That’s part of what makes life interesting.

Reality isn’t fixed, it’s fluid and subjective. Our thoughts influence what we pay attention to and how we see the world around us.

I’ve scoured my Kindle notes along the works from famous thinkers across the vast expanse of the internet to find the most thought-proviking quotes about the mind.

Ready to go down the rabbit hole?

Thought-Provoking Quotes About the Mind

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

Albert Einstein

The mind, once stretched by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is the power of the mind to be unconquerable.

Seneca

Everyone should have their mind blown once a day.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Aldous Huxley

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this beautiful path, I walk in peace. With each step, the wind blows. With each step, a flower blooms.

Thich Nhat Hanh

To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders.

Lao Tzu

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Carl Jung

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The thinking mind is a useful and powerful tool, but it is also very limiting when it takes over your life completely, when you don’t realize that it is only a small aspect of the consciousness that you are.

Eckhart Tolle

You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

Marcus Aurelius

The mind is like an iceberg, it floats with one-seventh of its bulk above water.

Sigmund Freud

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The energy of the mind is the essence of life.

Aristotle

All problems are illusions of the mind.

Eckhart Tolle

Parting Words

Quotes like this can evoke insights into our own ways of thinking and help poke holes in the ways we currently interpret reality.

Seeing the world through fresh eyes is what we’re all about here at Flaneur Life.

My hope is that at least one of these insights has made you stop and reflect on the world you’ve constructed around you. Either way, I hope you found this interesting or beneficial in some way.

Have any other quotes about the mind that you feel deserve to be a part of this post? Do let me know in the comments.

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

• Quotes About Finding Yourself
• Quotes About Synergy
• Quotes About Overcoming Fear
• Quotes About Idleness
• Quotes About Hope

Originally published June 18, 2020.

The post 18 Quotes About the Mind That Make You Think Deeply appeared first on Flâneur Life.

Books allow us to view things from new perspectives, to escape or disconnect, and to learn directly from those who have accomplished great feats in life.

The right idea, well explained, can spark our curiosity. As we unlock new information, our paths can change.

That’s why I’ve curated this collection of quotes about reading, to keep it as a handy source of inspiration.

Use it as needed to remind yourself of the power of reading and its benefits.

Quotes About Reading

Books are a uniquely portable magic.

Stephen King

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

George R.R.

Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world.

Jeanette Winterson

What I love most about reading: It gives you the ability to reach higher ground. And keep climbing.

Oprah Winfrey

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

Lemony Snicket

You will learn most things by looking, but reading gives understanding. Reading will make you free.

Paul Rand

You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.

C.S. Lewis

Keep reading. It’s one of the most marvelous adventures that anyone can have.

Lloyd Alexander

Books are the mirrors of the soul.

Virginia Woolf

We read to know we’re not alone.

William Nicholson

Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.

John Green

We read to know we’re not alone.

William Nicholson

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Joseph Addison

Read a thousand books, and your words will flow like a river.

Lisa See

I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.

Groucho Marx

Reading for me is spending time with a friend.

Gary Paulsen

If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.

Oscar Wilde

Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.

Carl Sagan

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library.

Jorge Luis Borges

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.

Henry Ward Beecher

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book! When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library.

Jane Austen

If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book.

J.K. Rowling

Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift.

Kate DiCamillo

I do not read a book; I hold a conversation with the author.

Elbert Hubbard

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

Rene Descartes

Rainy days should be spent at home with a cup of tea and a good book.

Bill Watterson

Classic′ – a book which people praise and don’t read.

Mark Twain

Whenever you read a good book, somewhere in the world a door opens to allow in more light.

Vera Nazarian

Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

Mason Cooley

Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don’t you agree?

Christopher Paolini

I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them.

Emma Thompson

For my whole life, my favorite activity was reading. It’s not the most social pastime.

Audrey Hepburn

Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers.

Charles W. Eliot

Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.

George R.R. Martin

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Orhan Pamuk

Reading is an act of civilization; it’s one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.

Ben Okri

Reading—the best state yet to keep absolute loneliness at bay.

William Styron

I feel the need of reading. It is a loss to a man not to have grown up among books.

Abraham Lincoln

Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.

Pam Allyn

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Margaret Fuller

The man who does not read good books is no better than the man who can’t.

Mark Twain

Only the very weak-minded refuse to be influenced by literature and poetry.

Cassandra Clare

To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.

Victor Hugo

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Harper Lee

A book is a gift you can open again and again.

Garrison Keillor

A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading.

William Styron

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Theodore Roosevelt

A parent or a teacher has only his lifetime; a good book can teach forever.

Louis L’Amour

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau

Once you learn to read, you will be forever free.

Frederick Douglass

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

Ray Bradbury

Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren’t very new after all.

Abraham Lincoln

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Gustave Flaubert

Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly.

Sir Francis Bacon

Sleep is good, he said, and books are better.

George R. R. Martin

My alma mater was books, a good library…I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.

Malcolm X

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Voltaire

There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.

Walt Disney

You get a little moody sometimes but I think that’s because you like to read. People that like to read are always a little fucked up.

Pat Conroy

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

Fran Lebowitz

Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you.

Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Reading brings us unknown friends.

Honoré de Balzac

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

Louis L’Amour

Many people, myself among them, feel better at the mere sight of a book.

Jane Smiley

I cannot remember the books I’ve read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

Joseph Brodsky

Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary.

Jim Rohn

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

Fran Lebowitz

We live for books.

Umberto Eco

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.

Mortimer J. Adler

No. I can survive well enough on my own— if given the proper reading material.

Sarah J. Maas

Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.

Diane Duane

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

Robert Frost

I read a book one day and my whole life was changed.

Orhan Pamuk

A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.

Italo Calvino

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.

Margaret Fuller

Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.

Diane Duane

The world was hers for the reading.

Betty Smith

The best books…are those that tell you what you know already.

George Orwell

Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while.

Malorie Blackman

The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.

Dr. Seuss

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith

Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.

Fernando Pessoa

Never trust anyone who has not brought a book with them.

Lemony Snicket

Parting Words

Not only does reading expand our knowledge, but it helps us disconnect. The act of reading itself involves slowing down and focusing deeply.

In this way, reading can be a tool for self-reflection and personal growth.

Which of these quotes about reading resonated most? Let me know!

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

• Quotes About Writing
• Quotes About Insight and Revelation
• Walter Benjamin Quotes
• Charles Baudelaire Quotes
• Transcendentalism Quotes

Initially published: July 23, 2023

The post Quotes About Reading That Will Make You Crave a Good Book appeared first on Flâneur Life.

“Just do it.” “Hustle until your haters ask if you’re hiring.” “Yesterday

Blind hustle culture makes my brain hurt.

But here, we’re looking for snippets of widsom: Witty observations. Insightful commentary. A peek into the mind of a successful individual’s routine.

What follows is a series of curated quotes about working hard from some of the world’s great thinkers, innovators, and trailblazers.

Take your time to explore (and I hope you find a tidbit that resonates).

Quotes About Working Hard

Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Henry David Thoreau

Hard work always pays off, whatever you do.

Dustin Lynch

A lot of hard work is hidden behind nice things.

Ralph Lauren

Hard work pays off. The harder you work, the more people will notice.

Sydney Sweeney

Preparation for tomorrow is hard work today.

Bruce Lee

Hard work spotlights the character of people: some turn up their sleeves, some turn up their noses, and some don’t turn up at all.

