126 Inspiring Life Philosophy Quotes

In a world where the hustle and bustle of daily life often overshadow our deeper thoughts and aspirations, finding moments of inspiration can be a breath of fresh air. Our life philosophies guide us through challenges, influence how we see the world, and impact our interactions with others. Whether you're seeking motivation, a shift in perspective, or simply a nugget of wisdom to carry you through the day, quotes can offer profound insight. Dive into our curated collection of 126 inspiring life philosophy quotes, each one chosen to uplift, provoke thought, and shine a light on the path to a more fulfilled existence. Let these pearls of wisdom be your companion on the journey to self-discovery and personal growth.

1. “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.” - Victor Frankl

2. “Disappointment will come when your effort does not give you the expected return. If things don’t go as planned or if you face failure. Failure is extremely difficult to handle, but those that do come out stronger. What did this failure teach me? is the question you will need to ask. You will feel miserable. You will want to quit, like I wanted to when nine publishers rejected my first book. Some IITians kill themselves over low grades – how silly is that? But that is how much failure can hurt you. But it’s life. If challenges could always be overcome, they would cease to be a challenge. And remember – if you are failing at something, that means you are at your limit or potential. And that’s where you want to be. Disappointment’ s cousin is Frustration, the second storm. Have you ever been frustrated? It happens when things are stuck. This is especially relevant in India. From traffic jams to getting that job you deserve, sometimes things take so long that you don’t know if you chose the right goal. After books, I set the goal of writing for Bollywood, as I thought they needed writers. I am called extremely lucky, but it took me five years to get close to a release. Frustration saps excitement, and turns your initial energy into something negative, making you a bitter person. How did I deal with it? A realistic assessment of the time involved – movies take a long time to make even though they are watched quickly, seeking a certain enjoyment in the process rather than the end result – at least I was learning how to write scripts, having a side plan – I had my third book to write and even something as simple as pleasurable distractions in your life – friends, food, travel can help you overcome it. Remember, nothing is to be taken seriously. Frustration is a sign somewhere, you took it too seriously.” - Chetan Bhagat

3. “Izzi: Remember Moses Morales? Tom Verde: Who? Izzi: The Mayan guide I told you about. Tom Verde: From your trip. Izzi: Yeah. The last night I was with him, he told me about his father, who had died. Well Moses wouldn't believe it. Tom Verde: Izzi... Izzi: [embraces Tom] No, no. Listen, listen. He said that if they dug his father's body up, it would be gone. They planted a seed over his grave. The seed became a tree. Moses said his father became a part of that tree. He grew into the wood, into the bloom. And when a sparrow ate the tree's fruit, his father flew with the birds. He said... death was his father's road to awe. That's what he called it. The road to awe. Now, I've been trying to write the last chapter and I haven't been able to get that out of my head! Tom Verde: Why are you telling me this? Izzi: I'm not afraid anymore, Tommy.” - Darren Aronofsky

4. “It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.” - Lewis Carroll

5. “Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.” - Voltaire

6. “Nanny's philosophy of life was to do what seemed like a good idea at the time, and do it as hard as possible. It had never let her down.” - Terry Pratchett

7. “Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself.We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.” - G.K. Chesterton

8. “Dacă omul va uita cu desăvârşire că există moarte, că există un sfârşit, riscăm să ne întoarcem la maimuţe. Explicaţia este simplă: omul activ, omul creator, este excitat mai ales de ideea că într-o zi se va termina totul, că va avea un sfârşit, o odihnă definitivă. Cultivă la maximum conştiinţa acestui sfârşit, şi vei obţine de la oameni cele mai extraordinare eforturi. Cine ştie asta incontinuu este în stare să ridice munţii, este în stare de cele mai crâncene libertăţi, de cele mai curajoase acte.” - Mircea Eliade

9. “There is nothing stronger than gentleness.” - John Wooden

10. “Humans are probably the only creatures who know that they will die. They know for certain and yet they keep going. A resilient spirit and a need to survive does not make for cowardice.Salma to Merrick in Simple Conversation” - Sonia Rumzi

11. “Dear little Swallow,’ said the Prince, ‘you tell me of marvelous things, but more marvelous than anything is the suffering of men and of women. There is no Mystery so great as Misery.” - Oscar Wilde

12. “Hardship often prepares an ordinary person for an extraordinary destiny.” - Christopher Markus

13. “In the eyeball there is a clash between creation and reflection. The two-way globes of sight are magical revolving doors where the creative spirit meets itself in the created spirit. The eye that surveys the universe is the universe's own eye.” - Jostein Gaarder

