That is, at least after I got over the initial culture shock.

Today we’re keeping things very minimalist with this collection of short travel quotes.

The ones that made the list do a great job of capturing this sense of adventure and exploration in just a few words, or impart years of wisdom in a short aphorism.

Whether you need a push of motivation to jump on that plane like I did, or have already hit the open road, some of these words are sure to connect.

Ready to explore?

A List of Short Travel Quotes

I haven’t been everywhere, but it’s on my list.

Susan Sontag

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.

Anaïs Nin

Adventure is worthwhile.

Amelia Earhart

Oh, the places you’ll go.

Dr. Seuss

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.

Martin Buber

Not all those who wander are lost.

J.R.R. Tolkien

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Yogi Berra

I am not the same, having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.

Mary Anne Radmacher

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Helen Keller

All travel has its advantages.

Samuel Johnson

Take only memories, leave only footprints.

Chief Seattle

The journey not the arrival matters.

T.S. Eliot

Live your life by a compass, not a clock.

Stephen Covey

Life is short and the world is wide.

Simon Raven

To travel is to live.

Hans Christian Andersen

Jet lag is for amateurs.

Dick Clark

Experience, travel – these are as education in themselves.

Euripides

And I think to myself, what a wonderful world.

Louis Armstrong

This wasn’t a strange place; it was a new one.

Paulo Coelho

We travel to be lost.

Ray Bradbury

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.

Lao Tzu

I love to travel, but hate to arrive.

Albert Einstein

Wherever you go becomes a part of you somehow.

Anita Desai

I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Travel and change of place impart new vigor to the mind.

Seneca

People don’t take trips, trips take people.

John Steinbeck

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Paul Theroux

You don’t have to be rich to travel well.

Eugene Fodor

If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it’s lethal.

Paul Coelho

Two roads diverged in a wood and I – I took the one less travelled.

Robert Frost

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travellers don’t know where they’re going.

Paul Theroux

Live with no excuses and travel with no regrets.

Oscar Wilde

I am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land.

Seneca

It is better to travel well than to arrive.

Buddha

Travel is never a matter of money but of courage.

Paolo Coelho

So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don’t be sorry.

Jack Kerouac

He who would travel happily must travel light.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.

Carl Sandburg

Little by little, one travels far.

J.R.R. Tolkien

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.

Izaak Walton

The gladdest moment in human life, me thinks, is a departure into unknown lands.

Sir Richard Burton

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people just exist.

Oscar Wilde

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Aldous Huxley

Travel, in the younger sort, is a part of education; in the elder, a part of experience.

Francis Bacon

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfilment.

Hilaire Belloc

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.

Neale Donald Walsch

Remember that happiness is a way of travel – not a destination.

Roy Goodman

A ship in a harbour is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.

William Shedd

Travel makes one modest. You see what a tiny place you occupy in the world.

Gustav Flaubert

Once you have travelled, the voyage never ends.

Pat Conroy

Hope is the only thing stronger than fear.

Suzanne Collins

Wherever you go, go with all your heart!

Confucius

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

George Bernard Shaw

Everywhere I went, the world was on my side.

Roman Payne

Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Mark Twain

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

So much of who we are is where we have been.

William Langewiesche

It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.

Ernest Hemingway

Traveling – it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller.

Ibn Battuta

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Henry David Thoreau

Traveling is not something you’re good at. It’s something you do, like breathing.

Gayle Foreman

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness.

Mark Twain

Once a year, go someplace you’ve never been before.

Dalai Lama

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

Henry Miller

Parting Words

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this humble list of short travel quotes. I encourage you to explore new places, go on random adventures, and get lost in the unknown.

Sometimes it’s just what we need.

What are your favorite short travel quotes? Let me know!

P.S. If you enjoyed this, you might also like these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Destinations
• Quotes About Road Trips
• Quotes About Vacation
• Quotes About Travel for Couples
• Quotes About Flâneurs and Flânerie

Originally published October 14, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of this post.

The post ​​65 Short Travel Quotes to Inspire Your Next Adventure appeared first on Flâneur Life.

Our worldly encounters, from the most beautiful moments to the most challenges situations, help us understand ourselves and our world better. I know all too well how hard it can be to see things this way all the time. Difficult experiences can be especially difficult to view as opportunities, but in hindsight always seem to result in the most growth.

As an aspiring flaneur, I’ve come to see the importance of seeking out a variety of life experiences, including the things that we fear most.

I’ve put together this collection of quotes about experience to remind us of this fact, and to give us new perspectives.

What follow is a curated list of phrases and thoughts from some of history’s greatest thinkers.

Quotes About Experience

I judge you unfortunate because you have never lived through misfortune. You have passed through life without an opponent—no one can ever know what you are capable of, not even you.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.

Oscar Wilde

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this.

Henry Ford

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

T. S. Eliot

Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired, and success achieved.

Helen Keller

We should come home from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day with new experience and character.

Henry David Thoreau

There is only one thing more painful than learning from experience and that is not learning from experience.

Archibald MacLeish

Everything you have done and been through is valuable and important. In order to be who you are, to know what you know, to be where you are in this moment, you needed to go through what you went through.

Iyanla Vanzant

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

Soren Kierkegaard

You cannot create experience. You must undergo it.

Albert Camus

Any experience good or bad can have value. Unlocking that value is determined by our choices.

Mark Manson

Experience is the teacher of all things.

Julius Caesar

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Truman Capote

Experience – the wisdom that enables us to recognise in an undesirable old acquaintance the folly that we have already embraced.

Ambrose Bierce

Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.

Jules Verne

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Aldous Huxley

Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.

Heinrich Heine

Nothing ever becomes real till experienced – even a proverb is no proverb until your life has illustrated it.

John Keats

All experience is an arch, to build upon.

Henry Adams

If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.

Sydney Banks

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Henry Miller

Only those who have learned the power of sincere and selfless contribution experience life’s deepest joy: true fulfillment.

Tony Robbins

I embrace emerging experience, I participate in discovery. I am a butterfly. I am not a butterfly collector. I want the experience of the butterfly.

William Stafford

Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.

Eckhart Tolle

Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.

John Keats

Experience may teach us what is, but never that it cannot be otherwise.

Immanuel Kant

All experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Mark Twain

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

James Russell Lowell

Experiences are savings which a miser puts aside. Wisdom is an inheritance which a wastrel cannot exhaust.

Karl Kraus

If we could sell our experiences for what they cost us, we’d all be millionaires.

Abigail Van Buren

My experience tells me the hard road is almost always the right road.

Shahid Khan

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.

Samuel Butler

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.

Helen Keller

All i have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Conviction without experience makes for harshness.

Flannery O’Connor

Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.

Auguste Rodin

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Khalil Gibran

The only source of knowledge is experience.

Albert Einstein

The value of any experience is measured, of course, not by the amount of money, but the amount of development we get out of it.

Henry David Thoreau

Life is a series of experiences, each one of which makes us bigger, even though sometimes it is hard to realize this. For the world was built to develop character, and we must learn that the setbacks and grieves which we endure help us in our marching onward.

Henry Ford

Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.

Bill Gates

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

Albert Einstein

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.

Timothy Leary

We don’t receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Marcel Proust

Experience does not err; only your judgements err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Leonardo da Vinci

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, until they take root in our personal experience.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills.

Minna Antrim

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

Leonardo da Vinci

The years teach much which the days never know.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Information’s pretty thin stuff unless mixed with experience.

Clarence Day

In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.

Ansel Adams

I firmly believe that all human beings have access to extraordinary energies and powers. Judging from accounts of mystical experience, heightened creativity, or exceptional performance by athletes and artists, we harbor a greater life than we know.

Jean Houston

To change your responses.

Jack Canfield

We had the experience, but we missed the meaning.

T. S. Eliot

You only have control over three things in your life — the thoughts you think, the images you visualize, and the actions you take (your behavior). How you use these three things determines everything you experience. If you don’t like what you are producing and experiencing, you have to change your responses.

Jack Canfield

The value of experience is not in seeing much, but in seeing wisely.

