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57 Highly Effective Life Lessons Quotes To Soak In Before It’s Too Late

life lessons quotes

If you’ve been in this world long enough you know life is full of life lessons. You don’t need to tell me that. But you might be interested to read quotes from some of these big thinkers below about life.

These are the best life lessons quotes from Goodreads and from around the internet. Hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I did and please tell me in the comments, which quote(s) is your favorite one.

Life Lessons Quotes

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

― Roy T. Bennett

Life Lessons Quotes

“‎Though nobody can go back and make a new beginning… Anyone can start over and make a new ending.”
― Chico Xavier

“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.”
― Maya Angelou

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“If there’s a single lesson that life teaches us, it’s that wishing doesn’t make it so.”
― Lev Grossman

Life Lessons Quotes

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.”
― Haruki Murakami

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.”
― Plato

“The trouble is if you don’t spend your life yourself, other people spend it for you.”
― Peter Shaffer

“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.”
― Santosh Kalwar

Life Lessons Quotes

“Attitude is a choice. Happiness is a choice. Optimism is a choice. Kindness is a choice. Giving is a choice. Respect is a choice. Whatever choice you make makes you. Choose wisely.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“People tend to complicate their own lives, as if living weren’t already complicated enough.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón

“There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.”
― Judith McNaught

“Happiness is not the absence of problems, it’s the ability to deal with them.”
― Steve Maraboli

Life Lessons Quotes

“This is an important lesson to remember when you’re having a bad day, a bad month, or a shitty year. Things will change: you won’t feel this way forever. And anyway, sometimes the hardest lessons to learn are the ones your soul needs most. I believe you can’t feel real joy unless you’ve felt heartache. You can’t have a sense of victory unless you know what it means to fail. You can’t know what it’s like to feel holy until you know what it’s like to feel really fucking evil. And you can’t be birthed again until you’ve died.”
― Kelly Cutrone

“Take responsibility of your own happiness, never put it in other people’s hands.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“In everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”
― Haruki Murakami

“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.”
― The Bhagavad Gita

Life Lessons Quotes

“You’ve got to get obsessed and stay obsessed.”
― John Irving

“You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.”
― Mandy Hale

“Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing.”
― Paulo Coelho

“I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”
― Joe Abercrombie

Life Lessons Quotes

“Make a pact with yourself today to not be defined by your past. Sometimes the greatest thing to come out of all your hard work isn’t what you get for it, but what you become for it. Shake things up today! Be You…Be Free…Share.”
― Steve Maraboli

“I don’t think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.”
― Douglas Coupland

“To be rejected by someone doesn’t mean you should also reject yourself or that you should think of yourself as a lesser person. It doesn’t mean that nobody will ever love you anymore. Remember that only ONE person has rejected you at the moment, and it only hurt so much because to you, that person’s opinion symbolized the opinion of the whole world, of God.”
― Jocelyn Soriano

“I always prefer to believe the best of everybody; it saves so much trouble”
― Rudyard Kipling

Life Lessons Quotes

“Patience is not the ability to wait. Patience is to be calm no matter what happens, constantly take action to turn it to positive growth opportunities, and have faith to believe that it will all work out in the end while you are waiting.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“Growing up means learning what life is. When you’re little, you have a set of ideals, standards, criteria, plans, outlooks, and you think that you have to sit around and wait for them to happen to you and then life will work. But life isn’t like that, for anybody; you can’t fall in love with a standard, you have to fall in love with a person. You can’t live in a criteria, you have to live your life. You can’t wait for your plans to materialize, because they may never materialize the way you think they will. You can’t wait to watch your ideals and standards walk up to you, because you can’t know what’s yours until you have it. I always say, always take the first chance in case you never get a second one, but growing up takes that even one step further, growing up means that you have to hold on to what you have, when you have it, because what you have- that’s yours- and all the ideals and criteria you have set in your head, those aren’t yours, because those haven’t happened to you.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Carve your name on hearts, not tombstones. A legacy is etched into the minds of others and the stories they share about you.”
― Shannon Alder

“Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it…Don’t allow his anger to become your anger.”
― Bohdi Sanders

Life Lessons Quotes

“I used to think the worst thing in life is to end up all alone. It’s not. The worst thing in life is to end up with people who make you feel all alone.”
― Robin Williams

“Help someone, you earn a friend. Help someone too much, you make an enemy.”
― Erol Ozan

“Nothing drives people crazier than seeing someone have a good fucking life.”
― Chuck Palahniuk

“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.”
― Steve Jobs

Life Lessons Quotes

“That’s the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don’t expect them or want them.”
― Cecelia Ahern

“Most things break, including hearts. The lessons of life amount not to
wisdom, but to scar tissue and callus.”
― Wallace Stegner

“Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”
― Haruki Murakami

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“I’ve learned… . That being kind is more important than being right.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

Life Lessons Quotes

“You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.”
― Joe Hill

“Yes, I understand why things had to happen this way. I understand his reason for causing me pain. But mere understanding does not chase away the hurt. It does not call upon the sun when dark clouds have loomed over me. Let the rain come then if it must come! And let it wash away the dust that hurt my eyes!”
― Jocelyn Soriano

“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
― Rumi

“Forgive but do not forget, or you will be hurt again. Forgiving changes the perspectives. Forgetting loses the lesson.”
― Paulo Coelho

Life Lessons Quotes

“Always believe in yourself and always stretch yourself beyond your limits. Your life is worth a lot more than you think because you are capable of accomplishing more than you know. You have more potential than you think, but you will never know your full potential unless you keep challenging yourself and pushing beyond your own self imposed limits.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“The words ‘I Love You’ kill, and resurrect millions, in less than a second.”
― Aberjhani

“There’s no need to wait for the bad things and bullshit to be over. Change now. Love now. Live now. Don’t wait for people to give you permission to live, because they won’t.”
― Kris Carr

“Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.”
― J.K. Rowling

Life Lessons Quotes

“Everybody in the world is seeking happiness—and there is one sure way to find it. That is by controlling your thoughts. Happiness doesn’t depend on outward conditions. It depends on inner conditions.”
― Dale Carnegie

“Fear’s useless. Either something bad happens or it doesn’t: If it doesn’t, you’ve wasted time being afraid, and if it does, you’ve wasted time that you could have spent sharpening your weapons.”
― Sarah Rees Brennan

“Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do.”
― Paulo Coelho

“You know the saying: he who doesn’t understand history is doomed to repeat it. And when it’s repeated, the stakes are doubled.”
― Pittacus Lore

Life Lessons Quotes

“The energy of the mind is the essence of life.”
― Aristotle

“You were not born on earth to please anyone; you have to live life to express yourself, not to impress someone. Don’t pretend to be someone you’re not, and never lose yourself in search of other people’s acceptance and approval.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun.”
― Shaun Hick

“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.”
― Erol Ozan

Life Lessons Quotes


“Never assume that the person you are dealing with is weaker or less important than you are. Some people are slow to take offense, which may make you misjudge the thickness of their skin, and fail to worry about insulting them. But should you offend their honor and their pride, they will overwhelm you with a violence that seems sudden and extreme given their slowness to anger. If you want to turn people down, it is best to do so politely and respectfully, even if you feel their request is impudent or their offer ridiculous.”
― Robert Greene

“Things are what they are, and whatever will be, will be.”
― Jonas Jonasson

“Never apologize for how you feel. No one can control how they feel. The sun doesn’t apologize for being the sun. The rain doesn’t say sorry for falling. Feelings just are”
― Iain S. Thomas

“There came a time when you realized that moving on was pointless. That you took yourself with you wherever you went.”
― Stephen King

Life Lessons Quotes