The wisdom of the wise, and the experience of ages, may be preserved through quotations. Here we present 100 wise quotes to help guide you through life. Feel free to share or download any of the pictures, they are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported license.
1.
“Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
2.
“Sometimes you need to step outside, get some air, and remind yourself of who you are and where you want to be.”
3.
“To love and win is the best thing; to love and lose the next best.”
– William Makepeace Thackeray
4.
“She believed she could, so she did.”
5.
“It is good to think; it is divine to act.”
6.
“Want something you’ve never had? Do something you’ve never done.”
7.
“In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.”
8.
“Do sharks complain about being tired? No! They wake up early, hunt, eat, act all scary, and remind everyone that they’re a fucking shark.”
9.
“If God be with me, who be against me?”
10.
“Consider and act with reference to the true ends of existence. This world is but the vestibule of an immortal life. Every action of our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.”
– E.H. Chapin
11.
“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.”
12.
“Quality over quantity. Let your guiding rule be not how much, but how good.”
13.
“In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”
14.
“Brethren, life is passing; youth goes, strength decays. But duty performed, work done for Good – this abides forever, this alone is imperishable.”
15.
“Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.”
– P.J. Bailey
16.
“Do today’s duty, fight today’s temptation; and do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things which you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.”
– Charles Kingsley
17.
“The best teachers of humanity are the lives of great men.”
– C.H. Fowler
18.
“We can do more good by being good than in any other way.”
– Rowland Hill
19.
“Faith is the subtle chain, that binds us to the infinite.”
20.
“The best cure for a sorrowful heart is to help others.”
21.
“Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
– Abraham Lincoln
22.
“God is love and goodness. Fill the soul with goodness, fill the soul with love, and it will be filled with God. ‘If we love one another, God dwelleth in us.’ There is nothing else that can satisfy.”
– Adapted from F.W. Robertson
23.
“Instruction ends in the schoolroom, but education ends only with life. A child is given to the universe to be educated.”
– F.W. Robertson
24.
“There are regions beyond the most nebulous outskirts of matter; but no regions beyond the Divine goodness. We may conceive of tracts where there are no worlds, but not of any where there is no God of mercy.”
– J.W. Alexander
25.
“Those who wait to do a great deal of good at once, will never do anything.”
26.
“The wrong choice often brings us to the right place.”
27.
“Good consists not in the outward things we do, but in the inward thing we are. To be is the great thing.”
– E.H. Chapin
28.
“Great hearts alone understand how much glory there is in being good.”
– Michelet
29.
“Those who try to do something and fail are infinitely better than those who try to do nothing and succeed.”
30.
“It is no use for one to stand in the shade and complain that the sun does not shine upon him. He must come out resolutely on the hot and dusty field where all are compelled to antagonize with stubborn difficulties, and pertinaciously strive until he conquers, if he would deserve to be crowned.”
– E.L. Magoon
31.
“No good thing is ever lost. Nothing dies, not even life which gives up one form only to resume another. No good action, no good example dies. it lives forever in our race. While the frame decays and disappears, the deed leaves an indelible stamp, and molds the very thought and will of future generations.”
– Samuel Smiles
32.
“The best help we can give to the suffering is not to take their burden from them, but to call out their best strength, that they may be able to bear the burden.”
33.
“One may live as a conqueror, a king, or a magistrate; but he must die as a man.”
– Daniel Webster
34.
“Art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.
– Pablo Picasso
35. Immerse Yourself
“The fact is that in order to do any thing in this world worth doing, we must not stand shivering on the bank thinking of the cold and the danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.”
– Sydney Smith
36.
“The first test of a truly great man is his humility.”
– John Ruskin
37.
“You will forever be my always.”
38.
“Physicists believe the separation between past, present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one.”
– Albert Einstein.
39.
“The time to be frightened is when evils can be remedied; when they cannot be fully remedied they must be faced with courage.”
– Winston Churchill
40.
“Not for ourselves, but for others,” is the grand law inscribed on every part of creation.”
– Edward Payson
41.
“Blessed is the man who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. Know thy work, and do it; and work at it like Hercules. One monster there is in the world, the idle man.”
– Thomas Carlyle
42.
“God does not give excellence to men but as the reward of labor.”
– Sir Joshua Reynolds
43.
“No man is born into the world whose work is not born with him. There is always work, and tools to work with, for those who will.”
– H.W. Beecher
44.
“A man can succeed at almost anything for which he has unlimited enthusiasm.”
– Charles Schwab
45.
