These Life Quotes Are the Motivation You Didn’t Know You Needed (2024)

Life quotes can turn around the heaviest of days. Whether you’re feeling disconnected or need a positive note to help you through a particularly tough time, quotes about life can help put things into perspective.

Maybe you’re looking for motivation to get you through a tough work week, or you want to send friends words of encouragement to let them know you care. Quotes about life are perfect for these situations. Or perhaps you, yourself, will want to bookmark these words of wisdom to read at the start of your day to help set you up for success. If you’re more of an evening person, maybe reading some life quotes before bed will yield more pleasant dreams.

From trailblazing icons like Dolly Parton and Oprah Winfrey to actresses like Sofia Vergara and Drew Barrymore, these amazing sayings offer a fresh look at life. Read on and make sure to share these with friends, family, or even a stranger to brighten their day. And if you’re looking for something specific, check out our loneliness quotes, friendship quotes, and self-love quotes.

Inspirational life quotes

1. “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.” —Serena Williams
2. “When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go.” —Carol Burnett
3. “The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.” —Steve Jobs
4. “Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come without leaving happier.” —Mother Teresa
5. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” —Oscar Wilde
6. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” —Oprah Winfrey
7. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
8. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.” —Michael Jordan
9. “You’ve got to be in it to win it.” —Tony Robbins
10. “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” —Confucius
11. “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” —Dolly Parton
12. “For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim. I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self. The journey doesn’t end.” —Michelle Obama
13. “Confident people have a way of carrying themselves that makes others attracted to them.” —Sofia Vergara
14. “If you can do what you do best and be happy, you are further along in life than most people.” —Leonardo DiCaprio
15. “You can be everything. You can be the infinite amount of things that people are.” —Kesha
16. “Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it’s realistic or not.” —Deepak Chopra
17. “When you change your thoughts, remember to also change your world.” —Norman Vincent Peale
18. “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” —Stephanie Perkins
19. “By being yourself, you put something wonderful in the world that was not there before.” —Edwin Elliot
20. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
21. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” —George Elliot
22. “Find out who you are and be that person. That’s what your soul was put on this earth to be. Find the truth, live that truth, and everything else will come.” —Ellen DeGeneres
23. “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” —Viktor E. Frankl
24. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” —Napoleon Hill
25. “Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.” —Og Mandino

Motivational life quotes

1. “Failure is a great teacher and, if you are open to it, every mistake has a lesson to offer.” —Oprah Winfrey
2. “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” —Dolly Parton
3. “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.”—Will Rogers
4. “Keep smiling, because life is a beautiful thing and there’s so much to smile about.” —Marilyn Monroe
5. “Be persistent and never give up hope.” —George Lucas
6. “When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” —Paulo Coelho
7. “Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” —Charles Kettering
8. “There are so many great things in life; why dwell on negativity?” —Zendaya
9. “Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you left open.” —John Barrymore
10. “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” —Margaret Mead
11. “Keep your face towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” —Walt Whitman
12. “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” —Duke Ellington
13. “You don’t always need a plan. Sometimes you just need to breathe, trust, let go and see what happens.” —Mandy Hale
14. “Nothing is impossible. The word itself says ‘I’m possible!’” —Audrey Hepburn
15. “Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.” —Annette Funicello
16. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” —Aristotle
17. “The best way out is through.” —Robert Frost
18. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” —John D. Rockefeller
19. “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” —Henry Ford
20. “Don’t take yourself too seriously. Know when to laugh at yourself, and find a way to laugh at obstacles that inevitably present themselves.” —Halle Bailey
21. “Love the life you live. Live the life you love.” —Bob Marley
22. “Keep your face towards the sunshine and shadows will fall behind you.” —Walt Whitman
23. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
24. “I’m not going to continue knocking that old door that doesn’t open for me. I’m going to create my own door and walk through that.” —Ava DuVernay
25. “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” —Wayne Dyer

Life quotes about the future

1. “You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.” —Maya Angelou
2. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” —Eleanor Roosevelt
3. “Take the time to enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.” —Robert Brault
4. “The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create.” —Leonard I. Sweet
5. “Life has got those twists and turns. You’ve got to hold on tight and off you go.” —Nicole Kidman
6. “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” —Malcolm X
7. “Don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself.” —Alice Walker
8. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” —Wayne Gretzky
9. “Life is a long lesson in humility.” —James M. Barrie
10. “You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” —Oprah Winfrey
11. “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” —Joseph Campbell
12. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” —Winston Churchill
13. “Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.” —Nikki Giovanni
14. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” —Lao Tzu
15. “Ignore your mistakes. The number one thing to worry about is: Am I doing what I’m good at?” —Max Levchin
16. “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” —Jim Rohn
17. “Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.” —Les Brown
18. “In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s life in your years.” —Abraham Lincoln
19. “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.” —Maya Angelou
20. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
21. “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” —Gloria Steinem
22. “We become what we think about most of the time.” —Earl Nightingale
23. “Life is very interesting…in the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.” —Drew Barrymore
24. “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” —Helen Keller
25. “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” —Charles Dickens

Life quotes about success

1. “Success is falling nine times and getting up 10.” —Jon Bon Jovi
2. “Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failures are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” —Dale Carnegie
3. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” —Arthur Ashe
4. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” —Alexander Graham Bell
5. “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” —Bill Bradley
6. “If you don’t have any shadows you’re not in the light.” —Lady Gaga
7. “There are no regrets in life. Just lessons.” —Jennifer Aniston
8. “Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success.” —Henry Ford
9. “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” —Margaret Fuller
10. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein
11. “How dare you settle for less when the world made it so easy for you to be remarkable?” —Seth Godin
12. “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” —Joshua J. Marine
13. “We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” —Albert Einstein
14. “It’s always better to shock people and change people’s expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do.” —Jonah Hill
15. “And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.” —Paulo Coelho
16. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” —Robert Louis Stevenson
17. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” —Herman Melville
18. “Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.” —Drew Houston
19. “Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” —Vernon Sanders Law
20. “Dream big and dare to fail.” —Norman Vaughan
21. “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” —Abraham Lincoln
22. “I’m not going to continue knocking on that old door that doesn’t open for me. I’m going to create my own door and walk through that.” —W.P. Kinsella
23. “For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.” —Vincent Van Gogh
24. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
25. “It’s a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.” —Danny Boyle