200+ Inspirational Quotes about life sayings

Like many others, I read about the lives and work of many great artists, writers, physicists, musicians, innovators, and thinkers. But rather than quoting them, I generally prefer to share my interpretation of their ideas. I feel I haven’t assimilated their words well if I share them plain rather than kneading them with my thoughts.

Benjamin Franklin, Elon Musk, Virginia Woolf, Ruskin Bond, Rainer Maria Rilke, Vincent van Gogh, Marcel Proust, Nietzsche, Josh Waitzkin, and The Little Prince of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry — I’ve adapted lessons, inspirations, and visions of all these great human beings.

Inspirational Quotes about life sayings

Inspirational life sayings and quotes “LIFE IS SHORT. Stop worrying so much. Have fun. Be grateful. Be yourself. Don’t allow others to bring you down. Life is a one-time offer. Live to your fullest.” this collection of deep heart touching quotes about life sayings for her.

Inspirational Quotes about life sayings: If You Lose Me, I’m Not A Second Option life thoughts

Inspirational sayings about life messages ” I’m not a second option. You either choose me or You lose me.” beautiful life quotes

Life Sayings

Inspirational life sayings and Inspirational life quotes “The best things in life aren’t things.”

#1. “Life comes from the earth and life returns to the earth.”
Scott Galloway

#2. “The world is not yours for the taking, but for the trying. Try hard.”
Anonymous

#3. “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”
Dalai Lama

#4. “Always be yourself. At the end of the day, that’s all you’ve really got; when you strip everything down, that’s all you’ve got, always be yourself.”
Al Roker

#5. “Not in doing what you like, but in liking what you do is the secret of happiness.”
J.m

#6. “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.”
Dolly Parton

inspirational life sayings and saying straight from the heart

#7. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

#8. “It makes a big difference in your life when you stay positive.”
Ellen DeGeneres

#9. “And then it happens… One day you wake up and you’re in this place. You’re in this place where everything feels right. Your heart is calm. Your soul is lit. Your thoughts are positive. Your vision is clear. You’re at peace, at peace with where you’ve been, at peace with what you’ve been through, and at peace with where you’re headed.”
Anonymous

#10. “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.”
Dolly Parton

#11. “You’ve got to learn to leave the table when love’s no longer being served.”
NINA SIMONE

#12. “If you feel like you’re losing everything remember trees lose their leaves every year, and they stand tall and wait for better days to come.”
Anonymous

best inspiring quotes about life quotes with pictures to share

#13. “Time isn’t valued by
How much of it do you have but how
U spend it. So stop
Rushing through life.
Slow down and
Do what will make you
A little bit better than
Yesterday.”
Anonymous

#14. “I’ve learned that no matter how much I care, some people just don’t care back. I’ve learned that you cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up to them. I’ve learned that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.”
Anonymous

#15. “Nobody is perfect. I may not be the most beautiful, the sexiest, or the girl with the Perfect body, but I don’t pretend to be someone I am not. I am good at being me, being real, I might not be proud of some things I have done in my past but I am proud of who I am today.”
Anonymous

#16. “Your opinion is your opinion, your perception is your perception do not confuse them with ‘facts’ or “truth. Wars have been fought and millions have been killed because of the inability of men to understand the idea that everybody has a different viewpoint.”
Anonymous

#17. “A hungry stomach, an empty wallet, and a broken heart can teach you the best lessons of life.”
ROBIN WILLIAM

#18. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
JOSEPH CAMPBELL

heart touching life sayings for him her

#19. “Life is hard. Then you die. Then they throw dirt in your face. Then the worms eat you. Be grateful it happens in that order.”
David Gerrold

#20. “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
Abraham Lincoln

#21. “Life is like a camera… Focus on what’s important, Capture the good times, Develop from the negatives, And if things don’t work out, Take another shot.”
Anonymous

#22. “Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.”
J.K. Rowling

#23. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
THOMAS A EDISON

#24. “Without communication, there is no relationship. Without respect, there is no love. Without trust, there’s no reason to continue.”
Anonymous

inspirational life quotes sayings messages

#25. “Learn to love without condition. Talk without bad intentions. Give without any reason. And most of all, care for people without expectation.”
Anonymous

#26. “You have this one life. How do you want to spend it? Apologizing? Regretting? Questioning? Hating yourself? Dieting? Running after people who don’t see you? Be brave. Believe in yourself. Do what feels good. Take risks. You have this one life. Make yourself proud.”
Anonymous

