101 Of The Best Deep and Meaningful Quotes

Sometimes during a hectic or challenging day, it's calming to just stop doing the task at hand, take a slow, deep breath, and read some deep and meaningful quotes for a fresh perspective.

People like to read deep quotes because they are inspiring and enlightening thoughts that are condensed into just a few words — but they pack a powerful dose of positive feelings that can change the trajectory of your day.

These deep and meaningful quotes will make you think and help you reflect on what is most important and valuable in life.

101 Of The Best Deep and Meaningful Quotes

Short Deep Quotes

1. “As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.” ~ Rumi

2. “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different?” ~ Calvin and Hobbs

3. “If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are a slave.” ~ Dr. Wayne Dyer

4. “The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.” ~ Bob Marley

5. “Time is a created thing. To say “I don’t have time”, is like saying, “I don’t want to”.” ~ Lao Tzu

7. “The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” ~ Ram Dass

8. “Never make fun of someone who mispronounces a word. It means they learned it by reading.” ~ Unknown

9. “Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” ~ Cicero

10. “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ~ Martin Luther

11. “There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.” ~ Henry Ford

12. “He who is untrue to his own cause cannot command the respect of others.” ~ Albert Einstein

13. “Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.” ~ Oscar Wilde

14. “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Deep Quotes

15. “Do not be lured by the need to be liked: better to be respected, even feared.” ~ Robert Greene

16. “We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves.” ~ Bruce Lee

17. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

18. “One day, you will wake up and there won’t be any more time to do the things you’ve always wanted. DO IT NOW.” ~ Paulo Coelho

19. “Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.” ~ Bertrand Russell

20. “Happiness depends upon ourselves.” ~ Aristotle

Deep Quotes About Love

21. “True love is eternal, infinite, and always like itself. It is equal and pure, without violent demonstrations: it is seen with white hairs and is always young in the heart.” ~ Honore de Balzac

22. “Love grows by giving. The love we give away is the only love we keep. The only way to retain love is to give it away.” ~ Elbert Hubbard

23. “You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” ~ Dr. Seuss

24. “Love is tough. Love survives through the worst of situations, and thrives through hope. Even when things seem hopeless love will find its way.” ~ Malika E. Nura

25. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” ~ Martin Luther King Jr.

26. “The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.” ~ Elie Wiesel

27. “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” ~ Lucille Ball

28. “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” ~ Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones

29. “There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.” ~ Sarah Dessen, The Truth About Forever

30. “Love is a garden where you keep sowing seeds and then one day you reap exactly what you have sown. It could be one flower at a time or a thorn at a time. Sow wisely.” ~ John Crows

31. “Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.” ~ Erich Fromm

32. “Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living…can grow if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

33. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.” ~ Robert Fulghum

34. “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.” ~ Anais Nin

35. “Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love.” ~ Erich Fromm

Girl in garden, deep quotes

36. “Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all.”
~ Alfred Lord Tennyson

37. “Love from novels isn’t true love: it ends where it should begin. True love, deep love, grows up with time, throughout days of dullness and days of storms. It leaves in one’s heart a rainbow of tenderness and forgiveness which illuminates forever the beloved one.” ~ Gabrielle Dubois

38. “Love is the expansion of two natures in such fashion that each include the other, each is enriched by the other.” ~ Felix Adler

39. “Flatter me, and I may not believe you. Criticize me, and I may not like you. Ignore me, and I may not forgive you. Encourage me, and I will not forget you. Love me and I may be forced to love you.” ~ William Arthur Ward

40. “We look forward to the time when the Power of Love will replace the Love of Power. Then will our world know the blessings of peace.” ~ William E. Gladstone

41. “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.” ~ Marilyn Monroe

42. “If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliche that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.” ~ John Lennon

43. “I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.' … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” ~ Maya Angelou

44. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

45. “Love is the morning to the heart covered with an endless night. Love is the sunrise and sunset, a brand new beginning for the lonesome heart. Love is the pulse, the heartbeat, the wave that keeps on flowing.” ~ Unknown

46. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” ~ James A. Baldwin

47. “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” ~ Vincent Van Gogh

48. “Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.” ~ Chuck Klosterman

49. “Tears shed for another person are not a sign of weakness. They are a sign of a pure heart.” ~ José N. Harris

50. “I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.” ~ Roy Croft

Deep Quotes That Make You Think

51. “If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from the inside.” ~ Jim Kwik

52. “The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare behind the scenes with everyone else's highlight reel.” ~ Stephen Furtick

53. “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it but that it is too low and we reach it.” ~ Michelangelo

54. “Too many people buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t like.” ~ Dave Ramsey

55. “And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” ~ Steve Jobs

56. “Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” ~ Buddha

57. “Happiness is not determined by what’s happening around you, but rather what’s happening inside you. Most people depend on others to gain happiness, but the truth is, it always comes from within.” ~ Adrian Corday

58. “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.” ~ Arthur C. Clarke

59. “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery

60. “The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ~ Isaac Asimov

Eggs in nest, deep quotes

61. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” ~ Mary Engelbreit

62. “I don’t count my sit-ups. I only start counting when it starts hurting. That is when I start counting, because then it really counts. That’s what makes you a champion.” ~ Muhammad Ali