William Osler

Experience is never limited, and it is never complete; it is an immense sensibility, a kind of huge spider-web of the finest silken threads suspended in the chamber of consciousness, and catching every air-borne particle in its tissue.

Henry James

Don’t just learn something from every experience, learn something positive.

Al Neuharth

To regret one’s own experiences is to arrest one’s own development. To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.

Oscar Wilde

Age is only a number, a cipher for the records. A man can’t retire his experience. He must use it. Experience achieves more with less energy and time.

Bernard Baruch

If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.

John Heywood

Pure love is who you are! When you express pure love, you give yourself the direct experience of who you are. It is the greatest gift! It looks as if your giving a gift to others, and you are giving it to yourself, that is because there is no one else in the room, it only looks as if there is.

Neale Donald Walsch

Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience.

M. Scott Peck

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

Oscar Wilde

The arts enable us to have experience we can have from no other source and through such experience to discover the range and variety of what we are capable of feeling.

Elliot W. Eisner

A good simulation, be it a religious myth or scientific theory, gives us a sense of mastery over experience. To represent something symbolically, as we do when we speak or write, is somehow to capture it, thus making it one’s own. But with this appropriation comes the realization that we have denied the immediacy of reality and that in creating a substitute we have but spun another thread in the web of our grand illusion.

Heinz Pagels

May seem to be.

John Heywood

I never learned from a man who agreed with me.

Robert A. Heinlein

Tell me and i forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn.

Xunzi

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

Paulo Coelho

Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one’s future must be hewn.

Walter Benjamin

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.

Andre Gide

Having an experience is taking part in the world. Taking part in the world is really about sharing responsibility.

Olafur Eliasson

The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.

William James

You will not experience all life has to offer you or begin to experience life at its fullest as long as you are satisfied with mediocrity. You have to be disgusted with your current circumstances before your circumstances can change.

Eric Thomas

I have absolutely no fear of death. From my near-death research and my personal experiences, death is, in my judgment, simply a transition into another kind of reality.

Raymond Moody

Attaining lasting happiness requires that we enjoy the journey on our way toward a destination we deem valuable. Happiness is not about making it to the peak of the mountain nor is it about climbing aimlessly around the mountain; happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak.

Tal Ben-Shahar

I think we are a product of all our experiences.

Sanford I. Weill

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Douglas Adams

When it’s time to die, let us not discover that we have never lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Don’t be so bitter about a bad experience from your past that you miss the opportunities in front of you.

Robert Kiyosaki

Everything is falling together perfectly, even though it looks as if some things are falling apart. Trust in the process you are now experiencing.

Neale Donald Walsch

As for the forces, electromagnetism and gravity we experience in everyday life. But the weak and strong forces are beyond our ordinary experience. So in physics, lots of the basic building blocks take 20th- or perhaps 21st-century equipment to explore.

Edward Witten

As you awaken to your divine nature, you’ll begin to appreciate beauty in everything you see, touch and experience.

Wayne Dyer

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Confucius

The act of writing bears something in common with the act of love. The writer, at his most productive moments, just flows. He gives of that which is uniquely himself. He makes himself naked, recording his nakedness in the written word. Herein lies some of the terror which frequently freezes a writer, preventing him from producing. Herein, too, lies some of the courage that must be entailed in letting others learn how one has experienced or is experiencing the world.

Sidney Jourard

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

George Bernard Shaw

All experience is an enrichment rather than an impoverishment.

Eudora Welty

There are no real successes without rejection. The more rejection you get, the better you are, the more you’ve learned, the closer you are to your outcome… If you can handle rejection, you’ll learn to get everything you want.

Tony Robbins

In times of rapid change, experience could be your worst enemy.

J. Paul Getty

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which we have experienced.

Henry David Thoreau

I do believe in an everyday sort of magic — the inexplicable connectedness we sometimes experience with places, people, works of art and the like; the eerie appropriateness of moments of synchronicity; the whispered voice, the hidden presence, when we think we’re alone.

Charles de Lint

Experience praises the most happy the one who made the most people happy.

Karl Marx

What you really value is what you miss, not what you have.

Jorge Luis Borges

Despotism has so often been established in the name of liberty that experience should warn us to judge parties by their practices rather than their preachings.

Raymond Aron

Mistakes – call them unexpected learning experiences.

Richard Bach

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.

Soren Kierkegaard

No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

John Locke

You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you: You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth are the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

Bruce Mau

Deep experience is never peaceful.

Henry James

The most important knowledge teachers need to do good work is a knowledge of how students are experiencing learning and perceiving their teacher’s actions.

Stephen Brookfield

It is important to expect nothing, to take every experience, including the negative ones, as merely steps on the path, and to proceed.

Ram Dass

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Niccolo Machiavelli

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

Henry Ford

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.

Robert Frost

I don’t like people who have never fallen or stumbled. Their virtue is lifeless and it isn’t of much value. Life hasn’t revealed its beauty to them.

Boris Pasternak

Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you’d have preferred to talk.

Doug Larson

Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging of the future by the past.

Patrick Henry

Year’s end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

Hal Borland

Not surprisingly, the place we’re most likely to experience testing is exactly where we struggle most to trust God.

Bruce Wilkinson

No one is born fully-formed: it is through self-experience in the world that we become what we are.

Paulo Freire

…talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.

Patrick Süskind

By definition, you have to live until you die. Better to make that life as complete and enjoyable an experience as possible, in case death is shite, which I suspect it will be.

Irvine Welsh

Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.

Victoria Holt

The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.

Livy

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, or worn. It is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace & gratitude.

Denis Waitley

It is highly possible that what is called ‘talented behavior’ is simply a greater individual capacity for experiencing. From this point of view, it is in the increasing of the individual capacity for experiencing that the untold potentiality of a personality can be evoked.

Viola Spolin

It’s important to know that at the end of the day it’s not the medals you remember. What you remember is the process — what you learn about yourself by challenging yourself, the experiences you share with other people, the honesty the training demands — those are things nobody can take away from you whether you finish twelfth or you’re an Olympic Champion.

Silken Laumann

Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.

John Milton

We are older by faith than by experience.

Henry David Thoreau

What I “discovered” was that happiness is not something that happens. It is not the result of good fortune or random chance. It is not something that money can buy or power command. It does not depend on outside events, but, rather, on how we interpret them. Happiness, in fact, is a condition that must be prepared for, cultivated, and defended privately by each person. People who learn to control inner experience will be able to determine the quality of their lives, which is as close as any of us can come to being happy.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Certain experiences you can’t survive, and afterward you don’t fully exist, even if you failed to die.

Nic Pizzolatto

Use whatever excuse you can to vibrate in harmony with those things you’ve been saying you want. And when you do, those things that are a vibrational equivalent flow into your experience in abundance. Not because you deserve it, not because you’ve earned it, but because it’s the natural consequence of the Law of Attraction. That which is like unto itself is drawn.

Esther Hicks

For perfect love casteth out fear, and fear can only be from the material things that soon must fade away. And thus hold to the higher thought of eternity. For life is a continual experience.

Edgar Cayce

The training is a set of interpersonal interactions that lead to emotional and intellectual experiences that provide a circumstance and an intrument for self awareness, self observation and reflection on the circumstances of the subject trainee, both in his individual life and as a social being.

Humberto Maturana

Parting Words

Experiential learning is often the most powerful. But learning through direct experience, actively engaging with our surroundings, and absorbing the lessons, we can shape our beliefs, values and sense of self.

In my humble opinion, this is the path to a fulfilling and authentic life.

What are some of your favorite quotes about experience? Leave a comment and let me know.

P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Memories
• Quotes About Reflection
• Quotes About Finding Yourself
• Quotes About Self Actualization
• Quotes About Moments

Originally published on November 7, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of this post.

   Cusco, Peru

The post 129 Quotes About Experience That Help You Evolve appeared first on Flâneur Life.

That’s why I put together this collection of quotes about optimism.

I’ve come to see optimism as a default approach to life, almost synonymous with openness, curiosity, and acceptance of the unknown—the unexpected twists and turns that inevitably arise. It’s a belief that possibilities and opportunities appear when you seek them out and keep moving forward.

