126 Inspiring Philosophy Of Life Quotes

In the journey of life, it's often the words of wisdom we encounter that leave the most lasting impressions. Philosophy, with its timeless insights, offers profound reflections on the nature of existence, purpose, and happiness. Our curated collection of 126 inspiring quotes brings together the thoughts of great thinkers, past and present, each offering a unique perspective on the philosophy of life. Whether you're seeking motivation, comfort, or a deeper understanding of your own path, these quotes serve as a beacon of clarity and inspiration. Dive in and let these powerful words ignite your passion and elevate your daily experiences.

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

2. “Time changes nothing, girl, but the size of your underwear. . .and hopefully your hairdo.” - Minton Sparks

3. “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

4. “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

5. “From the managerial perspective, Sir Oliver Humperdink, a heinous sort for most of his career, said the release of pentup emotions might even have been healthy for mind and soul. "As heels, we were able to be as annoying and politically incorrect’ as possible.We were able to say and do what everyone probably wanted to say and do, but, for one reason or another, could never, ever get away with. And, by being able to do so, I generally found that my fellow heels were much more 'easygoing' than our babyface counterparts who had to 'toe the line.” - Greg Oliver

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

7. “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

8. “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

9. “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

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

11. “Let animals live like animals; let humans live like humans. That's my whole philosophy in a sentence.” - Aravind Adiga

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

13. “I asked Elsie how much food they needed from outside the community. 'Flour and sugar,' she said, and then thought a bit. 'Sometimes we'll buy pretzels as a splurge.'It crossed my mind that the world's most efficient psychological evaluation would have just one question: Define splurge.” - Barbara Kingsolver

14. “Io avevo bisogno di ammirare innanzi di amare.” - Sibilla Aleramo

15. “Il mio allontanamento dai volumi di scienza era una colpa assai meno grave di quella che consisteva nell'aver trascurato di gettar gli occhi sul grande libro della vita.” - Sibilla Aleramo

16. “How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary. From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.” - Epictetus (From Manual 51)

17. “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

18. “It takes billions of years to create a human being. And it takes only a few seconds to die.” - Jostein Gaarder

19. “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

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

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

22. “It comes from within.” - Stephen R. Covey

23. “من كانني قبل ان أكونه؟ من كنته قبل ان يكونني ؟من كنت ؟ من ساكون ؟!” - سركون بولص

24. “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

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

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

27. “To quench my longing I bent me low By the streams of the spirits of Peace that flow In that magical wood in the land of sleep.” - Sarojini Naidu

28. “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

29. “Listen." Jennifer reverted, "I didn't mean anything by all of that before. I understand what you were trying to do and ..." She struggled for the right words. "Sweetie, like love, people don't live inside of life, life lives inside of you. Open yourself up to it and there's no stopping your heart.” - Carroll Bryant

30. “الحسد عاطفه مفعمه بالجبن والعار بحيث لا يجرؤ انسان على الاعتراف بها” - روشستر

31. “The Purpose of Philosophy is to fall in Love. To strip the world of all its clothes, and fall in Love with it as it stand before you completely naked.” - Ilyas Kassam

32. “Sometimes I fear that even as a People when we take one step forward, we reel backwards ten times fold. I don't even think on the Precipice of Change will we truly move forward... It will most definitely take a Miracle.” - Solange nicole

33. “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

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

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

36. “The only currency that we really have to spend during our lives is time. Everything else is just a sub-category.” - Stephen R. Bown

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

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

39. “When people say they hate life, to what are they comparing it to? The alternative isn't any more appealing.” - Carroll Bryant

40. “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

41. “Have I had two roads, I would have chosen their third.” - Mahmoud Darwish

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

43. “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

44. “One person's greatest regret is another person's greatest memory.” - Angela Lam Turpin

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

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

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

48. “Why don’t we just say it already?” He smirked. “I mean come on now.”I eyed him carefully not knowing where to step. “What is it you think we want to say?”“That we love each other. I kick myself every time I stopped myself from saying it. And I know you love me and that’s all that matters,” he said, pulling me close instead of away this time. We stared at the water in a shared silence.My mind wished I could say the same thing, but knowing if I wanted to was the problem. Did I even know how?” - Holly Hood

