Thought Provoking Life Quotes & Sayings

I like anything that is thought provoking and elevates one's consciousness to the highest and out of it's safety net, making one breathe aspiration. — Petra Remes

Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops ... I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop. — Chris Cleave

And I sat there at the patio,
while the whole of universe,
was getting engulfed,
in the whitest whiteness of snow.

Down, near my rough paw,
is soft snow,
mannering a fidgeting embryo.

I monitored the snow that plunged,
on the soil of my backyard,
and realized it melting fast.
Was that the temperature or,
my eyes on it overcast?

While I think of this melted exalt,
I am obliged to ask,
What ought happens to the thoughts?
Where do they get tossed?
When they are forgot?

Scorched?
Scoffed?
Deformed?
Unadorned? — Jasleen Kaur Gumber

If you were a brand, would you buy yourself or keep shopping? — Dean Del Sesto

Many feel that writers are a dime a dozen, so the goal is to break through and make it to the value of a penny. — Wil Zeus

When I asked her if she was afraid to fall in love, she damn near doubled over. "Afraid? My heart has been through hell and back. Yet it never quits, refuses to rest, gives without asking in return, and is deeper than the deepest sea. It's love, my dear, that should fear me." That night my heart was signed, by my one of a kind. — J. Raymond

You flesh bodies are so obsessed with goodness, yet no other form of life on earth is capable of such cruelty. You need only convince yourselves your transgressions serve some 'purpose.' Even if it is only greed, or lust, or the raw desire for power that drives you. You will spill the blood of your kinsmen, lay waste to the earth itself, wreak havoc, and cause unspeakable suffering
any and all sins are justified, as long as they are a means to your precous, righteous 'purpose'. — Maryrose Wood

Maybe I'm not so different from everyone else after all. It's like somebody gave me a puzzle, but I don't have the box with the picture on it. So I don't know what the final thing is supposed to look like. I'm not even sure if I have all the pieces. — Sharon M. Draper

Don't fall in love with me. Not unless you're ready for a God damn fight. I don't do fragility, or friction and fairy tales. I want you to be irrational because I'm irrational. Be bold. Speak your mind. I want your wildfires and obscenities. I want your passion and priorities. Protect what's yours. I'll defend what's ours. Let us fight against routines and bad habits, and anything typical. And don't you dare quit. Not on us, not on yourself. God help the person who threatens us. Forgive me when I let you down, but don't overlook it, or allow it. We're all insecure about something. Show me yours. We're all terrified sometimes. Turn to me. People come in and out of my life so often and easily that I just look for a love that stays. I don't mind your blemishes or scars, I have a few of my own. Don't be another flash in the pan. Falling for me will be easy. Staying with me will be impossible. But you deserve a love that most people don't believe in anymore. — J. Raymond

...Dickey Perrott, you Jago whelp, look at them - look hard. Some day if you are clever - cleverer than anyone in the Jago right now - if you're only scoundrel enough, and brazen enough, and lucky enough - one of a thousand - maybe you'll be like them: bursting with high living, drunk when you like, red and pimply. There it is - that's your aim in life - there's your pattern. Learn to read and write, learn all you can, learn cunning, spare nobody and stop at nothing, and perhaps - It's the best the world has for you, for the Jago's got you, and that's the only way out, except gaol and the gallows. So do your devil most, or God help you, Dicky Perrot - though he wont: for the Jago's got you! — Arthur Morrison

Careful. When you dabble too much with reason life becomes nothing but a process of dying. — Lucas Mascotto-Carbone

While she wanted to look neither to her past nor her future, she lived exclusively in both. They had took different paths, but they had journeyed, so she realized, together. — Monica Ali

If we are interested in a writing life - as opposed to a writing career - then we are in it for the process and not the product - for the body of work and not for the quick hit of one well-realised piece. — Julia Cameron

Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labeled This could change your life. — Helen Exley

And it was the speed that provided some solace. For if it moved like that, it would always move like that, and somehow, because of it, things change, somehow things end. — Alexander Maksik

Jack Bogle's passionate cry of Enough! contains a thought-provoking litany of life lessons regarding our individual roles in commerce and society. Employing a seamless mix of personal anecdotes, hard evidence and all-too-often-underrated subjective admonitions, Bogle challenges each of us to aspire to become better members of our families, our professions and our communities. Rarely do so few pages provoke so much thought. Read this book. — David F. Swensen

