Short Quotes About Life & Living
These smart yet brief quotations will help you get the most out of life.
This list features short quotes about life and living: insights and musings from celebrities, authors, scientists, and philosophers. Live your life to the fullest with a deeper understanding.
Great short quotes about life
The succinct expression of an idea can sometimes have the greatest impact. Enjoy these quotes and enjoy life!
Life quotations to ponder
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
Soren Kierkegaard
I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.
Corazon Aquino
Sometimes the questions are complicated, and the answers are simple.
Dr. Seuss
The best short quotes about life
Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.
Phillips Brooks
Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.
Euripides
To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
Mary Oliver
I don’t want to die without any scars.
Chuck Palahniuk
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Socrates — See more quotes from Socrates.
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
Bertrand Russell
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
Short meaningful quotes about life
Life is too deep for words, so don’t try to describe it, just live it.
C S Lewis
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
Bertrand Russell
Would you like you, if you met you?
Unknown
Of all lies, art is the least untrue.
Gustave Flaubert
A writer is a world trapped in a person.
Victor Hugo
Your very silence shows you agree.
Euripides
The truth is rarely pure and never simple.
Oscar Wilde
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
Henry David Thoreau
The kindest hearts have felt the most pains.
Unknown
To die is nothing, but it is terrible not to live.
Victor Hugo
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Voltaire
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
Short thoughtful quotes about life
Sin is geographical.
Bertrand Russell
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.
Thomas Paine
The quieter you become, the more you can hear.
Ram Dass
The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
Bob Marley
When it hurts – observe. Life is trying to teach you something.
Anita Krizan
Are you afraid of the good you might do?
Victor Hugo
Useful Tip: A thoughtful or amusing quote works well for a Quote of the Day in your blog.
I’m just trying to think about the future and not be sad.
Elon Musk
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.
Voltaire
Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than the arguments of its opposers.
William Penn
If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Forever is composed of nows.
Emily Dickinson
To do two things at once is to do neither.
Publilius Syrus
Short quotes about living
Lies hurt people; imagination makes life more fun.
Dean Koontz
Life is a constant process of dying.
Arthur Schopenhauer
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Teresa
I don’t care that they stole my idea. I care that they don’t have any of their own.
Nikola Tesla
What makes night within us may leave stars.
Victor Hugo
You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.
Pema Chödrön
All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
Alexandre Dumas
No notes. You speak from deep in your heart. It’s easy.
Manny Pacquiao
Check out these short love quotations and sayings.
Love doesn’t die; the men and women do.
William Faulkner
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
Leonardo da Vinci
Literature is a toil and a snare, a curse that bites deep.
D. H. Lawrence
If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.
Marcus Aurelius
We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves.
Bruce Lee
Famous short quotes about life
In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.
Robert Frost
Curiosity is gluttony. To see is to devour.
Victor Hugo
The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.
Mikhail Bakunin
The more I see the less I know for sure.
John Lennon
Check out these short humorous quotations and sayings.
Better a cruel truth than a comfortable delusion.
Edward Abbey
Death ends a life, not a relationship.
Mitch Albom
Humor is just another defense against the universe.
Mel Brooks
Holding onto your anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
Buddha
Life is a balance of holding on and letting go.
Rumi
We are always getting ready to live but never living.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Oscar Wilde
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James Baldwin
Life sayings and quotes
Love is the foolishness of men and the wisdom of God.
Victor Hugo
I can resist anything except temptation.
Oscar Wilde
A clear conscience is a sure sign of a bad memory.
Mark Twain
Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.
Confucius
Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.
Arthur Schopenhauer
You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality.
Eckhart Tolle
Adversity makes men, and prosperity makes monsters.
Victor Hugo
Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are a slave.
Dr. Wayne Dyer
Education is not the learning of the facts, but the training of the mind to think.
Albert Einstein
Those who do not weep, do not see.
Victor Hugo
If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra
The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.
Mencius
He who opens a school door closes a prison.
Victor Hugo
It’s not that I’m so smart. It’s just that I stay with problems longer.
Albert Einstein
Inspirational short quotes about life
A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure.
Lee Segall
Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
Oscar Wilde
Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.
William Shakespeare
To experience life you have to kind of face a lot of fears.
Carrie-Anne Moss
Check out more short quotes about life, love, friendships and more.
We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.
George Bernard Shaw
To be radical is to grasp things by the root.
Karl Marx
You can’t be brave if you’ve only had wonderful things happen to you.
