Quotes About Life Lessons

“I've never fooled anyone. I've let people fool themselves. They didn't bother to find out who and what I was. Instead they would invent a character for me. I wouldn't argue with them. They were obviously loving somebody I wasn't.” ― Marilyn Monroe

“The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.” ― Peter Shaffer, Five Finger Exercise: A Play

“Courage: the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently.” ― Maya Angelou

“If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and true enemies; succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you; be honest and frank anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous; be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; do good anyway…
You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God; it was never between you and them anyway.” ― Kent M. Keith

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.” ― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ― Plato

“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren't already complicated enough.” ― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Shadow of the Wind

“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.” ― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.” ― Anonymous, The Bhagavad Gita

“This is an important lesson to remember when you're having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won't feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can't feel real joy unless you've felt heartache. You can't have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can't know what it's like to feel holy until you know what it's like to feel really fucking evil. And you can't be birthed again until you've died.” ― Kelly Cutrone, If You Have to Cry, Go Outside: And Other Things Your Mother Never Told You
 

“Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” ― Mary Oliver

“No matter how much suffering you went through, you never wanted to let go of those memories.” ― Haruki Murakami

“First, let no one rule your mind or body. Take special care that your thoughts remain unfettered... . Give men your ear, but not your heart. Show respect for those in power, but don't follow them blindly. Judge with logic and reason, but comment not. Consider none your superior whatever their rank or station in life. Treat all fairly, or they will seek revenge. Be careful with your money. Hold fast to your beliefs and others will listen.” ― Christopher Paolini, Eragon

“That’s the thing about a human life-there’s no control group, no way to ever know how any of us would have turned out if any variables had been changed.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

“There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.” ― Judith McNaught, Remember When

“[H]iding how you really feel and trying to make everyone happy doesn't make you nice, it just makes you a liar.” ― Jenny O'Connell, The Book of Luke
 

“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.

“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.

“I don't care what you say to me. I care what you share with me.” ― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

“Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing.” ― Paulo Coelho, Maktub

“I've been in love before, it's like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You're not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things.You think about the person you love for two minutes then forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he's not there, you feel like an addict who can't get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you're willing to do anything for love."- By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept” ― Paulo Coelho

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ― Haruki Murakami

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it's the ability to deal with them.” ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“No human being, when you understand his desires, is worthless. No one's life is nothing. Even the most evil of men and women, if you understand their hearts, had some generous act that redeems them, at least a little, from their sins.” ― Orson Scott Card, Speaker for the Dead

“I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.” ― Douglas Coupland

“There were people who went to sleep last night,
poor and rich and white and black,
but they will never wake again.

And those dead folks would give anything at all
for just five minutes of this weather
or ten minutes of plowing.

So you watch yourself about complaining.

What you're supposed to do
when you don't like a thing is change it.
If you can't change it,
change the way you think about it.” ― Maya Angelou

“Pain is a pesky part of being human, I've learned it feels like a stab wound to the heart, something I wish we could all do without, in our lives here. Pain is a sudden hurt that can't be escaped. But then I have also learned that because of pain, I can feel the beauty, tenderness, and freedom of healing. Pain feels like a fast stab wound to the heart. But then healing feels like the wind against your face when you are spreading your wings and flying through the air! We may not have wings growing out of our backs, but healing is the closest thing that will give us that wind against our faces.” ― C. JoyBell C.

“Like all failed experiments, that one taught me something I didn’t expect: one key ingredient of so-called experience is the delusional faith that it is unique and special, that those included in it are privileged and those excluded from it are missing out.” ― Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

“Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn't what you get for it, but what you become for it. Shake things up today! Be You...Be Free...Share.” ― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble” ― Rudyard Kipling

“Then I discovered that being related is no guarantee of love!” ― Stieg Larsson, The Girl With the Dragon

“You don't have to disrespect and insult others simply to hold your own ground. If you do, that shows how shaky your own position is.” ― Red Haircrow

“Fear's useless. Either something bad happens or it doesn't: If it doesn't, you've wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you've wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.” ― Sarah Rees Brennan,

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.” ― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“There's no need to wait for the bad things and bullshit to be over. Change now. Love now. Live now. Don't wait for people to give you permission to live, because they won't.” ― Kris Carr, Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It!

“Friends are the family you choose (~ Nin/Ithilnin, Elven rogue).” ― Jess C. Scott, The Other Side of Life

“There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.” ― Maya Angelou

“A star falls from the sky and into your hands. Then it seeps through your veins and swims inside your blood and becomes every part of you. And then you have to put it back into the sky. And it's the most painful thing you'll ever have to do and that you've ever done. But what's yours is yours. Whether it’s up in the sky or here in your hands. And one day, it'll fall from the sky and hit you in the head real hard and that time, you won't have to put it back in the sky again.” ― C. JoyBell C.

“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so. ” ― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“This is what I've Learned, in my life: Headbanging is crucial. Growing up is hard to do.There's nothing wrong with wearing a dress.” ― Paramore

“Take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing: no one to blame.” ― Erica Jong

“How hurtful it can be to deny one's true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” ― June Ahern

“Always be fearless. Walk like lion, talk like pigeons, live like elephants and love like an infant child.” ― Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday

“I've learned... . That being kind is more important than being right.” ― H. Jackson Brown Jr., Live and

“Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.” ― Chuck Palahniuk

“Most important thing in life is learning how to fall.” ― Jeannette Walls, Half Broke Horses

“That's the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don't expect them or want them.” ― Cecelia Ahern, If You Could See Me Now

“But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park. You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for...or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your corn dog and your cotton candy all over the place.” ― J.R. Ward, Crave

“Curiosity is the lust of the mind” ― Thomas Hobbes

“As long as the world is turning and spinning, we're gonna be dizzy and we're gonna make mistakes.” ― Mel Brooks