213 Deep Quotes About Life That You Must Read

The best deep life quotes that you’ll ever see

Life can be such a rollercoaster, right? One minute we’re flying high, feeling unstoppable, and the next, we’re dealing with those tough turns and bumps. It’s part of the journey.

But through all the highs and lows, there’s a simple truth that often helps us keep moving forward—sometimes, it’s hidden in the words of a deep life quote.

These deep quotes about life make us pause, reflect, and see things in a completely different light. They can help us find meaning in the chaos or remind us that we’re not walking this path alone.

Whether you’re feeling on top of the world or struggling through a tough moment, deep life quotes offer a dose of inspiration that’s just what you need.

So if you’re looking for some wisdom, motivation, or just a little moment of reflection, I’ve put together a list of my favorite deep life quotes to share with you.

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My favorite deep quotes about life

1. “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin
2. “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
3. “Nothing will work unless you do.” – Maya Angelou
4. “To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.” – Oscar Wilde
5. “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
6. “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” – Napoleon Hill
7. “The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.” – Walt Disney
8. “How wild it was, to let it be.” – Cheryl Strayed
9. “I don’t think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains.” – Anne Frank
10. “If you always do what you’ve done, you’ll always get what you’ve got.” – Henry Ford
11. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.” – Oscar Wilde
12. “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” – Maya Angelou
13. “You must find the place inside yourself where nothing is impossible.” – Deepak Chopra
14. “The future starts today, not tomorrow.” – Pope John Paul II
15. “Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.” – Harper Lee
16. “Nothing is more honorable than a grateful heart.” – Seneca
17. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible!’” – Audrey Hepburn
18. “A positive attitude can really make dreams come true—it did for me.” – David Bailey
19. “Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once.” – Drew Houston
20. “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
21. “Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life.” – Buddha
22. “It’s not that I’m so smart. It’s just that I stay with problems longer.” – Albert Einstein
23. “Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully.” – Albert Camus
24. “Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
25. “People do not lack strength; they lack will.” – Victor Hugo

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26. “Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead.” – Hans Christian Andersen
27. “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” – Aristotle
28. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.” – Margaret Atwood
29. “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
30. “Things don’t have to change the world to be important.” – Steve Jobs
31. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
32. “Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.” – Og Mandino
33. “We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.” – Rick Warren
34. “Knowing what must be done does away with fear.” – Rosa Parks
35. “You, me or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life.” – Rocky Balboa
36. “Your time is limited. Don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs
37. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” – Benjamin Franklin
38. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” – Steve Jobs
39. “Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
40. “True nobility is being superior to your former self.” – W.L. Sheldon
41. “The only journey is the journey within.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
42. “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” – Walt Disney
43. “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” – Arthur Ashe
44. “I was taught that the way of progress was neither swift nor easy.” – Marie Curie
45. “Accept no one’s definition of your life, define yourself.” – Harvey Fierstein
46. “There is no perfection, only life.” – Milan Kundera
47. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
48. “One person can make a difference, and everyone should try.” – John F. Kennedy
49. “Living might mean taking chances, but they’re worth taking.” – Lee Ann Womack
50. “Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness.” – C. S. Lewis

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51. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” – William James
52. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
53. “I go to seek a Great Perhaps.” – François Rabelais
54. “Always go with your passions. Never ask yourself if it’s realistic or not.” – Deepak Chopra
55. “We do not remember days, we remember moments.” – Cesare Pavese
56. “In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take.” – Lewis Carroll
57. “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.” – Flannery O’Connor
58. “Success is falling nine times and getting up 10.” – Jon Bon Jovi
59. “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.” – C.S. Lewis
60. “You can’t help what you feel, but you can help how you behave.” – Margaret Atwood
61. “When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.” – Malala Yousafzai
62. “Dream big and dare to fail.” – Norman Vaughan
63. “Be persistent and never give up hope.” – George Lucas
64. “Forever is composed of nows.” – Emily Dickinson
65. “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Oprah Winfrey
66. “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.” – Bruce Lee
67. “Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
68. “It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville
69. “No one is you, and that is your power.” – Dave Grohl
70. “Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.” – Samuel Johnson
71. “There are so many great things in life; why dwell on negativity?” – Zendaya
72. “Yesterday is but today’s memory and tomorrow is today’s dream.” – Khalil Gibran
73. “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
74. “You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” – Oprah Winfrey
75. “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” – Bill Bradley

