I like short quotes that get right to the point.
So in today’s post I want to share 160 of the most powerful, meaningful and positive short quotes.
Ones that will give you a quick burst of inspiration to shift your mindset, renew your motivation, give you a laugh to release some stress or that will simply bring a smile to your face.
I hope you’ll find something helpful here for yourself and for the people you love.
Short and Positive Quotes About Life
“Today is life – the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today.”
– Dale Carnegie
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.”
– Albert Einstein
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”
– Mark Twain
“If you want to be happy, be.”
– Leo Tolstoy
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
– Confucius
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
– Anaïs Nin
“Happiness is a warm puppy.”
– Charles M. Schulz
“Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.”
– Dalai Lama
“Happiness is not a goal… it’s a by-product of a life well-lived.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“The mere sense of living is joy enough.”
– Emily Dickinson
“Simplicity makes me happy.”
– Alicia Keys
“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”
– Anne Frank
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Life is 10 percent what happens to you and 90 percent how you respond to it.”
– Lou Holtz
“There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“The most important thing is to enjoy your life – to be happy – it’s all that matters.”
– Audrey Hepburn
“Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
– Helen Keller
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.”
– Milton Erickson
“The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life.”
– William Morris
“Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.”
– Dalai Lama
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
– Robert Frost
“The fullness of life is only accessible in the present moment.”
– Eckhart Tolle
“Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.”
– Omar Khayyam
Short Quotes for Work and a Quick Boost of Motivation
“Every moment is a fresh beginning.”
– T.S. Eliot
“Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.”
– Conan O’Brien
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
– Wayne Gretzky
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”
– Arthur Ashe
“Work hard in silence, let success be your noise.”
– Frank Ocean
“Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.”
– Sam Levenson
“Make each day your masterpiece.”
– John Wooden
“Dream big and dare to fail.”
– Norman Vaughan
“You must do the things you think you cannot do.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“Whatever you are, be a good one.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Impossible is for the unwilling.”
– John Keats
“The future depends on what you do today.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Dreams don’t work unless you do.”
– John C. Maxwell
“Focus on being productive instead of busy.”
– Tim Ferriss
“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.”
– Vince Lombardi
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing.”
– Walt Disney
“Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.”
– Tim Notke
“It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.”
– Babe Ruth
“Build your own dreams or someone else will hire you to build theirs.”
– Farrah Gray
“What you do today can improve all your tomorrows.”
– Ralph Marston
“The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary.”
– Vidal Sassoon
“Quality means doing it right when no one is looking.”
– Henry Ford
“Nothing will work unless you do.”
– Maya Angelou
“Without labor, nothing prospers.”
– Sophocles
“All growth depends upon activity.”
– Calvin Coolidge
“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.”
– Florence Nightingale
Short, Deep and Meaningful Quotes and Sayings
“If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.”
– Jim Rohn
“It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.”
– Confucius
“Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
– Marthe Troly-Curtin
“A ship is always safe at shore but that is not what it’s built for.”
– John A. Shedd
“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
– Neale Donald Walsch
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
– Bruce Lee
“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.”
– Lao Tzu
“The only joy in the world is to begin.”
– Cesare Pavese
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
– Aesop
“Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
– Jack Canfield
“The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.”
– Henry Ford
“What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Judge your success by what you had to give up in order to get it.”
– Dalai Lama
“Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it.”
– Buddha
“Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.”
– Malcolm S. Forbes
“A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.”
– Henrik Ibsen
“The best revenge is massive success.”
– Frank Sinatra
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
– Gilbert K. Chesterton
“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.”
– Napoleon Hill
“Your problem is you’re… too busy holding onto your unworthiness.”
– Ram Dass
“For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.”
– Harry F. Banks
“We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
– Winston Churchill
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
– Steve Jobs
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
– Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
“Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness.”
– Buddha
Short and Funny Quotes for a Laugh and Less Stress
“Reality continues to ruin my life.”
– Bill Watterson
“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
– Steven Wright
“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.”
– Erma Bombeck
“I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort.”
– Zach Galifianakis
“If you think nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.”
– Steven Wright
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.”
– A. A. Milne
“A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.”
– Steve Martin
“Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.”
– George Burns
“Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.”
– Charles M. Schulz
“Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.”