Sometimes, hearing it from others can help spark a new perspective. Feel free to take in these thoughts and phrases, and adopt the mindsets that resonate with you or serve you best.

Quotes About Optimism

Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

As for health, consider yourself well.

Henry David Thoreau

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so wants nothing. The greatest blessings of mankind are within us and within our reach. A wise man is content with his lot, whatever it may be, without wishing for what he has not.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.

Helen Keller

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

William Arthur Ward

If you realized how powerful your thoughts are, you would never think a negative thought.

Peace Pilgrim

A pessimist is somebody who complains about the noise when opportunity knocks.

Oscar Wilde

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

Aristotle

Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.

Mary Lou Retton

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

Be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Talk health, happiness, and prosperity to every person you meet. Make all your friends feel there is something special in them. Look at the sunny side of everything. Think only the best, be as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give everyone a smile. Spend so much time improving yourself that you have no time left to criticize others. Be too big for worry and too noble for anger.

Norman Vincent Peale

I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed toward the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair. That way lays defeat and death.

Nelson Mandela

Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.

Victor Hugo

I have had dreams and I have had nightmares, but I have conquered my nightmares because of my dreams.

Jonas Salk

Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms — you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.

Seneca

Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost.

Robert H. Schuller

Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.

Zig Ziglar

In this world, the optimists have it, not because they are always right, but because they are positive. Even when they are wrong they are positive, and that is the way of achievement, correction, improvement, and success. Educated, eye-open optimism pays.

David Landes

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.

Walt Disney

Don’t ever become a pessimist… a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun, and neither can stop the march of events.

Robert A. Heinlein

An optimist stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist stays up to make sure the old year leaves.

Bill Vaughan

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.

Lao Tzu

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.

Oscar Wilde

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

J. Robert Oppenheimer

I always like to look on the optimistic side of life.

Walt Disney

Light tomorrow with today!

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

All things are possible until they are proved impossible – and even the impossible may only be so, as of now.

Pearl S. Buck

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by standing in one’s own sunshine.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.

William Arthur Ward

Be of good cheer. Do not think of today’s failures, but of the success that may come tomorrow. You have set yourselves a difficult task, but you will succeed if you persevere, and you will find a joy in overcoming obstacles… Remember, no effort that we make to attain something beautiful is ever lost.

Helen Keller

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

Albert Schweitzer

There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.

J.R.R. Tolkien

If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.

Mahatma Gandhi

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.

Khalil Gibran

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Charles Dickens

Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.

Dalai Lama

No person ever ended his eyesight by looking on the bright side.

Zig Ziglar

Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress.

Nicholas Murray Butler

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

Helen Keller

It’s better to be an optimist who is sometimes wrong than a pessimist who is always right.

Mark Twain

Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat.

Paul J. Meyer

Miracles happen to those who believe in them.

Bernard Berenson

You must not under any pretense allow your mind to dwell on any thought that is not positive, constructive, optimistic, kind.

Emmet Fox

Anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

J.K. Rowling

I am not a pessimist; to perceive evil where it exists is, in my opinion, a form of optimism.

Roberto Rossellini

I’ve always been the opposite of a paranoid. I operate as if everyone is part of a plot to enhance my well-being.

Stan Dale

Pessimism leads to weakness. Optimism leads to power.

William James

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!

Oscar Wilde

Success requires enough optimism to provide hope and enough pessimism to prevent complacency.

David Myers

Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi

To give so much time to the improvement of yourself

That you have no time to criticise others,

To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear,

Each day provides its own gifts.

Marcus Aurelius

And too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

Christian D. Larson

We turn not older with years but newer every day.

Emily Dickinson

Optimism is not only a false but also a pernicious doctrine, for it presents life as a desirable state and man’s happiness as its aim and object. Starting from this, everyone then believes he has the most legitimate claim to happiness and enjoyment. If, as usually happens, these do not fall to his lot, he believes that he suffers an injustice, in fact that he misses the whole point of his existence.

Arthur Schopenhauer

I never thought of losing, but now that it’s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

Muhammad Ali

These are the soul’s changes. I don’t believe in ageing. I believe in forever altering one’s aspect to the sun. Hence my optimism.

Virginia Woolf

Optimism is cowardice.

Oswald Spengler

Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

Truman Capote

Throw back the shoulders, let the heart sing, let the eyes flash, let the mind be lifted up, look upward and say to yourself…nothing is impossible!

Norman Vincent Peale

May you live all the days of your life.

Jonathan Swift

An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be.

Oscar Wilde

Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A “you can do it” when things are tough.

Richard DeVos

Character consists of what you do on the third and fourth tries.

James A. Michener

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?

Rene Descartes

You will succeed if you persevere; and you will find joy in overcoming obstacles.

Helen Keller

I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.

Antonio Gramsci

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.

Elbert Hubbard

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Oscar Wilde

When you can’t change the direction of the wind — adjust your sails.

H. Jackson Brown

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.

Irv Kupcinet

Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.

Epicurus

Be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.

Christian D. Larson

I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.

Charlotte Bronte

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Epictetus

The optimist sees the donut, the pessimist sees the hole.

Oscar Wilde

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not a winner.

Vince Lombardi

Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.

Charlotte Whitton

What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise.

Oscar Wilde

One day everything will be well, that is our hope. Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Voltaire

Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.

John Wooden

You’ll never find rainbows, If you’re looking down…

Charlie Chaplin

Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.

George A. Sheehan

Life is too short to spend your precious time trying to convince a person who wants to live in gloom and doom otherwise. Give lifting that person your best shot, but don’t hang around long enough for his/her bad attitude to pull you down. Instead, surround yourself with optimistic people.

Zig Ziglar

Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.

Marcus Aurelius

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.

Zig Ziglar

If you will call your troubles experiences, and remember that every experience develops some latent force within you, you will grow vigorous and happy, however adverse your circumstances may seem to be.

John Heywood

If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude.

Maya Angelou

Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.

Dr. Seuss

When its dark enough you can see the stars.

Charles A. Beard

Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses… on your powers, instead of your problems.

Paul J. Meyer

Parting Words

Optimism is about maintaining a flaneur mindset and trusting that even the most random life detours can lead to new unforeseen opportunities. It’s about seeing the beauty in the ever-unfolding journey, wherever it takes you.

This is the type of positive outlook that makes you more resilient, helps you fight through challenges, rebound stronger, and stay hopeful even when it’s not easy to.

We’re all setting out to design a life of freedom that aligns with our values and aspirations, and this is the outlook that will help us get there.

What are your favorite quotes about optimism? Post them in the comments!

P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Hope
• Quotes About Vision
• Quotes About Momentum
• Quotes About Beliefs
• Quotes About Simplicity

Originally published November 1, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of this post.

  Lima, Peru

The post 90 Quotes About Optimism That Will Flip Your Perspective appeared first on Flâneur Life.

And while it’s important to learn from our past experiences, it’s good to remind ourselves that we all make the wrong choices at times. Every experience in life is a chance to grow and evolve in our perspectives — even the ones we regret (or regret not pursuing).

Sometimes it just takes looking at things through a new lens.

Regret can act a reminder of the choices you’ve made, the lessons you’ve learned, and the infinite number of possibilities that you still have ahead of you.

This collection of quotes about regret show that regret is natural part of life, and offer perspective in terms of how we can view this universal feeling.

May they inspire you to look at things differently.

Quotes About Regret

No one looks back and regrets leaving this world. What’s regretted is how real we thought it was.

Rumi

As far as I’m concerned, I regret nothing.

Miyamoto Musashi

It is regret for the absence of his loved one which causes a mourner to grieve: yet it is clear that this in itself is bearable enough; for we do not weep at their being absent or intending to be absent during their lifetime, although when they leave our sight we have no more pleasure in them. What tortures us, therefore, is an idea.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

In February there is everything to hope for and nothing to regret.

Patience Strong

Make the most of your regrets; never smother your sorrow, but tend and cherish it till it comes to have a separate and integral interest. To regret deeply is to live afresh.

Henry David Thoreau

Has this world been so kind to you that you should leave with regret? There are better things ahead than any we leave behind.