Sam Ewing

Nothing will work unless you do.

Maya Angelou

The hard work definitely paid off and hard work always does.

Gabby Douglas

I’ve learned that anything in life worth having comes from patience and hard work.

Greg Behrendt

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

Henry Ford

Great things come from hard work and perseverance. No excuses.

Kobe Bryant

Work hard, be kind, and amazing things will happen.

Conan O’Brien

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day.

Jim Rohn

Hard work pays off if you’re patient enough to see it through.

Michael Chandler

If you do the work you get rewarded. There are no shortcuts in life.

Michael Jordan

The greater the effort, the greater the glory.

Pierre Corneille

Happiness is the real sense of fulfillment that comes from hard work.

Joseph Barbara

Enjoy your sweat because hard work doesn’t guarantee success, but without it you don’t have a chance.

Alex Rodriguez

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.

Margaret Thatcher

The only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.

Steve Jobs

The harder I work the more I live.

George Bernard Shaw

If you care about what you do and work hard at it, there isn’t anything you can’t do if you want to.

Jim Henson

I know the price of success: dedication, hard work and an unremitting devotion to the things you want to see happen.

Frank Lloyd Wright

Perseverance is failing 19 times and succeeding the 20th.

Julie Andrews

Without labor, nothing prospers.

Sophocles

Perseverance, the secret of all triumphs.

Victor Hugo

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Beverly Sills

The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses — behind the lines, in the gym, and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.

Muhammad Ali

There will be obstacles. There will be doubters. There will be mistakes. But with hard work, there are no limits.

Michael Phelps

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Colin Powell

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.

Seneca

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.

Alexander Graham Bell

Nobody who ever gave his best regretted it.

George Halas

The dictionary is the only place that success comes before work.

Vince Lombardi

Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.

David Bly

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

Booker T. Washington

If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.

Henry Ford

Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes, but they don’t quit.

Conrad Hilton

One important key to success is self-confidence. An important key to self-confidence is preparation.

Arthur Ashe

Dreams are not easy. Dreams are painful. They force work and commitment. They are challenging and motivating.

Robert Kiyosaki

You must tell yourself, “No matter how hard it is, or how hard it gets, I’m going to make it.

Les Brown

Believe in yourself, work hard, work smart and passionately present your best self to the world.

Hill Harper

In any given moment we have two options. To step forward into growth or to step back into safety.

Abraham Maslow

If you really want something, and really work hard, and take advantage of opportunities, and never give up, you will find a way.

Jane Goodall

I am who I am today because of the choices I made yesterday.

Eleanor Roosevelt

You can’t get there by bus, only by hard work and risk and by not quite knowing what you’re doing. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover will be yourself.

Alan Alda

I didn’t get there by wishing for it or hoping for it, but by working for it.

Estée Lauder

Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.

Oprah Winfrey

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.

Michelangelo

If you try and lose then it isn’t your fault. But if you don’t try and we lose, then it’s all your fault.

Orson Scott Card

Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.

Jim Rohn

If people knew how hard I had to work to gain my mastery, it would not seem so wonderful at all.

Michelangelo Buonarroti

There are no shortcuts to any place worth going.

Beverly Sills

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

Patrick Süskind

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.

Thomas A. Edison

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.

Thomas Jefferson

The writer’s curse is that even in solitude, no matter its duration, he never grows lonely or bored.

Criss Jami

Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.

Tim Fargo

Sometimes there’s not a better way. Sometimes there’s only the hard way.

Mary E. Pearson

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

George Herman Ruth

If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.

Jack Dixon

Parting Words

The most successful people I know all had to put in massive amounts of work to achieve what they have. There’s no denying that luck (or timing) plays into every success story, but the hard work element is always there, too.

What’s your go-to quote about working hard? Got any others that deserve a place on the list?

Thanks for tuning in.

P.S. You might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Financial Freedom
• Quotes About Overcoming Fear
• Quotes About Taking Risks in Life and Business
• Quotes About Life Direction
• Quotes About Resilience

The post 61 Quotes About Working Hard (That Don’t Suck) appeared first on Flâneur Life.

Decisions. Values. All that jazz.

As I’ve learned, it’s about so much more than academics. Having a personal life philosophy, or at least a clearer idea of which major philosophies resonate most, has real-world utility.

It helps you:

• Make decisions more obvious (and gives you the confidence to make them)
• Connect with your own intuition instead of just following what others expect of you
• Understand other points of view better
• Poke holes in your own thinking (and improve as a result)
• Deal more aptly with the twists life throws at you
• (….among a whole lot more applications that go beyond the scope of this post)

For inspiration, I’ve gathered this collection of philosophy of life quotes. It’s a list of beliefs and points of view from thinkers, authors and other exceptional individuals with their own unique point of view.

Let’s explore, shall we?

Philosophy of Life Quotes

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Helen Keller

The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.

Matt Haig

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

Mae West

It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.

Andre Gide

The one unforgivable sin is to be boring.

Christopher Hitchens

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.

Albert Einstein

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

J.K. Rowling

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Oscar Wilde

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.

Allen Saunders

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Douglas Adams

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Dr. Seuss

I’m not afraid of death; I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Woody Allen

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

George Bernard Shaw

Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.

John Green

Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.

Stephen Chbosky

But better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

Khaled Hosseini

Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can’t get any better, it can.

Nicholas Sparks

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Isaac Asimov

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Margaret Mead

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.

Gustave Flaubert

May you live every day of your life.

Jonathan Swift

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

Søren Kierkegaard

Where there is love there is life.

Mahatma Gandhi

If my life is going to mean anything, I have to live it myself.

Rick Riordan

Don’t be pushed around by the fears in your mind. Be led by the dreams in your heart.

Roy T. Bennett

Monsters are real, and ghosts are real too. They live inside us, and sometimes, they win.

Stephen King

He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche

The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.

Abigail Van Buren

The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it’s all that matters.

Audrey Hepburn

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

Albert Camus

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.

Kahlil Gibran

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

Marcus Aurelius

Life’s under no obligation to give us what we expect.

Margaret Mitchell

Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.

Albert Schweitzer

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

Abraham Lincoln

The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.

Nicolas Chamfort

Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.

Mark Twain

If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain.

Emily Dickinson

I am not sure that I exist, actually. I am all the writers that I have read, all the people that I have met, all the women that I have loved; all the cities I have visited.

Jorge Luis Borges

Life is to be enjoyed, not endured.

Gordon B. Hinckley

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Anais Nin

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

Robert Frost

Letting go means to come to the realization that some people are a part of your history, but not a part of your destiny.

Steve Maraboli

You were born to stand out, stop trying to fit in.

Roy T. Bennett

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.

Charles Dickens

Don’t waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.

Paulo Coelho

The past has no power over the present moment.

Eckhart Tolle

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

A learning experience is one of those things that says, ‘You know that thing you just did? Don’t do that.

Douglas Adams

What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears.

Lucius Annaeus Seneca

Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.

Louise Erdrich

It is not the length of life, but the depth.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

She remembered who she was and the game changed.

Lalah Delia

The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.

Steven Furtick

Just think! This whole world of ours is only a speck of mildew sprung up on a tiny planet, yet we think we can have something great – thoughts,, actions! They are all but grains of sand.

Leo Tolstoy

It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn’t the place, but the perspective.

Matt Haig

It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.

Confucius

It’s a funny thing about life, once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.

Germany Kent

Maybe everyone can live beyond what they’re capable of.

Markus Zusak

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.

