108 Acceptance Quotes

Navigating through life's complexities often leads us to face situations we cannot change. In such moments, acceptance becomes a powerful tool for inner peace and growth. Embracing acceptance allows us to live more authentically and with greater resilience. Whether you're seeking solace, motivation, or a fresh perspective, our carefully curated collection of the top 108 acceptance quotes offers wisdom and insight from some of the most profound thinkers and influencers. Dive in to find the perfect words to inspire a more accepting and fulfilling journey.

1. “A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” - Dinah Maria Craik

2. “You have to give up! you have to give up!You have to realize that someday you will die,Until you know that, you are useless!” - Chuck Palahniuk

3. “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” - Alice Walker

4. “to love life, to love it evenwhen you have no stomach for itand everything you've held dearcrumbles like burnt paper in your hands,your throat filled with the silt of it.When grief sits with you, its tropical heatthickening the air, heavy as watermore fit for gills than lungs;when grief weights you like your own fleshonly more of it, an obesity of grief,you think, How can a body withstand this?Then you hold life like a facebetween your palms, a plain face,no charming smile, no violet eyes,and you say, yes, I will take youI will love you, again.” - Ellen Bass

5. “I have a self-made quote: Celebrate diversity, practice acceptance and may we all choose peaceful options to conflict.” - Donzella Michele Malone

6. “A weed is but an unloved flower.” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox

7. “The best way is not to fight it, just go. Don't be trying all the time to fix things. What you run from only stays with you longer. When you fight something, you only make it stronger.” - Chuck Palahniuk

8. “It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159).” - John Bingham

9. “The four stages of acceptance:1. This is worthless nonsense.2. This is an interesting, but perverse, point of view.3. This is true, but quite unimportant.4. I always said so."(Review of The Truth About Death, in: Journal of Genetics 1963, Vol. 58, p.464)” - J.B.S. Haldane

10. “My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.” - Michael J. Fox

11. “No, the secret is that there's no reward and we have to endure our characters and our natures as best we can, because no amount of experience or insight is going to rectify our deficiencies, our self-regard, or our cupidity. We have to learn that our desires do not find any real echo in the world. We have to accept that the people we love do not love us, or not in the way we hope. We have to accept betrayal and disloyalty, and, hardest of all, that someone is finer than we are in character or intelligence.” - Sándor Márai

12. “Then she lay on her back and gazed at the cloudless sky. Mr. Beebe, whose opinion of her rose daily, whispered to his niece that that was the proper way to behave if any little thing went wrong.” - E.M. Forster

13. “Hate is a lack of imagination.” - Graham Greene

14. “Love is made up of three unconditional properties in equal measure:1. Acceptance2. Understanding3. AppreciationRemove any one of the three and the triangle falls apart.Which, by the way, is something highly inadvisable. Think about it — do you really want to live in a world of only two dimensions?So, for the love of a triangle, please keep love whole.” - Vera Nazarian

15. “Every advantage is temporary.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

16. “The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things, you have missed the target--you have missed. Because things are not the target, you, your innermost being, is the target--not a beautiful house, but a beautiful you; not much money, but a rich you; not many things, but an open being, available to millions of things.” - Osho

17. “I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.” - Sylvia Plath

18. “I'm only telling you on the truth," he said. "If you can't stand the truth, don't ask for it.” - colum mccann

19. “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” - Stephanie Perkins

20. “Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.” - Mitch Albom

21. “There's release in knowing the truth no matter how anguishing it is. You come finally to the irreducible thing, and there's nothing left to do but pick it up and hold it. Then, at last, you can enter the severe mercy of acceptance.” - Sue Monk Kidd

22. “Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.” - Deborah Reber

23. “I will not compare myself with others, nor them with me. I will appreciate myself and others for what I and they contribute.” - Gail Blanke

24. “How wonderful! How wonderful! All things are perfect, exactly as they are.” - Buddha

25. “We are women, and my plea is Let me be a woman, holy through and through, asking for nothing but what God wants to give me, receiving with both hands and with all my heart whatever that is.” - Elisabeth Elliot

26. “But at some point you have to make peace with what you were given and if God wanted me to be a shy girl with think, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn't. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.” - Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “My choice is what I choose to do,And if I'm causing no harm, it shouldn't bother you.Your choice is who you choose to be,And if you're causin' no harm, then you're alright with me.” - Ben Harper

28. “She talked about wanting to be a part of something, wanting to be desired, to be 'special', craving to be loved. She talked about experiencing the kind of loneliness so immense it could swallow you up. She called it 'loneliness that crowds couldn't cure'.” - Cupcake Brown

