c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That's its balance.
— Osho, Everyday Osho: 365 Daily Meditations for the Here and Now
Often, it’s not about becoming a new person, but becoming the person you were meant to be, and already are, but don’t know how to be.
— Heath L. Buckmaster, Box of Hair: A Fairy Tale
Nothing can disturb your peace of mind unless you allow it to.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
He was mastered by the sheer surging of life, the tidal wave of being, the perfect joy of each separate muscle, joint, and sinew in that it was everything that was not death, that it was aglow and rampant, expressing itself in movement, flying exultantly under the stars.
— Jack London, The Call of the Wild
We'd start slow, the way we always did, because the run, and the game, could go on for awhile. Maybe even forever.That was the thing. You just never knew. Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
If you have a strong purpose in life, you don't have to be pushed. Your passion will drive you there.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Never stop dreaming, never stop believing, never give up, never stop trying, and never stop learning.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
I can't decide whether I'm a good girl wrapped up in a bad girl, or if I'm a bad girl wrapped up in a good girl. And that's how I know I'm a woman!
— C. JoyBell C.
To be creative means to be in love with life. You can be creative only if you love life enough that you want to enhance its beauty, you want to bring a little more music to it, a little more poetry to it, a little more dance to it.
— Osho
Never lose hope. Storms make people stronger and never last forever.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
When you run with the Doctor, it feels like it'll never end. But however hard you try you can't run forever. Everybody knows that everybody dies and nobody knows it like the Doctor. But I do think that all the skies of all the worlds might just turn dark if he ever for one moment, accepts it. Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. (In the library, the Doctor walks back to the TARDIS. He stops, looking at the doors. Then he raises his hand, and stands there poised like that for a long moment. Finally he snaps his fingers. The doors open. He smiles slowly and walks in, joining Donna. Then he snaps his fingers again, and the doors close. River's voice continues over this.) Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair, and the Doctor comes to call... everybody lives.
— Steven Moffat
When you do the right thing, you get the feeling of peace and serenity associated with it. Do it again and again.
— Roy T. Bennett
Smile more. Smiling can make you and others happy.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Whenever something bad happens, keep calm, take a few deep breaths and shift the focus to something positive.
— Roy T. Bennett
You must learn to let go. Release the stress. You were never in control anyway.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Alone we can do so little
—  together we can do so much
I'm the most terrific liar you ever saw in your life. It's awful. If I'm on my way to the store to buy a magazine, even, and somebody asks me where I'm going, I'm liable to say I'm going to the opera. It's terrible.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
I'm not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.
— C. JoyBell C.
When you can live forever what do you live for?
— Stephenie Meyer
Oh the places you'll go! There is fun to be done! There are points to be scored. There are games to be won. And the magical things you can do with that ball will make you the winning-est winner of all.
— Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it's the small things that count.
— Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
I know it seems hard sometimes but remember one thing. Through every dark night, there's a bright day after that. So no matter how hard it get, stick your chest out, keep ya head up.... and handle it.
— Tupac Shakur
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.
— Steve Jobs
Don't ask for guarantees. And don't look to be saved in any one thing, person, machine, or library. Do your own bit of saving, and if you drown, at least die knowing you were heading for shore.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
My father had taught me to be nice first, because you can always be mean later, but once you've been mean to someone, they won't believe the nice anymore. So be nice, be nice, until it's time to stop being nice, then destroy them.
— Laurell K. Hamilton, A Stroke of Midnight
Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel.
— Jean Racine
One swing set, well worn but structurally sound, seeks new home. Make memories with your kid or kids so that someday he or she or they will look into the backyard and feel the ache of sentimentality as desperately as I did this afternoon. It's all fragile and fleeting, dear reader, but with this swing set, your child(ren) will be introduced to the ups and downs of human life gently and safely, and may also learn the most important lesson of all: No matter how hard you kick, no matter how high you get, you can't go all the way around.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Do not wait for the last judgment. It comes every day.
— Albert Camus
Don't be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844
Bottom line is, even if you see 'em coming, you're not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So what are we, helpless? Puppets? No. The big moments are gonna come. You can't help that. It's what you do afterwards that counts. That's when you find out who you are.