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76. “What we think, we become.” – Buddha
77. “All serious daring starts from within.” – Eudora Welty
78. “Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.” – Sam Levenson
79. “Do anything, but let it produce joy.” – Henry Miller
80. “Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.” – Charles Kettering
81. “Sometimes the questions are complicated, and the answers are simple.” – Dr. Seuss
82. “I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” – Esteé Lauder
83. “Behind every great woman … is another great woman.” – Kate Hodges
84. “Life shrinks or expands according to one’s courage.” – Anaïs Nin
85. “The best way out is through.” – Robert Frost
86. “You have to believe in yourself when no one else does.” – Serena Williams
87. “With each passing day, I didn’t lose hope. I fought to have more.” – Amy Tan
88. “I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.” – Oliver Sacks
89. “It’s a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations.” – Danny Boyle
90. “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” – Margaret Fuller
91. “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.” – Maya Angelou
92. “You don’t have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.” – Zig Ziglar
93. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
94. “Life does not have to be perfect to be wonderful.” – Annette Funicello
95. “Integrity is doing the right thing, even when no one is watching.” – C.S. Lewis
96. “The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot.” – Michael Altshuler
97. “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein
98. “The temptation of the age is to look good without being good.” – Brennan Manning
99. “If you don’t have any shadows you’re not in the light.” – Lady Gaga
100. “The best proof of love is trust.” – Joyce Brothers

101. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
102. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle
103. “Life is tough my darling, but so are you.” – Stephanie Bennett Henry
104. “People respond well to those that are sure of what they want.” – Anna Wintour
105. “Where there is love, there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
106. “Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.” – George Halas
107. “Bravery is acknowledging your fear and doing it anyway.” – Cheryl Strayed
108. “Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” – Will Rogers
109. “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
110. “Life is a daring adventure or it is nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
111. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.” – Albert Einstein
112. “Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.” – Sun Tzu
113. “If you own this story you get to write the ending.” – Brené Brown
114. “You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.” – Amy Poehler
115. “Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” – Gloria Steinem
116. “None but ourselves can free our minds.” – Bob Marley
117. “There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.” – George Sand
118. “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.” – Ruth Bader Ginsburg
119. “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.” – Charles Dickens
120. “You may delay, but time will not.” – Benjamin Franklin
121. “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” – Babe Ruth
122. “All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” – J.R.R. Tolkien
123. “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West
124. “Passion first and everything will fall into place.” – Holly Holm
125. “Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.” – Emily Dickinson

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126. “There is no failure except failure to serve one’s purpose.” – Henry Ford
127. “Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.” – Tim Notke
128. “Time doesn’t take away from friendship, nor does separation.” – Tennessee Williams
129. “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” – Malcolm X
130. “Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” – Coco Chanel
131. “Once you face your fear, nothing is ever as hard as you think.” – Olivia Newton-John
132. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
133. “In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.” – Anne Frank
134. “When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go.” – Carol Burnett
135. “The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the greatest intention.” – Kahlil Gibran
136. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” – William Shakespeare
137. “You do not find the happy life. You make it.” – Camilla Eyring Kimball
138. “There are no regrets in life. Just lessons.” – Jennifer Aniston
139. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
140. “If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
141. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
142. “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” – Confucius
143. “Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” – Abraham Lincoln
144. “If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Wayne Dyer
145. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller
146. “The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
147. “Perfect is boring. Human is beautiful.” – Tyra Banks
148. “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
149. “Running water never grows stale. So you just have to keep on flowing.” – Bruce Lee
150. “If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.” – Toni Morrison