29. “Know that everything is in perfect order whether you understand it or not.” - Valery Satterwhite

30. “The image I'd had of myself as a child was someone I'd never be, and it was only recently that I realized it was okay to be who I was. - Cat” - Jeaniene Frost

31. “I know what it's like to battle everyday of my life, just for acceptance, just to survive.” - Christine Feehan

32. “Humility means accepting reality with no attempt to outsmart it.” - David Richo

33. “You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.” - Stephen King

34. “Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves - regret for the past and fear of the future.” - Fulton Oursler

35. “It wasn’t that everything was going my way, but I began to believe that the way it was going was perfect. I accepted that where I was in life, was exactly where I was supposed to be.” - Hippie

36. “Hospitality means primarily the creation of free space where the stranger can enter and become a friend instead of an enemy. Hospitality is not to change people, but to offer them space where change can take place. It is not to bring men and women over to our side, but to offer freedom not disturbed by dividing lines.” - Henri J.M. Nouwen

37. “Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, and their responsibilities have been decreed by our species... the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit - for gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and of emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.” - John Steinbeck

38. “What's been important in my understanding of myself and others is the fact that each one of us is so much more than any one thing. A sick child is much more than his or her sickness. A person with a disability is much, much more than a handicap. A pediatrician is more than a medical doctor. You're MUCH more than your job description or your age or your income or your output.” - Fred Rogers

39. “To come to know that nothing is good, nothing is bad, is a turning point; it is a conversion. You start looking in; the outside reality loses meaning. The social reality is a fiction, a beautiful drama; you can participate in it, but then you don’t take it seriously. It is just a role to be played; play it as beautifully, as efficiently, as possible. But don’t take it seriously, it has nothing of the ultimate in it.” - Osho

40. “A crucial element of the real self is its unconditional acceptance of itself.” - Michael Adzema

41. “The MistakeWith the mistake your life goes in reverse.Now you can see exactly what you didWrong yesterday and wrong the day beforeAnd each mistake leads back to something worseAnd every nuance of your hypocrisyTowards yourself, and every excuseStands solidly on the perspective linesAnd there is perfect visibility.What an enlightenment. The colonnadeRolls past on either side. You needn't move.The statues of your errors brush your sleeve.You watch the tale turn back — and you're dismayed.And this dismay at this, this big mistakeIs made worse by the sight of all those whoKnew all along where these mistakes would lead — Those frozen friends who watched the crisis break.Why didn't they say? Oh, but they did indeed — Said with a murmur when the time was wrongOr by a mild refusal to assentOr told you plainly but you would not heed.Yes, you can hear them now. It hurts. It's worseThan any sneer from any enemy.Take this dismay. Lay claim to this mistake.Look straight along the lines of this reverse.” - James Fenton

42. “Let nothing human be foreign to me” - Kate Christensen

43. “Being different is a revolving door in your life where secure people enter and insecure exit.” - Shannon L. Alder

44. “Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.” - Deepak Chopra

45. “When you want to share something with another person more than anything, it is one of the most difficult things to realize that you can never have it. Accepting this realization is even more difficult. Loving someone does mean saying goodbye to them in some cases, though we will fight that until the oftentimes bitter end before doing the right thing.” - Ashly Lorenzana

46. “Perhaps a wiser eye than hers would be able to read tomorrow in tonight's stars, but where was the fun in that? It was better not to know. Better to be alive in the Here and the Now--in this bright, laughing moment--and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.” - Clive Barker

47. “Not being understood may be taken as a sign that there is much in one to understand.” - Alain De Botton

48. “Acceptance makes an incredible fertile soil for the seeds of change.” - Steve Maraboli

49. “Nobody's going to win all the time. On the highway of life you can't always be in the fast lane.” - Haruki Murakami

50. “The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.” - Maya Angelou

51. “You can argue that it's a different world now than the one when Matthew Shepard was killed, but there is a subtle difference between tolerance and acceptance. It's the distance between moving into the cul-de-sac and having your next door neighbor trust you to keep an eye on her preschool daughter for a few minutes while she runs out to the post office. It's the chasm between being invited to a colleague's wedding with your same-sex partner and being able to slow-dance without the other guests whispering.” - Jodi Picoult

