55 Motivational Quotes That Make You Question Life, Relationships, Happiness and the Afterlife

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Sometimes, I stand before my mirror and ask myself, “Why am I doing this?” Some days I get a definite answer like – I want to do this to get to a milestone. But some days I’m stumped – what am I actually doing in this life. Is it the lifestyle, spouse, the children, parents, or the friends that I’m working so hard for and make ends meet? Or, is it the afterlife redemption that I’m supposed to strive towards? When I think about all the misery, crime, violence, and deaths that plague the world, then I’m not so sure anymore. On the other hand, each day I also witness the triumphs of political leaders, earnings of tycoons, and successes of innovators, it’s difficult to imagine where I stand in the big plan of things. Then it strikes me – it doesn’t matter what we do as long as the inner self is satisfied and happy, all is good. Or is it? The following motivational quotes have helped shed some light and helped me find direction, and I’m sharing it with you.

On Life

1. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –Charles Swindoll
2. You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
3. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
4. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
5. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
6. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. –Anais Nin
7. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
8. You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame. –Erica Jong
9. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot
10. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
11. If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough. –Oprah Winfrey
12. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
14. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
15. Life isn’t about getting and having, it’s about giving and being. –Kevin Kruse
16. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
17. Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away. –Maya Angelou
18. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
19. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
20. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison
21. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
22. Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
23. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs

On Relationships

24. If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else. –Booker T. Washington
25. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
26. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost
27. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
28. 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
29. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
30. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
31. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
32. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller
33. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
34. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucius
35. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
36. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt
37. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.  –Ann Landers

On Happiness

39. Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama
40. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
41. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
42. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
43. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown
44. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh
45. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
46. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato
47. I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear. –Rosa Parks

Afterlife

48. Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. –Jesus
50. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained. –Marie Curie
51. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
52. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
53. Being a Humanist means trying to behave decently without expectation of rewards or punishment after you are dead.– Kurt Vonnegut
54. In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.– J. R. R. Tolkien
55. I have no idea what’s awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”– Albert Camus, The Plague

Read more: 50 Motivational Quotes to Instill a Positive Attitude Towards Life