Deep Meaningful Quotes: Those that cause my thoughts to wander off on a different path. Or provoke me to think a little bit further (or sometimes a lot). Therefore, in this post, I’d like to share some of the best and most thought-provoking quotes that I’ve discovered over the course of the past ten years or more. In order to make this long post more manageable and accessible, I have separated it into several distinct sections on topics such as life, love (for both yourself and others), and motivation.
I have faith that you will find something in this that will assist you in gaining a fresh viewpoint and making your own life better. And if you are in need of additional inspiration and assistance, then I suggest reading this post filled with quotes on never giving up and this post filled with profound thoughts and quotes on moving forward in life. Both of these posts can be found here. The following are profound sayings and quotes that also include accompanying images. For your convenience, a list of the most notable quotations has been compiled.
Powerful Meaningful Quotes About Life and Happiness
1. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” — James Baldwin
2. “Challenges are what make life interesting. Overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” – Joshua Marine
3. “They say: before you start a war you better know what you’re fighting for.”
4. “Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.” – Barbara Kingsolver
5. “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.” — Rainer Maria Rilke
6. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.” – Oscar Wilde
7. “The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.” — Morrie Schwartz
8. “The reason why we struggle with insecurity is that we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” — Stephen Furtick
9. “When you find no solution to a problem, it’s probably not a problem to be solved, but rather a truth to be accepted.”
10. When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.” — Kahlil Gibran
11. “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” — Soren Kierkegaard
12. “Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass but learning to dance in the rain.”
13. “When a person can’t find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.”
14. “The less you respond to negative people, the more peaceful your life will become.”
15. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” — George Bernard Shaw
16. “Work for a cause, not for applause. Live life to express, not to impress.”
17. “If it won’t matter in 5 years, don’t spend more than 5 minutes getting angry about it.”
18. “Life is like a piano. The white keys represent happiness and the black shows sadness. But as you go through life’s journey, remember that the black keys also make music.”
19. “You have to let people go. Everyone who is in your life are meant to be in your journey but not all of them are meant to stay till the end.”
20. “Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.” — M. Scott Peck
21. “It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth – and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up – that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it was the only one we had.” — Elizabeth Kubler-Ross
22. “Be strong but not rude. Be kind but not weak. Be bold but don’t bully. Be humble but not timid. Be confident but not arrogant.”
23. “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.”
24. “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” – Stephanie Perkins
25. “The loneliest people are the kindest. The saddest people smile the brightest. The most damaged people are the wisest. All because they do not wish to see anyone else suffer the way they do.”
26. “If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” — Jim Rohn
27. “Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.” — Joseph Campbell
28. “The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
29. “Hurting someone can be as easy as throwing a stone in the sea. But do you have any idea how deep that stone can go?”
30. “If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.” — Barbara De Angelis
31. “Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a step back and get a little bit of a different perspective and re-evaluate things.” — Austin Aries
32. “You were never created to live depressed, defeated, guilty, condemned, ashamed or unworthy. You were created to be victorious.”
33. “I just want people to take a step back, take a deep breath and actually look at something with a different perspective. But most people will never do that.” – Brian McKnight
34. “Pain changes people, it makes them trust less, overthink more, and shut people out.”
35. “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” — Anaïs Nin
36. “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.” — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
37. “The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton
38. “Someone once asked me, “Why do you always insist on taking the hard road?” I replied, “Why do you assume I see two roads?”
39. “Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.” – Anne Frank
40. “When you adopt the viewpoint that there is nothing that exists that is not part of you, that there is no one who exists who is not part of you, that any judgment you make is self-judgment, that any criticism you level is self-criticism, you will wisely extend to yourself an unconditional love that will be the light of the world.” — Harry Palmer
41. “Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.” — James Thurber
42. “The secret to happiness is to never expect anything from anyone, then you will never be disappointed.”
43. “For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.” — Seneca
44. “Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.”
Deep Motivational Quotes
46. “What makes things memorable is that they are meaningful, significant, colorful.” – Joshua Foer
47. “Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.” — Wayne Dyer
48. “Believe in yourself, take on your challenges, dig deep within yourself to conquer fears. Never let anyone bring you down. You got to keep going.” – Chantal Sutherland
49. “A true test of character isn’t how you are on your best days but how you act on your worst days.”
50. “Sleep doesn’t help if it’s your soul that’s tired.”
51. “It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life.” – Bryant H. McGill
52. “It’s been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.” — L.M. Montgomery
53. “You must listen to your heart and follow it or it will find a million ways to remind you that there is something missing.”
54. “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circ*mstances.” — Martha Washington
55. “Having a soft heart in a cruel world is courage, not weakness.”