— Joss Whedon
There's nothing more embarrassing than to have earned the disfavor of a perceptive animal.
— Michael Chabon, Wonder Boys
You never know what's around the corner. It could be everything. Or it could be nothing. You keep putting one foot in front of the other, and then one day you look back and you've climbed a mountain.
— Tom Hiddleston
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.
— Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
The only way to survive eternity is to be able to appreciate each moment.
— Lauren Kate, Fallen
When the going gets weird, the weird turn professional.
— Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72
I have often wished I had time to cultivate modesty...But I am too busy thinking about myself.
— Edith Sitwell
Don't JustDon't just learn, experience.Don't just read, absorb.Don't just change, transform.Don't just relate, advocate.Don't just promise, prove.Don't just criticize, encourage.Don't just think, ponder.Don't just take, give.Don't just see, feel.Don’t just dream, do. Don't just hear, listen.Don't just talk, act.Don't just tell, show.Don't just exist, live.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Sometimes all a person wants is an empathetic ear
—  all he or she needs is to talk it out. Just offering a listening ear and an understanding heart for his or her suffering can be a big comfort.
Being grateful does not mean that everything is necessarily good. It just means that you can accept it as a gift.
— Roy T. Bennett
You are unique. You have different talents and abilities. You don’t have to always follow in the footsteps of others. And most important, you should always remind yourself that you don't have to do what everyone else is doing and have a responsibility to develop the talents you have been given.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Don’t let others tell you what you can’t do. Don't let the limitations of others limit your vision. If you can remove your self-doubt and believe in yourself, you can achieve what you never thought possible.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
A smile puts you on the right track. A smile makes the world a beautiful place. When you lose your smile, you lose your way in the chaos of life.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Life's as kind as you let it be.
— Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music
Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...It's about learning to dance in the rain.
— Vivian Greene
Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
We’re here, and then we’re gone, and it’s not about the time we’re here, but what we do with the time.
— Rick Yancey, The 5th Wave
Romance novels are birthday cake and life is often peanut butter and jelly. I think everyone should have lots of delicious romance novels lying around for those times when the peanut butter of life gets stuck to the roof of your mouth.
— Janet Evanovich
We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.
— Terence McKenna
Get Off The Scale!You are beautiful. Your beauty, just like your capacity for life, happiness, and success, is immeasurable. Day after day, countless people across the globe get on a scale in search of validation of beauty and social acceptance.Get off the scale! I have yet to see a scale that can tell you how enchanting your eyes are. I have yet to see a scale that can show you how wonderful your hair looks when the sun shines its glorious rays on it. I have yet to see a scale that can thank you for your compassion, sense of humor, and contagious smile. Get off the scale because I have yet to see one that can admire you for your perseverance when challenged in life.It’s true, the scale can only give you a numerical reflection of your relationship with gravity. That’s it. It cannot measure beauty, talent, purpose, life force, possibility, strength, or love. Don’t give the scale more power than it has earned. Take note of the number, then get off the scale and live your life. You are beautiful!
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not.
— Stephen King, The Green Mile
Magic exists. Who can doubt it, when there are rainbows and wildflowers, the music of the wind and the silence of the stars? Anyone who has loved has been touched by magic. It is such a simple and such an extraordinary part of the lives we live.
— Nora Roberts
My life didn't please me, so I created my life.
— Coco Chanel
It is important that we forgive ourselves for making mistakes. We need to learn from our errors and move on.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Happiness is not a goal...it's a by-product of a life well lived.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Sacrifice is a part of life. It's supposed to be. It's not something to regret. It's something to aspire to.
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
There are people who are generic. They make generic responses and they expect generic answers. They live inside a box and they think people who don't fit into their box are weird. But I'll tell you what, generic people are the weird people. They are like genetically-manipulated plants growing inside a laboratory, like indistinguishable faces, like droids. Like ignorance.
— C. JoyBell C.
If you hang out with chickens, you're going to cluck and if you hang out with eagles, you're going to fly.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
I don't want to achieve immortality through my work
—  I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen
Action expresses priorities.
— Mahatma Gandhi
You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.
— Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean, Tears from the depths of some devine despairRise in the heart, and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn fields, And thinking of the days that are no more.
— Alfred Tennyson
Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.
— Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay
Do not let arrogance go to your head and despair to your heart
—  do not let compliments go to your head and criticisms to your heart
When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.
— George Bernard Shaw, Getting Married
Man is a mystery. It needs to be unravelled, and if you spend your whole life unravelling it, don't say that you've wasted time. I am studying that mystery because I want to be a human being.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky
I just wanted to tell you that I understand if you go. It’s okay if you have to leave us. It’s okay if you want to stop fighting.
— Gayle Forman, If I Stay
You do not immortalize the lost by writing about them. Language buries, but does not resurrect.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Everyone you meet is a part of your journey, but not all of them are meant to stay in your life. Some people are just passing through to bring you gifts; either they're blessings or lessons.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Great leaders create more leaders, not followers.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Always have a willing hand to help someone, you might be the only one that does.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
You cannot change what you are, only what you do.
— Philip Pullman, The Golden Compass
Life was meant to be lived, and curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
— Eleanor Roosevelt
Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.
— Tom Robbins
Life ... is a taleTold by an idiot, full of sound and fury,Signifying nothing.
— William Shakespeare, Macbeth
Renew, release, let go. Yesterday’s gone. There’s nothing you can do to bring it back. You can’t “should’ve” done something. You can only DO something. Renew yourself. Release that attachment. Today is a new day!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Growing up happens when you start having things you look back on and wish you could change -Clary Fray
— Cassandra Clare, City of Ashes
No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.
— George Lucas, The Star Wars Trilogy
I feel that life is divided into the horrible and the miserable. That's the two categories. The horrible are like, I don't know, terminal cases, you know, and blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So you should be thankful that you're miserable, because that's very lucky, to be miserable.
— Woody Allen, Annie Hall: Screenplay
Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, "What's in it for me?
— Brian Tracy
How would your life be different if…You walked away from gossip and verbal defamation? Let today be the day…You speak only the good you know of other people and encourage others to do the same.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
It’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you.
— Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
It has always seemed strange to me...The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling, are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest, are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
— John Steinbeck, Cannery Row
Yea, all things live forever, though at times they sleep and are forgotten.
— H. Rider Haggard, She
Very occasionally, if you pay really close attention, life doesn't suck.
— Joss Whedon
I have always, essentially, been waiting. Waiting to become something else, waiting to be that person I always thought I was on the verge of becoming, waiting for that life I thought I would have. In my head, I was always one step away. In high school, I was biding my time until I could become the college version of myself, the one my mind could see so clearly. In college, the post-college “adult” person was always looming in front of me, smarter, stronger, more organized. Then the married person, then the person I’d become when we have kids. For twenty years, literally, I have waited to become the thin version of myself, because that’s when life will really begin.And through all that waiting, here I am. My life is passing, day by day, and I am waiting for it to start. I am waiting for that time, that person, that event when my life will finally begin.I love movies about “The Big Moment” – the game or the performance or the wedding day or the record deal, the stories that split time with that key event, and everything is reframed, before it and after it, because it has changed everything. I have always wanted this movie-worthy event, something that will change everything and grab me out of this waiting game into the whirlwind in front of me. I cry and cry at these movies, because I am still waiting for my own big moment. I had visions of life as an adventure, a thing to be celebrated and experienced, but all I was doing was going to work and coming home, and that wasn’t what it looked like in the movies.John Lennon once said, “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” For me, life is what was happening while I was busy waiting for my big moment. I was ready for it and believed that the rest of my life would fade into the background, and that my big moment would carry me through life like a lifeboat.The Big Moment, unfortunately, is an urban myth. Some people have them, in a sense, when they win the Heisman or become the next American Idol. But even that football player or that singer is living a life made up of more than that one moment. Life is a collection of a million, billion moments, tiny little moments and choices, like a handful of luminous, glowing pearl. It takes so much time, and so much work, and those beads and moments are so small, and so much less fabulous and dramatic than the movies.But this is what I’m finding, in glimpses and flashes: this is it. This is it, in the best possible way. That thing I’m waiting for, that adventure, that move-score-worthy experience unfolding gracefully. This is it. Normal, daily life ticking by on our streets and sidewalks, in our houses and apartments, in our beds and at our dinner tables, in our dreams and prayers and fights and secrets – this pedestrian life is the most precious thing any of use will ever experience.
— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
Don't think about making life better for other people who don't even deserve you, rather, focus on making your life the best, for yourself and those who love you.
— C. JoyBell C.
Your conscience is the measure of the honesty of your selfishness.Listen to it carefully.
— Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
— Mark Haddon, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
The best thing, though, in that museum was that everything always stayed right where it was. Nobody'd move. You could go there a hundred thousand times, and that Eskimo would still be just finished catching those two fish, the birds would still be on their way south, the deers would still be drinking out of that water hole, with their pretty antlers and they're pretty, skinny legs, and that squaw with the naked bosom would still be weaving that same blanket. Nobody's be different. The only thing that would be different would be you. Not that you'd be so much older or anything. It wouldn't be that, exactly. You'd just be different, that's all. You'd have an overcoat this time. Or the kid that was your partner in line the last time had got scarlet fever and you'd have a new partner. Or you'd have a substitute taking the class, instead of Miss Aigletinger. Or you'd heard your mother and father having a terrific fight in the bathroom. Or you'd just passed by one of those puddles in the street with gasoline rainbows in them. I mean you'd be different in some way—I can't explain what I mean. And even if I could, I'm not sure I'd feel like it.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Of all creatures that breathe and move upon the earth, nothing is bred that is weaker than man.
— Homer, The Odyssey
What's done is done. What's gone is gone. One of life's lessons is always moving on. It’s okay to look back to see how far you’ve come but keep moving forward.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
You cannot change anyone, but you can be the reason someone changes.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Guard well your thoughts when alone and your words when accompanied.
— Roy T. Bennett
If you don’t give up on something you truly believe in, you will find a way.
— Roy T. Bennett
Be the positive impact on the lives of others.
— Roy T. Bennett
Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.
— Virginia Woolf
You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
The best of us must sometimes eat our words.
— J.K. Rowling
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
Just living is not enough," said the butterfly, "one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.
— Hans Christian Andersen, The Complete Fairy Tales
Sure, we'd faced some things as children that a lot of kids don't. Sure, Justin had qualified for his Junior de Sade Badge in his teaching methods for dealing with pain. We still hadn't learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you're just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something.Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee. There's the little empty pain of leaving something behind - gradutaing, taking the next step forward, walking out of something familiar and safe into the unknown. There's the big, whirling pain of life upending all of your plans and expecations. There's the sharp little pains of failure, and the more obscure aches of successes that didn't give you what you thought they would. There are the vicious, stabbing pains of hopes being torn up. The sweet little pains of finding others, giving them your love, and taking joy in their life they grow and learn. There's the steady pain of empathy that you shrug off so you can stand beside a wounded friend and help them bear their burdens. And if you're very, very lucky, there are a very few blazing hot little pains you feel when you realized that you are standing in a moment of utter perfection, an instant of triumph, or happiness, or mirth which at the same time cannot possibly last - and yet will remain with you for life.Everyone is down on pain, because they forget something important about it: Pain is for the living. Only the dead don't feel it.Pain is a part of life. Sometimes it's a big part, and sometimes it isn't, but either way, it's a part of the big puzzle, the deep music, the great game. Pain does two things: It teaches you, tells you that you're alive. Then it passes away and leaves you changed. It leaves you wiser, sometimes. Sometimes it leaves you stronger. Either way, pain leaves its mark, and everything important that will ever happen to you in life is going to involve it in one degree or another.
— Jim Butcher
The person you became with her is worth being.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
When Great Trees FallWhen great trees fall,rocks on distant hills shudder,lions hunker downin tall grasses,and even elephantslumber after safety.When great trees fallin forests,small things recoil into silence,their senseseroded beyond fear.When great souls die,the air around us becomeslight, rare, sterile.We breathe, briefly.Our eyes, briefly,see witha hurtful clarity.Our memory, suddenly sharpened,examines,gnaws on kind wordsunsaid,promised walksnever taken.Great souls die andour reality, bound tothem, takes leave of us.Our souls,dependent upon theirnurture,now shrink, wizened.Our minds, formedand informed by theirradiance,fall away.We are not so much maddenedas reduced to the unutterable ignoranceof dark, coldcaves.And when great souls die,after a period peace blooms,slowly and alwaysirregularly. Spaces fillwith a kind ofsoothing electric vibration.Our senses, restored, neverto be the same, whisper to us.They existed. They existed.We can be. Be and bebetter. For they existed.
