Life Celebration Quotes
Crafted with the reader in mind, this collection is clearly divided by themes:
Abraham Lincoln
No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar.
Agatha Christie
Very few of us are what we seem.
Albert Camus
The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.
Albert Einstein
Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.
A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Aldous Huxley
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.
Anaïs Nin
My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with
exactly who and what I am. To take pride in my thoughts, my
appearance, my talents, my flaws and to stop this incessant
worrying that I can’t be loved as I am.
Bertrand Russell
Make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life.
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think – in fact they do so.
Bob Marley
The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he
acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those
around him positively.
Buddha
Doubt everything. Find your own light.
Carl Jung
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.
I must also have a dark side if I am to be whole.
The most dangerous psychological mistake is the projection of the shadow on to others; this is the root of almost all conflicts.
Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.
Carl Sagan
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
Deepak Chopra
Passivity is the same as defending injustice.
Ernest Hemingway
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Epictetus
Books are the training weights of the mind.
You become what you give your attention to.
Be discriminating about what images and ideas you permit into your mind. If you yourself don’t choose what thoughts and images you expose yourself to someone else will, and their motives may not be the highest.
The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.
If you hear that someone is speaking ill of you, instead of trying to defend yourself you should say, “He obviously does not know me very well, since there are so many other faults he could have mentioned.”
Erich Fromm
Man’s main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
Franz Kafka
Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.
Frida Kahlo
Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain.
Friedrich Nietzsche
There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.
A thinker sees his own actions as experiments and questions-as attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.
The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.
I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.
And if your friend does evil to you, say to him, ''I forgive you for what you did to me, but how can I forgive you for what you did to yourself?
Why not share this as a heartwarming gift?
Georgia O'Keeffe
Where I was born and where and how I have lived is unimportant. It is what I have done with where I have been that should be of interest.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Nothing in this world is harder than speaking the truth, nothing is easier than flattery.
A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying - to others and to yourself.
Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.
If you are ever tempted to look for outside approval, realize that you have compromised your integrity.
There is nothing more alluring to man than freedom of conscience, but neither is there anything more agonizing.
Your worst sin is that you have destroyed and betrayed yourself for nothing.
To go wrong in one's own way is better than to go right in someone else's.
George Bernard Shaw
Attention and activity lead to mistakes as well as to successes; but a life spent in making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
Two things define you: Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.
George Carlin
I could never understand ethnic or national pride. Because to me, pride should be reserved for something you achieve or attain on your own, not something that happens by accident of birth. Being Irish isn’t a skill, it’s a fucking genetic accident. You wouldn’t say “I’m proud to be 5’11”. I’m proud to have a predisposition for colon cancer.” So why the fuck would you be proud to be Irish, or proud to be Italian, or American or anything?
Henry David Thoreau
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you've imagined. As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.
Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.
Hermann Hesse
I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?
I have no right to call myself one who knows. I was one who seeks, and I still am, but I no longer seek in the stars or in books; I'm beginning to hear the teachings of my blood pulsing within me. My story isn't pleasant, it's not sweet and harmonious like the invented stories; it tastes of folly and bewilderment, of madness and dream, like the life of all people who no longer want to lie to themselves.
Hunter S. Thompson
So we shall let the reader answer this question for himself: who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed?
(Jeff) “The Dude” Lebowski
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
John Lennon
Being honest may not get you a lot of friends but it’ll always get you the right ones.
Khalil Gibran
Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.
When I wrote on my door: Leave your hypocrisy outside before you come in. Not a soul dared to visit me or open my door.
James Baldwin
It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
Jean Jacques Rousseau
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little. It is plain than an ignorant person thinks everything he does know important, and he tells it to everybody. But a well-educated man is not so ready to display his learning; he would have too much to say, and he sees that there is much more to be said, so he holds his peace.
John Cleese
The biggest advantage of extremism is that it makes you feel good because it provides you with enemies. When you have enemies, you can pretend that all the badness in the whole world is in your enemies and all the goodness in the whole world is in you.”