52. “Mahirap tanggapin ang katotohanan. May mga pagkakataon na kinakailangan mong dumaan sa mga karanasanang magtuturo sa yo ng tama. Minsan masasaktan ka lalo at minsan din ay lalo mo lang mauunawaan ang tunay dahilan kung bakit nangyayari ang mga naranasan at nararanasan mo. Maaaring sa pamamagitan ng (mga) tao, (mga) bagay, o (mga) pangyayari.Ang pinakamainam na lang na gawin ay buksan ang puso at iproseso sa isip na ang lahat ng ito ay magandang idinulot at maidudulot sa buhay mo.” - Juan Qo Nga Bah

53. “As one old gentleman put it, " Son, I don't care if you're stark nekkid and wear a bone in your nose. If you kin fiddle, you're all right with me. It's the music we make that counts.” - Robert Fulghum

54. “What to Accept The fact of mountains. The actualityOf any stone — by kicking, if necessary. The need to ignore stupid people, While restraining one's natural impulseTo murder them. The change from your dollar, Be it no more than a penny, For without a pretense of universal penuryThere can be no honor between rich and poor.Love, unconditionally, or until proven false.The inevitability of cancer and/orHeart disease. The dialogue as written, Once you've taken the role. Failure, Gracefully. Any hospitalityYou're willing to return. The airEach city offers you to breathe.The latest hit. Assistance.All accidents. The end.” - Thomas M. Disch

55. “Close both eyes see with the other one. Then we are no longer saddled by the burden of our persistent judgments our ceaseless withholding our constant exclusion. Our sphere has widened and we find ourselves quite unexpectedly in a new expansive location in a place of endless acceptance and infinite love.” - Gregory Boyle

56. “Mary watched the sunset from her carriage window, realizing that such beauty could never last. Life was a golden glory that faded in the wink of an eye. Life was a village fair that only lasted for a single day. As the carriage rattled along, rocking her like a babe in arms, Mary felt very old and wise. She found that she didn't mind being taken back to the castle, to a caring captivity that was filled with comforts and kindness. And she also found that she couldn't keep her eyes open.” - Margaret George

57. “Be whoever you want to be. Party all night if you want. Just come home to me.” - Dawn Atkins

58. “It is only when you accept how different you all are, that you will be able to see how much the same you all are. Don't expect anybody to be the same as you, then you will see that you are in many ways the same as everybody.” - C. JoyBell C.

59. “Love and accept everyone for who they are, for where they are in life. That is compassion.” - Kristi Bowman

60. “Let go of certainty. The opposite isn't uncertainty. It's openness, curiosity and a willingness to embrace paradox, rather than choose up sides. The ultimate challenge is to accept ourselves exactly as we are, but never stop trying to learn and grow.” - Tony Schwartz

61. “What I will no longer accept is the mediocre life of a modest little gentleman.” - Joan Miro

62. “Life's too short to care about what other people think. Besides, they should accept us for who we are” - Jeannette Walls

63. “I am my own biggest critic. Before anyone else has criticized me, I have already criticized myself. But for the rest of my life, I am going to be with me and I don't want to spend my life with someone who is always critical. So I am going to stop being my own critic. It's high time that I accept all the great things about me.” - C. JoyBell C.

64. “We carry the dead with us only until we die too, and then it is we who are borne along for a little while, and then our bearers in their turn drop, and so on into the unimaginable generations.” - John Banville

65. “Never do anything you'll regret. Never regret anything you do.” - Lea Mishell

66. “Please do not break your heart over the withering of a dream you once held, that never became yours! After all, the shattered dream could have very well been a nightmare and not a dream at all, you wouldn't really know because you didn't have it yet! Let the sparks fade, let the flame dim and die, you'll never know it wasn't poison.” - C. JoyBell C.

67. “I don’t want there to be things you “love about me”, I want you to love “all of me”.” - Mathias Malzieu

68. “When you focus on someone's disability you'll overlook their abilities, beauty and uniqueness. Once you learn to accept and love them for who they are, you subconsciously learn to love yourself unconditionally.” - Yvonne Pierre

69. “Count Ayakura’s abstraction persisted. He believed that only a vulgar mentality was willing to acknowledge the possibility of catastrophe. He felt that taking naps was much more beneficial than confronting catastrophes. However precipitous the future might seem, he learned from the game of kemari that the ball must always come down. There was no call for consternation. Grief and rage, along with other outbursts of passion, were mistakes easily committed by a mind lacking in refinement. And the Count was certainly not a man who lacked refinement.Just let matters slide. How much better to accept each sweet drop of the honey that was Time, than to stoop to the vulgarity latent in every decision. However grave the matter at hand might be, if one neglected it for long enough, the act of neglect itself would begin to affect the situation, and someone else would emerge as an ally. Such was Count Ayakura’s version of political theory.” - Yukio Mishima

