Every day we show up to work, spending eight hours a day doing our best to earn as much money as we could. Some of us work under the heat of the sun as a farmer, gardener, or a construction worker. Others are actors, singers, teachers, cops, writers, and so on and so forth. We live our life working day and night, trying to succeed in each of our endeavors. But how are we supposed to live our lives anyway?
Sometimes we miss acknowledging the real meaning of living life because we’re too focused on becoming successful. We forget that there are a lot of other things, not in a form of materials or fame that makes this life worth living.
Although it’s easy to think about how we should live our life, we can agree that it is difficult to make it happen. How are we supposed to do what’s right if the only way to put food on our table is to do what’s wrong? How are we supposed to live a healthy lifestyle if we can only afford to buy cheap fast food? How are we supposed to forgive if we’re constantly betrayed? Each of us live in different circumstances and unless we get into each other’s shoes, there is no way to tell someone how they should live their life.
The following quotes, however, are written by people who learned a lot about life. These quotes are lessons that we can take with us in our own journey. We hope that, regardless of what circumstances you are into right now, may these quotes inspire you to live free, happy, and fulfilled!
Here we have compiled 142 uplifting quotes to live by.
Uplifting Quotes to Live By
1. Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
2. Luck is the residue of design. – John Milton
3. In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity. – Albert Einstein
4. The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that’s changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks. – Mark Zuckerberg
5. To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart. – Eleanor Roosevelt
6. I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination. – Jimmy Dean
7. Don’t allow your past or present condition to control you. It’s just a process that you’re going through to get you to the next level. – T.D. Jakes
8. You were born with the ability to change someone’s life, don’t ever waste it. – Dale Partridge
9. If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. – Mark Twain
10. The only wealth which you will keep forever is the wealth you have given away. – Marcus Aurelius
11. The great thing in this world is not so much where you stand, as in what direction you are moving. – Oliver Wendell Holmes
12. In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact. – Les Brown
13. Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. – Voltaire
14. Just remember: The people that say, ‘your dreams are impossible’ have already quit on theirs. – Grant Cardone
15. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. – Booker T. Washington
16. I think being in love with life is a key to eternal youth. – Doug Hutchison
17. You’re only here for a short visit. Don’t hurry, don’t worry. And be sure to smell the flowers along the way. – Walter Hagen
18. A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life. – Charles Darwin
19. If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor. – Eleanor Roosevelt
20. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
21. All of life is peaks and valleys. Don’t let the peaks get too high and the valleys too low. – John Wooden
22. Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough. – Emily Dickinson
23. My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style. – Maya Angelou
24. However difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at. – Stephen Hawking
25. Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving. – Albert Einstein
26. The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate. – Oprah Winfrey
27. The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters. – Audrey Hepburn
28. I enjoy life when things are happening. I don’t care if it’s good things or bad things. That means you’re alive. – Joan Rivers
29. Life is short, and it is up to you to make it sweet. – Sarah Louise Delany
30. Life doesn’t require that we be the best, only that we try our best. – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
31. I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. – Walt Disney
32. The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed. – Eminem
33. Life is one big road with lots of signs. So when you riding through the ruts, don’t complicate your mind. Flee from hate, mischief, and jealousy. Don’t bury your thoughts, put your vision to reality. Wake Up and Live. – Bob Marley
34. The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. – Oprah Winfrey
35. May you live as long as you wish and love as long as you live. – Robert A. Heinlein
36. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. – Martin Luther King, Jr.
37. Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life. – Buddha
38. A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love. – Max Muller
39. Life is like a roller coaster, live it, be happy, enjoy life. – Avril Lavigne
40. Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live. – Jim Rohn
41. I decided to fly through the air and live in the sunlight and enjoy life as much as I could. – Evel Knievel
42. I hated every minute of training, but I said, ‘Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion. – Muhammad Ali
43. As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them. – John F. Kennedy
44. As long as you live keep smiling because it brightens everyone’s day. – Vin Scully
45. To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. – Friedrich Nietzsche
46. See the world as it is, not as you wish it would be. – E. Lockhart
47. It is beautiful to express love and even more beautiful to feel it. – Dejan Stojanovic
48. Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. Nobody else can. – Michael A. Singe
49. Money is only a human invention. – Vanna Bonta
50. Always be true to your friends, just as you are to yourself. – Meg Cabot
51. Humor and joy contribute to my total well-being. – Louise L. Hay
52. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality, nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit. – Christopher McCandless
53. My mama always used to tell me: ‘If you can’t find somethin’ to live for, you best find somethin’ to die for.’ – Tupac Shakur
54. Whatever you do, do with determination. You have one life to live; do your work with passion and give your best. Whether you want to be a chef, doctor, actor, or a mother, be passionate to get the best result. – Alia Bhatt
55. I believe that two people are connected at the heart, and it doesn’t matter what you do, or who you are or where you live; there are no boundaries or barriers if two people are destined to be together. – Julia Roberts
56. Letting go helps us to live in a more peaceful state of mind and helps restore our balance. It allows others to be responsible for themselves and for us to take our hands off situations that do not belong to us. This frees us from unnecessary stress. – Melody Beattie
57. Be brave enough to live life creatively. The creative place where no one else has ever been. – Alan Alda
58. Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement. – Golda Meir
59. Through hard work, perseverance and a faith in God, you can live your dreams. – Ben Carson
60. Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for. – Dag Hammarskjold
61. I have learned that as long as I hold fast to my beliefs and values – and follow my own moral compass – then the only expectations I need to live up to are my own. – Michelle Obama
62. I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity. – Albert Einstein
63. You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. – Woodrow Wilson
64. The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. – Albert Einstein
65. Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially. – Tom Freston
66. In this life, we have to make many choices. Some are very important choices. Some are not. Many of our choices are between good and evil. The choices we make, however, determine to a large extent our happiness or our unhappiness, because we have to live with the consequences of our choices. – James E. Faust
67. Fashion is not something that exists in dresses only. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening. – Coco Chanel
68. Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter. – James A. Garfield
69. If you don’t embrace who you are and accept who you are, you won’t be able to live a happy life. – Ciara
70. The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can. – Neil Gaiman
71. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default. – J. K. Rowling
72. I’m just going to go live life. I’m going to go enjoy life. I have nothing left to hide. I am kind of a free person, a free soul. – Caitlyn Jenner
73. Nobody gets to live life backward. Look ahead that is where your future lies. – Ann Landers
74. Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people. – Carl Sagan
75. If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person. It’s how you handle adversity, not how it affects you. The main thing is never quit, never quit, never quit. – William J. Clinton
76. Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live. – Socrates
77. Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win. – Stephen King
78. It is my goal to love everyone. I hate no one. Regardless of their race, religion, their proclivities, the desire of their heart and how they want to live their life and the decisions that they make. I can even respect people’s decisions and lifestyle choices just as I hope they have the courtesy to respect my decisions and my choices. – Kirk Cameron
79. Choosing to be positive and having a grateful attitude is going to determine how you’re going to live your life. – Joel Osteen
80. If you live among wolves you have to act like a wolf. – Nikita Khrushchev
81. If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships; the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace. – Franklin D. Roosevelt
82. My trust in God flows out of the experience of his loving me, day in and day out, whether the day is stormy or fair, whether I’m sick or in good health, whether
83. I’m in a state of grace or disgrace. He comes to me where I live and loves me as I am. – Brennan Manning
84. Find out who you are and be that person. That’s what your soul was put on this Earth to be. Find that truth, live that truth and everything else will come. – Ellen DeGeneres
85. During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that conditions called war; and such a war, as if of every man, against every man. – Thomas Hobbes
86. You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life. – Albert Camus
87. I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong. – Abraham Lincoln
88. That is the key of this collection, being yourself. Don’t be into trends. Don’t make fashion own you, but you decide what you are, what you want to express by the way you dress and the way to live. – Gianni Versace
89. Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live. – Oscar Wilde
90. It is not up to me whether I win or lose. Ultimately, this might not be my day. And it is that philosophy towards sports, something that I really truly live by. I am emotional. I want to win. I am hungry. I am a competitor. I have that fire. But deep down, I truly enjoy the art of competing so much more than the result. – Apolo Ohno
91. Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in. – A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