#27. “Always notice the people who are happy for your happiness and sad for your sadness; they’re the ones who deserve special places in your heart.”
Anonymous

#28. “Always notice the people who are happy for your happiness and sad for your sadness. They’re the ones who deserve special places in your heart.”
KAKYTTADI

#29. “Life is beautiful one day, one hour, and one minute, will not come again in your entire life. Avoid fights, and angriness and speak lovely to every person.”
Anonymous

#30. “Notice the people who are happy for your happiness, and sad for your sadness. They’re the ones who deserve special places in your heart.”
Anonymous

inspirational life sayings and inspirational life quotes

#31. “Never ignore a person who loves you, cares for you, and misses you. Because one day you may wake up from your sleep and realize that you lost the moon while counting the stars.”
Anonymous

#32. “Appreciate those who are happy for your happiness and sad for your sadness. These are people to truly treasure.”
Anonymous

#33. “Save beautiful. It has its ups and downs, but you just need to appreciate it no matter what. You have one life only, so make it as amazing as you can.”
Anonymous

#34. “You have this one life. How do you want to spend it? Apologizing? Regretting? Questioning? Hating yourself? Dieting? Running after people who don’t see you? Be brave. Believe in yourself. Do what feels good. Take risks. You have this one life. Make yourself proud.”
Anonymous

#35. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
Albert Einstein

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Inspirational pictures with quotes

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inspirational life quotes quotes about life

inspirational thoughts of the day quotes pictures photos images and pics

“As far as I can tell, every great advance — whether in an individual life or the world at large — has come from dreams and attempts.

Devise more dreams. Make more attempts.”

– Author

“A philosophy I heard recently and have found useful: “We look for reasons to say yes and only say no when we have to.””

– Author

“Whenever you are stuck searching for the optimal plan, remember:

Getting started changes everything.”

– Author

“Focus on the seeds, not the trees. What seeds are you planting today?”

– Author

“Many of our habits and beliefs are learned from those who raised us. Which family story are you unconsciously repeating and reenacting? How can you rewrite the script to liberate yourself and the next generation?”

– Author

“Practice the art of small daily discomforts. Modern life is optimized for convenience and comfort. Your food can be delivered straight to your door. Your car seats can be heated. Your favorite show is available at the press of a button.

We all enjoy convenience and comfort, myself included. But our bodies and souls yearn for challenge. We want to be stretched. A deeper satisfaction awaits after pushing yourself to learn a challenging concept or complete a humbling workout or have an important but difficult conversation.

Should the whole day feel difficult? No, I don’t think that’s necessary. But a good day — a meaningful and fulfilling day — requires small moments of discomfort. Growth demands discomfort. We need something to push against to learn how strong we can become.”

– Author

“When I notice myself worrying about ‘what other people will think,’ I find I’m usually not worried about any single person’s opinion.

If I pick a specific person, I’m rarely concerned about what they will think. What I fear is the collective opinion in my head. It’s imaginary.”

– Author

“The fundamentals: Something many people know, but few people practice.”

– Author

“Start with the best opportunity available to you. If you make the most of what you have in front of you right now, better opportunities will become available as you go along.”

– Author

“Mental toughness is often framed as the perseverance that gets you across the finish line:

-Find a way to make it happen
-Push through the pain
-Grind it out to the end

But most days, mental toughness isn’t about crossing the finish line. It’s about getting to the starting line:

-Show up when no one is watching
-Keep your eye on the ball
-Do a little bit every day
Mental toughness is not skipping the days that are easy to skip.”

– Author

“A simple rule for life that rarely fails:

Optimize for enthusiasm. Make as many choices as you can that leave you feeling energetic and interested. Pay attention to when you have the urge to pursue or participate in something and do more of it.”

– Author

“There is always more than one way to do something. Write down as many ways as you can think of to achieve your desired outcome. Then, rank them based on how much time they take, how much money they cost, and how effective you expect them to be. Choose the best.”

– Author

“Today might be the best chance you have to take action.

The longer you wait, the more deeply embedded you get in your current lifestyle. Your habits solidify. Your beliefs harden. You get comfortable.

It will never be easy, but it may also never be easier than it is right now.”

– Author

“The beginning is mostly luck. The end is mostly choices.”

– Author

“Shortcuts tend to accelerate effort, not replace it. Supplements and cutting edge recovery methods might speed up your progress in the gym, but they don’t replace the need to do the workout. In general, the people who benefit most from shortcuts are those who continue to practice the fundamentals consistently.”

– Author

“Stress and worry tend to be higher before you act.

Without action, all you can do is worry.