If you “have a lot of anger and resentment in you anyway,” you can justify your own uncivilized behavior because these enemies of yours are such very bad persons, and that if it wasn’t for them, you’d actually be good-natured and courteous and rational all the time. Sign on with the hard left, and you’ll receive their list of authorized enemies: almost all kinds of authority, especially the police, the City, Americans, judges, multinational corporations, public schools, furriers, newspaper owners, fox hunters, generals, class traitors — and of course, moderates.
If you prefer the “hard right,” they have a list of their own, one including noisy minority groups, unions, Russia, weirdos, demonstrators, welfare sponges, meddlesome clergy, peaceniks, the BBC, strikers, social workers, communists — and of course, moderates.
As an extremist, you can strut around abusing people and telling them you could eat them for breakfast and still think of yourself as a champion of the truth, a fighter for the greater good, and not the rather sad, paranoid schizoid that you really are.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
You have to be your own teacher.
The root of all understanding lies in understanding yourself.
What is important is not a philosophy of life but to observe what is actually taking place in our daily life, inwardly and outwardly.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult.
Mahatma Gandhi
God has no religion.
Nobody can hurt me without my permission.
Marcus Aurelius
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.
Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one.
Pain is neither unendurable nor unending, as long as you remember its limits and do not exaggerate it in your imagination.
Never value anything as profitable that compels you to break your promise, to lose your self-respect, to hate any man, to suspect, to curse, to act the hypocrite, to desire anything that needs walls and curtains.
Whenever you are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What fault of mine most nearly resembles the one I am about to criticize?
The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.
There is but one thing of real value – to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men.
Margaret Atwood
Men often ask me, 'Why are your female characters so paranoid?' It’s not paranoia. It’s recognition of their situation.
All these things set a standard of behavior that you don’t necessarily wish to live up to. If you’re put on a pedestal you’re supposed to behave like a pedestal type of person. Pedestals actually have a limited circumference. Not much room to move around.
Marie Curie
Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.
I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.
Mark Twain
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect).
Maya Angelou
Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.
Michel Foucault
It’s amazing how people like judging.
Nikola Tesla
I don't care that they stole my idea… I care that they don't have any of their own.
Pablo Picasso
Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success.
Paul Gauguin
The self-esteem one acquires and a well-earned feeling of one's strength are the only consolation in this world. Income, after all, most brutes have that.
Plato
You should not honour men more than truth.
No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.
Excellence is not a gift, but a skill that takes practice. We do not act ‘rightly’ because we are ‘excellent’, in fact we achieve ‘excellence’ by acting rightly.
Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses.
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.
Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
René Descartes
Conquer yourself rather than the world.
Robert Anton Wilson
You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.
Richard Feynman
Nobody ever figures out what life is all about, and it doesn’t matter. Explore the world. Nearly everything is really interesting if you go into it deeply enough.
Seneca
No man was ever wise by chance.
A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man be perfected without trials.
All cruelty springs from weakness.
Do battle with yourself; if you have the will to conquer anger, it cannot conquer you.
Prove your words by your deeds.
Not how long, but how well you have lived is the main thing.
Socrates
The shortest and surest way to live with honour in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice of them.
The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
The easiest and noblest way is not to be crushing others, but to be improving yourselves.
The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.
It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.
Steve Jobs
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Vincent van Gogh
I try more and more to be myself, caring relatively little whether people approve or disapprove.
Voltaire
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.
Walt Disney
All the adversity I've had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me... You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.
William Shakespeare
To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.
Why not keep this resource at your fingertips?
Other Voices
For these sections without caricature the quote comes first, the cited person after. In case you are using text-to-speech be aware.
When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.
African Proverb
Recognize what you can and cannot control. You determine your reaction to a crisis. Ignore people dominated by their own negative emotions. Master yourself and aim to be virtuous. Learn to move on.
Alexis Carrel
It's amazing how many people are ashamed of their body and how few of their minds.