Terry Pratchett

You can have it all. Just not all at once.

Oprah Winfrey

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?

Virginia Woolf

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.

Peter Shaffer

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

Robert Louis

If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.

Charles Darwin

Parting Words

Whether you agree with them or not, that’s all part of the beauty of forming your own life philosophy.

Collect the ones that resonate, and discard the ones that don’t.

We’re each in the process of evolving our points of view, step by step.

Which philosophy of life quotes or beliefs did you find yourself agreeing with? Let me know in the comments.

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

• Quotes About Self Discovery
• Quotes About Imagination
• Quotes About Epiphanies
• Quotes About Identity
• Quotes About Life Direction

Originally published July 3, 2023 in Panama City, Panama. The date in the header of this post reflects the last date significant changes were made.

The post 67 Philosophy of Life Quotes to Expand Your Worldview appeared first on Flâneur Life.

I’ve used journaling to capture my mindset, focus and insights in the various locations I’ve visited over the past 15 years. It helps me create a tangible record of my adventures.

Mostly I’m just recording significant thoughts, realizations and ideas.

When I look back and read past entries, it’s as if I’m instantly transported back to that place and time. I can also see how my mindset has evolved, and track progress on key projects I’ve been working on on a continual basis.

If you’re looking to start up a similar practice, these quotes about journaling can help. What follows is a collection of insights from various thinkers that each share a unique perspective on what it means to document your thoughts (and how you go about doing it).

Enjoy.

Quotes About Journaling

I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.

Flannery O’Connor

I love my journal as much as I love my phone. I find it to be a big part of my self-care to reflect on my day and write words that inspire me.

Franchesca Ramsey

Social media is just an online journal.

Jordyn Woods

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Henry David Thoreau

This pouring thoughts out on paper has relieved me. I feel better and full of confidence and resolution.

Diet Eman

Journal writing is a voyage to the interior.

Christina Baldwin

Keeping a journal: The short entries are often as dry as instant tea. Writing them down is like pouring hot water over them to release their aroma.

Ernst Jünger

The habit of writing for my eye is good practice. It loosens the ligaments.

Virginia Woolf

The body will fail you, the mind will deceive you, but the spirit is the true essence of the Individual.

Phillip Anderson

You don’t care about those first three pages; those you will throw out, those you needed to write to get to that fourth page, to get to that one long paragraph that was what you had in mind when you started, only you didn’t know that, couldn’t know that, until you got to it.

Anne Lamott

Document your dreams. Sketch that shape you saw. Write those lyrics before they fade out.

Michael Bassey Johnson

Working with the morning pages, we begin to sort through the differences between our real feelings, which are often secret, and our official feelings, those on the record for public display.

Julia Cameron

These words need not be red for our blood to run through them.

Amanda Gorman

Writing your thoughts down can bring clarity amid confusion and stagnancy.

Robin S. Baker

Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you’ve learned to change the narrative in the next volume.

Ryder Carroll

I don’t journal to ‘be productive.’ I don’t do it to find great ideas or to put down prose I can later publish. The pages aren’t intended for anyone but me. It’s the most cost-effective therapy I’ve ever found.

Tim Ferriss

The very centre of your heart is where life begins – the most beautiful place on earth.

Rumi

If you haven’t been journaling through this, now is a good time to start. One day, you and people who love and loved you and people who will never know you may want to look back to understand how you survived.

Darnell Lamont Walker

Only when she has re-created in ink upon parchment what she saw does she fully understand it. Visions are not complete until they have been set down and stepped away from, turned this way and that in the hand.

Lauren Groff

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

William Wordsworth

If kids reflect on their days, they will become better problem-solvers of life.

Trevor Carss

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

Rob Bignell

He captures memories because if he forgets them, it’s as though they didn’t happen.

Donald Miller

Writing your name can lead to writing sentences. And the next thing you’ll be doing is writing paragraphs, and then books.

Henry David Thoreau

Writing is the only way I have to explain my own life to myself.

Pat Conroy

These handwritten words in the pages of my journal confirm that from an early age I have experienced each encounter in my life twice: once in the world, and once again on the page.

Terry Tempest Williams

A writer, I think, is someone who pays attention to the world.

Susan Sontag

Keep writing, and one day you might just become a great writer.

Pablo Picasso

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

Ernest Hemingway

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

Maya Angelou

A write is someone who has taught his mind to misbehave.

Oscar Wilde

Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.

Virginia Woolf

The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.

Anais Nin

Journaling can be an excellent way to increase self-awareness, discover and change habits.

Akiroq Brost

Paper is to write things down that we need to remember. Our brains are used to think.

Albert Einstein

A personal journal is an ideal environment in which to ‘become.’ It is a perfect place for you to think, feel, discover, expand, remember, and dream.

Brad Wilcox

Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end.

Paulo Coelho

A diary or journal isn’t necessarily something that should be done daily so much as it is a clue to how to see the daily world around oneself differently.

Alexandra Johnson

What a comfort is this journal. I tell myself to myself and throw the burden on my book and feel relieved.

Anne Lister

Journaling helps you to remember how strong you truly are within yourself.

Asad Meah

Keep some souvenirs of your past, or how will you ever prove it wasn’t all a dream?

Ashleigh Brilliant

I never wrote things down to remember; I always wrote things down so I could forget.

Matthew McConaughey

Keeping a journal is the number-one best way to develop your written voice.

Camille Perri

I would consider my diary serves the same purpose as going for a walk or a run. They are all physical ways of clearing a mental landscape.

Chet Faker

The true purpose of illustrated journaling [is] to celebrate your life. No matter how small or mundane or redundant, each drawing and little essay you write to commemorate an event or an object or a place makes it all the more special

. Danny Gregory

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

Henry David Thoreau

If you’re serious about becoming a wealthy, powerful, sophisticated, healthy, influential, cultured, and unique individual, keep a journal.

Jim Rohn

Journaling is the perfect way to shift your emotions immediately and process your feelings without judgment, so you don’t get stuck in unpleasant experiences.

Kristen Butler

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I’m a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

Ruth Ozeki

Each Bullet Journal becomes another volume in the story of your life. Does it represent the life you want to live? If not, then leverage the lessons you’ve learned to change the narrative in the next volume.

Ryder Carroll

As there are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.

William Makepeace Thackeray

Parting Words

Journaling isn’t just about self-reflection. It helps you get clarity on what’s most important, allowing you to make better decisions.

Plus, it’s just cool to look back and see how far you’ve come. This perspective might just be the biggest benefit I’ve seen.

What’s your favorite quote about journaling? Let me know in the comments!

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

• Quotes About Epiphanies
• Quotes About Finding Yourself
• Quotes About Reflection
• Quotes About Memories
• Quotes About Influence

Originally Published on May 18, 2023. The date of the last significant edit is reflected at the top of the post.

  Guatape, Colombia

The post 51 Quotes About Journaling to Free Your Mind appeared first on Flâneur Life.

These quotes about wisdom cover a range of topics, from love and happiness to success and personal growth, and are sure to offer a fresh perspective on life.

Whether you’re seeking wisdom for your own personal development or looking for a way to inspire others, these quotes are sure to leave a lasting impact. So sit back, relax, and prepare to be inspired by the wise words of some of the greatest minds in history.

Wisdom Quotes

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

Self-reflection is the school of wisdom.

