Positive quotations about life can open the door to deeper thought, personal growth, and perspective shifts.
You can find many positive quotations about life in websites, books and calendars, or journals.
The question is do all these words of wisdom really that effective?
Some say their real power comes when we take a moment to ponder over them.
These feel-good phrases can reframe how we see the world.
Positive Quotations About Life
Here I have a collection of positive quotations about life gathered from various sources.
You may question, or even disagreed with them, because growth isn’t one-size-fits-all.
Each quote invites you to pause, reflect, and ask yourself what it means in the context of your life.
Some may affirm what you already believe., while others might push you out of your comfort zone.
Then there are ones might sound wishy-washy, overly simplistic, or like something you’d see on a coffee mug — and that’s okay. Not every quote will land with the same impact.
Whether you use them as journaling prompts, or quiet moments of reflection, these positive quotations about life are here to support your journey and not to fix it.
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” – James Baldwin
“People don’t get upset. They contribute to their upsetness.” – Albert Ellis
“One resolution I have made, and try always to keep is this: To rise above the little things.” – John Burroughs
“Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would have thought that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“When I hear somebody sigh that life is hard, I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?'” – Sydney J. Harris
“Happiness is a perfume you cannot pour on others without getting a few drops on yourself.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs.” – Henry Ford
“You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” – Yogi Berra
“I ask not for a lighter burden, but for broader shoulders.” – Jewish Proverb
“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.” – Thich Nhat Hanh
“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” – Annie Dillard
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” – Thomas Edison
“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly; devils fall because of their gravity.” – G. K. Chesterton
“There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year’s course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.” – Carl Gustav Jung
“Start by doing what’s necessary, then what’s possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – St. Francis of Assisi
“They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” – Andy Warhol
“The best way to have a good idea is to have lots of ideas.” – Linus Pauling
“Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy and wise.” – Benjamin Franklin
“Throw your heart over the fence and the rest will follow.” – Norman Vincent Peale
“Laughter is the sun that drives winter from the human face.” – Victor Hugo
“Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.” – Jonathan Kozol
“The miracle is not to fly in the air, or to walk on the water, but to walk on the earth.” – Chinese Proverb
“Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.” – George Bernard Shaw
“Firelight will not let you read fine stories, but it’s warm and you won’t see the dust on the floor.” – Irish Proverb
“The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.” – Mark Twain
“In charity there is no excess.” – Francis Bacon
“Courage is doing what you’re afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you’re scared.” – Eddie Rickenbacker
“Humankind’s ladder to God is a ladder of deeds.” – Sholem Asch
“Adversity draws men together and produces beauty and harmony in life’s relationships, just as the cold of winter produces ice-flowers on the window-panes, which vanish with the warmth.” – Søren Kierkegaard
“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.” – Alan W. Watts
“May you live all the days of your life.” – Jonathan Swift
“Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.” – Ovid
“People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“To a quick question, give a slow answer.” – Italian Proverb
“A good cry lightens the heart.” – Yiddish Proverb
“If a man does not know what port he is steering for, no wind is favorable to him.” – Seneca
“A friend is a gift you give to yourself.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
“Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” – Sir Walter Scott
“It is not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get back up.” – Vince Lombardi
“In the field of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind.” – Louis Pasteur
“To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.” – Plutarch
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” – Aldous Huxley
“Work banishes those three great evils: boredom, vice, and poverty.” – Voltaire
“Call on God, but row away from the rocks.” – Indian Proverb
“That which we obtain easily, we esteem too lightly.” – Thomas Paine
“Humility is the only true wisdom by which we prepare our minds for all the possible changes of life.” – George Arliss
“You can only perceive real beauty in a person as they get older.” – Anouk Aimée
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.” – Robert F. Kennedy
“I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” – Walt Whitman
“To enjoy freedom, we have to control ourselves.” – Virginia Woolf
“Never fail to know that if you are doing all the talking, you are boring somebody.” – Helen Gurley Brown
There’s no single quote that can capture the full complexity of life.
What resonates today might not tomorrow.
That’s why these positive quotations about life are not solutions, but starting points.