Once you begin, fear shrinks as you start to influence the outcome.”

– Author

”

Trying to please everyone
Imitating the desires of others
Chasing status without questioning why
Playing superhero and trying to do it all alone
Dividing attention between too many projects
Which one is most likely to pull you in?”

– Author

“Your first task is to find what feels effortless to you.

Your second task is to put maximum effort into it.”

– Author

“One way to stand out is to look for pockets of low competition.

Wake up early—less traffic, fewer people.

Go deeper or narrower in your field—less noise, more space.

People are drawn to where it is crowded. Look for the quiet spaces inside your areas of interest. Excellence often hides at the edges.”

– Author

“Worrying about the future is like watching a leaf fall and trying to predict where it will land. Stop trying to guess where the wind will blow and get to work.”

– Author

“The Paradox of Freedom: The way to expand your freedom is to narrow your focus.

-Stay focused on saving to achieve financial freedom.

-Stay focused on training to achieve physical freedom.

-Stay focused on learning to achieve intellectual freedom.

The disciplined become the free.”

– Author

“The person who learns the most in any classroom is the teacher.

If you really want to learn a topic, then “teach” it. Write a book. Teach a class. Build a product. Start a company.

The act of making something will force you to learn more deeply than reading ever will.”

– Author

“I found this in a pile of notes to myself, and share here simply as food for thought… “You want two things:

1. Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity. No wasted movement. No wasted effort.

2. Compounding. Every project should have a long runway and feed the others.”

– Author

“Although losing is never fun, there is a certain satisfaction that can be found on the other side of losing — but only when you give your all. To lose with half effort offers no pleasure in the moment and no peace in the long run. But if your ambitions were full and your attempt was genuine, after the sting of losing wears off you’ll be left with something resembling contentment. The reward is not always in winning, but in striving.”

– Author

“Remain playful as your responsibilities increase. It’s easy to become serious when people and results depend on you, but nearly everyone’s performance improves when they proceed lightly through the world.”

– Author

“Stories of failure resonate more than stories of success. Few people reach the top, but everyone has failed—including those who eventually succeed. If you’re teaching people how to succeed in a given field (or talking about your own success), start with how you failed.”

– Author

“Even bad luck is a source of opportunity—but only if you live each day as if that is true.”

– Author

“Each year, Steve Jobs would hold an annual meeting with the 100 most important people at Apple.

Crucially, these were not the top 100 executives, but rather the 100 people who were most important to the company that year. Jobs personally chose attendees based on their direct contribution, creativity, vision, and impact within the company, regardless of their official titles or positions.

I always loved the spirit of that practice. Competence over credentials.”

– Author

“You are as old as the risks you take. In many ways, aging is not the process of growing old, but rather the slow death of becoming overly protective, scared, and worried about losing what you have. Youth is found in the energy of going for it, taking the risk, and trusting that you’ll figure it out along the way.”

– Author

“The Process:

1. Decide what you want to achieve.
2. Try different ways of achieving it until you find one that works for you.
3. Do more of what works. Do less of what doesn’t.
4. Don’t stop doing it until it stops working.
5. Repeat.

It is both this simple and this hard.”
– Author

“To understand others, watch what they reward.

To understand yourself, watch what you envy.”

– Author

“What you push down doesn’t vanish. It festers and wields quiet power over your thoughts and actions.

What needs to be addressed that isn’t currently being addressed?”

– Author

“Things that keep people from fulfilling their potential:

-Lacking the courage to try
-Trying to please everyone
-Imitating the desires of others
-Chasing status without questioning why
-Playing superhero and trying to do it all alone
-Dividing attention between too many projects”
– Author

“Think about self-control less as the quality of a person and more as the quality of a place. There are some places and situations that lean toward lower self-control and others that lean toward higher self-control. Self-control is about your context as much as your character. Put yourself in good positions.”

– Author

“There are two ways to live a longer life:

1) Biologically. Extend the timeline between your birth and your death.

2) Psychologically. Fit more lives into whatever time you are given.

Make each decade rich with experiences and perhaps you can live a handful of lives before you are done.”

– Author

“Spend today interpreting whatever people do in the most generous way. See if you feel better as a result.”

– Author

“If you do not bend, you will break.

The adaptable prevail. Determined, but flexible.”

– Author

“People frequently get what they deserve, but it doesn’t feel like it because the unspoken rule is that you only deserve it if you have (1) the courage to attempt it, (2) the guts to ask for it, and (3) the willingness try again when it doesn’t work out the first time.”

