Life Quotes and Sayings

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Are you living a good life? These meaningful life quotes will give you perspective on your life so you can make it a good one.

Life is all around us and life itself has always been an important topic to humanity. From philosophers and poets to musicians and religious leaders, life is a fascinating thing.

We’ve all heard sayings like “life’s not fair” and “that’s life,” but living and being alive are more special than that. After all, life’s too short not to enjoy it!

Challenges in life present us with questions, and blessings give us times to reflect. So whichever you’re feeling now, enjoy these deep life quotes and sayings and live your best life today.

Top 10 Life Quotes

Life is a lively process of becoming.

Gen. Douglas MacArthur

Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.

Les Brown
Plato quote "Life must be lived as play"
“Life must be lived as play.” – Plato

Life is not an exact science, it is an art.

Samuel Butler

You cannot have a positive life and a negative mind.

Joyce Meyer

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Neale Donald Walsch

There is just one life for each of us: our own.

Euripides
Horace quote "Life is largely a matter of expectation"
“Life is largely a matter of expectation.” – Horace

If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.

Eleanor Roosevelt

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

Robert Frost

Short Life Quotes

I am all for the short and merry life.

Edward Fitzgerald

Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet.

Sarah Louise Delany

While there’s life, there’s hope.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

True life is lived when tiny changes occur.

Leo Tolstoy
Walter Bagehot quote "Life is a school of probability"
“Life is a school of probability.” – Walter Bagehot

Life is a long lesson in humility.

James M. Barrie

The shortness of life, so often lamented, may be the best thing about it.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is not a dress rehearsal.

Rose Tremain

Life should be great rather than long.

B.R. Ambedkar

Life is trying things to see if they work.

Ray Bradbury

Keep looking up… that’s the secret of life.

Charlie Brown

Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.

Stephen Hawking

The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The greatest pleasure of life is love.

Euripides

Life’s too mysterious to take too serious.

Mary Engelbreit
Baz Luhrmann quote "A life lived in fear is a life half lived"
“A life lived in fear is a life half lived.” – Baz Luhrmann

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

Socrates

It is not length of life, but depth of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life is too important to be taken seriously.

Oscar Wilde

Quotes about Life

You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.

Mae West

Life is a game and true love is a trophy.

Rufus Wainwright

Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

Vivian Greene

Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you only spend it once.

Lillian Dickson

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

Life is about how much you can take and keep fighting, how much you can suffer and keep moving forward.

Anderson Silva

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

Life is a mirror and will reflect back to the thinker what he thinks into it.

Ernest Holmes
Jonathan Swift quote "May you live all the days of your life"
“May you live all the days of your life.” – Jonathan Swift

Life is a succession of moments, to live each one is to succeed.

Corita Kent

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

Life is a journey that must be traveled no matter how bad the roads and accommodations.

Oliver Goldsmith

The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy – it’s all that matters.

Audrey Hepburn

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.

Thales

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Helen Keller

We can’t plan life. All we can do is be available for it.

Lauryn Hill

Life was always a matter of waiting for the right moment to act.

Paolo Coelho

A happy life is one spent in learning, earning, and yearning.

Lilian Gish

Don’t settle for what life gives you; make life better and build something.

Ashton Kutcher
Johnn Ruskin quote "There is no wealth but life"
“There is no wealth but life.” – John Ruskin

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

Neil Armstrong

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

Omar Khayyam

Three things in life – your health, your mission, and the people you love.

Naval Ravikant

Don’t go through life, grow through life.

Eric Butterworth

The greatest mistake you can make in life is continually fearing that you’ll make one.

Elbert Hubbard

Good Quotes on Living Life

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

Walter Bagehot

Do not let making a living prevent you from making a life.

John Wooden

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Bertrand Russell

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.

Steve Jobs

Most people have never learned that one of the main aims in life is to enjoy it.

Samuel Butler
"Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved"
“Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.” – D.H. Lawrence

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

Jack London

Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.

Leo Burnett

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life is a great big canvas; throw all the paint you can at it.

Danny Kaye

Life is like a dogsled team. If you ain’t the lead dog, the scenery never changes.

Lewis Grizzard

You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.

Oprah Winfrey

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

Charles Swindoll

Life leaps like a geyser for those who drill through the rock of inertia.

Alexis Carrel

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

Tennessee Williams

It’s better to be a lion for a day than a sheep all your life.

Elizabeth Kenny
Bette Davis quote "The key to life is accepting challenges"
“The key to life is accepting challenges.” – Bette Davis

The true currency of life is time, not money, and we’ve all got a limited stock of that.

Robert Harris

Good health and good sense are two of life’s greatest blessings.

Publilius Syrus

The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.

Carl Rogers

Beautiful Words on Life

The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.

Hans Christian Andersen

The healthiest response to life is joy.

Deepak Chopra

Love the life you live. Live the life you love.

Bob Marley

Life is never easy for those who dream.

Robert Waller

Life is a lot like jazz… it’s best when you improvise.

George Gershwin

Lighten up, just enjoy life, smile more, laugh more, and don’t get so worked up about things.

Kenneth Branagh

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein
"Make each day your masterpiece"
“Make each day your masterpiece.” – John Wooden

Life is like the ocean, it goes up and down.

Vannessa Paradis

When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.

Willie Nelson

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.

Oprah Winfrey

Life is a flower of which love is the honey.

