity we have. But we have one shot. You graduate from college once, and that’s it. You’re going out of that nest. And you have to find that courage that’s deep, deep, deep in there. Every step of the way. – Andrew Shue
146. Work hard for what you want because it won’t come to you without a fight. You have to be strong and courageous and know that you can do anything you put your mind to. If somebody puts you down or criticizes you, just keep on believing in yourself and turn it into something positive. – Leah LaBelle
147. Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand. – Confucius
148. Don’t underestimate the value of doing anything, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering. – Winnie The Pooh
149. The desire for a more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. – Mark Manson