C.S. Lewis

Remorse is the punishment of crime; repentance, its expiation. The former appertains to a tormented conscience; the latter to a soul changed for the better.

Joseph Joubert

We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.

Jim Rohn

With everything that has happened to you, you can either feel sorry for yourself or treat what has happened as a gift. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose.

Wayne Dyer

Prefer loss to the wealth of dishonest gain. The former vexes you for a time; the latter will bring you lasting remorse.

Chilo

Don’t be so bitter about a bad experience from your past that you miss the opportunities in front of you.

Robert Kiyosaki

Remorse is the poison of life.

Charlotte Bronte

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable.

Sydney J. Harris

You’ll seldom experience regret for anything that you’ve done. It is what you haven’t done that will torment you. The message, therefore, is clear. Do it! Develop an appreciation for the present moment. Seize every second of your life and savor it.

Wayne Dyer

As a general rule, most “regrets” after one is caught aren’t regrets about having committed the action, but regrets about having been caught. Apologies count only when they are spontaneous, coming out of deep principles. Otherwise they are just an expression of submission.

Nassim Taleb

Many of us crucify ourselves between two thieves – regret for the past and fear of the future.

Fulton Oursler

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The greatest freedoms are freedom from regret, freedom from fear, freedom from anxiety, and freedom from sorrow.

Thich Nhat Hanh

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home.

Henry David Thoreau

If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world.

Mercedes Lackey

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

Jim Rohn

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.

Arthur Brisbane

Live with intention. Walk to the edge. Listen hard. Practice wellness. Play with abandon. Laugh. Choose with no regret. Appreciate your friends. Continue to learn. Do what you love. Live as if this is all there is.

Mary Anne Radmacher

In the end, we only regret the chances we didn’t take, the relationships we were afraid to have, and the decisions we waited too long to make.

Lewis Carroll

Never regret. If it’s good, it’s wonderful. If it’s bad, it’s experience.

Jean Plaidy

In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.

Stefan Zweig

This is our big mistake: to think we look forward to death. Most of death is already gone. Whatever time has passed is owned by death.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it it’s only good for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield

Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

William C. Bryant

Speak when you are angry and you will make the best speech you will ever regret.

Ambrose Bierce

Guard well within yourself that treasure, kindness. Know how to give without hesitation, how to lose without regret, how to acquire without meanness.

George Sand

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.

Søren Kierkegaard

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.

Carlos Castaneda

It’s not what you are, it’s what you don’t become that hurts.

Oscar Levant

Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy, you can’t build on it it’s only good for wallowing in.

Katherine Mansfield

Looking back, I have this to regret, that too often when I loved, I did not say so.

Ray Stannard Baker

Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because the regret is stronger than gratitude.

Anne Frank

Neither look forward where there is doubt nor backward where there is regret. Look inward and ask not if there is anything outside you want, but whether there is anything inside that you have not yet unpacked.

Quentin Crisp

Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will be delightful, old age will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.

Louisa May Alcott

The follies which a man regrets the most in his life are those which he didn’t commit when he had the opportunity.

Helen Rowland

Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.

Arthur Miller

No one looks back and regrets leaving this world. What’s regretted is how real we thought it was. 

Rumi

It is with regret that I pronounce the fatal truth: Louis ought to perish rather than a hundred thousand virtuous citizens; Louis must die so that the country may live.

Maximilien Robespierre

Remorse goes to sleep during a prosperous period and wakes up in adversity.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Regrets are a waste of time. They’re the past crippling you in the present.

Federico Fellini

My only regret in life is that I did not drink more wine.

Ernest Hemingway

There are two kinds of guilt: the kind that drowns you until you’re useless, and the kind that fires your soul to purpose.

Sabaa Tahir

My advice to other disabled people would be, concentrate on things your disability doesn’t prevent you doing well, and don’t regret the things it interferes with. Don’t be disabled in spirit, as well as physically.

Stephen Hawking

The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing. It receives but does not keep.

Zhuangzi

I knew that if I failed I wouldn’t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying.

Jeff Bezos

One regret dear world, that I am determined not to have when I am lying on my deathbed is that I did not kiss you enough.

Hafez

The great tragedy of the average man is that he goes to his grave with his music still in him.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

The bed is a bundle of paradoxes: we go to it with reluctance, yet we quit it with regret; we make up our minds every night to leave it early, but we make up our bodies every morning to keep it late.

Ogden Nash

Regret for wasted time is more wasted time.

Mason Cooley

Do not regret what you have done.

Miyamoto Musashi

To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

The only conquests that are permanent and leave no regrets are our conquests over ourselves.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Bereavement is terrible, of course. And when somebody you love dies, it’s a time for reflection, a time for memory, a time for regret.

Richard Dawkins

I often regret that I have spoken; never that I have been silent.

Publilius Syrus

In my flowery dreams there’s always you. I do not regret it one bit.

Alfred de Musset

Tap into that one fear that drives greatness – the fear of regret.

Betty Liu

For all sad words of tongue and pen, The saddest are these, ‘It might have been’.

John Greenleaf Whittier

One truth discovered, one pang of regret at not being able to express it, is better than all the fluency and flippancy in the world.

William Hazlitt

I don’t spend much time regretting the past, once I’ve taken my lesson from it. I don’t dwell on it.

Charlie Munger

We suffer more in imagination than in reality.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here now with the power to shape your day and your future.

Steve Maraboli

One’s real life is often the life that one does not lead.

Oscar Wilde

We all do things we desperately wish we could undo. Those regrets just become part of who we are, along with everything else. To spend time trying to change that, well, it’s like chasing clouds.

Libba Bray

I regret very much that I have painted a picture that requires any description.

Winslow Homer

There is no person so severely punished, as those who subject themselves to the whip of their own remorse.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Remorse is virtue’s root; its fair increase are fruits of innocence and blessedness.

William Cullen Bryant

So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having married it.

Harold Acton

Parting Words

I’ve come to see how regret can be one of the most powerful emotions we experience.

It can help highlight missed opportunities or latent, unfulfilled desires that we’re meant to pursue. It can act as a teacher. It can give us valuable insights into our values, passions, and next steps.

It’s an inevitable part of this experience we call ‘being human’, so let’s take the lessons that we can from this feeling and turn it into something positive.

What are your favorite quotes about regret? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. Liked this? You may also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Moments
• Quotes About Idleness (The Good and the Bad)
• Quotes About Memories
• Quotes About Dreams and Reality
• Quotes About Hope

Originally published November 15, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

Cusco, Peru

The post 73 Quotes About Regret That Give You Perspective appeared first on Flâneur Life.

During my month-long visit there a few years back about, I set out to truly embody the flâneur lifestyle. I spend my time wandering Paris’ charming streets, appreciating architectural details, strolling along the Seine, stumbling upon hidden cafes, and soaking in the city’s unique energy.

Let’s just say this city has a way of waking up your senses and sparking new perspectives.

No wonder it’s been a source of inspiration for countless artists, writers and romantics throughout history.

Whether you’re a first-time visitor or have been lucky enough to call Paris home, these quotes about Paris capture the allure of this storied city.

Quotes About Paris

London is a riddle. Paris is an explanation.

Gilbert K. Chesterton

Coming [to Paris] has been a wonderful experience, surprising in many respects, one of them being to find how much of an American I am.

Augustus Saint-Gaudens

Paris is narcotic for a man alone, a never-ending labyrinth where the anxiety of freedom is relieved.

Federico Castigliano

April in Paris, chestnuts in blossom, holiday tables under the trees.

Yip Harburg

Paris, I believe, is a man in his twenties in love with an older woman.

John Berger

The old Paris is no more (the form of a city changes faster, alas! than a mortal’s heart).

Charles Baudelaire

Paris… is a world meant for the walker alone, for only the pace of strolling can take in all the rich (if muted) detail.

Edmund White

I love Paris in the summer, when it sizzles.

Cole Porter

With an apple I will astonish Paris.

Paul Cezanne

Whether you like it or not, Paris is the beating heart of Western civilization. It’s where it all began and ended.

Alan Furst

A walk about Paris will provide lessons in history, beauty, and in the point of life.

Thomas Jefferson

In Paris, everybody wants to be an actor; nobody is content to be a spectator.