— Maya Angelou
Remember that everyone you meet is afraid of something, loves something and has lost something.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
If there were such a thing as terminal literalism, you'd have died in childhood.
— Cassandra Clare, City of Bones
I was always an unusual girl.My mother told me I had a chameleon soul, no moral compass pointing due north, no fixed personality; just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide and as wavering as the ocean.
— Lana Del Rey
There are ships sailing to many ports, but not a single one goes where life is not painful.
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live, and she was always thinking that, in the future, she might regret the choices she made now. “I’m afraid of committing myself,” she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none. Even in that most important area of her life, love, she had failed to commit herself. After her first romantic disappointment, she had never again given herself entirely. She feared pan, loss, and separation. These things were inevitable on the path to love, and the only way of avoiding them was by deciding not to take that path at all. In order not to suffer, you had to renounce love. It was like putting out your own eyes not to see the bad things in life.
— Paulo Coelho, Brida
It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald, This Side of Paradise
Live the Life of Your DreamsWhen you start living the life of your dreams, there will always be obstacles, doubters, mistakes and setbacks along the way. But with hard work, perseverance and self-belief there is no limit to what you can achieve.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Cynics are simply thwarted romantics.
— William Goldman, The Princess Bride
Forget yesterday - it has already forgotten you. Don't sweat tomorrow - you haven't even met. Instead, open your eyes and your heart to a truly precious gift - today.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Life is like a novel. It's filled with suspense. You have no idea what is going to happen until you turn the page.
— Sidney Sheldon
The person in life that you will always be with the most, is yourself. Because even when you are with others, you are still with yourself, too! When you wake up in the morning, you are with yourself, laying in bed at night you are with yourself, walking down the street in the sunlight you are with yourself.What kind of person do you want to walk down the street with? What kind of person do you want to wake up in the morning with? What kind of person do you want to see at the end of the day before you fall asleep? Because that person is yourself, and it's your responsibility to be that person you want to be with. I know I want to spend my life with a person who knows how to let things go, who's not full of hate, who's able to smile and be carefree. So that's who I have to be.
— C. JoyBell C.
If you've never eaten while crying you don t know what life tastes like.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
I think that the best thing we can do for our children is to allow them to do things for themselves, allow them to be strong, allow them to experience life on their own terms, allow them to take the subway... let them be better people, let them believe more in themselves.
— C. JoyBell C.
Who are you?Are you in touch with all of your darkest fantasies?Have you created a life for yourself where you can experience them?I have. I am fucking crazy.But I am free.
— Lana Del Rey
I don't think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem.
— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything Is Illuminated
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world.
— William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Dreams don't work unless you take action. The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them.
— Roy T. Bennett
To perceive is to suffer.
— Aristotle
But I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or to make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.
— Gloria Naylor
Life will not break your heart. It'll crush it.
— Henry Rollins
Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
— Alan Moore, V for Vendetta
The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.
— C.S. Lewis
People say that eyes are windows to the soul.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
Our life is what our thoughts make it.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
It wasn’t my day. My week. My month. My year. My life. God damn it.
— Charles Bukowski, Pulp
This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
— Alan W. Watts
For I have known them all already, known them all—Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.
— T.S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Others
I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.
— Albert Camus, The Plague
We leave something of ourselves behind when we leave a place, we stay there, even though we go away. And there are things in us that we can find again only by going back there.
— Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Just keep moving forward and don't give a shit about what anybody thinks. Do what you have to do, for you.
— Johnny Depp
Don't cry, I'm sorry to have deceived you so much, but that's how life is.
— Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita
It's not what you say out of your mouth that determines your life, it's what you whisper to yourself that has the most power!
— Robert T. Kiyosaki
I see it all perfectly
—  there are two possible situations — one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it — you will regret both.
When things go wrong, don't go with them.
— Elvis Presley
To travel is to live.