Victor Hugo

Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments.

Rose Kennedy

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

Arthur Rubinstein

Life would be infinitely happier if we could only be born at the age of eighty and gradually approach eighteen.

Mark Twain

God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.

Voltaire

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

William James

Thoughts on Life

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding.

Robert Louis Stevenson

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln
"The unexamined life is not worth living"
“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Jim Rohn

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.

Albert Einstein

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.

Henry David Thoreau

In order to write about life first you must live it.

Ernest Hemingway

Life all comes down to a few moments. This is one of them.

Charlie Sheen,
Wall Street

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.

Elie Wiesel

Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be.

Eckhart Tolle

All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.

Havelock Ellis

Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises.

Samuel Butler

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

Marcus Aurelius
Clint Eastwood quote "What you put into life is what you get out of it"
“What you put into life is what you get out of it.” – Clint Eastwood

Life is like a wheel. Sooner or later, it always come around to where you started again.

Stephen King

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’

Hunter S. Thompson

In between goals is a thing called life, that has to be lived and enjoyed.

Sid Caesar

Look at the sparrows; they do not know what they will do in the next moment. Let us literally live from moment to moment.

Mahatma Gandhi

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

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Benjamin Franklin

Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.

Seneca

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.

Bruce Lee

Life imposes things on you that you can’t control, but you still have the choice of how you’re going to live through this.

Celine Dion

Unique Perspectives on Life

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

John Lennon

You only pass through this life once, you don’t come back for an encore.

Elvis Presley
"Life is made of ever so many partings welded together"
“Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” – Charles Dickens

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

Oscar Wilde

A man sooner or later discovers that he is the master-gardener of his soul, the director of his life.

James Allen

Cease trying to work everything out with your minds. It will get you nowhere. Live by intuition and inspiration and let your whole life be Revelation.

Eileen Caddy

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Søren Kierkegaard

Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.

Neil Gaiman

Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.

Sholom Aleichem

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

Mahatma Gandhi

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Søren Kierkegaard

The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.

Frank Sinatra

The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.

David Russell

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Anais Nin

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.

Grandma Moses
"People living deeply have no fear of death"
“People living deeply have no fear of death.” – Anais Nin

The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.

Alfred Adler

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

Matthew McConaughey

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Joseph Campbell

Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.

Hugh Prathner

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Benjamin Franklin

Purpose of Life Quotes

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Mark Twain

The purpose of life is to believe, to hope, and to strive.

Indira Gandhi

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

Jackie Robinson

The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.

Henry Ford

The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.

Nelson Henderson

Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will.

Paul Gauguin

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.

Carl Jung
"The purpose of our lives is to be happy"
“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – Dalai Lama

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive.

Joseph Campbell

If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.

Rick Riordan

Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.

Robin Sharma

Life does not owe you anything because life has already given you everything.

Ralph Marston

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, ‘I used everything you gave me’.

Erma Bombeck

We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.

William Osler

You can never have enough power. If my life has a meaning – that’s the meaning.

Christopher Walken,
Batman Returns

The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.

Horace Walpole

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.

John Dewey

The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.

Albert Schweitzer
Ken Hudgins quote "The meaning of life is to give life meaning"
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” – Ken Hudgins

Life is a question and how we live it is our answer.

Gary Keller

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

Groucho Marx

Sayings about Life

Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.

John W. Gardner

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius

We design our lives through the power of choices.

Richard Bach

Life is about making an impact, not making an income.

Kevin Kruse

There are three constants in life… change, choice and principles.

Stephen Covey

Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.

Irving Berlin

Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best.

H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.

Les Brown

Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance.

Charles Lindbergh

The trick in life is learning how to deal with it.

Helen Mirren

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

Eleanor Roosevelt
John Henry Newman quote "Growth is the only evidence of life"
“Growth is the only evidence of life.” – John Henry Newman

Every man dies. Not every man really lives.

William Wallace

Life will always be to a large extent what we ourselves make it.

Samuel Smiles

I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.

Corazon Aquino

Life’s for the living, so live it – or you’re better off dead.

Passenger,
Life’s for the Living

The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

Dolly Parton

Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.

Dolly Parton

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

Albert Einstein

If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you’ll never enjoy the sunshine.

Morris West

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

In every life, we have some trouble, but when you worry you make it double.

Bobby McFerrin

Life is pain. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.

William Goldman

Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right, always.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Begin at once to live and count each day as a separate life.

Seneca
"Live for each second without hesitation"
“Live for each second without hesitation.” – Elton John

Life is half spent before we know what it is.

George Herbert

Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.

Tom Hanks,
Forrest Gump

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up.

John C. Maxwell

Life is like riding a bicycle: you don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling.

Claude Pepper

Life is a perplexing and wonderful experience. Hopefully, these sayings about life gave you a newfound appreciation for your life and everything in it.

We only get one life so it pays to make the most of it, even if we have a few bumps along the way. A little reflection on our lives and how we’re living them is a great way to expand our understanding and enjoyment.

It’s never too late to find ways to live life to the fullest and make your experiences better. So get out there and start living bigger today!

Photo of author

Quincy Seale

Quincy is KIM's editor, and has collected and shared inspiring quotes and stories since 2005. Quincy holds an MBA from the University of Dundee and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh, and lives in San Antonio with his wife Natalie, son Alex, and his dog Oban.

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