Short Deep Quotes: Thoughtful & Reflective
A few words can have a major impact - check out these insights and reflect on your own approach to living life.
These short deep quotes cover a wide range of topics that address everyday living, including relationships, life, culture, and politics. A review of this collection will put your brain to work, and hopefully, you’ll walk away with a new insight or two about your approach to life.
99 short deep quotes to make you think
In the spirit of “less is more,” we present these thought-provoking short quotes.
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- Thoughtful
- Mindful
- Quotes to make you think
- Existential
- Reflective
- Introspective
- Philosophical
- Thinking
- Intellectual
- Quotes to ponder
- Cerebral
- BONUS! quotes
- Conceptual
- Self-reflection
- Understanding
- Confucius
- Buddha
- Syrus
Thoughtful short deep quotes
- A friend to all is a friend to none.
Aristotle – Check out 21 Best Aristotle Quotes
- What labels me, negates me.
Soren Kierkegaard
- When words fail, music speaks.
Shakespeare
- Close both eyes to see with the other eye.
Rumi
Check out these short quotations for tattoos.
- The menu is not the meal.
Alan Watts
- The very essence of romance is uncertainty.
Oscar Wilde
- The trouble is, you think you have time.
Buddha
- In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality.
William S. Burroughs
Mindful short deep quotes
Where there is love, there is no darkness.
Burundi proverb
If love is a sickness, patience is the remedy.
Cameroon proverb
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie
We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.
Thích Nhat Hanh
Quotes to make you think
Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair.
Soren Kierkegaard
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Albert Camus
Some things scratch the surface while others strike at your soul.
Gianna Carini
Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle
Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.
Thomas Carlyle
Dynamic activity and the deep rest of the mind are complementary to each other.
Deepak Chopra
You don’t drown by falling in the water. You drown by staying there.
Edwin Louis Cole
I feel safe in white because, deep down inside, I’m an angel.
Sean Combs
A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep or taste not the Pierian spring.
Alexander Pope
The deeper thought is, the taller it becomes.
Dejan Stojanovic
Existential short deep quotes
Beauty will save the world.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
All human wisdom is summed up in two words; wait and hope.
Alexandre Dumas
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Aristotle
I am not deep, but I am very wide.
Honoré de Balzac
Conscience doth make cowards of us all.
William Shakespeare
People do not lack strength; they lack will.
Victor Hugo
When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.
Viktor Frankl
Don’t be ‘a writer’. Be writing.
William Faulkner
There is no truth. There is only perception.
Gustave Flaubert
Gratitude is one of the least articulate the emotions, especially when it is deep.
Felix Frankfurter
Reflective & meaningful short deep quotes
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Sigmund Freud
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
He who is untrue to his own cause cannot command the respect of others.
Albert Einstein
The course of true love never did run smooth.
William Shakespeare
Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.
Werner Herzog
Introspective short deep quotes
When the mind is perfectly clear, what is what we want.
Byron Katie
If I know what love is, it is because of you.
Herman Hesse
I personally think we developed language because of our deep need to complain.
Lily Tomlin
A friend is someone who knows all about you and still loves you.
Elbert Hubbard
Love is the absence of judgment.
Dalai Lama
Common sense is in spite of, not the result of, education.
Victor Hugo
Somewhere deep down, there’s a decent man in me; he just can’t be found.
Eminem
No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to h—.
Carl Jung
Philosophical sayings
There is no mistake in nature.
Byron Katie
To understand everything is to forgive everything.
Gautama Siddhartha
It is not I who am strong; it is reason; (and)it is truth.
Émile Zola
You will not be punished for your anger; your anger will punish you.
Buddha
There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When a deep injury is done us, we never recover until we forgive.
Alan Paton
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
Rumi
Thinking quotations
Dreams have only one owner at a time. That’s why dreamers are lonely.
William Faulkner
He who knows does not speak. He who speaks does not know.
Lao Tzu
Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.
Alan Watts
To love is to recognize yourself in another.
Eckhart Tolle
Deep summer is when laziness finds respectability.
Sam Keen
We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
Henry David Thoreau
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Bertrand Russell
Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.
Vittorio Alfieri
Intellectual short deep quotes
What worries you masters you.
John Locke
Deep down, I happen to be very shallow.
Pat Paulsen
“I” is another.
Arthur Rimbaud
Question everything. Learn something. Answer nothing.
Euripides
When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.
Anais Nin
Hug the shore; let others try the deep.
Virgil
I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.