“Kings and their subjects, masters and slaves, find a common level in two places – at the foot of the cross, and in the grave.”
– C.C. Colton
46.
“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
– Louisa May Alcott
47.
“Life as we call it, is nothing but the boundless ocean of existence as it comes upon shore.”
– Adapted from OW Holmes (Life as we call it, is nothing but the edge of the boundless ocean of existence when it comes upon soundings.)
48.
“Life is before you, not earthly life alone, but life – a thread running interminably through the warp of eternity.”
– J.G. Holland
49.
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk in my garden forever.”
– Alfred Tennyson
50.
“Every day should be distinguished by at least one particular act of love.”
– Lavater
51.
“There is no human life so poor and small that is does not contain a divine possibility.”
52.
“Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm. It is the real allegory of the tale of Orpheus; it moves stones and charms brutes. It is the genius of sincerity and truth accomplishes no victories without it.”
– Edward Bulwer-Lytton
53.
“Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experiment uncertain, and judgment difficult.”
– Hippocrates
54.
“A few years from now we will be beneath the soil; but the cliffs will stand, as now, facing the ocean, incessantly lashed by its waves, yet unshaken, immovable; and other eyes will gaze upon them for their brief day of life, and then they, too, will close.”
– Adapted from H.P. Liddon
55.
“The strongest friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame.”
– Adapted from Charles Caleb Colton
56.
“We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.”
– Charles Kingsley
57.
“This earth will be looked back on like a lowly home, and this life of ours be remembered like a short apprenticeship to duty.”
– WM. Mountford
58.
“Always be doing good things, and pay no mind if they are little things. This is the secret of a happy life.”
59.
“Most people would succeed in small things if they were not troubled with great ambitions.”
– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
60.
“A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you, and were helped by you, will remember you when forget-me-nots are withered. Carve your name on hearts, and not on marble.”
– C.H. Spurgeon
61.
“Of all earthly music, that which reaches furthest into heaven is the music of a loving heart.”
62.
“I have often had occasion to observe, that a warm blundering man does more for the world than a frigid wise man.”
– Richard Cecil
63.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
– George Bernard Shaw
64.
“No one is so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.”
– Henry David Thoreau
65.
“How can man understand God, since he does not yet understand his own mind, with which he endeavors to understand All?”
66.
“Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.”
– Benjamin Franklin
67.
“Do one thing at a time, and do that one thing as if your life depended upon it.”
68.
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
– Confucius
69.
“No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
70.
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in.”
– Abraham Lincoln
71.
“Everything has its beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
– Confucius
72.
“Some people, no matter how old they get, never lose their beauty – they merely move it from their faces into their hearts.”
– Martin Buxbaum
73.
“There is no religion without mysteries. God Himself is the great secret of Nature.”
– Chateaubriand
74.
“The greatest discovery of all time is that a person can change his future by merely changing his attitude.”
– Oprah Winfrey
75.
“The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness.”
– Montaigne
76.
“The whole track of history is marked with the ruin of empires which having been founded in injustice, or perpetuated by wrong, were ultimately destroyed.”
77.
“It is not by change of place that we can come nearer to Him who is in every place, but by the cultivation of pure desires and virtuous habits.”
– St. Augustine
78.
“It is not so bad a thing to grow old; it is only getting a little nearer home; a little nearer to immortal youth.”
– A.H.K.
79.
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.”
– Mark Twain
80.
“The soul that perpetually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful.”
– Parke Godwin
81.
“Success is never final. Failure is never fatal. It’s courage that counts.”
– John Wooden
82.
“Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.”
– Confucius
83.
“As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
84.
“The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”
– Mark Twain
85.
“You find yourself refreshed by the presence of cheerful people. Why not make earnest effort to confer that pleasure on others?”
– L.M. Child
86.
“No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.”
– Plato
87.
“Our death is not an end if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.”
– Albert Einstein
88.
“The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing.”
– Socrates
89.
“Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.”
– Albert Einstein
90.
“Children need role models more than critics.”
91.
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
92.
“Kindness has converted more sinners than either zeal, eloquence, or learning.”
– F.W. Faber
93.
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
94.
“War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.”
– Thomas Mann
95.
“We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?”
96.
“A happy family is but an earlier heaven.”
– George Bernard Shaw
97.
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
– Aristotle
98.
“Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.”
– Lao Tzu
99.
“The reward of fulfilling one duty is the power to fulfill another.”
– George Eliot
100.
“Labor to keep alive in your breast that little spark of celestial fire, called conscience.”
– George Washington