– Author

“When accessing all information is common, paying attention to important information is rare.”

– Author

“People can sometimes be held hostage by their expectations. They have a dream of something they would like to achieve or a path they intend to follow, but their mindset falls apart when things don’t work out how they had hoped.

The key is to reach for an extremely high bar, but to be adaptable enough to reframe the failures, disappointments, and defeats into fuel for the next thing. Give your best effort, but no matter how it works out, trust that life will be good for you. Focus on how the world is working with you, not against you.

Everything you are given is material for the next move. Everything.”

– Author

“The source of healthy boundaries is self-love and self-respect. When you learn to love yourself, you are less likely to put up with people who don’t love you back.”

– Author

“At any moment, you are one good choice away from a meaningfully better life.”

– Author

“If you keep showing up, you’ll almost certainly break through — but probably not in the way you expected or intended. You need enough persistence to keep working and enough flexibility to enjoy success when it comes in a different form than you imagined. ”

– Author

“Savor the little victories as much as you criticize the little mistakes.”

– Author

“Use what you already know. People are so busy searching for a shortcut — or hoping an easier path will reveal itself — they let numerous moments slip by when they could get results simply by doing what is right in front of them.”

– Author

“Your habits are often a byproduct of convenience. Humans are wired to seek the path of least resistance, which means the most convenient option is often the one that wins. Make good choices more convenient and bad choices less so. Behavior will improve naturally.”

– Author

“Writing is the superpower of humankind. It is our truest form of magic. Writing allows you to conjure up something of value where nothing previously existed. It costs little for you to write down the lessons of your life and yet those few minutes spent writing can be life-altering for the right reader. As I once saw it put: “there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words.”

Furthermore, writing is the foundation of nearly every technology and innovation because we have to record what we know before we can build upon it. And these innovations are passed down from generation to generation, allowing our children to inherit a richer intellectual fortune than what we were born into. The world is richer because we write and nobody is made poorer in the process.”

– Author

“You have to work hard to discover how to work smart. You won’t know the best solutions until you’ve made nearly all the mistakes.”

– Author

“You can’t make a comeback if you don’t start.”

– Author

“The quality of my life is significantly higher on days that I publish an article. The creative process and well-being go hand-in-hand.”

– Author

But it is not always about the source or amalgamation of motivation. Ideas and inspiration need to keep floating in the universe irrespective of where they come from. After all, we are only the means to an end, and we all need a guiding light.

In this piece, I am sharing some of the most deep, inspiring quotes about life I have come across. The hope is to read these avant-garde quotes, to come back to them whenever we need them, and sift through them even when we feel we don’t require them. Thus we keep ourselves soaked in inspiration and don’t let it deplete.

Categories in which I have organized the quotes recur and follow a random order.

Because,

If we asked out of all the things in this universe which one, if altered in a random way, would remain unchanged, the answer is a random sequence. A random sequence changed in a random way remains random. A mess remains a mess.

Heinz Pagels

Powerful and Deep Quotes About Life

On Overthinking.

“There are more things likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality .”

Seneca

(Read Open Letter to My Mind to see what all we worry about.)

On Human Condition. 

“Pity is a paralyzing mental luxury.” ― Will Durant

“If you cannot trust life who are you going to trust? If you cannot allow life to flow through you, you will be missing this tremendous opportunity to be alive. Then you will get worried, then you will be caught in your own mind, and then misery is the natural outcome.”

Buddha Said and Osho interpreted

“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”  —  Ernest Hemingway

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.”

Victor E. Frankl, as he said in Man’s Search for Meaning

“To be tough is to be fragile; to be tender is to be truly fierce.”  —  Farhana Qazi (and other research-backed understandings about our emotions.)

“And it is pleasant now and then to go among people who carry their lives lighdy, who do not give too much importance to this transitory world, and are not so taken up with the means of living that no thought and time is left over for the enjoyment of life itself.”

Freya Stark

“Circumstance is not an excuse.”  —  Yours Truly

“The real question is not what do we want to become, but what do we want to want?”

Yuval Noah Harari, as said in Sapiens

“People where you live, the little prince said, grow five thousand roses in one garden… Yet they don’t find what they’re looking for… And yet what they’re looking for could be found in a single rose.” — From The Little Prince (originally published in French as Le Petit Prince) by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

On Choosing.

“‘No’ is a complete sentence.”

Annie Lamott

On the Cosmos.

“There are no separate systems. The world is a continuum. Where to draw a boundary around a system depends on the purpose of the discussion.”