Baltasar Gracian

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

Doug Larson

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

Ambrose Bierce

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

Karl Kraus

They will envy you for your success, your wealth, for your intelligence, for your looks, for your status – but rarely for your wisdom.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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 bitterest.

Confucius

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Socrates

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

Knowledge is a process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.

Martin H. Fischer

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare

It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.

Maurice Switzer

The best index to a person’s character is how he treats people who can’t do him any good, and how he treats people who can’t fight back.

Abigail Van Buren

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Isaac Asimov

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

Fran Lebowitz

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

Aristotle

Life is from the inside out. When you shift on the inside, life shifts on the outside.

Kamal Ravikant

Life can be simple and beautiful. Focus on the good things.

Maxime Lagacé

In the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.

Abraham Lincoln

I’m always doing things I can’t do. That’s how I get to do them.

Pablo Picasso

Very little is needed to make a happy life, it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Marcus Aurelius

It all begins and ends in your mind. What you give power to, has power over you, if you allow it.

Leon Brown

Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.

Omar Khayyam

If you don’t like something change it; if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.

Mary Engelbreit

Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.

John Lennon

Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.

Rumi

Virtually nothing is impossible in this world if you just put your mind to it and maintain a positive attitude.

Lou Holtz

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.

Jules Renard

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

Lao Tzu

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.

Confucious

Repetition of the same thought or physical action develops into a habit which, repeated frequently enough, becomes an automatic reflex.

Norman Vincent Peale

Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.

Theodore Roosevelt

May you live every day of your life.

Jonathan Swift

You do not write your life with words…You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

Patrick Ness

The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them.

Paulo Coelho

Knowledge is proud that it knows so much; wisdom is humble that it knows no more.

William Cowper

Everything is within your power, and your power is within you.

Janice Trachtman

We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

Wisdom is having things right in your life and knowing why.

William Stafford

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power.

Lao Zhu

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

Harper Lee

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

Henry David Thoreau

If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.

Lewis Carroll

Look for the good in every person and every situation. You’ll almost always find it.

Brian Tracy

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

Otto von Bismarck

It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.

Epictetus

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Carl Jung

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Archimedes

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Aristotle

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

Epictetus

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Lao Tzu

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

Seneca

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

Plato

To acquire knowledge, one must study; but to acquire wisdom, one must observe.

Marilyn vos Savant

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Marcus Aurelius

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in few.

Pythagoras

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom. One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

Sandra Carey

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

Mahatma Gandhi

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Aldous Huxley

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

Confucius

There are three constants in life…change, choice and principles.

Stephen Covey

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them–that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Lao Tzu

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Winston Churchill

Let your actions demonstrate your wisdom.

Truman Capote

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you do the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Robert Frost

It is the province of knowledge to speak, and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr

Learn the wisdom of compromise, for it is better to bend a little then to break. J

Ane Wells

The wisest mind has something yet to learn.

George Santayana

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.

C. S. Lewis

Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom.

Theodore Isaac Rubin

Convince yourself everyday that you are worthy of a good life. Let go of stress, breathe. Stay positive, all is well.

Germany Kent

Make peace with yourself, and both heaven and earth will make peace with you. St.

Isaac the Syrian

Faith gives us strength and reassurance and leaves us bathed in the wisdom that we are never alone.

Socrates

What wills to grow will grow. What wills to flow will flow.

Donna Goddard

A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.

John C. Maxwell

Always walk through life as if you have something new to learn, and you will.

Vernon Howard

The past is behind, learn from it. The future is ahead, prepare for it. The present is here, live it.

Thomas S. Monson

We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.

George Bernard Shaw

Everything is hard before it is easy.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Intelligence without wisdom brings destruction.

Erol Ozan

Be wiser than other people, if you can; but do not tell them so. 

Lord Chesterfield

Thus, a wise individual is the one who learns to see the positive even in unfavorable events and unanticipated behavior of people.

Lindsay J. Hallie

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge.

Charles Spurgeon

It is said that wisdom lies not in seeing things, but seeing through things.

Elbert Hubbard

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.

Edward Hersey Richards

Knowledge is knowing what to say. Wisdom is knowing when to say it.

Colette

Never, no, never did nature say one thing and wisdom say another.

Charles Dickens

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.

Mark Twain

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Winston Churchill

You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough.

William Blake

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.

David Starr Jordan

The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.

Confucius

Happiness and freedom begin with one principle. Some things are within your control and some are not.

Epictetus

While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us.

Benjamin Franklin

Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how’.

Viktor Frankl

When we ignore our inner wisdom, we will come to regret it.

John Soforic

Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Mark Twain

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Live simply so others may simply live.

Mother Teresa

The more we learn, the more we discover how much we do not know.

Yoda

Be still my heart; thou hast known worse than this.

Homer

You’ve heard that it’s wise to learn from experience, but it is wiser to learn from the experience of others.

Rick Warren

Seek the wisdom of the ages, but look at the world through the eyes of a child.

Ron Wild

You can never plan the future by the past.

Edmund Burke

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.

Aristotle

Turn your wounds into wisdom.

Oprah Winfrey

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

Soren Kierkegaard

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

George Bernard Shaw

Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.

Albert Einstein

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them–that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Lao Tzu

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young.

Henry Ford

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Amelia Earhart

Knowledge comes from learning. Wisdom comes from living.

Anthony Douglas Williams

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

Joseph Campbell

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 nonessentials.

Lin Yutang

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

Eleanor Roosevelt

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Socrates

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

Robert Frost

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Aristotle

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain

Losing faith in your own singularity is the start of wisdom, I suppose; also the first announcement of death.

Peter Conrad

Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.

Rumi

There is a universal, intelligent, life force that exists within everyone and everything. It resides within each one of us as a deep wisdom, an inner knowing. We can access this wonderful source of knowledge and wisdom through our intuition, an inner sense that tells us what feels right and true for us at any given moment.

Shakti Gawain

The end of wisdom is to dream high enough to lose the dream in the seeking of it.

William Faulkner

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

Hermann Hesse

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

Ansel Adams

Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it.

M.H. McKee

Parting Words

As you reflect on these timeless wisdom quotes, may they inspire you to continue your exploration of the world and of yourself. Remember that wisdom is not just about accumulating knowledge, but also about putting that knowledge into action. So go forth, fellow explorer, and live your life with intention, curiosity, and a thirst for growth.

We’re curious, what’s your favorite among these wisdom quotes? Are there any others you’d add? Leave a comment below.

You might also like these related quote collections:

• Quotes About the Mind
• Quotes About Finding Yourself
• Quotes About Self-Actualization
• Quotes About Life Direction
• Quotes About Epiphanies

Originally Published: April 24, 2023

The post 117 Timeless Wisdom Quotes for the Modern Explorer appeared first on Flâneur Life.

These inspiring quotes about following your own path will remind you of the importance of staying the course, even when it’s difficult. So pack your bags and set off on your next adventure, knowing that you can always find your way by keeping your heart open and following your dreams.

If you’re feeling brave enough, scroll down and read on!

Quotes About Following Your Own Path

Every time you fall down or take the wrong path, it isn’t wasted. You will surely develop and grow over time.

Natsuki Takaya

As people are walking all the time, in the same spot, a path appears.

John Locke

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.

Joseph Campbell

You are responsible for the world that you live in. It is not the government’s responsibility. It is not your school’s or your social club’s or your church’s or your neighbor’s or your fellow citizen’s. It is yours, utterly and singularly yours.

August Wilson

If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it.

Zora Neale Hurston

Don’t follow the path. Blaze the trail.