Jean Cocteau

You can’t escape the past in Paris, and yet what’s so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn’t seem to burden.

Allen Ginsberg

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

Ernest Hemingway

What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!

Charles Dickens

There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.

Vincent Van Gogh

Lunch kills half of Paris, supper the other half.

Baron de Montesquieu

As an artist one has no home in Europe except in Paris.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Though I often looked for one, I finally had to admit that there could be no cure for Paris.

Paula McLain

America is my country and Paris is my hometown.

Gertrude Stein

There are only two places in the world where we can live happy: at home and in Paris.

Ernest Hemingway

When good Americans die, they go to Paris.

Oscar Wilde

I think Paris smells, and not just sweet but melancholy and curious, sometimes sad but always enticing and seductive. She’s a city for all the senses, for artists and writers and musicians and dreamers, for fantasies, for long walks and wine and lovers and yes, for mysteries.

M.J. Rose

Secrets travel fast in Paris.

Napoleon Bonaparte

To know Paris is to know a great deal.

Henry Miller

I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil.

Ernest Hemingway

Whoever does not visit Paris regularly will never really be elegant.

Honoré de Balzac

To err is human. To loaf is Parisian.

Victor Hugo

The last time I saw Paris, her heart was warm and gay, I heard the laughter of her heart in every street café.

Oscar Hammerstein

Breathe Paris in. It nourishes the soul.

Victor Hugo

Paris is a hard place to leave, even when it rains incessantly and one coughs continually from the dampness.

Willa Cather

Paris…is loath to surrender itself to people who are in a hurry; it belongs to the dreams, to those capable of amusing themselves in its streets without regard to time when urged business requires their presence elsewhere.

Julien Green

I love Paris for the million reasons that everybody loves the city. It’s an incredibly romantic and beautiful place.

Alan Furst

Paris at dawn is one of those rare cities where you get the impression that something worthwhile could actually happen to you.

Pierre Assouline

He who contemplates the depths of Paris is seized with vertigo. Nothing is more fantastic. Nothing is more tragic. Nothing is more sublime.

Victor Hugo

…the whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music…it is worth anyone’s while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in Everything.

James Thurber

She wanted to pass, but she also wanted to live in Paris.

Gustave Flaubert

Paris is the most beautiful city in the world. It brings tears to your eyes.

Lee Radziwill

Paris is not a city; it’s a world.

King Francis

To study in Paris is to be born in Paris!

Victor Hugo

When Paris sneezes, Europe catches a cold.

Klemens von Metternich

Paris is a divine section of eternity.

E.E. Cummings

Flowers never look so lovely as they do in Paris in the market there.

Agatha Christie

Paris was a museum displaying exactly itself.

Jeffrey Eugenides

The chief danger about Paris is that it is such a strong stimulant.

T.S. Eliot

Paris is a city where time is best to spend doing nothing.

Erich Maria Remarque

Paris – There you can be whatever you want to be. Totally yourself.

Langston Hughes

Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.

Jack Kerouac

In Paris, our lives are one masked ball.

Gaston Leroux

Parting Words

No other city in the world inspires the thoughts and emotions that Paris does. Poets, artists, and writers have waxed poetic about it for centuries, and I have no trouble seeing why.

Everything about Paris seems to call out to flaneurs — observers who appreciate the small details and beauty of life.

What are your favorite quotes about Paris? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S. If you liked this, you may also enjoy our related quote collections:

• Walter Benjamin Quotes
• Charles Baudelaire Quotes
• Quotes About Flanerie
• Quotes About Relaxation
• Quotes About Society

Originally published October 25, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

The post 49 Quotes About Paris That Capture The City’s Allure appeared first on Flâneur Life.

I could write in small bursts when there was a clear purpose or task, but I’ve struggled my whole adult life to make it a regular thing.

That is, until I found a way to actually enjoy it. For me the “secret” was studying great writers from the past, learning their perspectives, and realizing that this type of writer’s block was a universal phenomenon.

It’s been incredible to witness what a daily writing habit can produce. How your thoughts start to become organized. How you start to realize what you’re actually creating.

I’ve rounded up some quotes about writing that help give insights into the minds of the greats.

We can learn from their perspectives, hard-earned lessons, and reflections then apply them to our own journey as writers.

Quotes About Writing

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

Douglas Adams

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou

The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.

Gustav Flaubert

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream by night.

Edgar Allan Poe

That’s what you’re looking for as a writer when you’re working. You’re looking for your own freedom.

Philip Roth

What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.

J.D. Salinger

If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.

Toni Morrison

Creativity is a combination of discipline and childlike spirit.

Robert Greene

Writing is the painting of the voice.

Voltaire

It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.

Paulo Coelho

You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.

Madeleine L’Engle

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.

Anais Nin

But when people say, did you always want to be a writer? I have to say no! I always was a write.

Ursula K. Le Guin

If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.

Stephen King

I write only because there is a voice within me that will not be stilled.

Sylvia Plath

Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself… it’s a self-exploratory operation that is endless.

Harper Lee

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very;’ your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.

Mark Twain

As a writer, you should not judge. You should understand.

Ernest Hemingway

Lock up your libraries if you like; but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.

Virginia Woolf

If you don’t see the book you want on the shelf, write it.

Beverly Cleary

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Ernest Hemingway

Stories may well be lies, but they are good lies that say true things, and which can sometimes pay the rent.

Neil Gaiman

We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.

Kurt Vonnegut

When all else fails, write what your heart tells you. You can’t depend on your eyes, when your imagination is out of focus.

Mark Twain

There are books of which the backs and covers are by far the best parts.

Charles Dickens

The greatest part of a writer’s time is spent in reading, in order to write; a man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Samuel Johnson

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

George Bernard Shaw

Fantasy is hardly an escape from reality. It’s a way of understanding it.

Lloyd Alexander

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Jack Kerouac

And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.

Sylvia Plath

Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.

William Faulkner

The first draft is you just telling yourself the story.

Terry Pratchett

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Agatha Christie

Write a page a day. Only 300 words and in a year you have written a novel.

Stephen King

The job of the novelist is to invent: to embroider, to color, to embellish, to make things up.

Donna Tart

You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.

Saul Bellow

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

Ray Bradbury

Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.

Anton Chekhov

No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.

Robert Frost

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.

E.L. Doctorow

Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.

Louis L’Amour

After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.

Philip Pullman

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart. 

William Wordsworth

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Henry David Thoreau

Know your literary tradition, savor it, steal from it, but when you sit down to write, forget about worshiping greatness and fetishizing masterpieces.

Allegra Goodman

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

There are no laws for the novel. There never have been, nor can there ever be.

Doris Lessing

Long patience and application saturated with your heart’s blood—you will either write or you will not—and the only way to find out whether you will or not is to try.

Jim Tully

Tears are words that need to be written.

Paulo Coelho

A word after a word after a word is power.

Margaret Atwood

There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they’ll take you. 

Beatrix Potter

For your born writer, nothing is so healing as the realization that he has come upon the right word.

Catherine Drinker Bowen

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Maya Angelou

You should write because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page. Writing comes from reading, and reading is the finest teacher of how to write.

Annie Proulx

If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.

Margaret Atwood

You should write stories because you love the shape of stories and sentences and the creation of different words on a page.

Annie Proulx

We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

Ernest Hemingway

When I sit down to write a book, I do not say to myself, ‘I am going to produce a work of art.’ I write it because there is some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention, and my initial concern is to get a hearing.

George Orwell

Always be a poet, even in prose.

Charles Baudelaire

Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

Franz Kafka

A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.

Thomas Mann

I write to give myself strength. I write to be the characters that I am not. I write to explore all the things I’m afraid of. 

Joss Whedon

All readers come to fiction as willing accomplices to your lies. Such is the basic goodwill contract made the moment we pick up a work of fiction.

Steve Almond

The writer is an explorer. Every step is an advance into a new land.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A well-composed book is a magic carpet on which we are wafted to a world that we cannot enter in any other way.

Caroline Gordon

It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.

Jack Kerouac

I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and look at it, until it shines.