Donella H. Meadows

“The moral influence of nature upon every individual is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

On Asking Questions.

“Out of the quarrel with others we make rhetoric; out of the quarrel with ourselves, we make poetry.” – W.B. Yeats

We should never be shy to question ourselves.

On Love. 

“Why does the sun go on shining? Why does the sea rush to shore? Don’t they know it’s the end of the world, ’Cause you don’t love me anymore?”  —  From The End Of The World by Arthur Kent and Sylvia Dee.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”  —  Lao Tzu.

(Read why we need a life partner and how to find one.)

On Thinking Right.

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.”  —  Norman Vincent Peale

“Well, everybody does it that way.” — Huck.

“I am not everybody.” — Tom

A conversation from The Adventures of Tom Sawyer By Mark Twain

“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”  —  Plutarch

“The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”

Robert M. Pirsig (as he wrote in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

On Dreams and Reality.

“All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.”  —  Walt Disney

“Dreams are only dreams until we start working towards them.” — Yours Truly

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.”

Amelia Earhart, an author, and the first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean.

“Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.”  —  A. P. J. Abdul Kalam.

(Read why we need to continue even if we are bleeding.)

Quotes About What’s Important

“The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.”  —  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

By keeping your life in order, you can even sleep in storms. — Yours Truly

On Getting Started.

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”  —  Mark Twain.

“All glory comes from daring to begin.” ― Ruskin Bond.

“Believe you can and you are halfway there .” —  Theodore Roosevelt

On Success. 

“However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Stephen Hawking.

I will not let myself be put off even by my mistakes.

Vincent Van Gogh

Be the best you can be at whatever you do, and even the invisible doors will open in ways unknown. (Read how to find something you can love.)

On Learning.

“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”

Bruce Lee

On Life. 

“You can never really change your life and that, in any case, every life was more or less the same and that my life here wasn’t bad at all.”

Albert Camus, as he said in The Outsider

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving .” —  Albert Einstein

“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced .” —  Soren Kierkegaard, an existential philosopher.

“In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.”

Anne Frank, as she wrote in her diary, now published as Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

“Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves .” —  Henry David Thoreau

On Kindness.

“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”  — Aesop

One morning, I told my cleaning lady to wait until I finished my shower so that I could make tea for her. But I couldn’t get out of the bathroom. The door was jammed. I shouted for help a few times. She heard me and pushed the door open. We can’t always see kindness flowing freely like a river, but it does.

“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud .” —  Maya Angelou

On the Matters of Heart. 

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched — they must be felt with the heart .”

Helen Keller

(like Klaus Nomi singing My heart opens to your voice)

On What is Important.

“Having no limitation as limitation.”  —  Bruce Lee

“One of those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”  —  T.S. Eliot

Limitations are imaginary constructions of the human mind.

On Innovation.

“I believe you have to be willing to be misunderstood if you’re going to innovate.”  —  Jeff Bezos

Don’t expect others to understand or appreciate your vision.

On Happiness. 

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

Marcus Aurelius

On Eccentricity.

“Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”  —  Bertrand Russell

“…those in this world who have the courage to try and solve in their own lives new problems of life are the ones who raise society to greatness! Those who merely live according to rule do not advance society, they only carry it along.”

Rabindra Nath Tagore wrote in Gora

“Every society honors its live conformists and dead troublemakers.”  —  Mignon McLaughlin

“Boldness has genius, power and magic in it .” —  W.H.Murray

“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Rob Siltanen

(Read my journey from coding to writing: Breaking the barriers)

On the Troubles of Life. 

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky .”

Rabindranath Tagore

“And, furthermore, even in terms of quantity, the days of our life aren’t equal. To pass through the day, people with a somewhat nervous nature, as is mine, have, like automobiles, different “speeds” at their disposal. There are hilly, difficult days that it takes one an infinite amount of time to climb, and there are days with downward slopes that allow us to descend at full tilt, singing as we go.”

Proust

On Relationships. 

“Hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.”  —  Rainer Maria Rilke (let life flow: another one of Rilke’s inspiration from his Letters to a Young Poet.)

“We can only be with someone if they can be with our solitude.” — Yours Truly

(3 things I’m learning the hard way in a relationship)

On Pragmatism. 

“History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets.”  —  Yuval Noah Harari, as he wrote in his book Sapiens.

A few plan, communicate, and lead. The rest allow them.

On Doing. 

“The shortest answer is doing the thing .” —  Ernest Hemingway

On Fear. (Quotes that changed my life)

“Let us not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless when facing them.”  — Rabindranath Tagore.