— Hans Christian Andersen, The Fairy Tale of My Life: An Autobiography
Most of the basic material a writer works with is acquired before the age of fifteen.
— Willa Cather
The surest way to make your dreams come true is to live them.
— Roy T. Bennett
Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. 
— Oprah Winfrey
Life doesn’t get easier or more forgiving, we get stronger and more resilient.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
You are not the victim of the world, but rather the master of your own destiny. It is your choices and decisions that determine your destiny.
— Roy T. Bennett
A smart person knows how to talk. A wise person knows when to be silent.
— Roy T. Bennett
Turn your obstacles into opportunities and your problems into possibilities.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Learning to distance yourself from all the negativity is one of the greatest lessons to achieve inner peace.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
It takes sunshine and rain to make a rainbow. There would be no rainbows without sunshine and rain.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
In all of living, have much fun and laughter. Life is to be enjoyed, not just endured.
— Gordon B. Hinckley
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Collected Works
There are no random acts...We are all connected...You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind...
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.
— Yoko Ono
There were five others before they got to him. He smiled a little when his turn came. His voice was low, smoky, and dead sexy. “My name is Augustus Waters,” he said. “I’m seventeen. I had a little touch of osteosarcoma a year and a half ago, but I’m just here today at Isaac’s request.”“And how are you feeling?” asked Patrick.“Oh, I’m grand.” Augustus Waters smiled with a corner of his mouth. “I’m on a roller coaster that only goes up, my friend.
— John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice.", 2005]
— Steve Jobs
A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty.
— John Grogan, Marley and Me: Life and Love With the World's Worst Dog
Even for me life had its gleams of sunshine.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
At some point we all look up and realize we are lost in a maze.
— John Green, Looking for Alaska
I want words at my funeral. But I guess that means you need life in your life.
— Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented with a glass that is exactly half full, say: this glass is half full. And then there are those who say: this glass is half empty. 	The world belongs, however, to those who can look at the glass and say: What's up with this glass? Excuse me? Excuse me? This is my glass? I don't think so. My glass was full! And it was a bigger glass! Who's been pinching my beer?	And at the other end of the bar the world is full of the other type of person, who has a broken glass, or a glass that has been carelessly knocked over (usually by one of the people calling for a larger glass) or who had no glass at all, because he was at the back of the crowd and had failed to catch the barman's eye. 
— Terry Pratchett, The Truth
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.
— Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt
All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret.
— Gabriel García Márquez, Gabriel García Márquez: a Life
Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people that they don't like.
— Will Rogers
But I have learned that you make your own happiness, that part of going for what you want means losing something else. And when the stakes are high, the losses can be that much greater.
— Emily Giffin, Something Borrowed
When life gives you lemons, chunk it right back.
— Bill Watterson
Human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but ... life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.
— Gabriel García Márquez
The truth is that the world is full of dragons, and none of us are as powerful or cool as we’d like to be. And that sucks. But when you’re confronted with that fact, you can either crawl into a hole and quit, or you can get out there, take off your shoes, and Bilbo it up.
— Patrick Rothfuss
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.I wish you all very good lives.
— J.K. Rowling, Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.
— Matthew Quick, The Silver Linings Playbook
I want to live my life in such a way that when I get out of bed in the morning, the devil says, "aw shit, he's up!
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
You can't just plan a moment when things get back on track, just as you can't plan the moment you lose your way in the first place.
— Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You
It's worth making time to find the things that really stir your soul. That’s what makes you really feel alive. You have to say ‘no’ to other things you’re used to, and do it with all your heart.
— Roy T. Bennett
Discipline Your Mind to Think Positively: Discipline your mind to see the good in every situation and look on the best side of every event.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Focus on your goals, not your fear. Focus like a laser beam on your goals.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
When one has a grateful heart, life is so beautiful.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Is this thing safe?""Safe as life," Gansey replied.
— Maggie Stiefvater, The Raven Boys
I would rather be ashes than dust!I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot.I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.The function of man is to live, not to exist.I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them.I shall use my time.
— Jack London
Though the road's been rocky it sure feels good to me.
