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“And still, I rise.”
Short, yet very powerful, this quote is from Maya Angelou, one of the most iconic authors and activists of all time. In fact, many of the influential quotes you will find online (and even offline) are from Angelou.
Quotes aren’t just a bunch of words combined together to impress. They come from people who have succeeded in life, or worked their way through remarkable experiences.
Short quotes are no different from the lengthy ones. They possess the same level of profundity and enlightenment, and in some ways their brevity makes them even more powerful, as they are easier to remember.
In this article, we share with you 157 of the best short quotes of all time. We have quotes about happiness and love, sayings about life and struggles, messages about relationships, and a lot more. These quotes can literally change the way you look at life.
Let’s start with some inspirational, short quotes about life.
Short Inspirational Quotes About Life
- “Only a life lived for others is a life lived worthwhile.” – Albert Einstein
- “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “Because I have loved life, I shall have no sorrow to die.” – Amelia Burr
- “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
- “Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process.” – Anne Wilson Schaef
- “I can't change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean
- “The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge.” – Bertrand Russell
- “Breathe. It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” – Johnny Depp
- “Dream as if you’ll live forever, live as if you’ll die today.” – James Dean
- “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
- “I don’t need it to be easy, I need it to be worth it.” – Lil Wayne
- “Life becomes easier when you learn to accept the apology you never got.” – R. Brault
- “Broken crayons still color.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Leave no stone unturned.” – Euripides
- “It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.” – Seneca
- “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.” – Helen Keller
- “Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.” – Marthe Troly-Curtin
- “My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.” – Cary Grant
My formula for living is quite simple. I get up in the morning and I go to bed at night. In between, I occupy myself as best I can.” – Cary Grant
- “Maybe that's what life is, a wink of the eye and winking stars.” – Jack Kerouac
- “Living is the art of getting used to what we didn’t expect.” – Eleanor C. Wood
- “Growth is the only evidence of life.” – John Henry Newman
- “The middle is messy, but it is also where the magic happens.” – Brené Brown
- “We can't plan life. All we can do is be available for it.” – Lauryn Hill
- “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” – Oprah Winfrey
- “Life is a lot like jazz … it's best when you improvise.” – George Gershwin
- “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.” – Mae West
- “I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.” – Alice Roosevelt-Longworth
Life can be tough, but it is not impossible. It may cause you stress and worries, yet at the same time it will always be a wonderful experience.
We hope that these quotes will help you stay motivated to be strong and keep getting stronger. You are destined for a meaningful life.
Next, we have a set of short quotes about love.
Short Quotes About Love
- “If you judge people you have no time to love them.” – Mother Teresa
- “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.” – Sophocles
- “Love is great when you find someone to give it to.” – Unknown
- “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” – Martin Luther King, Jr.
- “Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” – Alfred Lord Tennyson
- “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” – Peter Ustinov
- “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved.” – Victor Hugo
- “Hate comes from intimidation, love comes from appreciation.” – Tyga
- “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” – Lord Byron
- “Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.” – Zora Neale Hurston
- “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” – Khalil Gibran
- “Love’s greatest gift is its ability to make everything it touches sacred.” – Barbara de Angelis
- “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.” – Buddha
- “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.” — Honore de Balzac
- “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupery
- “To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow—this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.” — Elizabeth Gilbert
- “Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.” — Socrates
Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.” — Socrates
- “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.” — Victor Hugo
- “You know you're in love when you don't want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr. Seuss
- “A heart worth loving is one you understand, even in silence.” ― Shannon Alder
- “Don't ever think I fell for you, or fell over you. I didn't fall in love; I rose in it.” — Toni Morrison
- “Loving yourself isn’t vanity. It’s sanity.” – Katrina Mayer
- “Better to have lost and loved than never to have loved at all.” – Ernest Hemingway
- “Love is when he gives you a piece of your soul, that you never knew was missing.” — Torquato Tasso
- “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart, and the senses.” — Lao Tzu
The Beatles didn’t sing “All You Need is Love” for nothing. They wanted to teach people that love can make the world go round, and that everything is possible if we just learn how to love ourselves and others.
Our third set of quotes is for those whose motto in life is to “never say never.” Strive and work hard, and you’ll be surprised at how victory can come to you easily.