“No great art has ever been made without the artist having known danger.”  — Rainer Maria Rilke

“Life is ours to be spent, not to be saved.”  —  D.H.Lawrence

I always tried to please people because I didn’t want them to be upset with me or argue with me. I was scared. Over time, I realized people will think what they want to think. I should be least bothered about what someone would say. If the other threatens my integrity or peace, I can stand up for myself. (and many other things I want to tell my younger self.)

On The Most Important.

“If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.”  —  Aristotle. [Marcus Aurelius writes this in his diary Meditations as well]

On Being Larger Than Life.

“I don’t want to have lived in vain like most people. I want to be useful or bring enjoyment to all people, even those I’ve never met. I want to go on living even after my death .”

Anne Frank, as she noted down in her diary.

“Another voice in his heart was telling him that he must not fall under the sway of the past and that one can do anything with oneself.”  —  Leo Tolstoy (as he wrote in Anna Karenina)

It is about overcoming the fears inside.

(Read along: what is the purpose of our lives.)

On Belief.

“My mother was the greatest mother in the world. She thought I was the greatest thing on two feet. I’d come home with a little composition I had written at school, and she’d look at it and say, ‘It’s wonderful! You’re another Shakespeare!’ I always assumed I could do anything. It really is amazing how much that has to do with your attitude.”

Stan Lee

First, believe. (13 other methods on achieving our goals.)

On Everything in Life.

“When asked, ‘How do you write?’ I invariably answer, ‘one word at a time.’”  —  Stephen King

You can apply this to anything in life.

(suggested read everything I have learned so far: in 4,500 words.)

On Being Larger Than Life.

“Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it .”

Rabindranath Tagore

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.”  —  R. Buckminster Fuller

Only you know what you are capable of. (And success could come from having fun.)

On Opinions and Being Right.

“Opinions are nothing, better than all is the self-contained calm of true realization. What does it matter which argument is true and which is false — what has been gained within is the real thing.”  —  Rabindranath Tagore writes in his book Gora.

On Loneliness.

“The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.”  —  Douglas Coupland.

On What is Important.

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop.”  —  Rumi

“Never stop smiling not even when you’re sad, someone might fall in love with your smile.”  — Gabriel Garcia Marquez. (Here are some of my ideas on making others smile.)

“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”  — William Morris.

“Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.”  —  Henry David Thoreau.

(These lessons on resilience and repetition from an old Himalayan woman also showed me how little details run our lives.)

On Learning.

“More than a gigantic pool of knowledge, a teacher should have a kind heart to facilitate the environment of learning .” —  Yours Truly

Quotes On Truth of Life

“Look, further on ahead, there, between truth and falsehood, a little empty space .” —  Amrita Preetam

“Live only with reason.” — Marcus Aurelius.

On Becoming Better.

“If you believe you can change and start changing your habits, the change becomes real.”

Charles Duhigg.

(Read why are habits so important.)

On Human Condition.

“My grandfather was a wild-raspberry patch on the side of a mountain, and my grandmother was a flower garden in a concrete city .” —  From The Stump Ranch Fish by Quinn Grover

Do you think you don’t belong? We all have a place in the world; sometimes, the whole world is our place.

On Art. 

“The business of art is to reveal the relation between man and his environment .”

1. H. Lawrence.

Deep Inspiring Quotes On Travel and Life.

“It is not down in any map; true places never are .” —  Herman Melville

“All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.”  —  Martin Buber (travel inspires change)

यस्तु सञ्चरते देशान् सेवते यस्तु पण्डितान् !
तस्य विस्तारिता बुद्धिस्तैलबिन्दुरिवाम्भसि !!

The wisdom of the one who travels to many countries and serves the learned there increases as an oil drop spreads on water.

I can’t find the source of the above Sanskrit shloka. Please let me know if you know.

You might also like to read What I have learned from traveling the world.

On Writing.

“Stories are our souls. Write and edit and tell yours with your whole selves. Tell them as if they are all that matters. It matters that you do it as if that is all there is.”  —  Jacqui Banaszynski

If you are interested in writing, check out all my experiential advice on writing.

On Human Condition. 

“The human soul needs actual beauty more than bread.”  —  D. H. Lawrence

Go back to the basics of life with The Little Prince.

On Being Yourself.

“Be yourself, everyone else is taken .” —  Oscar Wilde

On Learning.

“Life must be understood backward. But it must be lived forward.”  —  Søren Kierkegaard

The 30 life lessons I learned in my twenties: moving forward with pride.

On Happiness.