— Bob Marley
Style is the answer to everything.A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thingTo do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without itTo do a dangerous thing with style is what I call artBullfighting can be an artBoxing can be an artLoving can be an artOpening a can of sardines can be an artNot many have styleNot many can keep styleI have seen dogs with more style than men,although not many dogs have style.Cats have it with abundance.When Hemingway put his brains to the wall with a shotgun,that was style.Or sometimes people give you styleJoan of Arc had styleJohn the BaptistJesusSocratesCaesarGarcía Lorca.I have met men in jail with style.I have met more men in jail with style than men out of jail.Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done.Six herons standing quietly in a pool of water,or you, naked, walking out of the bathroom without seeing me.
— Charles Bukowski
I want a life that sizzles and pops and makes me laugh out loud. And I don't want to get to the end, or to tomorrow, even, and realize that my life is a collection of meetings and pop cans and errands and receipts and dirty dishes. I want to eat cold tangerines and sing out loud in the car with the windows open and wear pink shoes and stay up all night laughing and paint my walls the exact color of the sky right now. I want to sleep hard on clean white sheets and throw parties and eat ripe tomatoes and read books so good they make me jump up and down, and I want my everyday to make God belly laugh, glad that he gave life to someone who loves the gift.
— Shauna Niequist, Cold Tangerines: Celebrating the Extraordinary Nature of Everyday Life
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.
— Joseph Campbell
There's gon' be some stuff you gon' seethat's gon' make it hard to smile in the future.But through whatever you see,through all the rain and the pain,you gotta keep your sense of humor.You gotta be able to smile through all this bullshit.Remember that.
— Tupac Shakur
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
— Terry Pratchett, Guards! Guards!
I don't get it,' Caroline said, bemused. 'She's the only one with wings. Why is that?'There were so many questions in life. You couldn't ever have all the answers. But I knew this one.It's so she can fly,' I said. Then I started to run.
— Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever
The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.
— Oprah Winfrey
It's everybody, I mean. Everything everybody does is so — I don't know — not wrong, or even mean, or even stupid necessarily. But just so tiny and meaningless and — sad-making. And the worst part is, if you go bohemian or something crazy like that, you're conforming just as much only in a different way.
— J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey
Count your blessings, not your problems. Count your own blessings, not someone else's. Remember that jealousy is when you count someone else's blessings instead of your own.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs
—  he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.
We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
— Kahlil Gibran
Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You're given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. - Mrs. Whatsit
— Madeleine L'Engle, A Wrinkle in Time
Yeah, sometimes life really sucks," she says. "But you know what I'm holding on for?"I raise my eyebrows.She raises hers, too, mimicking me."The moments that don't suck," she says. "The trick is to notice them when they come around.
— Veronica Roth, Allegiant
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.
— Marc Riboud
Never let hard lessons harden your heart; the hard lessons of life are meant to make you better, not bitter.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Integrity is doing the right thing when nobody's watching, and doing as you say you would do.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Failure is a bend in the road, not the end of the road. Learn from failure and keep moving forward.
— Roy T. Bennett
You don’t have to like someone, but you have to treat them as you wish to be treated.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Until you step into the unknown, you don’t know what you’re made of.
— Roy T. Bennett
Don’t wait for things to happen. Make them happen.
— Roy T. Bennett
Good things happen in your life when you surround yourself with positive people.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
It takes guts and humility to admit mistakes. Admitting we're wrong is courage, not weakness.
— Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart
Life is a journey. Time is a river. The door is ajar
— Jim Butcher, Dead Beat
Home wasn't a set house, or a single town on a map. It was wherever the people who loved you were, whenever you were together. Not a place, but a moment, and then another, building on each other like bricks to create a solid shelter that you take with you for your entire life, wherever you may go.
— Sarah Dessen, What Happened to Goodbye
If you need something from somebody always give that person a way to hand it to you.
— Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
How would your life be different if…You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day…You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.
— Michel Legrand
I like the scientific spirit—the holding off, the being sure but not too sure, the willingness to surrender ideas when the evidence is against them: this is ultimately fine—it always keeps the way beyond open—always gives life, thought, affection, the whole man, a chance to try over again after a mistake—after a wrong guess.
— Walt Whitman, Walt Whitman's Camden Conversations
A kind gesture can reach a wound that only compassion can heal.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave.
— Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying. To the best you can do everyday.
— Jason Mraz