Short Success Quotes
- “Nothing will work unless you do.” – Maya Angelou
- “The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones that do.” – Steve Jobs
- “Success is dependent upon the glands – sweat glands.” – Zig Ziglar
- “I never dreamed about success, I worked for it.” – Estee Lauder
- “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela
- “If you really look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.” – Steve Jobs
- “Ambition is the path to success. Persistence is the vehicle you arrive in.” – Bill Bradley
- “Die with memories, not dreams.” – Unknown
- “The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” – Colin R. Davis
- “Victory is sweetest when you've known defeat.” – Malcolm S. Forbes
- “Whatever you do, do it well.” – Walt Disney
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
- “Tough times never last but tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller
- “Whatever you do, do with all your might.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
- “Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.” – Samuel Beckett
- “Success is not the absence of failure; it’s the persistence through failure.” – Aisha Tyler
- “Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.” – Alexander Graham Bell
- “Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.” – Henry Ward Beecher
Our best successes often come after our greatest disappointments.” – Henry Ward Beecher
- “Action is the foundational key to all success.” – Pablo Picasso
- “Impossible is for the unwilling.” – John Keats
- “Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” – Babe Ruth
- “Success comes when people act together; failure tends to happen alone.” – Deepak Chopra
- “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.” – Bruce Lee
- “Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John R. Wooden
- “Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.” – Winston Churchill
- “Growth begins when we start to accept our own weakness.” – Jean Vanier
Success is so much sweeter when you’ve worked hard to arrive at it. With the proper combination of grit, resilience, and introspection, there is no reason for failure.
Use these motivational quotes about success to reach your highest potential. Keep pushing—otherwise, you will never know what waits for you at the finish.
Next, we have a list of simple, short happiness quotes that can change the way you perceive life and all it has to offer.
Short Quotes About Happiness
- “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” – Katherine Hepburn
- “Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness.” – Buddha
- “There is only one happiness in life—to love and to be loved.” – George Sand
- “Happy he who learns to bear what he cannot change.” – Friedrich Schiller
- “Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.” – Dalai Lama
- “Be happy. It’s one way of being wise.” – Colette
- “Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.” – Dennis Waitley
- “Don’t cry because it’s over, smile because it happened.” – Ludwig Jacobowski
- “A happy soul is the best shield for a cruel world.” – Atticus
- “No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” – Gabriel García Márquez
- “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” – Mahatma Gandhi
- “Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.” – Steve Maraboli
- “To fall in love with yourself is the first secret to happiness.” – Robert Morley
- “Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you left open.” – John Barrymore
- “You do not find the happy life. You make it.” – Camilla Erying Kimball
- “Stay close to anything that makes you glad you are alive.” – Hafez
- “Tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are.” – Chinese Proverb
- “It’s a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.” – Lucille Ball
- “Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.” – Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
- “I’d far rather be happy than right any day.” – Douglas Adams
- “Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.” – Albert Schweitzer
- “The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.” – Andre Maurois
- “If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.” – Andrew Carnegie
- “Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha
- “There's nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.” – Stephen Chbosky
Happiness is a feeling of satisfaction and contentment. It does not come from getting the things you want; rather, it comes from being focused on the journey and content with what you have.
It may be a challenge to find happiness at times, but the best things always take work. Focus on the good, let things flow and fall into their places, and you’ll eventually discover where happiness lies.
Moving on to our fifth set, we have quotes about finding meaning in life. What is your purpose? How do you determine what you are destined to do?