Jordan Belfort

The scandal of education is that every time you teach something, you deprive a [student] of the pleasure and benefit of discovery.

Seymour Papert

After all it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life.

Evelyn Underhill

Over every mountain there is a path, although it may not be seen from the valley.

Theodore Roethke

Curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Walt Disney

An artist is a person who has invented an artist.

Harold Rosenberg

Does the walker choose the path or the path the walker?

Garth Nix

When the path reveals itself, follow it.

Cheryl Strayed

The obstacle in the path becomes the path. Never forget, within every obstacle is an opportunity to improve our condition.

Ryan Holiday

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.

Joseph Campbell

Today’s ‘best practices’ lead to dead ends; the best paths are new and untried.

Peter Thiel

If you’re not excited about it, it’s not the right path.

Abraham Hicks

Just because someone stumbles and loses their path, doesn’t mean they’re lost forever.

(Professor X)

Always follow the path of truth.

Chris Butler

The path to success is to take massive, determined action.

Tony Robbins

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Henry David Thoreau

Don’t compare your path with anybody else’s. Your path is unique to you.

Ram Dass

Nothing will work unless you do.

Maya Angelou

Choosing a path means having to miss out on others.

Paulo Coelho

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act, but a habit.

Aristotle

If you feel lost, disappointed, hesitant, or weak, return to yourself, to who you are, here and now and when you get there, you will discover yourself, like a lotus flower in full bloom, even in a muddy pond, beautiful and strong.

Masaru Emoto

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Lao-tzu

Expect nothing, live frugally on surprise.

Alice Walker

When you’re feeling lost, take heart. It’s just your brain gathering the information it needs to make good decisions.

Josh Kaufman

The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.

Michel de Montaigne

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Christian Nestell Bovee

Wisdom is knowing the right path to take. Integrity is taking it.

M.H. McKee

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Mark Twain

Life is a process. We are a process. The universe is a process.

Anne Wilson Schaef

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

Søren Kierkegaard

The most decisive actions of our life… are most often unconsidered actions.

André Gide

A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.

John A. Shedd

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

Maya Angelou

Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain. Most paths are neither.

Seth Godin

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Buddha

Unless you dream, you’re not going to achieve anything.

Richard Branson

You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.

Chris Guillebeau

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Mahatma Gandhi

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

Joseph Campbell

If you don’t go after what you want, you’ll never have it. If you don’t ask, the answer is always no. If you don’t step forward, you’re always in the same place.

Nora Roberts

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Marie Curie

On this path let the heart be your guide.

Rumi

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.

Steve Jobs

Remember when life’s path is steep to keep your mind even.

Horace

Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.

John Muir

Being selective—doing less—is the path of the productive. Focus on the important few and ignore the rest.

Tim Ferriss

As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.

Rumi

No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.

Francois Mauriac

A red rose is not selfish because it wants to be a red rose. It would be horribly selfish if it wanted all the other flowers in the garden to be both red and roses.

Oscar Wilde

Although the road is never-ending take a step and keep walking, do not look fearfully into the distance…On this path let the heart be your guide for the body is hesitant and full of fear.

Rumi

If the path is beautiful, let us not ask where it leads.

Anatole France

It is not too late to take another path.

David Suzuki

Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot. Seek the path that demands your whole being.

Rumi

Chances are, if you are following the crowd, you’re following the wrong path.

Bob Proctor

Sometimes God will place a wall on your path to force you to go in another direction.

Suzy Kassem

There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.

Gavriel Kay

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Oscar Wilde

Your path and purpose will become crystal clear when you begin to trust your vision.

Bill Walsh

But remember, nothing comes without a price. Our paths are not mapped; they’re made.

Priya Ardis

If you are seeking the right path, you are already on the right path.

Yehuda Berg

The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

Carl Jung

Often what may appear as a detour in life is actually the most direct and empowering path to your destination.

James Arthur Ray

A successful life is one that is lived through understanding and pursuing one’s own path, not chasing after the dreams of others.

Chin-Ning Chu

Sometimes the most evolved souls take the most challenging paths.

Brian Weiss

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

In life, one has a choice to take one of two paths: to wait for some special day or to celebrate each special day.

Rasheed Ogunlaru

The only things I regret, and the only things I’ll ever regret are things I didn’t do. In the end, that’s what we mourn. The paths we didn’t take. The people we didn’t touch.

Scott Spencer

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward is to move toward perfection. March on, and fear not the thorns, or the sharp stones on life’s path.

Khalil Gibran

Parting Words

As wanderers, we all have our own paths to follow. And while it can be difficult to stay the course when things get tough, it’s these challenges that make the journey so worth it.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of quotes about following your own path – each one is a reminder that there’s no right or wrong way to find your way in life, as long as you’re true to yourself.

What’s your favorite quote about following your own path? Share it with us in the comments below and let us know why it resonates with you.

P.S. You might also enjoy these related quote collections:

• Quotes About The Road Less Traveled
• Quotes About Conformity
• Quotes About Life Direction
• Quotes About Nonconformity
• Quotes About Individuality

Originally Published: November 22, 2022

  Cusco, Peru

The post 73 Quotes About Following Your Own Path: A Wanderer’s Collection appeared first on Flâneur Life.

Mentors offer guidance and support, and can provide valuable insights that you may not have access to on your own. As an entrepreneur, creator, or linchpin, it’s important to find a mentor who can help you grow both professionally and personally.

In this collection of mentor quotes, we’ve curated some inspiring words from famous thinkers and entrepreneurs about the importance of mentorship. Read on to learn more!

Mentor Quotes

The true secret of giving advice is, after you have honestly given it,  to be perfectly indifferent whether it is taken or not and never persist in trying to set people right.

Hannah Whitall Smith

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

Khalil Gibran

I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.

Socrates

Colleagues are a wonderful thing – but mentors, that’s where the real work gets done.

Junot Diaz

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.

Mark Van Doren

By thinking about your goals every morning, many times during the day, and every night, you begin moving toward it, and bringing it toward you.

Bob Proctor

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

Carl Jung

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating them in your own image, but giving them the opportunity to create themselves.

Steven Spielberg

In a battery, I strive to maximize electrical potential. When mentoring, I strive to maximize human potential.

Donald Sadoway

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

We can help a person to be himself by our own willingness to steep ourselves temporarily in his world, in his private feelings and experiences. By our affirmation of the person as he is, we give him support and strength to take the next step in his own growth.

Clark Moustakas

I remember saying to my mentor, ‘If I had more money, I would have a better plan.’ He quickly responded, ‘I would suggest that if you had a better plan, you would have more money.’ You see, it’s not the amount that counts; it’s the plan that counts.

Jim Rohn

The knowledge we get by tinkering, via trial and error, experience, and the workings of time, in other words, contact with the earth, is vastly superior to that obtained through reasoning, something self-serving institutions have been very busy hiding from us.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

However self-sufficient we may fancy ourselves, we exist only in relation – to our friend, family, and life partners; to those we teach and mentor; to our coworkers, neighbors, strangers; and even to forces we cannot fully conceive of, let alone define. In many ways, we are our relationships.

Derrick Bell

What is desired is that the teacher ceased being a lecturer, satisfied with transmitting ready-made solutions. His role should rather be that of a mentor stimulating initiative and research.

Jean Piaget

I’ve been lucky to have lots and lots of mentors. I think that is incredibly important in anyone’s life to encourage and inspire them, let them understand that their own potential is a reality that they can strive for.