63. “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” ~ George Bernard Shaw

64. “There isn’t anything noble about being superior to another person. True nobility is in being superior to the person you once were.” ~ Ziad K. Abdelnour

65. “People who take the sun-lit world of the senses to be good and real are living pitifully in a den of evil and ignorance.” ~ Socrates

Deep Funny Quotes

66. “Somewhere in the crowd was at least one potential friend who'd understand the fundamental value of goofing off.
Because if not, how boring would that be?”
~ Alyson Noel, Radiance

67. “One piece of wisdom a writer quickly learns ~ typos keep you humble.”
~ E.A. Bucchianeri

68. “Laugh, and the world laughs with you. Don't, and the world laughs at you.”
~ Fakeer Ishavardas

69. “If you're afraid to leave the house unless you're armed, you don't need a gun, you need a psychiatrist.” ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

70. “The only relatives who remain friends with you throughout life, are most probably but acquaintances, and not your relatives from any side.” ~ Fakeer Ishavardas

71. “People who have absolutely nothing interesting or unique to say think writing a book will make them interesting. They think when they tell people “I'm a writer” it sounds cooler than if they say “I clean houses for a living.” ~ Oliver Markus Malloy

72. “Being unique is what's cool man. Being normal? What's that? That's a setting on a washing machine. Nobody wants to be that.” ~ Ashley Purdy

Staring woman, deep quotes

73. “If you’re not willing to be a fool, then you can’t be a master.” ~ Jordan Peterson

74. “It’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” ~ Unknown

75. “The children are our future,’ which is true, but they said that when I was a child. Then I grew up. I was like ‘here I am!’ They were like, ‘Now it’s the other kids.’ …I know a Ponzi scheme when I see one…” ~ Norm MacDonald

76. “No sympathy for the devil; keep that in mind. Buy the ticket, take the ride…and if it occasionally gets a little heavier than what you had in mind, well…maybe chalk it up to forced consciousness expansion: Tune in, freak out, get beaten.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson

77. “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.” ~ Jonathan Swift

78. “Time and Space is where you chase things you pretend you don’t have – love, friends, and abundance – while worrying about things you pretend you do have – problems, challenges, and issues. Until one day, you happen to notice the prophetic powers of pretending.” ~ Mike Dooley

79. “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” ~ Hunter S. Thompson

80. “People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion . . . ” ~ Robert Keith Leavitt

81. “Having mastered the atom and the machinery of death that is modern warfare, the mere fact that we are alive now reveals a vast preference toward life and virtue.” ~ Brendon Burchard

82. “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” ~ Charles Bukowski

Deep Quotes About Pain

83. “If you can learn to endure pain, you can survive anything. Some people learn to embrace it- to love it. Some endure it through drowning it in sorrow, or by making themselves forget. Others turn it into anger.” ~ Sarah J. Maas, The Assassin's Blade

84. “Pain is the feeling. Suffering is the effect the pain inflicts. If one can endure pain, one can live without suffering. If one can withstand pain, one can withstand anything. If one can learn to control pain, one can learn to control oneself. ” ~ James Frey, My Friend Leonard

85. “If you don't get what you want, you suffer; if you get what you don't want, you suffer; even when you get exactly what you want, you still suffer because you can't hold on to it forever.” ~ Dan Millman

86. “Life is filled with unanswered questions, but it is the courage to seek those answers that continues to give meaning to life. You can spend your life wallowing in despair, wondering why you were the one who was led towards the road strewn with pain, or you can be grateful that you are strong enough to survive it.” ~ J.D. Stroube

87. “Forgiveness has nothing to do with absolving a criminal of his crime. It has everything to do with relieving oneself of the burden of being a victim–letting go of the pain and transforming oneself from victim to survivor.” ~ C.R. Strahan

88. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.” ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

89. “But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.” ~ Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale

90. “Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say ‘My tooth is aching' than to say ‘My heart is broken.'” ~ C.S. Lewis

Sad woman, deep quotes

91. “Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” ~ C.S. Lewis

92. “It has been said, ‘time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone.” ~ Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy

93. “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.” ~ James Baldwin

94. “It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.” ~ Chuck Palahniuk

95. “Much of your pain is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.” ~ Khalil Gibran

96. “Recovery begins with embracing our pain and taking the risk to share it with others. We do this by joining a group and talking about our pain.” ~ John Bradshaw

97. “Pain is what the world inflicts upon us. Suffering is our emotional reaction when we fail to make the difficult conscious choice to choose Joy.” ~ Jonathan Lockwood Huie

98. “Pain nourishes courage. You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.” ~ Mary Tyler Moore

99. “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” ~ Jim Rohn

100. “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” ~ Lance Armstrong

101. “Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows, without it, there is no way of life.” ~ Angelina Jolie


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Final Thoughts

Hopefully, you find these quotes to be inspiring and thought-provoking. Read these quotes a few times. If you especially resonate with a quote, read it every day.

Write it down and put it somewhere that you can see it often. Quotes that are repeated over and over again can act like affirmations and can positively impact your mind and behavior.