Emily Dickinson

Enter the writing process with a childlike sense of wonder and discovery. Let it surprise you.

Charles Ghigna

Parting Words

For me, it’s valuable to realize that every writer, irrespective of their acclaim or the volume of their work, faced the same uncertainties and blank pages that we do.

Feel free to revisit these quotes whenever you need a quick dose of inspiration or a reminder of why you started writing in the first place.

What’s your favorite quote about writing? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. If you liked this, you might also like these related quote collections:

• Nassim Taleb Quotes
• Walter Benjamin Quotes
• Charles Baudelaire Quotes
• Quotes About Reading
• Transcendentalism Quotes

Originally published July 1, 2023. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of this post.

The post 68 Quotes About Writing From Renowned Writers appeared first on Flâneur Life.

The more I’ve studied the great thinkers of the past, the more I’ve come to see the importance of appreciating each and every one.

From attempting to live out the flâneur philosophy, I’ve learned to look for the extraordinary in the ordinary, and to create a collection of memories that will last a lifetime.

My experiences have taught me to appreciate the mundane, in the everyday, in the seemingly insignificant deails of life.

Seeminly small moments can add up to have a profound impact on our lifes and shape our memories, relationships, and perspectives.

That’s why I’ve put together this curated collection of quotes about moments.

My hope is that they’ll work as inspiration to create a more mindful approach to life, to slow down and be more present.

Quotes About Moments

Life is a succession of moments, to live each one is to succeed.

Corita Kent

Mindfulness is not chasing the moment but sipping the nectar of the moment.

Amit Ray

The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.

Richard Bach

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.

Mark Twain

You only live once; but if you do it right, once is enough.

Mae West

Philosophy always requires something more, requires the eternal, the true, in contrast to which even the fullest existence as such is but a happy moment.

Soren Kierkegaard

You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.

Zig Ziglar

We never remember days, only moments.

Cesare Pavese

At the end of the day, if I can say I had fun, it was a good day.

Simone Biles

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Marcus Aurelius

Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments.

Rose Kennedy

Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly.

Paulo Coelho

A person’s last moments are an important thing. You can’t choose how you’re born, but you can choose how you die.

Haruki Murakami

Guard well your spare moments. They are like uncut diamonds. Discard them and their value will never be known. Improve them and they will become the brightest gems in a useful life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

Confucius

We make patterns, we share moments.

Jenny Downham

We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.

Thornton Wilder

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day-in and day-out.

Robert Collier

Live life to its fullest or it may seem like you died young.

James Wattersmith

We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory.

Georges Duhamel

This moment contains all moments.

C.S. Lewis

I find happiness comes from numerous sources in my life. Most often, the happy moments I cherish most are quiet moments.

Peter MacKay

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, ‘what is’ what we want.

Byron Katie

Don’t waste your time in anger, regrets, worries, and grudges. Life is too short to be unhappy.

Roy T. Bennett

Remember then: there is only one time that is important – Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power.

Leo Tolstoy

Don’t wait for the perfect moment, take the moment, and make it perfect.

Zoey Sayward

If you were conscious, that is to say totally present in the now, all negativity would dissolve almost instantly. It could not survive in your presence.

Eckhart Tolle

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have.

Eckhart Tolle

You must collect moments. Those will be the true wealth of your soul.

Liviu C. Tudose

Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw

People aren’t meant to be perfect. We’re all imperfect people looking for perfect moments to share with other imperfect people.

Shaun Hutchinson

The greatest moments in life are not concerned with selfish achievements but rather with the things we do for the people we love and esteem.

Walt Disney

Life is available only in the present moment. If you abandon the present moment you cannot live the moments of your daily life deeply.

Thich Nhat Hanh

I can feel guilty about the past, apprehensive about the future, but only in the present can I act. The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

Abraham Maslow

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Leo Tolstoy

The moment in between what you once were, and who you are now becoming, is where the dance of life really takes place.

Barbara De Angelis

We are travelers on a cosmic journey, stardust, swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.

Paulo Coelho

Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.

John Spence

Why is it that weeks and months and years go by so quickly, all in a blur, but moments last forever?

Jennifer Donnelly

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

Dorothea Lange

Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.

Walt Whitman

We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.

H. G. Wells

Learn to enjoy every minute of your life. Be happy now. Don’t wait for something outside of yourself to make you happy in the future. Think how really precious is the time you have to spend, whether it’s at work or with your family. Every minute should be enjoyed and savored.

Earl Nightingale

There are moments that have a certain flavor of eternity.

Marc Levy

Measure yourself by your best moments, not by your worst. We are too prone to judge ourselves by our moments of despondency and depression.

Robert A. Johnson

Remember that at any given moment there are a thousand things you can love.

David Levithan

Remember the sole life which one can lose is that which he is living at the moment.

Marcus Aurelius

I have learned to live my life one step, one breath, and one moment at a time, but it was a long road. I set out on a journey of love, seeking truth, peace and understanding. I am still learning.

Muhammad Ali

Presence is when you’re no longer waiting for the next moment, believing that the next moment will be more fulfilling than this one.

Eckhart Tolle

But what minutes! Count them by sensation, and not by calendars, and each moment is a day.

Benjamin Disraeli

Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.

Mother Teresa

Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.

Homer

Every situation— nay, every moment— is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity.

Goethe

Every moment is the paradox of now or never.

Simon Van Booy

When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses – that’s what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that’s all that really mattered.

Waking Life

At the end, one didn’t remember life as a whole but as just a string of moments.

David Levien

Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have.

Eckhart Tolle

Some moments are nice, some are nicer, some are even worth writing about.

Charles Bukowski

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment.

Henry David Thoreau

The bittersweet side of appreciating life`s most precious moments is the unbearable awareness that those moments are passing.

Marc Parent

Every moment is a golden one for those who have the vision to recognize it as such.

Henry Miller

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by so quick you hardly catch it going.

Tennessee Williams

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

George Bernard Shaw

For life is holy and every moment is precious.

Jack Kerouac

It is now, and in this world, that we must live.

André Gide

Life is great and wondrous mystery and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don`t miss it.

Leo Buscaglia

You will never take a breath more or less important than the one you are taking now. You will never be in a day or year more or less important than the one you are in now.

Tolbert McCarroll

All the treasures of earth cannot bring back one lost moment.

Mervyn Morris

What we are left with then is to appreciate the moment we are in. This is the best time to be alive, because we are, and to enjoy it to the fullest, because we can.

Larry Chang

He is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing life in remembering the past.

Henry David Thoreau

Each second that we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that never was before and never will be again.

Pablo Casals

Parting Words

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that we can be more intentional about creating experiences and memories that make our lives better.

Little moments of insight and reflection during downtime or walks can help give us connect dots and understand ourselves better.

Travel and exploration is just one of many ways to make this happen.

Moments are fleeting, but we can become better at appreciating the present moment, making the most of our time, and embracing the ephemeral beauty of life.

What other quotes about moments would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Imagination for Those Who Dream Big
• Quotes About Idleness (The Good and the Bad)
• Quotes About Exploration
• Quotes About Dreams and Reality
• Quotes About Walking That Speak to the Flâneur in You

Originally published November 24, 2021. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of this post.

The post 71 Quotes About Moments That Force You Into the Present appeared first on Flâneur Life.

Our perceptions, actions, and ultimately our lives, are shaped by how we think and what we believe. Imagine our beliefs like filters that determine what we notice and how we interpret what we experience.

The good thing? These filters are malleable.

Even if we’ve had beliefs implanted or dictated to us that no longer serve us, we can examine them, start to challenge them, and reshape them with time.

That’s why I’ve rounded up some of the best quotes about beliefs from famous psychologists, philosophers and thinkers.

May their words give you insights and new perspectives.

Quotes About Quotes

Belief creates the actual fact.

William James

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

George Orwell

A widespread belief is more often likely to be foolish than sensible.

Bertrand Russell

People only see what they are prepared to see.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Few really believe. The most only believe that they believe or even make believe.

John Lancaster Spalding

A wise man … proportions his belief to the evidence.

David Hume

You don’t believe things because they make your life better, you believe them because they’re true.