“Happiness isn’t the result of getting all the other stuff right, but something you can do right now, and that then leads to getting the other stuff right. Be happy and the reason will appear.”  —  Jeff Olsen (as he wrote in his book The Slight Edge)

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

Mahatma Gandhi

I rarely quote Gandhi, but this quote emphasizes the way of nature, and the way of nature is always right.

On Success.

“Those who achieve the extraordinary are usually the most ordinary because they have nothing to prove to anybody. Be Humble.”  —  Aaron Lauritsen, as he wrote in his book 100 Days Drive

“The moment we believe that success is determined by an ingrained level of ability as opposed to resilience and hard work, we will be brittle in the face of adversity .” —  Joshua Waitzkin, as he wrote in his book The Art of Learning. (This has been my life mantra, too.)

You might find this inspiring: How to nurture the art of learning, inspired by Josh Waitzkin.

On Life and the Cosmos.

“Once you lose that sense of wonder at being alive, you’re pretty much on the way out.”

David Bowie.

“Don’t get so overshadowed by the problems, you can’t see what it is about. Don’t just scratch the surface. Fight. Strive. Bleed. Sweat. Cry. Run. Dig deep. Live.” — Yours Truly

On Love and Work.

“Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.”  —  Buddha

Devote yourself to your purpose.

Suggested Read: Why work shouldn’t be boring and how to find and do what you love — inspired by my own journey and a career-change at the age of 30.

On Creativity.

“All of my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.”  —  David Bowie

“What I like my music to do is awaken the ghosts inside me. Not the demons you understand, but the ghosts .” —  David Bowie

Prestige or fame shouldn’t be your drive. Your only drive could be the ghosts gnawing you from the inside.

Here’s how to sort through the mundane for creative living and creative rituals to make art.

On Truth.

“Always go too far, because that’s where you’ll find the truth.”

Albert Camus

On the Power of Time and Persistence. 

“There’s never one sunrise the same or one sunset the same .” —  Carlos Santana

“If you want to direct your life on a continual positive change, then you need to tap into the most powerful force for change in the universe. Fortunately for you, that force is always with you. That force is time.”  —  Jeff Olsen (as he wrote in his book The Slight Edge)

“Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.”  —  Ray Cummings

“If time frightens us, this is because it works out the problem and the solution comes afterward .” —  Albert Camus

One of my favorite pieces, also inspired by Josh Waitzkin: The importance of the process of learning versus the result.

On Human Mind. 

“Once in a great while, a few times in history, a human mind produces an observation so acute and unexpected that people can’t quite decide which is the more amazing — the fact or the thinking of it .” —  Bill Bryson, as said in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything

“A human being is the only animal that thinks about future.” —  Daniel Gilbert, as he wrote in his book Stumbling Upon Happiness.

On Art and why we make it. 

“I began to experience the fullness of winter in Kashmir, and finally understood what artist Cezanne meant when, as he painted, he attempted to capture the multiple reflections of a scene. “The landscape thinks itself in me…I am its consciousness,” he once said.”

Farhana Qazi, quoting the French Painter Cezanne in her book Secrets of the Kashmir Valley.

Recommended Read: 15 things we overthink about

On Suffering. 

“Is it not a relief from suffering to be permitted to express it?”

Paul Cézanne

On the Past and Doing Better.

“Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.”  —  Maya Angelou.

“To live is to learn.” — Yours Truly

About Hope. 

“Hope is the magic carpet that transports us from the present moment into the realm of infinite possibilities .” —  H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

On Truth.

“Say not, ‘I have found the truth,’ but rather, ‘I have found a truth.’ ” —  Khalil Gibran

On Human Condition.

उध्दरेदात्मनात्मानम्  —  udhdaredātmanātmānam  —  Save yourself from yourself  —  Swami Vivekananda

“Don’t underestimate the power of a human being. If needed, human consciousness can reach deeper than the depths of the ocean.” — Yours truly

Scientific ideas on how to manipulate consciousness to change reality.

On Worrying. 

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is, while you are thinking about it.” ― Daniel Kahneman, as he wrote in his book Thinking Fast and Slow.

On Power. 

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any .” —  Alice Walker

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”  —  Eleanor Roosevelt

And other ways to excel in your thirties.

On Being Larger Than Life.

“The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.”

George Orwell

On Happiness and Experience.

“The way an experience ends is more important to us than the total amount of pleasure we receive — until we think about it .” —  Daniel Gilbert, as he said in his book Stumbling Upon Happiness.