14. “If he was not exactly a Spartan, he was, you might say, spartanatical. Things happened to you; they were good,or they were bad - and that was the truth about everything.” - A.E. Coppard

15. “perception shapes priorities, priorities shape people” - Ben Thompson

16. “Duty were our games.” - William Wordsworth

17. “It was both odd and unjust, a real example of pitiful arbitrariness of existance, that you were born into a particular time & held prisoner there whether you wanted it or not. It gave you an indecent advantage over the past and made you a clown vis-a-vis the future.” - Daniel Kehlmann

18. “No matter how many plans you make or how much in control you are, life is always winging it.” - Carroll Bryant

19. “Don't bite off more than you can chew because nobody looks attractive spitting it back out.” - Carroll Bryant

20. “The only thing standing between you and your dreams is ... reluctance.” - Carroll Bryant

21. “Nothing will be resolved here. Nothing is ever resolved without war. It is the way of the universe.” - Marianne Curley

22. “I can blend words easily with my pen, and show concepts from deep within. Yet not everyone gets the message I send. So why do I even let these words begin? Maybe they will soak in one day at the right time. When the readers on a new path to find. So for now I'll continue to drop ink and not worry about what other people think.” - Stanley Victor Paskavich

23. “If you measure your life by what you own, the cavern of your heart will never be filled.” - James D. Maxon

24. “It is not the truth that people cannot handle. It is the consequences that stem from that truth.” - J. K. Miller II

25. “We can't know or say what other people do. You have to think what you want to do to get the situation where you want it to be.” - E. Lockhart

26. “If you don't want to be in an argument with someone, it is probably best to try to solve the problem, rather than lying around hoping the other person will do it for you.” - E. Lockhart

27. “Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.” - Carroll Bryant

28. “Reading is going toward something that is about to be, and no one yet knows what it will be.” - Italo Calvino

29. “No matter where you go, there you are.” - Keith Caserta

30. “Don't make me come down there. - God” - Keith Caserta

31. “When what you hear and what you see don't match, trust your eyes.” - Dale Renton

32. “The evolution revolution is here. Global sense makes common sense.” - Judah Freed

33. “If we are merely matter intricately assembled, is this really demeaning? If there's nothing here but atoms, does that make us less or does that make matter more?” - Carl Sagan

34. “Life is a constant process of dying.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

35. “At the same time that 'I' am the content of a relation, 'I' am also that which does the relating.” - Haruki Murakami

36. “One must not judge other cultures by the standars of one's one,' said Aunt Hilda” - Eva Ibbotson

37. “As to the roaming of sages,They move in utter emptiness,Let their minds meander in the great nothingness;They run beyond conventionAnd go through where there is no gateway.They listen to the soundlessAnd look at the formless,They are not constrained by societyAnd not bound to its customs.- Lao-tzu” - Lao Tzu

38. “The moment you stop trying to become a better person, is the moment you start to become worse than what you already are.” - Carroll Bryant

39. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw

40. “Don’t be afraid of death so much as an inadequate life.” - Bertholt Brecht

41. “Be noble minded! Our own heart, and not other men's opinions of us, forms our true honor.” - Friedrich Schiller

42. “But the elastic heart of youth cannot be compressed into one constrained shape long at a time.” - Mark Twain

43. “إن القلق حالة من التوتر تنتابنا حينما ننقسم في داخلنا و نشهد رغباتنا و هي تقتتل و تتصارع ..إنها اللحظة الأليمة التي تتجلى فيها عداوتنا لأنفسنا ، و هي عداوة مفزعة .. لأن لا شئ فيها يمكن لمسه بالأصبع أو رؤيته رؤية العيان .. "د.مصطفى محمود ، الأحلام” - مصطفى محمود

44. “I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?” - E.A. Bucchianeri

45. “It is a law of nature that every decent man on earth is bound to be a coward and a slave” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

46. “To be, or not to be: what a question!” - E.A. Bucchianeri

47. “Life is short and truth works far and lives long: let us speak the truth.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

48. “Το γέλιο είναι το προνόμιο που ο Θεός δώρισε στους ανθρώπους σαν παρήγορια για την ευφυϊα τους.” - Marcel Pagnol

49. “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” - Albert Camus

50. “هكــذا دائمــاً هى الحيــاة .. بطيئــة فى تحقيق أحلامِنــا .. و هكـذ دائمــاً هو الموت .. سريع فى خطفِهــا منـــا ..” - هبة غاندى