Andrzej Saramonowicz
To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard. Become a saint of your own province and your own consciousness.
Allen Ginsberg
One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.
Charles M. Blow
You have no enemies, you say? Alas, my friend, the boast is poor. He who has mingled in the fray of duty that the brave endure, must have made foes. If you have none, small is the work that you have done. You’ve hit no traitor on the hip. You’ve dashed no cup from perjured lip. You’ve never turned the wrong to right. You’ve been a coward in the fight.
Charles Mackay
One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.
Chinua Achebe
It’s easy to judge. It’s more difficult to understand. Understanding requires compassion, patience, and a willingness to believe that good hearts sometimes choose poor methods. Through judging, we separate. Through understanding, we grow.
Doe Zantamata
The brave man is he who overcomes not only his enemies but his pleasures.
Democritus
Once you’ve accepted your flaws, no one can use them against you.
George R. R. Martin
If you accomplish something good with hard work, the labour passes quickly, but the good endures. If you do something shameful in pursuit of pleasure, the pleasure passes quickly, but the shame endures.
Gaius Musonius Rufus
I’m big and you’re little, and big protects little.
Halle Berry, Bruised
I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning.
Haruki Murakami
Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.
Hypatia
One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.
Immanuel Kant
The calm man, having learned how to govern himself, knows how to adapt himself to others; and they, in turn, reverence his spiritual strength, and feel that they can learn of him and rely upon him. The more tranquil a man becomes, the greater is his success, his influence, his power for good.
James Allen
For this is the journey that men make: to find themselves. If they fail in this, it doesn't matter much what else they find. Money, position, fame, many loves, revenge are all of little consequence, and when the tickets are collected at the end of the ride they are tossed into the bin marked FAILURE.
But if a man happens to find himself - if he knows what he can be depended upon to do, the limits of his courage, the positions from which he will no longer retreat, the degree to which he can surrender his inner life to some woman, the secret reservoirs of his determination, the extent of his dedication, the depth of his feeling for beauty, his honest and unpostured goals - then he has found a mansion which he can inhabit with dignity all the days of his life.
James A. Michener
If we’re growing, we’re always going to be outside our comfort.
John C. Maxwell
Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
John Wooden
When you have something to say, silence is a lie.
Jordan B. Peterson
The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.
Joseph Joubert
I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil.
Malcolm X
If we are not ashamed to think it, we should not be ashamed to say it.
It is the peculiar quality of a fool to perceive the faults of others and to forget his own.
The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
Think lightly of yourself and deeply of the world.
Miyamoto Musashi,
It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
Noel Coward
The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism.
Norman Vincent Peale
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The mark of a civilized man is his willingness to re-examine his most cherished beliefs.
Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.
Paulo Coelho
Success is no accident. It is hard work, perseverance, learning, studying, sacrifice and most of all, love of what you are doing or learning to do.
Pele
This is my doctrine: Give to every human being every right that you claim for yourself. Keep your mind open to the influences of nature. Receive new thoughts with hospitality. Let us advance.
Robert Green Ingersoll
Beware of overconcern for money, or position, or glory. Someday you will meet a man who cares for none of these things. Then you will know how poor you are.
Rudyard Kipling
Train tirelessly to defeat the greatest enemy, yourself, and to discover the greatest master, yourself.
She Su Yan
Do not judge by appearances; a rich heart may be under a poor coat.
Scottish Proverb
The only crime is pride.
Rather fail with hour than succeed by fraud.
Sophocles
The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.
Sigmund Freud
A Stoic is someone who transforms fear into prudence, pain into transformation, mistakes into initiation, and desire into undertaking.
Taleb Nassim Nicholas
It is not who is right, but what is right, that is important.
Thomas Huxley
He who dares not offend cannot be honest.
Thomas Paine
Half of the harm that is done in the world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
T.S. Eliot
Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.
Warren Buffett
The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind.
William Blake
Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure.
William Saroyan