92. My music fights against the system that teaches to live and die. – Bob Marley
93. Our duty is to encourage everyone in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth. – Swami Vivekananda
94. This too, shall pass.
95. Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground. – Theodore Roosevelt
96. The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday.
97. Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself. – Harvey Fierstein
98. Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. – C.S. Lewis
99. A man who flies from his fear may find that he has only taken a shortcut to meet it. – Sador
100. Life’s too mysterious to take too serious. – Mary Engelbreit
101. You can’t go around building a better world for people. Only people can build a better world for people. Otherwise it’s just a cage. – Terry Pratchett
102. There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do. – Terry Pratchett
103. It’s not about how hard you can hit; it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. – Rocky Balboa, Rocky
104. More fuck yeah, less fuck that.
105. If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. – African proverb
106. It’s OK to not be OK, as long as you don’t stay that way.
107. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. – T. Roosevelt
108. May I never be complete. May I never be content. May I never be perfect. – Chuck Palahniuk
109. Nothing in life is to be feared; it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more so that we may fear less. – Marie Curie
110. There is no elevator to success — you have to take the stairs.
111. Plant your garden and decorate your own soul, instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers. – Jose Luis Borges
112. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. – Albus Dumbledore
113. Don’t sweat the petty things and don’t pet the sweaty things. – George Carlin
114. Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway. – Eleanor Roosevelt.
115. Do not set yourself on fire in order to keep others warm.
116. The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa, the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant. – Doctor Who
117. It’s supposed to be hard. If it were easy, everyone would do it. – Jimmy Dugan
118. Ask yourself if what you’re doing today will get you closer to where you want to be tomorrow.
119. Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we’re here, we should dance.
120. Never cowardly or cruel. Never give up, never give in. – Doctor Who
121. Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none. – William Shakespeare
122. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit. – Aristotle
123. It does not help to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
124. Never erase your memories. The good memories help you to remain happy. The bad memories help you how to remain happy.
125. What may seem small and insignificant to one person, to another, maybe the one thing that makes everything else worthwhile.
126. When we do today what others won’t, we accomplish tomorrow what others can’t; turn our stumbling block into stepping stones, and transform our setbacks into comebacks. – Dan Clark
127. Be the change that you wish to see in the world.
128. There is no rainbow without the rain.
129. I try to explain to people that the only way to be cool is to be who you truly are, and the only way to live life is to do the things that you want to do and be the person that you want to be no matter who that is or what that is or how you have to do it. That’s the only way you can be genuinely happy. – Tucker Max
130. Whether you live in a city or a small town, and whether you drive a car, take the bus or ride a train, at some point in the day, everyone is a pedestrian. – Anthony Foxx
131. You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store. – Joel Osteen
132. Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values, and false ideals. But you are not part of that world. – Sai Baba
133. To live a pure unselfish life, one must count nothing as one’s own in the midst of abundance. – Buddha
134. Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness. – Leon Trotsky
135. The heart will break, but broken live on. – Lord Byron
136. As you keep your mind and heart focused in the right direction, approaching each day with faith and gratitude, I believe you will be empowered to live life to the fullest and enjoy the abundant life He has promised you. – Victoria Osteen
137. All my life, I have maintained that the people of the world can learn to live together in peace if they are not brought up in prejudice. – Josephine Baker
138. We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; in feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best. – Aristotle
139. Don’t marry the person you think you can live with; marry only the individual you think you can’t live without. – James Dobson
140. Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered – either by themselves or by others. – Mark Twain
141. You have competition every day because you set such high standards for yourself that you have to go out every day and live up to that. – Michael Jordan
142. If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud. – Emile Zola