151. “We pass through this world but once.” – Stephen Jay Gould
152. “Refuse to be average. Let your heart soar as high as it will.” – A. W. Tozer
153. “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future.” – Oscar Wilde
154. “Either you run the day or the day runs you.” – Jim Rohn
155. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.” – John D. Rockefeller
156. “Nobody has ever measured, even poets, how much a heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald
157. “The soul is stronger than its surroundings.” – William James
158. “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less.” – C.S. Lewis
159. “Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments.” – Rose Kennedy
160. “Find out who you are and do it on purpose.” – Dolly Parton
161. “Faith is the highest passion in a human being.” – Søren Kierkegaard
162. “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
163. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
164. “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain
165. “Chop your own wood, and it will warm you twice.” – Henry Ford
166. “We need not wait to see what others do.” – Mahatma Gandhi
167. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas Edison
168. “Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.” – Mahatma Gandhi
169. “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
170. “Life has no limitations, except the ones you make.” – Les Brown
171. “Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.” – Toni Morrison
172. “Rise above the storm, and you will find the sunshine.” – Mario Fernandez
173. “A problem is a chance for you to do your best.” – Duke Ellington
174. “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” – Zora Neale Hurston
175. “Life is a long lesson in humility.” – James M. Barrie

176. “Be the best of whatever you are.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
177. “Get busy living or get busy dying.” – Stephen King
178. “A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.” – Joyce Meyer
179. “No one changes the world who isn’t obsessed.” – Billie Jean King
180. “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca
181. “Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.” – Anne Frank
182. “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.” – Henry Ford
183. “If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” – Dolly Parton
184. “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
185. “One must be something to do something.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
186. “You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.” – Maya Angelou
187. “Let us think only of the good days that are to come.” – Agatha Christie
188. “Everyone’s dream can come true if you just stick to it and work hard.” – Serena Williams
189. “Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to the error that counts.” – Nikki Giovanni
190. “If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.” – Rick Riordan
191. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray
192. “The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” – Robert Byrne
193. “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
194. “A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for.” – Albert Einstein

195. “Love the life you live. Live the life you love.” – Bob Marley
196. “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott
197. “The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work.” – Harry Golden
198. “We don’t see things the way they are. We see them the way we are.” – Talmud
199. “Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.” – Hafez
200. “When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu
201. “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
202. “Turn your wounds into wisdom.” – Oprah Winfrey
203. “You’ve got to be in it to win it.” – Tony Robbins
204. “He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because he fears.” – Michel De Montaigne
205. “A man falls in love through his eyes, a woman through her ears.” – Les Dawson
206. “The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.” – Frank Herbert
207. “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
208. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle
209. “Passion is the log that keeps the fire of purpose blazing.” – Oprah Winfrey
210. “A minute’s success pays the failure of years.” – Robert Browning
211. “Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.” – Emily Brontë
212. “A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.” – Maya Angelou
213. “We become what we think about most of the time.” – Earl Nightingale

What are meaningful quotes about life, and why should I read them?

Meaningful quotes about life are words that carry deep wisdom and insight, often coming from people who’ve lived through all kinds of experiences.

They touch on topics like love, growth, challenges, and happiness, offering perspective or guidance when we need it most.

These quotes aren’t just nice to read—they have the power to spark a shift in our mindset, remind us of what truly matters, or simply make us feel understood.

So, why should you read them? Well, life can get overwhelming, and sometimes we just need a reminder to keep going, to focus on what’s important, or to find meaning in our everyday moments.

A good quote can do all of that—and more. It’s like a little whisper of wisdom that resonates with our hearts and helps us navigate the ups and downs with more clarity and peace.

Whether you’re seeking inspiration, comfort, or just a bit of guidance, meaningful life quotes can help guide you through and offer a fresh perspective.

Did you like any of these deep quotes about life?