“We don’t just treasure our memories. We are our memories.”  —  Daniel Gilbert, as he illustrated in his book Stumbling on Happiness.

On Happiness and Human Condition. 

“We treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy .” —  Daniel Gilbert, as he explained in his book Stumbling Upon Happiness.

“To be a human being means to possess a feeling of inferiority which constantly presses towards its own conquest. The greater the feeling of inferiority that has been experienced, the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more violent the emotional agitation.” ― Alfred Adler

You might enjoy: How to choose between ambition and happiness, lessons inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche.

On the Redundancy of Abundance. 

“So much is available, almost nothing can be found .” —  Pico Iyer

On Human Condition.

“And dimly she realized one of the great laws of the human soul: that when the emotional soul receives a wounding shock, which does not kill the body, the soul seems to recover as the body recovers. But this is only appearance. It is really only the mechanism of the re-assumed habit. Slowly, slowly the wound to the soul begins to make itself felt, like a bruise, which only slowly deepens its terrible ache, till it fills all the psyche. And when we think we have recovered and forgotten, it is then that the terrible after-effects have to be encountered at their worst.”

David Herbert Lawrence, as he wrote in his book Lady Chatterley’s Lover.

Time only seems to cover up a wound while the experience seeps into the deepest crevices of our consciousness.

On Being Larger Than Life.

“One who daily puts the finishing touches to his life is never in want of time.”

Seneca, as he noted in Letters From A Stoic.

“Live as if no one is watching.” — Yours Truly

On Doing Less. 

“Most people think that big success is time-consuming and complicated. As a result, their calendars and to-do lists become overloaded and overwhelming. Success starts to feel out of reach so they settle for less. Unaware that big success comes when we do a few things well, they get lost trying to do too much and in the end accomplish too little. Over time they lower their expectations, abandon their dreams, and allow their life to get small. This is the wrong thing to make small.

Going small is ignoring all the things you could do and doing what you should do. It is recognizing that not all things matter equally and finding the things that matter most. When you go as small as possible, you will be staring at one thing. And that’s the point .”

Gary Keller and Jay Papasan, as they explained in their book The One Thing.

On Forgiveness.

“I thought that I needed your apology to move on. I really needed to forgive myself first.”

Najwa Zebian.

On Our Needs and Truth.

“Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation .” —  Friedrich Nietzsche

“We need much less than we think we do.” — Yours Truly

“The truth is, we know so little about life, we don’t really know what the good news is and what the bad news is.”  —  Kurt Vonnegut

On Human Condition.

“Caught in the deluge, we were torn — wanting to run for shelter but tempted, also, to sing in the rain .” —  Joyce Maynard, as she wrote in An 18-Year-Old Looks Back on Life.

“There’s only one rule you need to remember: laugh at everything and forget everybody else! It sounds egotistical, but it’s actually the only cure for those suffering from self-pity.”

Anne Frank

Read About mindfulness and how to practice it, lessons inspired by Buddha as interpreted by Osho.

On Being Larger Than Life.

“To use your head you have to go out of your mind.” — Timothy Leary

Either do the thing, or worry. Choose one. — Yours Truly

Falling Leaf by Ajneya (Translated from Hindi by the poet)

From this spreading golden canopy

There fell but one solitary leaf

But how many times

In every shiver

Of its insignificant falling

Did I not die!

One moment is dark,
and the next moment there is light,
you don’t have the slightest hint
of what’s going to come next,
then why do you knit your brows,
smile for the now,
smile for the blue sky under which you sleep,
smile for the bright moon that gives strength,
smile for the bread you have just had,
smile
for you still breathe,
because you don’t know what would happen the next moment,
but don’t be scared,
for you cannot change anything,
all you can do is face the today fearlessly,
and that might just do it.

Yours Truly.

Quotes on Everything in Life

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

By Mary Oliver, as said in the poem “In Blackwater Woods”.

To the Great Ocean,

Of the sunken arm that throws up a drop of water nothing remains but a kiss of salt.

Of the bodies of mankind along your shores a misty scent of wet flowers is all that lasts.

Your energy seems to slip away without ever being exhausted,

it seems to circle back into your calm.

Pablo Neruda

On Pausing. 

With every click of the shutter,

you’re trying to press pause on your life.

If only so you can feel a little more comfortable moving on

living in a world stuck on play

Morii, From Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.

On Strength.

So few grains of happiness

measured against all the dark

and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us

only the strength we have and we give it.

Then it asks more, and we give it.

by Jane Hirshfield.

In a moment, a moment is gone. Let’s spend it with reason.