Erik Weihenmayer

If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.

Romain Rolland

Hug and kiss whoever helped get you – financially, mentally, morally, emotionally – to this day. Parents, mentors, friends, teachers. If you’re too uptight to do that, at least do the old handshake thing, but I recommend a hug and a kiss. Don’t let the sun go down without saying thank you to someone, and without admitting to yourself that absolutely no one gets this far alone.

Stephen King

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

Benjamin Franklin

Every student deserves to be treated as a potential genius.

Anton Ehrenzweig

A mentor is someone who sees more talent and ability within you, than you see in yourself, and helps bring it out of you.

Bob Proctor

Conscience, as a mentor, the guide and compass of every act, leads ever to happiness. When the individual can stay alone with his or her conscience and get its approval, without knowing force or specious knowledge, then he or she begins to know what real happiness is.

William George Jordan

The difference in a teacher and a mentor is that a mentor is interested in our soul.

Robert A. Johnson

Every child I know who overcame long odds and grew into a responsible adult can point to an adult who stepped into his or her life as a FRIEND, a MENTOR, and a GUIDE.

Truett Cathy

Most people who decide to grow personally find their first mentors in the pages of books.

John C. Maxwell

A Role Model should be like the light at the end of a tunnel, guiding you when you are lost.

Cristina Imre

I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

It’s easy to make a buck.  It’s a lot tougher to make a difference.

Tom Brokaw

Our chief want in life is somebody who will make us do what we can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The best gift you can ever give your mentor is to grow. They feed off your growth. I believe that everyone has the seed of success inside, but too many people can’t find it in themselves and as a result do not reach their potential. But there are those whose purpose in life is to fertilize the seed of potential in another, who are rewarded by seeing that person grow and blossom before their eyes. Raising up others to a higher level is a mentor’s joy and sustenance.

John C. Maxwell

Spoon feeding, in the long run, teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.

E.M.Forster

Learning is finding out that you already know. Doing is demonstrating that you know it. Teaching is reminding others that they know just as well as you. You are all learners, doers, and teachers.

Richard Bach

My mentor said, ‘Let’s go do it’, not ‘You go do it’. How powerful when someone says, ‘Let’s!’

Jim Rohn

It’s been true in my life that when I’ve needed a mentor, the right person shows up.

Ken Blanchard

My job is not to be easy on people. My job is to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better.

Steve Jobs

Think for yourself.  Unplug yourself from follow-the-follower groupthink, and virtually ignore what everyone else in your industry is saying (except the ones everyone agrees is crazy).  Do your own research, draw your own conclusions, set your own course, and stick to your guns.  When you’re just starting out, people will tell you you’re wrong.  After you’ve blown past them, they’ll tell you you’re crazy.  A few years after that, they’ll (privately) ask you to mentor them.

Steve Pavlina

If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Carson

The mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting.

Plutarch

In terms of changes, the spiritual mentors teach me that I must not forget those relating primarily to improve myself.

Chico Xavier

I think the greatest thing we give each other is encouragement…knowing that I’m talking to someone in this mentoring relationship who’s interested in the big idea here is very, very important to me. I think if it were just about helping me get to the next step, it would be a heck of a lot less interesting.

Anne Sweeney

You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.

Galileo Galilei

Cooking is in an honest profession where you cannot hide and let others do the work for you. You have to show up, work hard and prove you can do it faster and better. And find a mentor who will recognize your talent and push you in the right direction.

Marcus Samuelsson

What you do has far greater impact than what you say.

Stephen Covey

What i need is someone who will make me do what i can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every disciple needs three types of relationships in his life. He needs a ‘Paul’ who can mentor him and challenge him. He needs a ‘Barnabas’ who can come along side and encourage him. And he needs a ‘Timothy,’ someone that he can pour his life into.

Howard G. Hendricks

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

Jacques Barzun

I think along the way, as we treat nature as model and mentor, and not as a nuisance to be evaded or manipulated, we will certainly acquire much more reverence for life than we seem to be showing right now.

Amory Lovins

Mentoring is a brain to pick, an ear to listen, and a push in the right direction.

John Crosby

I am not a teacher, but an awakener.

Robert Frost

People will never forget how you made them feel.

Maya Angelou

Don’t wait for mentors to seek you out. Don’t ever wait for your phone calls to be returned, your letters to be answered, your faxes to be responded to. Keep going out and asking question.

Denis Waitley

The dream begins with a teacher who believes in you, who tugs and pushes and leads you to the next plateau, sometimes poking you with a sharp stick called truth.

Dan Rather

Mentoring brings us together – across generation, class, and often race – in a manner that forces us to acknowledge our interdependence, to appreciate, in Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words, that ‘we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single garment of destiny.’

Marc Freedman

Good coaching is good teaching and nothing else.

Pat Conroy

You can’t push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb himself.

Andrew Carnegie

A great mentor helps you to achieve what seems impossible.

Mariela Dabbah

The people closest to me determine my level of success or failure. The better they are, the better I am. And if I want to go to the highest level, I can do it only with the help of other people. We have to take each other higher.

John C. Maxwell

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

William A. Ward

A mentor is a person, an expert in a specific area of endeavor, who trains, guides and observes a less experienced person to also become an expert through support, advice, and involvement in character-building opportunities.

Israelmore Ayivor

The path to diversity begins with supporting, mentoring, and sponsoring diverse women and men to become leaders and entrepreneurs.

Denise Morrison

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

Margaret Mead

If you’re early on in your career and they give you a choice between a great mentor or higher pay, take the mentor every time. It’s not even close. And don’t even think about leaving that mentor until your learning curve peaks.

Stanley Druckenmiller

Age is rarely a limitation to being a mentor.

Ken Blanchard

The best way a mentor can prepare another leader is to expose him or her to other great people.

John C. Maxwell

Mentoring is the cultivation of young adults, the tender caring for and nurturing of them so that they will grow, flourish, and be fruitful.

Jeff Myers

How you coach them is how they’re going to play.

Stefan Fatsis

If you ask most smart or successful people where they learned their craft, they will not talk to you about their time in school. It’s always a mentor, a particularly transformative job, or a period of experimentation or trial and error.

Ryan Holiday

I think the most important quality of a mentor is that they are open to following students where they want to go. Not always pushing their own agenda.

Cordelia Jensen

If the world had more people like you it would be a better place. You do make a difference.

Catherine Pulsifer

True mentors don’t make their mentees a clone of themselves.

Bernard Kelvin Clive

You are only as powerful as your mentors.

Robert G. Allen

It’s important to look for mentors all around you.

Maureen Chiquet

If you ask any successful business person, they will always have had a great mentor at some point along the road.

Richard Branson

Teaching is a creative profession, not a delivery system. Great teachers do [pass on information], but what great teachers also do is mentor, stimulate, provoke, engage.

Ken Robinson

Your Mentors in life are important, so choose them wisely.

Robert Kiyosaki

Parting Words

Appreciating the impact of mentors in our lives is one step, but actually finding and working with a mentor can be daunting. The quotes we’ve shared today should help you reflect on the importance of mentors and provide some inspiration to find someone who can help guide your development.

Finding a mentor can be one of the best decisions you make in your career. Not only do they offer guidance and support, but they also provide a wealth of knowledge and experience that can help skyrocket your development. The next time you find yourself feeling lost or stuck, reach out to a potential mentor—you won’t regret it.

