In the journey of life, there are moments when we all need a little inspiration to guide us and a sprinkle of wisdom to uplift our spirits. Words have an extraordinary power to motivate and inspire, offering insights and perspectives that resonate on a deeper level. Whether you’re seeking motivation for personal growth, encouragement during challenging times, or simply a reminder of the beauty in everyday moments, these quotes can serve as a beacon of hope and a source of empowerment. In this post, we've gathered a thoughtfully curated collection of the top 35 inspirational quotes about life and living, each one a small treasure of wisdom and encouragement. Let them inspire you to embrace life's journey with renewed determination and positivity.
1. “Growing up means learning what life is. When you're little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks, and you think that you have to sit around and wait for them to happen to you and then life will work. But life isn't like that, for anybody; you can't fall in love with a standard, you have to fall in love with a person. You can't live in a criteria, you have to live your life. You can't wait for your plans to materialize, because they may never materialize the way you think they will. You can't wait to watch your ideals and standards walk up to you, because you can't know what's yours until you have it. I always say, always take the first chance in case you never get a second one, but growing up takes that even one step further, growing up means that you have to hold on to what you have, when you have it, because what you have- that's yours- and all the ideals and criteria you have set in your head, those aren't yours, because those haven't happened to you.” - C. JoyBell C.
2. “Our bodies have five senses: touch, smell, taste, sight, hearing. But not to be overlooked are the senses of our souls: intuition, peace, foresight, trust, empathy. The differences between people lie in their use of these senses; most people don't know anything about the inner senses while a few people rely on them just as they rely on their physical senses, and in fact probably even more.” - C. JoyBell C.
3. “The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” - C. JoyBell C.
4. “The whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano key.” - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. “I'm half good and I'm half bad. My mama is a very good girl and my daddy is a very bad boy. And I guess that leaves me somewhere sort of...here.” - C. JoyBell C.
6. “We have to allow ourselves to be loved by the people who really love us, the people who really matter. Too much of the time, we are blinded by our own pursuits of people to love us, people that don't even matter, while all that time we waste and the people who do love us have to stand on the sidewalk and watch us beg in the streets! It's time to put an end to this. It's time for us to let ourselves be loved.” - C. JoyBell C.
7. “Kada smo u kontaktu sa drugim čovekom, mi mu ili pomažemo ili smetamo. Nema trećeg: ili ga vučemo na dole, ili ga izvlačimo na površinu.” - Booker T. Washington
8. “It is the useless things that make life worth living and that make life dangerous too: wine, love, art, beauty. Without them life is safe, but not worth bothering with.” - Stephen Fry
9. “I hope I don't write TOO many books! When I look at authors who have written too many books, I wonder to myself "When did they live?" I certainly want to write BECAUSE I live! I know I don't want to write in order to live! My writing is an overflow of the wine glass of my life, not a basin in which I wash out my ideals and expectations.” - C. JoyBell C.
10. “If it's easy to be friendly she will be. If the wind blows the other way her friendship will be gone. And I'm thinking the wind is blowing the other way. She has found some other way to be an important person in her own right by hating others.” - Charlaine Harris
11. “People have to forgive. We don't have to like them, we don't have to be friends with them, we don't have to send them hearts in text messages, but we have to forgive them, to overlook, to forget. Because if we don't we are tying rocks to our feet, too much for our wings to carry!” - C. JoyBell C.