Mary Tyler Moore
Home is not where you live, but where they understand you.
Christian Morgenstern
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
One original thought is worth a thousand mindless quotings.
Diogenes
When love itself comes to kiss you, don’t hold back.
Rumi
Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.
André Gide
Anything becomes interesting if you look at it long enough.
Gustave Flaubert
The soul that sees beauty may sometimes walk alone.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
BONUS short quotes about life
It’s so hard when I have to, and so easy when I want to.
Annie Gottlier
He who despairs is wrong.
Victor Hugo
Life is short. You have to be able to laugh at our pain or we never move on.
Jeff Ross
Experience, travel – these are an education in themselves.
Euripides
Do not grow to fond of your ideas or too certain of their truth.
Robert Greene
Out of all the things I have lost, I miss my mind the most.
Mark Twain
The past is never dead. It’s not even past.
William Faulkner
I have lived with several Zen masters—all of them cats.
Eckhart Tolle
Boredom: the desire for desires.
Leo Tolstoy
You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain
Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared.
Robert Greene
You who suffer because you love, love still more. To die of love is to live by it.
Victor Hugo
Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.
Helen Keller
Do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish your opinions.
Seng-ts’an
Insightful quotes and sayings
Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.
Dr. Seuss
It is so hard to believe because it is so hard to obey.
Soren Kierkegaard
You don’t deserve what you don’t respect.
Unknown
Poetry is the rhythmical creation of beauty in words.
Edgar Allan Poe
A letter from the heart can be read on the face.
Kenyan proverb
The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear.
Mahatma Gandhi
The more one judges, the less one loves.
Honoré de Balzac
If it is not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide.
Lord Acton
If I love myself I love you. If I love you I love myself.
Rumi
Cleverness is not wisdom.
Euripides
Passion is born deaf and dumb.
Honoré de Balzac
As with stomachs, we should pity minds that do not eat.
Victor Hugo
When the ego dies, the soul awakes.
Mahatma Gandhi
I wish I could write as mysterious as a cat.
Edgar Allan Poe
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
Henri Louis Bergson
Dr. Seuss quotes
- Think and wonder, wonder and think.
- Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
- A person’s a person, no matter how small.
- Oh, the things you can find, if you don’t stay behind!
- Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!
- I speak for the trees, for the trees have no tongues.
- Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.
- Today I shall behave as if this is the day I will be remembered.>
- Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.
- Remember me and smile, for it’s better to forget than to remember me and cry.
- You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
- I meant what I said and I said what I meant.
Maya Angelou quotes
- There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.
- You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
- When you learn, teach. When you get, give.
- If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.
- Nothing will work unless you do.
Benjamin Franklin sayings
- Genius without education is like silver in the mine.
- Diligence is the mother of good luck.
- Anger is never without a reason, but seldom a good one.
- God heals, and the doctor takes the fee.
- Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
- When in doubt, don’t.
- The cat in gloves catches no mice.
- If you would be wealthy, think of saving as well as getting.
- Look before, or you’ll find yourself behind.
- An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.
- You may delay, but time will not.
- To the generous mind, the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it.
- Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.
- Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.
More short quotes about life
William Shakespeare quotations
To be, or not to be,—that is the question.
O excellent! I love long life better than figs.
Lay aside life-harming heaviness, And entertain a cheerful disposition.
The sands are number’d that make up my life; Here must I stay, and here my life must end.
Thy life’s a miracle.
There where my fortune lives, there my life dies.
The object of art is to give life a shape.
And a man’s life’s no more than to say “One.”
The time of life is short; to spend that shortness basely were too long.
Let life be short: else shame will be too long.
Life is a shuttle.
So wise so young, they say, never do live long.
When we are born, we cry, that we are come to this great stage of fools.
The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together.
A man can die but once.
I bear a charmed life.
The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.
Reason thus with life: If I do lose thee, I do lose a thing that none but fools would keep.
Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, Vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with asleep.
Oscar Wilde thoughts and sayings
Success is a science; if you have the conditions, you get the result.
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.
Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.
Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.
No man is rich enough to buy back his past.
Experience is one thing you can get for nothing.
Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.
I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.
Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
Deceiving others. That is what the world calls a romance.
When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.
Women are made to be loved, not understood.
I can resist everything except temptation.
Memory… is the diary that we all carry about with us.
A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
— Greg Johnson
Greg is a writer and co-founder of LIstCaboodle.
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