What’s your favorite quote about mentors? Leave us a comment below. e would love to hear from you!

P.S. You might also like these related quote collections:

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

Originally Published: November 21, 2022

  Cusco, Peru

The post 77 Mentor Quotes to Skyrocket Your Development appeared first on Flâneur Life.

He is most well-known for his book Walden, in which he recounts two years he spent living in a cabin near Walden Pond. In this book and his other writings, Thoreau examines topics such as civil disobedience, self-reliance, and simplicity. His words are just as relevant today as they were when he first wrote them.

Here is a list of our favorite Thoreau quotes that will make you think differently about the world around you.

Henry David Thoreau Quotes

Simplify your life. Don’t waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don’t burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don’t destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!

Henry David Thoreau

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined…

Henry David Thoreau

Life isn’t about finding yourself; it’s about creating yourself. So live the life you imagined.

Henry David Thoreau

To have made even one person’s life a little better, that is to succeed.

Henry David Thoreau

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.

Henry David Thoreau

As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.

Henry David Thoreau

Every oak tree started out as a couple of nuts who stood their ground.

Henry David Thoreau

I am a happy camper so I guess I’m doing something right. Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.

Henry David Thoreau

The only people who ever get anyplace interesting are the people who get lost.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

If the machine of government is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law.

Henry David Thoreau

Everyone must believe in something. I believe I’ll go canoeing.

Henry David Thoreau

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him. None of his institutions control or pervade her. There a different kind of right prevails. In her midst I can be glad with an entire gladness. If this world were all man, I could not stretch myself, I should lose all hope. He is constraint, she is freedom to me. He makes me wish for another world. She makes me content with this.

Henry David Thoreau

And when we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

Henry David Thoreau

An early-morning walk is a blessing for the whole day.

Henry David Thoreau

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Henry David Thoreau

You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.

Henry David Thoreau

Let nothing come between you and the light.

Henry David Thoreau

Kindness to children, love for children, goodness to children– these are the only investments that never fail.

Henry David Thoreau

The secret of achievement is to hold a picture of a successful outcome in mind.

Henry David Thoreau

What lies before us and what lies behind us are small matters compared to what lies within us.

Henry David Thoreau

I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating. I love to be alone. I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude.

Henry David Thoreau

There is no remedy for love but to love more.

Henry David Thoreau

We can never have enough of nature. We must be refreshed by the sight of inexhaustible vigor, vast and titanic features, the sea-coast with its wrecks, the wilderness with its living and its decaying trees, the thunder-cloud, and the rain.

Henry David Thoreau

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

Henry David Thoreau

When we bring what is within out into the world, miracles happen.

Henry David Thoreau

City life is millions of people being lonesome together.

Henry David Thoreau

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

Henry David Thoreau

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

Henry David Thoreau

Do not despair of your life. You have force enough to overcome your obstacles.

Henry David Thoreau

Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.

Henry David Thoreau

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

Henry David Thoreau

All good things are wild and free.

Henry David Thoreau

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Henry David Thoreau

Waves of a serene life pass over us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields in cloudy weather.

Henry David Thoreau

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Henry David Thoreau

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Henry David Thoreau

What is the use of a house if you haven’t got a tolerable planet to put it on?

Henry David Thoreau

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

Henry David Thoreau

Perfect sincerity and transparency make a great part of beauty, as in dewdrops, lakes, and diamonds.

Henry David Thoreau

Do not lose hold of your dreams or aspirations. For if you do, you may still exist but you have ceased to live.

Henry David Thoreau

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Henry David Thoreau

The great art of life is how to turn the surplus life of the soul into life for the body.

Henry David Thoreau

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

Henry David Thoreau

Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

Henry David Thoreau

I believe that there is a subtle magnetism in Nature, which, if we unconsciously yield to it, will direct us aright.

Henry David Thoreau

All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable.

Henry David Thoreau

Nay, be a Columbus to whole new continents and worlds within you, opening new channels, not of trade, but of thought.

Henry David Thoreau

All things in this world must be seen with youthful, hopeful eyes.

Henry David Thoreau

A friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate them in us. The friend asks no return but that his friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him. They cherish each other’s hopes. They are kind to each other’s dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

You must not blame me if I do talk to the clouds.

Henry David Thoreau

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Henry David Thoreau

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

Henry David Thoreau

Not till we are lost, in other words not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations.

Henry David Thoreau

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Henry David Thoreau

Behave so the aroma of your actions may enhance the general sweetness of the atmosphere.

Henry David Thoreau

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.

Henry David Thoreau

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.

Henry David Thoreau

The devil finds work for idle hands.

Henry David Thoreau

Life by conscious endeavor.

Henry David Thoreau

There is one consolation in being sick; and that is the possibility that you may recover to a better state than you were ever in before.

Henry David Thoreau

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Henry David Thoreau

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Henry David Thoreau

Remember that the smallest seed of faith is of more worth than the largest fruit of happiness.

Henry David Thoreau

The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.

Henry David Thoreau

Why should I feel lonely? is not our planet in the Milky Way?

Henry David Thoreau

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will religiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of him.  They cherish each other’s hopes.  They are kind to each other’s dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.

Henry David Thoreau

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature -if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you -know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

Henry David Thoreau

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

Henry David Thoreau

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Henry David Thoreau

The true harvest of my life is intangible – a little star dust caught, a portion of the rainbow I have clutched.

Henry David Thoreau

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the thought; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morning or evening without their colors, or the heavens without their azure.

Henry David Thoreau

Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?

Henry David Thoreau

Friends…they cherish one another’s hopes. They are kind to one another’s dreams.

Henry David Thoreau

Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature doth thus kindly heal every wound.  By the mediation of a thousand little mosses and fungi, the most unsightly objects become radiant of beauty.  There seem to be two sides of this world, presented us at different times, as we see things in growth or dissolution, in life or death.  And seen with the eye of the poet, as God sees them, all things are alive and beautiful.

Henry David Thoreau

One must maintain a little bittle of summer, even in the middle of winter.

Henry David Thoreau

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Henry David Thoreau

Time is like a handful of sand – the tighter you grasp it, the faster it runs through your fingers.

Henry David Thoreau

The stars are the jewels of the night, and perchance surpass anything which day has to show.

Henry David Thoreau

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong, with moral questions; and betting naturally accompanies it. The character of the voters is not staked. I cast my vote, perchance, as I think right; but I am not vitally concerned that right should prevail. I am willing to leave it to the majority.

Henry David Thoreau

On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend’s life also, in our own, to the world.

Henry David Thoreau

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

Henry David Thoreau

Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.

Henry David Thoreau

Find your eternity in each moment.

Henry David Thoreau

I once had a sparrow alight upon my shoulder for a moment, while I was hoeing in a village garden, and I felt that I was more distinguished by that circumstance that I should have been by any epaulet I could have worn.

Henry David Thoreau

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

Henry David Thoreau

A lake is a landscape’s most beautiful and expressive feature. It is Earth’s eye; looking into which the beholder measures the depth of his own nature.

Henry David Thoreau

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

Henry David Thoreau

In any weather, at any hour of the day or night, I have been anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of two eternities, the past and future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.

Henry David Thoreau

I sat at a table where were rich food and wine in abundance, and obsequious attendance, but sincerity and truth were not; and I went away hungry from the inhospitable board.

Henry David Thoreau

I have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars, and a little world all to myself.

Henry David Thoreau

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial.