56. “If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap. If you want happiness for a day — go fishing. If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune. If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.” — Chinese Proverb
57. “I have learned that there is more power in a good strong hug than in a thousand meaningful words.” – Ann Hood
58. “You have to fight through some bad days to earn the best days of your life.”
59. “Surround yourself with the dreamers and the doers, the believers and thinkers, but most of all, surround yourself with those who see greatness within you, even when you don’t see it yourself.”
60. “The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.” — Stephanie Perkins
61. “The biggest mistake you could ever make is being too afraid to make one.”
62. “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” — Rumi
63. “Love is a friendship set to music.” — Joseph Campbell
64. “The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.” — James Oppenheim
65. “When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.” — Winston Churchill
66. “If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.” — Epicurus
67. “The longer I go about living, I see it’s the relationship that is most meaningful.” – William Shatner
68. “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” – Epicurus
69. “Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.” — Vincent Van Gogh
70. “When you are your own best friend, you don’t endlessly seek out relationships, friendships, and validation from the wrong sources because you realize that the only approval and validation you need is your own.” – Mandy Hale
71. “A meaningful silence is always better than a meaningless words.”
72. “On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do.” — Eckhart Tolle
73. “The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be.” — Marcel Pagnol
74. “Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.” — Heracl*tus
75. “It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
76. “You know it’s love when all you want is that person to be happy, even if you’re not part of their happiness.”* — Julia Roberts
77. “Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful.” — Martin Yan
78. “Happiness is within. It has nothing to do with how much applause you get or how many people praise you. Happiness comes when you believe that you have done something truly meaningful.” – Martin Yan
79. “Don’t rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can’t love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.” — Stacey Charter
80. “The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.” — Henry Miller
81. “Sometimes what you’re most afraid of doing is the very thing that will set you free.”
82. “You just decide what your values are in life and what you are going to do, and then you feel like you count, and that makes life worth living. It makes my life meaningful.” – Annie Lennox
83. “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” — Lord Byron
84. “Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.’” — Erich Fromm
85. “Together we can face any challenges as deep as the ocean and as high as the sky.” – Sonia Gandhi
86. “Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.”
87. “The art of love is largely the art of persistence.” — Albert Ellis
88. “The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.” — Helen Keller
89. “If you would be loved, love, and be loveable.” — Benjamin Franklin
90. “Love is an untamed force. When we try to control it, it destroys us. When we try to imprison it, it enslaves us. When we try to understand it, it leaves us feeling lost and confused.” — Paulo Coelho
91. “Don’t underestimate the value of Doing Nothing, of just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.” — Winnie the Pooh
92. “Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
93. “Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments.” – Bryant H. McGill
94. “Since loving is about knowing, we have more meaningful love relationships when we know each other and it takes time to know each other.” – Bell Hooks
95. “Life is the most exciting opportunity we have. But we have one shot. You graduate from college once, and that’s it. You’re going out of that nest. And you have to find that courage that’s deep, deep, deep in there. Every step of the way.” – Andrew Shue
96. “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” — Albert Einstein
97. “If you love someone tell them. Because hearts are often broken by words left unspoken.”
98. “Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it’s there if you look deep.” – Taraji P. Henson
99. “I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.” — Roy Croft
Deep Meaningful Inspirational Quotes
101. “Perhaps they are not stars, but rather openings in heaven where the love of our lost ones pours through and shines down upon us to let us know they are happy.” — Eskimo Proverb
102. “Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good.” – Vaclav Havel
103. “The pleasure which we most rarely experience gives us greatest delight.” — Epictetus
104. “Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
105. “No reason to stay is a good reason to go.”
106. “Just because my path is different doesn’t mean I’m lost.”
107. “This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.” – Dalai Lama
108. “I walk in the darkness so that others may see the light!”
109. “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” — Marthe Troly-Curtin
110. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Maya Angelou
111. “A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.” — Henrik Ibsen
112. “There will be times in your life when you have to choose between being loved and being respected. Always pick being respected. That love without respect was always fleeting. But that respect could grow into real, lasting love.”
113. “Men spend their lives in anticipations, in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other – it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.” — Charles Caleb Colton
114. “Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.” — Epicurus
115. “Just because it didn’t last forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t worth your while.” — Unknown
116. “Once someone’s hurt you, it’s harder to relax around them, harder to think of them as safe to love. But it doesn’t stop you from wanting them.” – Holly Black
117. “Life is difficult. Not just for me or other ALS patients. Life is difficult for everyone. Finding ways to make life meaningful and purposeful and rewarding, doing the activities that you love and spending time with the people that you love – I think that’s the meaning of this human experience.” – Steve Gleason
118. “Do what you have to do until you can do what you want.” – Oprah Winfrey
119. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” — Buddha
120. “On the other side of fear lies freedom.”
121. “There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.” — Seneca
122. “When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.” — Helen Keller