51. “Не сме нито глупави, нито умни.Винаги сме някъде по средата.Това ни уморява и ни прави тъжни.Човек трябва да знае къде му е мястото.” - Erich Maria Remarque Translated by A.W. Wheen

52. “To say "He was a young fool, and now he's an old fool" is to make a distinction without a difference.” - Gary Inbinder

53. “Alas, Siddhartha, I see you suffering, but you're suffering a pain at which one would like to laugh, at which you'll soon laugh for yourself.” - Hermann Hesse

54. “Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.” - St. Thomas Aquinas

55. “Why does it seem easier for us to accept reality when it is within the confinement of the animal kingdom yet so hard for us to face it in our?” - Aysha Taryam

56. “Those who are wise won't be busy, and those who are too busy can't be wise.” - Lin Yutang

57. “If one's bowels move, one is happy, and if they don't move, one is unhappy. That is all there is to it.” - Lin Yutang

58. “When a traveler from the future must talk, he does not talk but whimpers. He whispers tortured sounds. He is agonized. For if he makes the slightest alteration in anything, he may destroy the future. At the same time, he is forced to witness events without being part of them, without changing them. He envies the people who live in their own time, who can act at will, oblivious of the future, ignorant of the effects of their actions. But he cannot act. He is an inert gas, a ghost, a sheet without soul. He has lost his personhood. He is an exile of time.” - Alan Lightman

59. “Find your truth, live your truth.” - J. T. OWENS

60. “When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.” - Henry Miller

61. “We’re beings toward death, we’re featherless, two-legged, linguistically-conscious creatures born between urine and feces whose body will one day be the culinary delight of terrestrial worms. That's us.” - Cornel West

62. “Have you ever sensed that our soul is immortal and never dies?” - Plato

63. “Das Negative zu tun, ist uns noch auferlegt, das Positive ist uns schon gegeben.” - Franz Kafka

64. “Freedom is your birthright!” - Tae Yun Kim

65. “Your own thoughts can be your worst enemy!” - Tae Yun Kim

66. “There are two more turds, smaller ones, and when he has eaten these, residual shit to lick out of her anus. He prays that she'll let him drop the cape over himself, to be allowed, in the silk-lined darkness, to stay a while longer with his submissive tongue straining upward into her asshole. But she moves away. The fur evaporates from his hands. She orders him to masturbate for her. She has watched Captain Blicero with Gottfried, and has learned the proper style.” - Thomas Pynchon

67. “Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.” - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

68. “There's no tragedy in nature, only process -- and therefore no triumph, either.” - Dean Koontz

69. “Dreams are a beautiful bride that holds our hands to enter a world more gloriousthan this one.” - Subhan Zein

70. “... the river is everywhere at once, at the source and at the mouth, at the waterfall, at the ferry, at the rapids, in the sea, in the mountains, everywhere at once, and that there is only the present time for it, not the shadow of the past, not the shadow of the future.” - Hermann Hesse

71. “Progress should never be impeded by a need to coddle adults who respond to the world as children.” - Kelli Jae Baeli

72. “If I say I do not believe in faeries or elves or trolls, does this imply that I have a set of beliefs and a lifestyle that adheres to this lack of belief? NO, IT ONLY IMPLIES that I do not believe in faeries, elves and trolls. So one cannot extrapolate morality, philosophy, cosmology, character, political party, or any other thing of that sort from the mere lack of belief in one other thing.” - Kelli Jae Baeli

73. “The conundrum of sanity and insanity, is that it serves us to be some of each. It's really only a question of degrees. You cannot possibly be 100% adjusted and live in this INSANE world. A little bit of crazy is a coping skill.” - Kelli Jae Baeli

74. “You have to be able to recognize your truths in the daylight before you can find them in the dark.” - Kelli Jae Baeli

75. “Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart’s desire; the other is to get it.” - Socrates

76. “You can't do that, it makes too much sense.” - Daven Anderson

77. “If only yesterday could be my tomorrow then today wouldn't even matter.” - Carroll Bryant

78. “Know yourself fearlessly (even quietly) for all the things you are.” - Aberjhani

79. “It’s the people who don’t worry—those who never have any doubts that what they’re doing is good and right—they’re the ones that cause the problems.” - Alastair Reynolds

80. “The illusion of the seventh veil was the illusion that you could get somebody else to do it for you. To think for you. To hang on your cross. The priest, the rabbi, the imam, the swami, the philosophical novelist were traffic cops, at best. They might direct you through a busy intersection, but they wouldn't follow you home and park your car.” - Tom Robbins

81. “When you're already going through a rough patch of life; a slight wave from past thrash you down so gracefully that journey bcms an unending shore !” - Monika Arora

82. “Success is getting what you want. Happiness is liking what you get.” - H. Jackson Brown Jr.