49. “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

50. “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

51. “Westereners often think that the East is one vast Buddhist temple, which is rather like thinking the West is one vast Carthusian monastery. If the [Western people who like Buddhism] were to visit the East, he'd certainly experience many new things, but he'd find first, that the food is under lock and key and second, that humans are considered to be a miserable, destructive, greedy lot, just as they are in the West.” - Daniel Quinn

52. “All I know is that I do not know anything” - Socrates

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

54. “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

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

56. “When the writing is good, a book becomes a mirror. The reader will see an uncanny familiarity and respond accordingly.” - Jen Knox

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

58. “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

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

60. “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

61. “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

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

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

64. “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

65. “There are so many simple things getting unnoticed in me, it makes me feel I am a robot!” - Vikram Roy

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

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

68. “Wenn man einmal das Böse bei sich aufgenommen hat, verlangt es nicht mehr, daß man ihm glaube.” - Franz Kafka

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

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

71. “Red stimulates and excites your nerves, pulse rate and blood circulation, and lends energy to your entire system. When you are fatigued, lethargic or sluggish for any reason, red has an energizing influence.” - Tae Yun Kim

72. “Often times, "shame" is the word that best describes reality.” - Carroll Bryant

73. “Maybe you had to be dying to finally get to do what you wanted.I fidgeted around with the puzzle pieces for a while longer, but I wasn't lucky. Nothing seemed to fit without a whole lot of work.Then I had this thought: What if it was enough to realize that you would die someday, that none of this would go on forever? Would that be enough?” - Carol Rifka Brunt

74. “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

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

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

77. “... 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

78. “I think about that centurion from time to time and wonder, had he retired to a farm in Campagna, happy with his harvest of grapes and grandchildren, or had he fallen amongst his comrades on some distant, ruined field, defending the honor and the ever-expanding borders of the Republic? What we foreigners have failed to comprehend over the centuries is that the proud centurion would have found either fate equally satisfying. This is why Rome grows, and the rest of the world shrinks.” - Andrew Levkoff

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

80. “The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace.” - Chinua Achebe

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

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

83. “What a more beautiful world this would be if we didn't wait til people were dead before we honored their spirit.” - Kellie Elmore

84. “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

85. “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

86. “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

87. “¿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

88. “Iron deficiency can lead to a wardrobe full of crumpled clothes” - Benny Bellamacina

89. “Hey, if it's a good philosophy, it works. Death is imminent. Live every day like it's your last.” - Justina Chen Headley

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

91. “A house is a compressed territory where our basic needs can be fulfilled close by and safely.” - Yann Martel

92. “When you will have to search for long to collect other nine players to organize your usual five-a-side football match..you will realize to be old...” - Gaetano De Coubertin

93. “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

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

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

96. “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

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

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

99. “It is difficult when reading the description of certain fictional characters not at the same time to imagine the real-life acquaintances who they most closely, if often unexpectedly, resemble.” - Alain De Botton

100. “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

101. “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

102. “You think because you face situations not of your making that you exercise no choice? That you are helpless? To the contrary, child. Your whole life has been full of choices. Hiding from a hard truth is a choice. Surrender - even to the inevitable - is a choice. Even in death there is a choice. You may have no control over the time or manner of your death, but you can choose how you face it.” - C.L. Wilson

103. “nO thing is yOur's except yOur "bOdy" -&- nO one is yOurs except yOur "sOul” - Prateek Vyas

104. “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

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

106. “Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.” - Henry J. Kaiser

107. “Be quick, be quiet, and be on time.” - Clarence L "Kelly" Johnson

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

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

110. “Prophecy is nothing but only just an estimation based on regularities of the Nature.” - Ghumakkad Agantuk Ram

111. “Every day I add to the list of things I refuse to discuss. The wiser the man, the longer the list.” - Nicolas Chamfort

112. “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

113. “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

114. “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

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. “LOOK AT MY BLOOD FLOWERS, BECAUSE I WRITE WITH A SERENE SHARP BLADE THAT SOOTHES. AS MUCH AS CUTS INTO THE DEEPEST PARTS OF MY SOUL.” - Basith

119. “There is a light within our soul that burns brighter than the sun. And we ignore it.” - Basith

120. “After a breath and before another, there's plenty of time to rest.” - Basith

121. “إن الأمور لا تتحسن مع الوقت ، بل نحن الذي نعتاد سُوأَها” - 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