Veronica Roth

One person with a belief is equal to ninety nine who have only interests.

John Stuart Mill

Every man prefers belief to the exercise of judgment.

Seneca

There can be no merit in believing something which you can neither explain nor understand.

John Lubbock

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

William James

He who believes needs no explanation.

Euripides

Belief is the wound that knowledge heals.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Remember that what you believe will depend very much on what you are.

Noah Porter

The more we justify our beliefs, the more narrow-minded we become.

Lin Yutang

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

Mahatma Gandhi

Strong beliefs win strong men, and then make them stronger.

Richard Bach

If you want to know what your true beliefs are, take a look at your actions.

Robert Anthony

Man is what he believes.

Anton Chekhov

He who does not know how to believe, should not know.

Antonio Porchia

I ask you to believe nothing that you cannot verify for yourself.

G.I. Gurdjieff

Beliefs are choices. First you choose your beliefs. Then your beliefs affect your choices.

Roy T. Bennett

Be brave to stand for what you believe in even if you stand alone.

Roy T. Bennett

A believer…is never disturbed because other persons do not see the fact which he sees.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.

Jose Bergamin

Men freely believe that which they desire.

Julius Caesar

Beliefs create reality.

Melody Beattie

Believe in one thing too much and you have no room for new ideas.

Ray Bradbury

First we have to believe, and then we believe.

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

It’s what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.

Karen Marie Moning

Generally the theories we believe we call facts, and the facts we disbelieve we call theories.

Felix Cohen

Belief gets in the way of learning.

Robert A. Heinlein

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Belief is the death of intelligence.

Robert Anton Wilson

When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.

Walt Disney

The belief that others think they are right doesn’t mean that they are.

Steven Redhead

Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.

Bob Ross

I believe that deep inside us, we all strive to move forward and up, to scale new heights.

Erik Weihenmayer

Believe and have trust and faith that you are really capable of doing what you want to do.

Jamie Anderson

As a man believes, so he will act.

Sam Harris

Our success is measured by personal beliefs, not by anybody else’s standards or beliefs.

Henry Marsh

Don’t let them drag you down by rumors just go with what you believe in.

Michael Jordan

But if we’re skeptical about our ability to affect belief, we merely have to look at naturally sticky ideas, because some of them persuade us to believe some pretty incredible things. Chip Heath;

Dan Heath

The fact is, you do not believe what you see, but rather, you see what you already believe. Your deeply held beliefs distort your worldview and cause you to see things not the way they are but the way you are.

Brian Tracy

It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.

Muhammad Ali

Our beliefs led us to make certain decisions about what is valuable to us as human beings. As the day goes by, we choose to do whatever we think is valuable.

Jim Rohn

He who believes he can and he who believes he can’t are both usually right.

Confucius

On the other hand, if you believe in happiness and abundance, think only about them, talk about them with others, and act on your belief in them, it is a very good bet that you are seeing what you believe.

Wayne Dyer

I believe if you truly have a passion for something – and if you believe it’s your God-given purpose in life – you can do it.

Zig Ziglar

It’s what you choose to believe that makes you the person you are.

Karen Marie Moning

Keep your dreams alive. Understand to achieve anything requires faith and belief in yourself, vision, hard work, determination and dedication. Remember all things are possible for those who believe.

Gail Devers

Men willingly believe what they wish.

Julius Ceaser

You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.

Neil Gaiman

For those who believe, no proof is necessary. For those who don’t believe, no proof is possible.

Stuart Chase

You are what you believe yourself to be.

Paulo Coelho

What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.

Norman Vincent Peale

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning.

Mahatma Gandhi

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

Henry Miller

Believing is a type of magic. It can make something true.

Emily X.R. Pan

Don’t be afraid of the space between your dreams and reality. If you can dream it, you can make it so.

Belva Davis

He does not believe that does not live according to his belief.

Sigmund Freud

Seeing is not believing; believing is seeing! You see things, not as they are, but as you are.

Eric Butterworth

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

Robertson Davies

If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you become that.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

To believe in something and not to live it is dishonest.

Mahatma Gandhi

Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself.

Robert Collier

Faith is expectancy. You do not receive what you want; you do not receive what you pray for, not even what you say you have faith in. You will always receive what you actually expect.

Eric Butterworth

Follow your bliss and the Universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

Joseph Campbell

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself but to your own estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.

Marcus Aurelius

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

William James

Some things have to be believed to be seen.

Ralph Hodgson

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true either is true or becomes true.

John Lilly

The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.

J. M. Barrie

The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.

Frank Lloyd Wright

To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Anatole France

Every mental act is composed of doubt and belief, but it is belief that is the positive, it is belief that sustains thought and holds the world together.

Søren Kierkegaard

What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is rarely a function of our true capability. It is more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.

Anthony Robbins

Believe that you can make your way. Or don’t. Either way, you are right.

Jennifer Donnelly

Your chances of success in any undertaking can always be measured by your belief in yourself.

Robert Collier

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Your belief determines your action and your action determines your results, but first you have to believe.

Mark Victor Hansen

Don’t limit yourself. Many people limit themselves to what they think they can do. You can go as far as your mind lets you. What you believe, remember, you can achieve.

Mary Kay Ash

If you want to know what your true beliefs are, take a look at your actions.

Robert Anthony

Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.

Henry David Thoreau

Believe something and the Universe is on its way to being changed. Because you’ve changed, by believing.

Diane Duane

Parting Words

By being mindful observers, we can start to examine our beliefs and challenge our assumptions.

We all have the right to develop beliefs that empower us, and not keep us held back. Even if that requires challenging societal norms or setting off on our own path, our sovereignty and self-discovery needs to be prioritized.

Here’s to expanding our worldviews and living a life of freedom.

What’s your favorite quote about beliefs? Let me know in the comments below.

P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Imagination for Those Who Dream Big
• Quotes About Momentum to Propel You on Your Journey
• Quotes About Vision to Light the Path Forward
• Quotes About Dreams and Reality
• Quotes About Self-Actualization

Originally published July 4, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

The post 88 Quotes About Beliefs to Change How You See the World appeared first on Flâneur Life.

Then it’s just a matter of time before our days are filled with noise and confusion. That’s when we lose track of what’s most important.

Being busy for busy’s sake is easy. Being selective, I’ve found, is much harder. It requires the development of a selective, minimalist mindset.

This involves decluttering, both mentally and physically, so we’re better able to connect with what drives us.

I’ve curated the following set of quotes about simplicity to inspire us all towards minimalism.

Quotes About Simplicity

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Confucius

If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.

Albert Einstein

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Jack Kerouac

Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple.

Natalie Babbitt

Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

Henry David Thoreau

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

E.F. Schumacher

Living simply makes loving simple.

Bell hooks

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

Rainer Maria Rilke

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy

Wash yourself clean. With simplicity, with humility, with indifference to everything but right and wrong. Care for other human beings.

Marcus Aurelius

Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.

George Sand

Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies.

Derek Landy

Manifest plainness,

Reduce selfishness,

Embrace simplicity,

Have few desires.

Lao Tzu

A person with taste is merely one who can recognize the greatest beauty in the simplest things.

Barbara Taylor Bradford

Living simply makes loving simple.

Bell Hooks

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

William Golding

One should use common words to say uncommon things.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Life is simple. You just have to stop trying to figure it out.

Marty Rubin

Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Isaac Newton

The greatest ideas are the simplest.

William Golding

As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.

Isaac Newton

It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.

David Levithan

Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.

Lin Yutang

Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with nature herself.

Henry David Thoreau

Every increased possession loads us with new weariness.

John Ruskin

He who is contented is rich.

Lao Tzu

The less I needed, the better I felt.

Charles Bukowski

Straightforwardness and simplicity are in keeping with goodness.

Seneca

My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.

Francine Jay

Order and simplification are the first steps toward the mastery of a subject.

Thomas Mann

It is always the simple that produces the marvelous.

Amelia Barr

Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.

Coco Chanel

Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?’

Marcus Aurelius

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

Douglas Horton

There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth.

Leo Tolstoy

The core of beauty is simplicity.

Paulo Coelho

We are happy in proportion to the things we can do without.