83. “¿Qué tienen esos momentos intemporales que luego siempre se recuerdan con una dulce melancolía? A veces me parece que es en esos intervalos de vacío, sin que fuera consciente de ello, cuando he vivido de manera más real y auténtica.” - John Banville

84. “Through creativity, we are seamlessly connected and sustained as we pullback the veil, revealing beneath our differences and distinctive characteristics,human expression and the human experience are universal. It is the greatnessof this experience that connects us together by infinite invisible threads strewnacross the globe. This is my responsibility, passion and desire as an artist—mysoul purpose.” - Brian Bowers

85. “Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful.” - John Dewey

86. “It is this idea 'decency' should be attached to wealth -and 'indecency'' to poverty - that forms the core of one strand of skeptical complaint against the modern status-ideal. Why should failure to make money be taken as a sign of an unconditionally flawed human being rather than of a fiasco in one particular area if the far larger, more multifaceted, project of leading a good life?Why should both wealth and poverty be read as the predominant guides to an individual's morals ?” - Alain De Botton

87. “Always tell yourself that you are as good as anyone that breathes; that you have two hands and a brain, and a little time in which to use them. But they are enough, and no one has any more. And if you train and force them to serve you well, you can reach any height to which you aspire. But to waste any of them is to betray yourself.” - Robert Stroud

88. “To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].” - Ernesto Che Guevara

89. “But a desperate heart will seduce the mind.” - Mitch Albom

90. “You're too young to decide to live forever.” - Maxine Hong Kingston

91. “I just know that I don't want cheating. I refuse. I deepened myself but I don't believe in myself because my thought is invented.” - Clarice Lispector

92. “Claude tiene una pinche potencia omfg perdí la cuenta de cuentas veces yo no podía ni caminar después.” - Mariana Calderón de la Barca

93. “We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit” - Will Durant

94. “The ritual works. The forms overcome doubts. We have learned over the centuries to weave meaning around emptiness and pain. A meaning and a pattern. We have been practising that for a very long time.” - Håkan Nesser

95. “YOU. ARE. PERFECT. You are. Im talking to YOU. and dont you dare think otherwise...embrace the entity of yourself...you are a puzzle piece and you are meant to be puzzling.” - Kaiden Blake

96. “But life does not consist of words.Life consists of reality.” - Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson

97. “There are three conditions which often look alikeYet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachmentFrom self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference, ... .” - T.S. Eliot

98. “My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.” - Derek Parfit

99. “Who but the Atman is capable of removing the bonds of ignorance, passion and self-interested action?” - Shankara

100. “The widespread willingness to rely on thermonuclear bombs as the ultimate weapon displays a cavalier attitude toward death that has always puzzled me. My impression is that...most of the defenders of these weapons are not suitably horrified at the possibility of a war in which hundreds of millions of people would be killed...I suspect that an important factor may be belief in an afterlife, and that the proporttion of those who think that death is not the end is much higher among the partisans of the bomb than among its opponents.” - Thomas Nagel

101. “The world is mere change, and this life, opinion.” - Marcus Aurelius

102. “He shook his head pityingly. “This, more than anything else, is what I have never understood about your people. You can roll dice, and understand that the whole game may hinge on one turn of a die. You deal out cards, and say that all a man's fortune for the night may turn upon one hand. But a man's whole life, you sniff at, and say, what, this naught of a human, this fisherman, this carpenter, this thief, this cook, why, what can they do in the great wide world? And so you putter and sputter your lives away, like candles burning in a draft.”“Not all men are destined for greatness,” I reminded him.“Are you sure, Fitz? Are you sure? What good is a life lived as if it made no difference at all to the great life of the world? A sadder thing I cannot imagine. Why should not a mother say to herself, if I raise this child aright, if I love and care for her, she shall live a life that brings joy to those about her, and thus I have changed the world? Why should not the farmer that plants a seed say to his neighbor, this seed I plant today will feed someone, and that is how I change the world today?”“This is philosophy, Fool. I have never had time to study such things.”“No, Fitz, this is life. And no one has time not to think of such things. Each creature in the world should consider this thing, every moment of the heart's beating. Otherwise, what is the point of arising each day?” - Robin Hobb