70. “Mine own people do not care for me, John Carter; I am too unlike them. It is a sad fate, since I must live my life amongst them.” - Edgar Rice Burroughs

71. “Note that acceptance is different from approval. Acceptance is simply saying, “It is so.” - Margie Warrell

72. “Allow yourself to celebrate your sense of freedom , your capacity to make a choice and your strength in facing the truth. Not everyone has the courage to do so, even if it hurts……Knowing is KEY to acceptance.” - Abby Espiritu

73. “I have learned over a period of time to be almost unconsciously grateful--as a child is--for a sunny day, blue water, flowers in a vase, a tree turning red. I have learned to be glad at dawn and when the sky is dark. Only children and a few spiritually evolved people are born to feel gratitude as naturally as they breathe, without even thinking. Most of us come to it step by painful step, to discover that gratitude is a form of acceptance.” - Faith Baldwin

74. “Often times, the greatest peace comes of surrender.” - Richard Paul Evans

75. “Have a big enough heart to love unconditionally, and a broad enough mind to embrace the differences that make each of us unique.” - D.B. Harrop

76. “There are only two ways to live your life. One as if all that matters is to have someone love and accept you. The other is as though loving and accepting another person is all that matters. Often, when you choose the second you get the first.” - Shannon L. Alder

77. “When small towns find they cannot harm the strangest of their members, when eccentrics show resilience, they are eventually embraced and even cherished.” - Louise Erdrich

78. “The process of leniency involves accepting the reality of the current situation and finding a satisfying meaning therein, as opposed to misconstruing or denying the facts of the situation.” - Sandra L. Schneider

79. “When our hopes for performance are not completely met, realistic optimism involves accepting what cannot now be changed, rather than condemning or second-guessing ourselves. Focusing on the successful aspects of performance (even when the success is modest) promotes positive affect, reduces self-doubt, and helps to maintain motivation (e.g., McFarland & Ross, 1982).... Nevertheless, realistic optimism does not include or imply expectations that things will improve on their own. Wishful thinking of this sort typically has no reliable supporting evidence. Instead, the opportunity-seeking component of realistic optimism motivates efforts to improve future performances on the basis of what has been learned from past performances.” - Sandra L. Schneider

80. “The truth is, it's really only okay to be yourself if that self is within an accepted range of 'normal'.” - Stacey Kade

81. “I know my time will come soon enough, but I will not dwell on it. What is the purpose? We might as well dwell on the work of our teeth or on the mechanics of our walk. It is there, it will always be there, and I don't intend to spend my glorious hours looking over my shoulder to see death's icy face.” - Alberto Manguel

82. “And then Jonah heard God’s voice. “Jonah, do you know what the difference is between you and the trees?” He was confident it was God because God usually asked questions but gave no answers. Jonah didn’t need a divine answer to this question, he knew it. “Yes,” he said. “The difference between me and the trees is that the trees let go of their leaves. I keep holding onto mine. The trees make room for new life. I don’t.” - David W. Jones

83. “Hatred never ceases with hatred, but with love alone is healed.” - T. Scott McLeod

84. “You necessarily have to be lost, before you’re found.” - T. Scott McLeod

85. “I loved Enso Roshi’s teachings. I loved learning about life. I loved life. It was a good thing to feel. I loved life, and I loved learning, and I was still learning. I was not, yet, done. At the end of our journeys, there would be an end to the journey. Maybe. If I was lucky. If providence shone down upon me gently. I would find love. I would find acceptance. Complete love. Complete acceptance. I would know, that the self, is an illusion. I would come to enlightenment, but that would also mean, there would be no ‘I’ there. I would realize that the ‘I’ was an illusion, all along, just like some great dream. This is what the wise sages say, the great teachings, the mystical teachings, not only from the East, but also from the West. The Gospel of Saint Thomas. Thomas Merton. Thomas, like I was Thomas, and also doubting, the main reasons I’d chosen the name. If nothing else, it was lovable, just as it is. My life. Even the parts I didn’t love, could I love them? The struggles. It was all part of the journey, and would I not look back fondly on this, at some time? Look at how arduous and sincere I’d been. Look at how worried I’d been. Look at how insecure I’d been. Look at how I’d struggled. Trying to find my way. Would I not look back upon myself, affectionately and fondly and with love?” - T. Scott McLeod