Flannery O’Connor
When love prevails, fear departs.
Rumi
Deep experience is never peaceful.
Henry James
One must be deeply aware of the impermanence of the world.
Dogen
Quotes to ponder
The opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Plato
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Edgar Allan Poe
Hold a true friend with both your hands.
Proverb
If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?
Stanislaw J. Lec
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Bertrand Russell
Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time” is like saying, “I don’t want to.”
Lao Tzu
Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
Arthur Rimbaud
Beauty may be skin deep, but ugly goes clear to the bone.
Redd Foxx
The soul lives there in the silent breath.
Rumi
Those who have a voice must speak for those who are voiceless.
Bishop Oscar Romero
To be sane in a world of madmen is in itself madness.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.
Rumi
Cerebral short deep quotes
Deep in their roots, all flowers keep the light.
Theodore Roethke
In any really good subject, one has only to probe deep enough to come to tears.
Edith Wharton
Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.
Jean-Paul Sartre
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw
The roots of racism lie deep in man’s nature, wounded and bruised by original sin.
Sargent Shriver
Mindful short deep quotes
When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.
Hunter S. Thompson
It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.
Henry David Thoreau
A woman’s heart is a deep ocean of secrets.
Gloria Stuart
Never regret something that once made you happy.
Unknown
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
This life is like a swimming pool. You dive into the water, but you can’t see how deep it is.
Dennis Rodman
If I feel frustrated in a situation, I take a deep breath and walk away.
Iman
Conceptual quotations
The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
Oscar Wilde
Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties.
Barbara Walters
If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.
Mark Twain
Don’t judge someone just because they sin differently than you.
Unknown
One way to break up any kind of tension is good deep breathing.
Byron Nelson
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. It means they learned it by reading.
Unknown
Self-reflection quotes
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
If the world was blind, how many people would you impress?
Unknown
The prettiest eyes have cried the most.
Unknown
Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Khalil Gibran
We have deep depth.
Yogi Berra
He who loves loves you with your dirt.
Ugandan proverb
Understanding quotes
Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
Alan Watts
Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.
Oscar Wilde
Politics is in a crisis because it’s separated from our deep humanity.
Marianne Williamson
What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain
Life is too short to be living somebody else’s dream.
Hugh Hefner
One’s art goes as far and as deep as one’s love goes.
Andrew Wyeth
Confucius short deep quotes
It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
Silence is a true friend who never betrays.
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
Do not do to others what you do not want done to yourself.
Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
Wherever you go, go with all your heart.
Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.
Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.
Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.
I want you to be everything that’s you, deep at the center of your being.
Life is elementary, but we insist on making it complicated.
Respect yourself, and others will respect you.
The funniest people are the saddest ones.
You cannot open a book without learning something.
He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.
The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.
Check out more short quotes about life, love, friendship, and more.
Buddha sayings
- Give, even if you only have a little.
- People with opinions just go around bothering each other.
- There is no fear for one whose mind is not filled with desires.
- You yourself must strive. The Buddhas only point the way.
- If anything is worth doing, do it with all your heart.
- Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.
- Meditate… do not delay, lest you later regret it.
- Understanding is the heartwood of well-spoken words.
- All that we are is the result of what we have thought.
- Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.
- Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace.
- May all beings have happy minds.
- You only lose what you cling to.
- A jug fills drop by drop.
- One who acts on truth is happy in this world and beyond.
- Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.
- The tongue like a sharp knife… Injures without drawing blood.
- The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.
Publilius Syrus short deep quotes
I often regret that I have spoken, never that I have been silent.
Where there is unity, there is always victory.
It is an arduous undertaking to seek to please everybody.
I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.
A rolling stone gathers no moss.
The friendship that can come to an end never really began.
No one knows what he can do until he tries.
Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Good health and good sense are two of life’s greatest blessings.
Prosperity makes friends; adversity tries them.
Tip: These quotations and sayings make great photo captions.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe quotations
Nothing is worth more than this day.
Dream no small dreams, for they have no power to move the hearts of men.
Magic is believing in yourself; if you can do that, you can make anything happen.
The solution to every problem is another problem.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing is not enough; we must do.
When ideas fail, words come in very handy.
Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Things that matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.
As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.
Every day we should hear at least one little song, read one good poem, see one exquisite picture, and, if possible, speak a few sensible words.
Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.
Wisdom is only found in truth.
Every second is of infinite value.
— Greg Johnson
Greg is a writer and co-founder of ListCaboodle.
Encore
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