Henry David Thoreau

It is the sweet simple things in life which are the real ones after all.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.

Joshua Becker

A simple statement is bound to be untrue. One that is not simple cannot be utilized.

Paul Valéry

Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.

William Morris

Simplicity is making the journey of this life with just baggage enough.

Charles Dudley Warner

Reduce the complexity of life by eliminating the needless wants of life, and the labors of life reduce themselves. 

Edwin Way Teale

I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.

Roald Dahl

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house.

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The things that are essential are acquired with little bother; it is the luxuries that call for toil and effort.

Seneca

For a few minutes I tried to empty my mind entirely, to concentrate solely on breathing: sometimes it’s useful to rediscover simpler pleasures of life.

Romain Gary

Nature teaches us simplicity and contentment because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy.

Mark Coleman

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Isaac Newton

I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.

Sandra Cisneros

Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Albert Einstein

Simplicity is nature’s first step and the last of art.

Philip James Bailey

That’s been one of my mantras — focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple.

Steve Jobs

In character, in manner, in style, in all the things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Leonardo da Vinci

Like all magnificent things, it’s very simple.

Natalie Babbitt

To say more while saying less is the secret of being simple.

Dejan Stojanovic

Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.

Isaac Newton

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.

Rainer Maria Rilke

​​Find joy in simplicity, self-respect, and indifference to what lies between virtue and vice. Love the human race. Follow the divine.

Marcus Aurelius

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

Albert Einstein

It’s strange how the simple things in life go on while we become difficult.

Richard Brautigan

Simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance.

Coco Chanel

Natural beauty breezes within the simplicity that’s the purity, and the essence of natural beauty too.

Ehsan Sehgal

The wise man then followed a simple way of life-which is hardly surprising when you consider how even in this modern age he seeks to be as little encumbered as he possibly can.

Seneca

Nature loves simplicity and unity.

Johannes Kepler

Simplicity is the nature of great souls.

Papa Ramadas

The first step in crafting the life you want is to get rid of everything you don’t.

Joshua Becker

Complex things are easy to do. Simplicity’s the real challenge.

Robert James Waller

Life only puzzles us because we’re not simple enough to understand it.

Marty Rubin

I always go for simplicity.

David Bailey

One of the biggest accelerators to change is simplicity.

Dr Henry Cloud

I have to remind myself to live simply and not to overindulge, which is a constant battle in a material world.

Sandra Cisneros

Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Isaac Newton

It is desirable that a man live in all respects so simply and preparedly that if an enemy take the town… he can walk out the gate empty-handed and without anxiety.

Henry David Thoreau

Modern civilization is complicated and artificial. Simple folk live in a world of love and peace. Let no one hate another or harm another.

Sivananda

I have had to learn the simplest things last. Which made for difficulties.

Charles Olsen

Every solution to every problem is simple. It’s the distance between the two where the mystery lies.

Derek Landy

It’s as simple as that. Simple and complicated, as most true things are.

David Levithan

You can never be too subtle, and you can never be too simple.

Paul Valéry

Some things just work. There is elegance in simplicity.

Brandon Sanderson

The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.

Hans Hofmann

Nature teaches us simplicity and contentment because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy.

Mark Coleman

The expression of truth is simplicity.

Seneca

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Lao Tzu

Parting Words

Simplicity is underrated.

We can all attest to the fact that life is complicated enough without adding more noise.

That’s why quotes about simplicity are so helpful — they can help focus our minds on what’s most important.

What’s your favorite quote about simplicity? Let me know in the comments.

P.S. If you liked this, you might also like these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Slowing Down in Life
• Quotes About Simplifying Life
• Quotes About Minimalism
• Quotes About Nature
• Quotes About Moments

Originally published October 29, 2022. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

  Lima, Peru

The post 87 Quotes About Simplicity For a Minimalist Mindset appeared first on Flâneur Life.

While I’m all for solo travel at times, even then part of the fun is meeting new friends along the way. You link up, travel together until plans diverge, then go your separate ways. But the bond and memories last for a lifetime.

That’s why I’ve put together this list of quotes about traveling with friends, to remind us of the incredible adventures that come when you choose the right company.

Quotes About Travel With Friends

Happy is the soul that has a friend. Happier is the soul that trusts in the truth of the heart of a friend. Happiest is the soul that knows the solemnity of friendship and honours its laws.

Ogwo David Emenike

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter.

Izaak Walton

There is an unspoken bond you create with the friends you travel with.

Kristen Sarah

Wherever it is you may be, it is your friends who make your world.

Chris Bradford

True friends will always push you towards the great possibilities of your future, false friends will always chain you to the mistakes in your past.

Seth Brown

As soon as I saw you, I knew a grand adventure was about to happen.

Winnie The Pooh

No road is long with good company.

Turkish proverb

A friend may be waiting behind a stranger’s face.

Maya Angelou

Friendship is the golden thread that ties the heart of all the world.

John Evelyn

Don’t walk in front of me… I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me… I may not lead. Walk beside me… just be my friend.

Albert Camus

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ten minutes with a genuine friend is better than years spent with anyone less.

Crystal Woods

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.

Woodrow T. Wilson

If you have two friends in your lifetime, you’re lucky. If you have one good friend, you’re more than lucky.

S.E. Hinton

One of the great things about travel is that you find out how many good, kind people there are.

Edith Wharton

There’s not a word yet for old friends who’ve just met.

Jim Henson

The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow.

Aaron Lauritsen

Tourists don’t know where they’ve been, travelers don’t know where they’re going.

Paul Theroux

Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.

Tehyi Hsieh

Live life with no excuses, travel with no regret.

Oscar Wilde

The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.

Wallace Stevens

True friends never apart maybe in distance never in heart.

Helen Keller

Will you come travel with me? Shall we stick by each other as long as we live?

Walt Whitman

I have found out that there ain’t no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.

Mark Twain

An acquaintance merely enjoys your company, a fair-weather companion flatters when all is well, a true friend has your best interests at heart, and the pluck to tell you what you need to hear.

E.A. Bucchianeri

Good friends follow you anywhere.

Winnie the Pooh

Wherever you go, go with all your heart!

Confucius

We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best we can find in our travels is an honest friend.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Mark Twain

A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.

Tim Cahill

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

Maya Angelou

Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.

Anthony Bourdain

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

Anais Nin

Don’t tell me the sky’s the limit when there are footprints on the moon.

Paul Brandt

Discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.

Marcel Proust

What we find in a soul mate is not something wild to tame, but something wild to run with.

Robert Brault

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go further, go together.

African proverb

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Eleanor Roosevelt

A true best friend may get you into trouble, but they will always be there to pull you out of it too.

Kaylee Stepkoski

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.

Amy Poehler

When you get lost in a really strange place, nothing is more comforting than finding your friend whom you trust and can show the way.

Toba Beta

Anyone can have a friend, but the one that would walk in a storm to find you is all you will ever need.

Shannon L. Alder

Sometimes all you need is a great friend and a tank of gas.

Thelma and Louise

In life, it’s not where you go, it’s who you travel with.

Charles M. Schulz

The more I traveled, the more I realized fear makes strangers of people who should be friends.

Shirley MacLaine

Happiness is not a state to arrive at, but a manner of traveling.

Margaret Lee Runbeck

There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.

William Butler Yeats

Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

Ernest Hemingway

When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun’.

Groucho Marx

Own only what you can always carry with you: known languages, known countries, known people. Let your memory be your travel bag.

Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

Parting Words

Whether you’re taking a road trip in your own country or heading out on a more ambitious journey around the world, remember the power of traveling with the right people.

The shared experiences and memories are something that can never be taken away, no matter if things go perfectly smoothly or not.

In fact, some of my best memories to this day are from trips when disaster struck (but that’s a story for another day).

Have any other travel with friends quotes you’d add to the list? Let me know!

P.S. If you liked this, you might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Quitting Your Job
• Quotes About Synergy
• Quotes About Solo Travel
• Quotes About Idleness
• Quotes About Hope

Originally published October 14, 2021. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

The post 50 Quotes That Inspire You to Travel With Friends appeared first on Flâneur Life.