Henry David Thoreau

Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe.

Henry David Thoreau

Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.

Henry David Thoreau

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

Henry David Thoreau

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler,  and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature is slow, but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance.

Henry David Thoreau

Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows.

Henry David Thoreau

As for the pyramids, there is nothing to wonder at in them so much as the fact that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs.

Henry David Thoreau

All voting is a sort of gaming, like checkers or backgammon, with a slight moral tinge to it, a playing with right and wrong.

Henry David Thoreau

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Henry David Thoreau

Never look back unless you are planning to go that way.

Henry David Thoreau

The fire is the main comfort of the camp, whether in summer or winter, and is about as ample at one season as at another.  It is as well for cheerfulness as for warmth and dryness.

Henry David Thoreau

The words which express our faith and piety are not definite; yet they are significant and fragrant like frankincense to superior natures.

Henry David Thoreau

The true husbandman will cease from anxiety, as the squirrels manifest no concern whether the woods will bear chestnuts this year or not, and finish his labor with every day, relinquishing all claim to the produce of his fields, and sacrificing in his mind not only his first but last fruits also.

Henry David Thoreau

Parting Words

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher and writer who believed in the power of nature, simplicity, and self-reliance. He is best known for his book Walden, which chronicles two years he spent living in a cabin near Walden Pond. His quotes reflect his beliefs and paint a picture of the life philosophy he lived by.

What’s your favorite quote from Henry David Thoreau? Leave a comment below – we’d love to hear what you think!

P.S. You might also like these related quote collections:

• Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
• Walter Benjamin Quotes
• Charles Baudelaire Quotes
• Virginia Woolf Quotes
• Transcendentalism Quotes

Originally Published: November 16, 2022

   Cusco, Peru

The post 115 Henry David Thoreau Quotes That Paint His Life Philosophy appeared first on Flâneur Life.

The transcendentalists believed that humans could find true happiness by reconnecting with nature and living simply. They stressed the inherent goodness of people and nature, and advocated self-reliance, freedom, individualism and appreciation of natural beauty. Many famous transcendentalist writers, such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, produced their work during this time period.

In this post we’ll take a look at some beautiful quotes about life, society, nature, and independence from prominent transcendentalists. Enjoy!

Transcendentalism Quotes

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The troubles of modern life come from being divorced from nature.

Isaac Asimov

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Leonardo da Vinci

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.

Annie Leibovitz

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Mahatma Gandhi

The greatest tragedy in life is to spend your whole life fishing only to discover it was never fish that you were after.

Henry David Thoreau

Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

There is a patience of the wild – dogged, tireless, persistent as life itself.

Jack London

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.

Henry David Thoreau

All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Henry David Thoreau

In actual life, it requires the greatest discipline to be simple, and the acceptance of oneself is the essence of the moral problem and the epitome of a whole outlook upon life.

Carl Jung

Belief fuels our decisions – even when we are not clearly aware of those beliefs.

Mary Anne Radmacher

In wildness is the preservation of the world.

Henry David Thoreau

He who is not everyday conquering some fear has not learned the secret of life.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Allow yourself to trust joy and embrace it. You will find you dance with everything.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every man is the builder of a temple called his body.

Henry David Thoreau

Whatever you do, you need courage. Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Every wall is a door.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Painting is the representation of visible forms. The essence of realism is its negation of the ideal.

Gustave Courbet

You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Henry David Thoreau

I dream of a better tomorrow, where chickens can cross the road and not be questioned about their motives.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.

Henry David Thoreau

It is better to create than to learn! Creating is the essence of life.

Julius Caesar

Mistrust all enterprises that require new clothes.

E. M. Forster

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But in fact they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman.

Margaret Fuller

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Henry David Thoreau

You become what you think about all day long.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart.

E. O. Wilson

That government is best which governs least.

Henry David Thoreau

To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity and trust.

Henry David Thoreau

The world belongs to the energetic.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Even from the darkest night songs of beauty can be born.

Mary Anne Radmacher

In skating over thin ice our safety is in our speed.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Henry David Thoreau

When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.  The question is not what you look at but what you see.

Henry David Thoreau

The essence of humanity’s spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and the empiricist world views?

E.O. Wilson

The essence of a role-playing game is that it is a group, cooperative experience.

Gary Gygax

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Henry David Thoreau

The essence of greatness is neglect of the self.

James Anthony Froude

In absolute incommunicableness it stood apart, a thought, a system of thought which as yet had no symbol in spoken language.

Fitz Hugh Ludlow

All life is an experiment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

Henry David Thoreau

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Henry David Thoreau

We are a puny and fickle folk. Avarice, hesitation, and following are our diseases.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.

Henry David Thoreau

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

Henry David Thoreau

People understand me so poorly that they don’t even understand my complaint about them not understanding me.

Søren Kierkegaard

Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow.

Margaret Fuller

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

Henry David Thoreau

Cruel persecutions and intolerance are not accidents, but grow out of the very essence of religion, namely, its absolute claims.

Morris Raphael Cohen

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.

Henry David Thoreau

It is characteristic of science that the full explanations are often seized in their essence by the percipient scientist long in advance of any possible proof.

John Desmond Bernal

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Wise men put their trust in ideas and not in circumstances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Good thoughts are no better than good dreams if you don’t follow through.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

Mahatma Gandhi

The years in your life are less important than the life in your years.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Don’t be pushed by your problems. Be led by your dreams.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The essence of strategy is choosing what not to do.

Michael Porter

Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.

Louisa May Alcott

The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure.

Dale Carnegie

Like bones to the human body, the axle to the wheel, the wing to the bird, and the air to the wing, so is liberty the essence of life. Whatever is done without it is imperfect.

Jose Marti

Back through the ages of barbarism and civilization, in all tongues, we find this instinctive pleasure in the imitative action that is the very essence of all drama.

George P. Baker

As to the mental essence, we find it in infants devoid of every mental form.

Avicenna

Be yourself- not your idea of what you think somebody else’s idea of yourself should be.

Henry David Thoreau

To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All unrest is but the struggle of the soul to reassure herself of her inborn immortality.

Amos Bronson Alcott

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees.

Henry David Thoreau

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.

Margaret Fuller

It is not of the essence of mathematics to be conversant with the ideas of number and quantity.

George Boole

Simplify your life. Don’t waste the years struggling for things that are unimportant. Don’t burden yourself with possessions. Keep your needs and wants simple and enjoy what you have. Don’t destroy your peace of mind by looking back, worrying about the past. Live in the present. Simplify!

Henry David Thoreau

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, Faith looks up.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Parting Words

Transcendentalism is a philosophical and religious movement that stresses the existence of an ideal spiritual state beyond the empirical and material world. The transcendentalists believed in self-reliance, nature, simplicity, and intuition as a means to knowledge. They also championed civil disobedience as a way to change society for the better.

Transcendentalism has been influential on American culture ever since it emerged, and its ideas about spirituality, nature, and individuality continue to resonate with people today.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of transcendentalism quotes about life, society, nature and independence.

What is your favorite quote from a transcendentalist writer? Leave a comment below!

P.S. You might also like these related quote collections:

• Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes
• Walter Benjamin Quotes
• Charles Baudelaire Quotes
• Virginia Woolf Quotes
• Transcendentalism Quotes

Originally Published: November 17, 2022

Cusco, Peru

The post 87 Transcendentalism Quotes About Life, Society and Independence appeared first on Flâneur Life.