Philosophy is about having a set of principles that help guide how we think and navigate 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.