– Elbert Hubbard
“When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.”
– Cathy Guisewite
“Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.”
– Stephen Hawking
“Rice is great when you’re hungry and you want 2000 of something.”
– Mitch Hedberg
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific.”
– Lily Tomlin
“Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.”
– Golda Meir
“I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
– Jerome K. Jerome
“Hard work never killed anybody, but why take a chance?”
– Edgar Bergen
“When in doubt, look intelligent.”
– Garrison Keillor
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
– Thomas A. Edison
“Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow just as well.”
– Mark Twain
“No man goes before his time – unless the boss leaves early.”
– Groucho Marx
“Knowledge is like underwear. It is useful to have it, but not necessary to show it off.”
– Bill Murray
“I’m sick of following my dreams, man. I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with ’em later.”
– Mitch Hedberg
“Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.”
– Terry Pratchett
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no point in being a damn fool about it.”
– W. C. Fields
“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
– Isaac Asimov
“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”
– Oscar Wilde
Short and Inspirational Quotes About Love and Relationships
“If you live to be 100, I hope I live to be 100 minus one day, so I never have to live without you.”
– Ernest H. Shepard
“If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”
– Haruki Murakami
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you…I could walk through my garden forever.”
– Alfred Lord Tennyson
“I would rather share one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
“Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
– Emily Brontë
“For small creatures such as we, the vastness is bearable only through love.”
– Carl Sagan
“I want all of you, forever, you and me, every day.”
– Nicholas Sparks
“I saw that you were perfect, and so I loved you. Then I saw that you were not perfect, and I loved you even more.”
– Angelita Lim
“In all the world, there is no heart for me like yours. In all the world, there is no love for you like mine.”
– Maya Angelou
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.”
– Roy Croft
“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
– Lao Tzu
“The best love is the kind that awakens the soul and makes us reach for more.”
– Nicholas Sparks
“In your light, I learn how to love. In your beauty, how to make poems.”
– Rumi
“I swear I couldn’t love you more than I do right now, and yet I know I will tomorrow.”
– Leo Christopher
“I found the one my heart loves.”
– Song of Solomon 3:4
“Everything I do, I do it for you.”
– Bryan Adams
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you.”
– William Shakespeare
“I have for the first time found what I can truly love. I have found you.”
– Charlotte Brontë
“Yours is the light by which my spirit’s born: you are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.”
– E.E. Cummings
“You are every reason, every hope and every dream I’ve ever had.”
– Nicholas Sparks
“I’ve tried so many times to think of a new way to say it, and it’s still I love you.”
– Zelda Fitzgerald
“You are the best thing that’s ever been mine.”
– Taylor Swift
“I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.”
– Elizabeth Barret Browning
“To find someone who will love you for no reason, and to shower that person with reasons, that is the ultimate happiness.”
– Robert Brault
“A hundred hearts would be too few to carry all my love for you.”
– Henry Wadsworth
“For all the things my hands have held, the best by far is you.”
– Andrew McMahon
“You are my today and all of my tomorrows.”
– Leo Christopher
Short Quotes About Success and Living Your Best Life
“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
– Zig Ziglar
“I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have.”
– Thomas Jefferson
“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.”
– Robert Collier
“Success is simple. Do what’s right, the right way, at the right time.”
– Arnold H. Glasgow
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”
– Pablo Picasso
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
– Winston Churchill
“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
– Herman Cain
“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“Follow effective actions with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action.”
– Peter Drucker
“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”
– Albert Einstein
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
– Stephen King
“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“If you can’t do great things, do small things in a great way.”
– Napoleon Hill
“Not he who has much is rich, but he who gives much.”
– Erich Fromm
“The distance between insanity and genius is measured only by success.”
– Bruce Feirstein
“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.”
– George Sheehan
“To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.”
– Mark Twain
“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
– Benjamin Disraeli
“Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
– Winston Churchill
“The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”
– Mark Caine
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.”
– Conrad Hilton
“The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.”
– Vince Lombardi
“Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”
– George S. Patton
“Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.”
– Alexander Graham Bell
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”
– Winston Churchill
Want more short and powerful inspiration? Then check out these short happy quotes, the short love quotes here and also this post filled with short and motivational work quotes.