Some quotes and timeless sayings simply stick with us longer than the rest.
They cut through the noise. Make us stop and think. And focus on what truly matters to us.
So in today’s post I want to focus on such sayings that have lived on and people keep quoting year after year.
This is 130 of the most famous quotes of all time on life, love, success, happiness and plenty more from the greatest minds, artists, leaders and dreamers who have walked this Earth.
The Most Famous Quotes of All Time About Life
“You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.”
– Mae West
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
– Soren Kierkegaard
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
– George Bernard Shaw
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
– Anaïs Nin
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
– Confucius
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”
– Lao Tzu
“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature. Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.”
– Helen Keller
“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.”
– Robert Frost
“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.”
– Oscar Wilde
“Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.”
– Allen Saunders
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
– Socrates
“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“There is nothing permanent except change.”
– Heraclitus
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.”
– Buddha
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
– Viktor E. Frankl
“Not everything that is faced can be changed. But nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
– James Baldwin
“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
– Simone de Beauvoir
“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.”
– Aldous Huxley
“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”
– Mark Twain
“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.”
– Henry David Thoreau
“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
– Buddha
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.”
– Helen Keller
The Most Famous Short Quotes of All Time
“I think, therefore I am.”
– René Descartes
“I came, I saw, I conquered.”
– Julius Caesar
“To be, or not to be, that is the question.”
– William Shakespeare
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Stay hungry, stay foolish.”
– Steve Jobs
“Keep calm and carry on.”
– Winston Churchill
“Not all those who wander are lost.”
– J.R.R. Tolkien
“Well done is better than well said.”
– Benjamin Franklin
“Believe you can and you’re halfway there.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
“It always seems impossible until it’s done.”
– Nelson Mandela
“Where there is love there is life.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.”
– Oprah Winfrey
“The root of suffering is attachment.”
– Buddha
“Peace begins with a smile.”
– Mother Teresa
“Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.”
– Confucius
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.”
– Plutarch
“Learning never exhausts the mind.”
– Leonardo da Vinci
“Genius is eternal patience.”
– Michelangelo
“Do all things with love.”
– Og Mandino
The Most Famous Quotes of All Time on Love
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.”
– Aristotle
“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
– A.A. Milne
“A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”
– Ingrid Bergman
“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.”
– Leo Buscaglia
“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.”
– Judy Garland
“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
– Oscar Wilde
“I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.”
– John Keats
“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Love has no age, no limit, and no death.”
– John Galsworthy
“There is only one happiness in this life, to love and be loved.”
– George Sand
“You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.”
– Albert Einstein
“Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.”
– Loretta Young
“Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.”
– Khalil Gibran
“Love cures people – both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”
– Karl A. Menninger
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
– William Shakespeare
“Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.”
– Mother Teresa
“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
– Albert Camus
“Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.”
– Euripides
“There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.”
– Thomas Aquinas
“You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them.”
– Desmond Tutu
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
– Stephen Chbosky
The Most Funny Famous Quotes of All Time
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”
– Albert Einstein
“Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
– Groucho Marx
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
– Oscar Wilde
“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”
– Kurt Vonnegut
“Be like a duck. Calm on the surface but always paddling like the dickens underneath.”
– Michael Caine
“The secret of staying young is to live honestly, eat slowly, and lie about your age.”
– Lucille Ball
“A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
– William Shakespeare
“Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”
– Phyllis Diller
“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There’s no use being a damn fool about it.”
– W.C. Fields
“So many books, so little time.”
– Frank Zappa
“In America, there are two classes of travel – first class and with children.”
– Robert Benchley
“Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes.”
– Jim Carrey
“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
– Dorothy Parker
“Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way, you’ll be a mile from them, and you’ll have their shoes.”
– Jack Handey
“Doing nothing is very hard to do. You never know when you’re finished.”
– Leslie Nielsen
“Instead of getting married again, I’m going to find a woman I don’t like and give her a house.”
– Rod Stewart
“In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra.”
– Fran Lebowitz
“Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.”
– Margaret Mead
“I intend to live forever. So far, so good.”
– Steven Wright
“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.”
– Voltaire
The Most Famous Quotes of All Time About Success
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
– Samuel Beckett
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
– Isaac Newton
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt
“I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life and that is why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan
“You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”
– Wayne Gretzky
“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
– Neil Armstrong
“All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.”
– Walt Disney
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
– John F. Kennedy
“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.”
– Confucius
“It’s not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up.”
– Vince Lombardi
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
– Thomas A. Edison
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
– Nelson Mandela
“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”
– Henry Ford
“Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”
– John F. Kennedy
“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
– Bruce Lee
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”
– Albert Einstein
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
– Mark Twain
“If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.”
– Milton Berle
“Winners never quit, and quitters never win.”
– Vince Lombardi
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
– Abraham Lincoln
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
– Thomas A. Edison
“But man is not made for defeat. A man can be destroyed but not defeated.”
– Ernest Hemingway
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.”
– Amelia Earhart
The Most Famous Quotes of All Time on Happiness
“Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
– Marcel Proust
“Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”
– Dr. Seuss
“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.”
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
“Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.”
– Maya Angelou
“Be kind whenever possible. It is always possible.”
– 14th Dalai Lama
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
– Aesop
“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.”
– Robert H. Schuller
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
– Kahlil Gibran
“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
– Joseph Campbell
“Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul.”
– Democritus
“It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.”
– Aristotle Onassis
“You’ll never find a rainbow if you’re looking down.”
– Charlie Chaplin
“Whoever is happy will make others happy too.”
– Anne Frank
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
– Walt Whitman
“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.”
– Robert Louis Stevenson
“We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”
– Marilyn Monroe
“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.”
– Edith Wharton
“Happiness can exist only in acceptance.”
– George Orwell
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
– Mahatma Gandhi
“Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.”
– Marcus Aurelius
Want more timeless motivation and inspiration? Then check out the best Dolly Parton quotes, this one with uplifting quotes and also this post with plenty of funny and heartwarming Winnie the Pooh quotes.