103. “So much of life, it seems, is determined by pure randomness.” - Sidney Poitier

104. “Things are neither good nor bad , all that matters is our thinking....!” - M.H. Rakib

105. “In any given situation you will find only what you bring with you...” - Christopher Earle

106. “The single most important human insight to be gained from this way of comparing societies is perhaps the realization that everything could have been different in our own society – that the way we live is only one among innumerable ways of life which humans have adopted. If we glance sideways and backwards, we will quickly discover that modern society, with its many possibilities and seducing offers, its dizzying complexity and its impressive technological advances, is a way of life which has not been tried out for long. Perhaps, psychologically speaking, we have just left the cave: in terms of the history of our species, we have but spent a moment in modern societies. (..) Anthropology may not provide the answer to the question of the meaning of life, but at least it can tell us that there are many ways in which to make a life meaningful.” - Thomas Hylland Eriksen

107. “The more I learn, the more I yearn.” - Aaron B. Powell

108. “Experience is the treasure of any persona.” - Ghumakkad Agantuk Ram

109. “One's mutual responsibility to any individual determines the role of one person who he is.” - Ghumakkad Agantuk Ram

110. “Whether we realize it or not, most of us define ourselves by opposing rather than by favoring something or someone. To put it another way, it is easier to react than to act. Nothing arouses a passion for dogma more than a good antagonist. And the more unlikely, the better. … It’s difficult to hate an idea. … It’s much easier to hate someone with a recognizable face whom we can blame for everything that makes us feel uncomfortable. It doesn’t have to be an individual character. It could be a nation, a race, a group … anything.” - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

111. “It is quite futile to argue that man is small compared to the cosmos; for man was always small compared to the nearest tree.” - G.K. Chesterton

112. “There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

113. “The elements of life do not segregate themselves, unless they are human.” - Zephyr A. McIntyre

114. “ساعات بنعمل غلطات صغيرة عشان نصلِّح غلطة أكبرمن رواية تراب الماس على لسان الخواجة لييتو.” - أحمد مراد

115. “Life is a path to reach destination.However once it is reached ,implies Life had all kind of sharp turns one time or other for all” - N.Manoj

116. “Une lutte qui semble perdue, est la plus excitante.” - Jacques Tardi

117. “As human beings, our first commandment is:Something needs to happen” - Chuck Palahniuk

118. “He feels a second pang now for the existence of perfection, the stubborn existence of perfection in the most vulnerable of things and in the face of his refusal-logical-admirable refusal-to engage with this existence in his heart, in his mind. For the comfortless logic, the curse of clear sight, no matter which string he pulls on the same wretched knot: (a) the futility of seeing given the fatality in a place such as this where a mother still bloody must bury her newborn, hose off, and go home to pound yam into paste; (b) the persistence of beauty, in fragility of all places!, in a dewdrop at daybreak, a thing that will end, and in moments, and in a garden, and in Ghana, lush Ghana, soft Ghana, verdant Ghana, where fragile things die.” - Taiye Selasi

119. “Those masks we wear not to shield others; but ourselves from who we are.” - Basith

120. “إن الأمور لا تتحسن مع الوقت ، بل نحن الذي نعتاد سُوأَها” - عز الدين شكرى فشير

121. “عندما تعمل بالحكومة لوقت طويل - لاقدر الله ذلك - تتحول حياتك إلى سلسلة من الأعوام ،لا الأيام ، فتتذكر ما حدث لك عاماً بعام ، و يتداخل كل ماحدث طوال العام كأنه كان يوماً واحداً ، يغلب عليه حدث واحد هو الذي يعلق بذهنك و يُطمس ما عداه ” - عز الدين شكرى فشير

122. “يا الله !هناك أشياء تفعلها أو تسكت عنها دون سوء نية منك ... وحين تٌدرك هول نتائجها يكون الوقت قد فات ، و الثمن أصبح هائلاً” - عز الدين شكرى فشير

123. “إن من سخرية القدر أن تتدهور أحوال الناس بعد ثورة شعبية و تتحسن أحوال المسئولين عن النظام ” - عز الدين شكري فشير

124. “Nature is the supreme cradle of life, and must be protected and treated with the highest respect and care.” - Bryant McGill

125. “…praise does not make anything better or worse.” - Marcus Aurelius

126. “Be your own master, and look at things as a man, as a human being, as a citizen, as a mortal creature.” - Marcus Aurelius