12. “She knew that when she got old it would be more fun to look back on a life of romance and adventure than a life of quiet habits. But looking back was easy. It was the doing that was painful. There were plenty of things she would like to look back on but wasn't willing to risk ...” - Ann Brashares
13. “The river itself portrays humanity precisely, with its tortuous windings, its accumulation of driftwood, its unsuspected depths, and its crystalline shallows, singing in the Summer sun. Barriers may be built across its path, but they bring only power, as the conquering of an obstacle is always sure to do. Sometimes when the rocks and stone-clad hills loom large ahead, and eternity itself would be needed to carve a passage, there is an easy way around. The discovery of it makes the river sing with gladness and turns the murmurous deeps to living water, bright with ripples and foam.” - Myrtle Reed
14. “The heart's seasons seldom coincide with the calendar. Who among us has not been made desolate beyond all words upon some golden day when the little creatures of the air and meadow were life incarnate, from sheer joy of living? Who among us has not come home, singing, when the streets were almost impassable with snow, or met a friend with a happy, smiling face, in the midst of a pouring rain?” - Myrtle Reed
15. “Nothing is but what is now” - Ron Rash
16. “Start spreading the news, I'm leaving today. I want to be a part of it. New York... New York..." New York, New York - Fred Ebb/John Kander” - Karla M. Nashar
17. “It's amazing how close I have been, all this time, to my old life. And yet the distance that divides me from it is vast.” - Lauren Oliver
18. “Women waste so much time wearing no perfume. As for me, in every step that I have taken in life, I have been accompanied by an exquisite perfume!” - C. JoyBell C.
19. “These were good people and they had been good to us and we had therefore had a good time. To conclude otherwise was frightening, raising the specter of some unnameable quantity without which we could not abide, but which we could not summon on demand, least of all by proceeding in virtuous accordance with an established formula.You regarded redemption as an act of will. You disparaged people (people like me) for their cussedly nonspecific dissatisfactions, because to fail to embrace the simple fineness of being alive betrayed a weakness of character. You always hated finicky eaters, hypochondriacs, and snobs who turned their noses up at Terms of Endearment just because it was popular. Nice eats, nice place, nice folks- what more could I possibly want? Besides, the good life doesn’t knock on the door. Joy is a job. So if you believed with sufficient industry that we had had a good time with Brian and Louise in theory, then we would have had a good time in fact. The only hint that in truth you’d found our afternoon laborous was that your enthusiasm was excessive.” - Lionel Shriver
20. “Life should be great rather than long.” - Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar
21. “But sometimes you can't figure everything out because you can't ever really understand other people. You can't understand why they do what they do. You just have to accept a little mystery, Ben. People are mysterious, the world is mysterious. You can't know everything. You're not supposed to. This isn't a history book. It's just the world. It's a messy place.” - William Landay
22. “Teikt vai neteikt, ka es Tevi.. Un jā.. Varbūt pat ļoti.” - Imants Ziedonis
23. “This was the first time I thought of S— that day. Her music was beautiful, her voice was beautiful, her body was beautiful. Even the dirty little pads of her feet were beautiful. I cursed myself then. For once, heaven had sent me Beauty in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down. How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?” - Roman Payne
24. “We are as connected to each other, as time is to the clock.” - Zephyr A. McIntyre
25. “Maintain a receptive attitude!” - Tae Yun Kim
26. “How could I, who loved life so intensely, have let myself be entangled for so long in that balderdash of books and paper blackened with ink!” - Nikos Kazantzakis
27. “Sometimes we need to feel bad to know what it's like to feel good...” - Nitra Gipson
28. “I am losing precious days. I am degenerating into a machine for making money. I am learning nothing in this trivial world of men. I must break away and get out into the mountains to learn the news” - John Muir
29. “Human beings are not made to take shortcuts,... You're to live your life, moment by moment. Your life isn't here to entertain you - it's to be lived.” - David Rotenberg
30. “Despite the forecast, live like it's spring.” - Lilly Pulitzer
31. “Life is real, not ideal.” - Heather Muzik
32. “To travel beyond our world is to change this present one forever.” - Steven J. Carroll
33. “Life happened. In all its banality, brutality, cruelty, unfairness. But also in its beauty, pleasures and delights. Life happened.” - Thrity Umrigar
34. “But the summer had been a very happy one, too -- a time of glad living with summer suns and skies, a time of keen delight in wholesome things; a time of renewing and deepening of old friendships; a time in which she had learned to live more nobly, to work more patiently, to play more heartily.” - L.M. Montgomery
35. “What happens to those who live dangerously by being true to who they are?” - Bryant McGill