86. “The world is already yours - why try to conquer it?” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

87. “Shuki’s wisdom: "Sometimes things happen, and the only choice you have is to accept it, and learn to make a life anyway.” - M. A. McRae

88. “All children should be taught to unconditionally accept, approve, admire, appreciate, forgive, trust, and ultimately, love their own person.” - Asa Don Brown

89. “Rather than allowing our response to an even affect our breathing, we can learn instead to let our breathing change our relationship to the event.” - Cyndi Lee

90. “Not everyone will like what you have to say. Not everyone will like what you do. Social networking is a garbage pile waiting for rats to feed. Pointless nothings of your everyday lives. Still the fumes rise.” - Jerica Barsht

91. “Let the water flow beneath the bridge; let men be men, that is to say, weak, vain, inconstant, unjust, false, and presumptuous; let the world be the world still; you cannot prevent it. Let every one follow his own inclination and habits; you cannot recast them, and the best course is, to let them be as they are and bear with them. Do not think it strange when you witness unreasonableness and injustice; rest in peace in the bosom of God; He sees it all more clearly than you do, and yet permits it. Be content to do quietly and gently what it becomes you to do, and let everything else be to you as though it were not.” - Francois Fenelon

92. “Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.” - Jack Kornfield

93. “Acceptance is to love and embrace everything that we find within ourselves like a mother embraces her child.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

94. “In life one has a choice to take one of two paths: to wait for some special day - or to celebrate each special day.” - Rasheed Ogunlaru

95. “The happier person is one, that acknowledges and accepts life won't get any better than this.” - Anthony Liccione

96. “Awareness is a choiceless consciousness. Awareness is the capacity to embrace, accept and include both joy and sadness, love and aloneness, light and darkness, male and female qualities and life and death. Through saying “yes” and accepting both tendencies and including whatever aspect that happens in the moment, we meet our unlimited and boundless inner being. The inner man and woman need to find their own independence and integrity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

97. “What America is, to me, is a guy doesn't want to buy, you let him not buy, you respect his not buying. A guy has a crazy notion different from your crazy notion, you pat him on the back and say, Hey pal, nice crazy notion, let's go have a beer. America, to me, should be shouting all the time, a bunch of shouting voices, most of them wrong, some of them nuts, but please, not just one droning glamorous reasonable voice.” - George Saunders

98. “Sometimes it is best for men not to attempt to interfere with destiny. Our prayers can be answered in ways which we do not expect and do not welcome.” - Wilbur Smith

99. “If all we ever offer is blanket praise without any meaning behind it, kids will always seek approval because they'll never feel satisfied. If we offer genuine encouragement for their accomplishments, they won't need our approval; they'll approve of themselves.” - Kelly Bartlett

100. “Patience is the antidote to the restless poison of the Ego. Without it we all become ego-maniacal bulls in china shops, destroying our future happiness as we blindly rush in where angels fear to tread. In these out-of-control moments, we bulldoze through the best possible outcomes for our lives, only to return to the scene of the crime later to cry over spilt milk.” - Anthon St. Maarten

101. “Love heals violence and all its sources” - Bryant McGill

102. “Acceptance. We want someone to look at us, and really see us—our physical flaws, our personality quirks, our insecurities. And we want them to be okay with every square inch of who we are. We’re always afraid we might be too needy or too much work. We put all these limitations on ourselves and our relationships because we’re afraid that we’re not really loved. That we’re not really accepted. We hide little pieces of ourselves because we think that might be the one thing that finally drives away the person who’s supposed to love us.” - Michele Bardsley

103. “America was never designed to be fixed forever, but was meant to be fluid and evolving.” - Bryant McGill

104. “Every relationship that has hit a crossroads has asked, “What is it that you want from me?” - Shannon L. Alder

105. “Criticism is no threat to your self-esteem or identity, but rather informs you.” - Bryant McGill

106. “We must resist impulses to attack people, their credibility or their nature, and focus only on sharing our own positive creations, contributions, ideas and solutions.” - Bryant McGill

107. “I guess when you’re trying to find all the parts of yourself, it’s difficult to be with someone who’s already fully intact.” - Cecelia Ahern

108. “Love – Acceptance – Unity – Peace –Integrity – Respect… a strong, pure creed is short on words and long on nourishing ideas. For me, the longer the creed the more it has been diluted, manipulated, and spoiled. The results of this creed poisoning can be seen in the behavior of its followers. We have all heard the expression, “The devil is in the details”; my observations have led me to suspect this is true.” - Steve Maraboli