Quotes About Finding the Meaning of Life
- “No one has ever become poor by giving.” – Anne Frank
- “Be a lover of the world, it is the only way to survive in it.” – Janosch
- “Embrace the glorious mess that you are.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
- “Sometimes, the simple things are more fun and meaningful than all the banquets in the world.” – E.A. Bucchianeri
- “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” – Benjamin Spock
- “Realize that if a door closed, it’s because what was behind it wasn’t meant for you.” – Mandy Hale
- “The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself.” – Maya Angelou
- “The secret to life is meaningless unless you discover it yourself.” – W. Somerset Maugham
- “You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.” – Stephen King
- “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw
- “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Eliot
- “Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.” – Buddha
- “It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something.” – Winston S. Churchill
- “He who has a why to live for can bear almost anyhow.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
- “Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.” – W. Clement Stone
- “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
- “Finding meaning in your life is not a difficult thing, but it is harder than living a numb, fast-paced superficial life.” – Juanita Gomez
- “You are not one type, nor belong to one category. You are a unique blend of personality needs. Live your needs for total fulfillment.” – Diana Detinger
- “Life is without meaning. You bring meaning to it. The meaning of life is whatever you ascribe it to be. Being alive is the meaning.” – Joseph Campbell
- “Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have – and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life.” – Philip Appleman
- “Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.” – Les Brown
Life takes on meaning when you become motivated, set goals and charge after them in an unstoppable manner.” – Les Brown
- “Everything in life is most fundamentally a gift. And you receive it best and you live it best by holding it with very open hands.” – Leo O’Donovan
- “The meaning of life is not only to exist, to survive, but to move ahead, to go up, to achieve, to conquer.” – Arnold Schwarzenegger
- “If you don’t follow your heart, you might spend the rest of your life wishing you had.” – Brigitte Nicole
- “You can never cross the ocean unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.” – Anonymous
- “Keep your eyes in the stars and your feet on the ground.” – Theodore Roosevelt
Many people are taken aback when they are asked about their purpose in life. If you are one of these people and you do not know what to do with your life, it’s time to take action.
There are a lot of things to be passionate about, and there are so many ways to discover your real purpose.
No, it won’t be easy. In fact, you may need to exert a great deal of effort to find that purpose. But once you do find it, happiness and life satisfaction shall follow.
Last but definitely not least, we share with you relationship quotes that can help you keep your relationships with other people brimming with love and sincerity.
Relationship Quotes
- “Treasure your relationships, not your possessions.” – Anthony J. D'Angelo
- “They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” – Carl W. Buechner
- “If civilization is to survive, we must cultivate the science of human relationships – the ability of all peoples, of all kinds, to live together, in the same world at peace.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
- “Don't smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.” – Leo Buscaglia
- “The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.” – Stephen R. Covey
- “People are lonely because they build walls instead of bridges.” – Joseph F. Newton Men
- “Truth is everybody is going to hurt you: you just gotta find the ones worth suffering for.” – Bob Marley
- “I think it matters whether someone has a good heart.” – Elon Musk
- “A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out.” – Walter Winchell
- “Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.” – Tennessee Williams
- “What love we've given, we'll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.” – Leo Buscaglia
- “True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” – David Tyson Gentry
- “When you stop expecting people to be perfect, you can like them for who they are.” – Donald Miller
- “Assumptions are the termites of relationships.” – Henry Winkler
- “To know when to go away and when to come closer is the key to any lasting relationship.” – Doménico Cieri Estrada
- “Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” – Miles Franklin
- “Relationships based on obligation lack dignity.” – Wayne Dyer
- “We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” – Joyce Meyer
We can improve our relationships with others by leaps and bounds if we become encouragers instead of critics.” – Joyce Meyer
- “The ultimate test of a relationship is to disagree but to hold hands.” – Alexandra Penney
- “Your relationship with yourself sets the tone for every other relationship you have.” – Robert Holden
- “The purpose of a relationship is not to have another who might complete you, but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.” – Neale Donald Walsch
- “Far too many people are looking for the right person, instead of trying to be the right person.” – Gloria Steinem
- “In the end there doesn’t have to be anyone who understands you. There just has to be someone who wants to.” – Robert Brault
- “We’re often afraid of being vulnerable, but vulnerability creates genuine connection.” – Gabby Bernstein
- “Be honest, brutally honest. That is what’s going to maintain relationships.” – Lauryn Hill
- “It is only when we no longer compulsively need someone that we can have a real relationship with them.” – Anthony Storr
Final Thoughts on Short Quotes
Quotes are very powerful—they can be a great inspiration to help you live your life to the fullest, full of gratitude, strength, and happiness.
When times get rough and you feel like giving up, revisit this post and read the quotes we have shared above. We hope that they were able to inspire you to live a happier, more satisfactory life.
Did any of them resonate with you? If so, we’d love to know which ones. Feel free to share your thoughts and comments in the fields below.
And if you happened to like any of the images we featured, a share through your favorite social media platform would be greatly appreciated.
And if you want more inspirational quotes, be sure to check out these blog posts:
- 91 Quotes About Perseverance Through Hard Times
- 63 Inspiring Walt Whitman Quotes About Life
- 67 Self-Reflection Quotes to Help You Grow as a Person
Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then check out and recite these 57 affirmations for success.