We have control over our prayer life, our relationship with Jesus. — Francis Chan

In a way, a garden is the most useless of creations, the most slippery of creations: it is not like a painting or a piece of sculpture - it won't accrue value as time goes on. Time is its enemy' time passing is merely the countdown for the parting between garden and gardener. — Jamaica Kincaid

Sometimes I wonder if we're all a little like Harold (a rooster). Real life carries on around us while we strut around in our own yards, thinking we're the ones in charge of things. — Suzanne Woods Fisher

Sometimes we choose the road we follow.
And sometimes the road chooses us. — Richie Singh

Renewed mind, revived spirit and restored strength. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Some questions are more complicated than their answers could be. — Parul Wadhwa

Even when we do not actively participate in our destiny, we are still on a chosen path. Life has a way of making decisions for us. — Nina Guilbeau

And there
Like I thought I knew
And aint life a bitch
Was his head on a silver platter — Valerie

The magic of each day lives in the unknown. It's waking up as one person, and accepting that when night falls, we may be someone else entirely. So, when you ask what my story is, forgive me----I'm not quite sure yet. — J. Raymond

It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected ... I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing ... I still had the childish notion that since my life was so important, all lives were so important. Since my death would be so cataclysmic, all deaths would be so cataclysmic. — Michael J. Collins

If we were to one day encounter a form of life more powerful and intelligent than our own, and it regarded us as we regard fish, what would be our argument against being eaten? — Jonathan Safran Foer

One thing you have to realize from now on is that it doesn't matter if this is a dream or not. Survival depends on what you do, not what you think. — Rebecca McKinsey

In our weeks of talk, movies and friendship, I watched as Wilma turned a medical ordeal into one more event in her life, but not its definition. I believe she was teaching me an intimate form of The Way. In her words: Every day is a good day - because we are part of everything alive. — Gloria Steinem

Life is going to happen to you. Your destiny will be found in how you respond to life. Most let fate find them; the few find their destiny. — Shay Dawkins

Never discount good intentions, for good intentions may be all one has to offer. - Eilish in "No-Till" by Basil Pearl. — Basil Pearl

Saying no isn't easy, but it's a required skill if you wish to have any degree of focus in your life. If you say yes too often, you'll likely fall into the common trap of saying yes to the good while simultaneously saying no to the best. — Steve Pavlina

There's a problem with continually stamping down on the least sensible instincts that drive men to recklessly endanger themselves. Even the most reasonable and level-headed of us have only limited space to store such unwanted emotion. You keep putting the stuff away, shoving it to the back of your mind but like an over-full cupboard there comes a point where you try to cram one more thing into it and all of a sudden something snaps, the catch gives, the door bursts open and everything inside spills out on top of you. — Mark Lawrence

Life is going to beat you up, it wouldn't be fair if you didn't throw some punches back at it — Bradley Bowman

I am a Beacon of Light. I attract so many different kinds of people from all walks of life. Like a moth to a flame. Different ages,different races, different genders,different social classes,the homeless,the mentally disabled and addicts. So you have to excuse me when I turn off my porch light. Cause that is the time I find peace in the darkness. — Ricky Star

The book from which to learn religion, is your own mind. — Abhijit Naskar

Life is made for the living. — J.J.V. The Storyteller

May each of you live lives of immersion. They won't necessarily be easy lives. But in the end, it is all that will sustain us. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Dwell on positive thoughts! — Lailah Gifty Akita

I had always been an atheist until I met Lenny. He was too wonderously complex and good for there to be no benevolent and intelligent force behind our marvelous cosmos. Lenny gave me the actual proof my fiercely skeptical mind had always demanded. Not some logical, 37-step proof of God's existence. It was a personal proof. And it was irrefutable. — Zack Love

The only thing stopping you is fear, and the only thing that will get you past it is courage. What you do with your life isn't up to your parents, your boss, or your spouse. It's up to you and you alone. — Steve Pavlina

Oh no. I'm not gonna let you leave yet. I'm gonna show you the value of takin' your time to get to work. I probably should have done this a long time ago. — Zack Love

The party in Alobar's head, which agitation and anxiety were throwing, now was crashed by a notion: existence can be rearranged. — Tom Robbins

Too much time will do that to you. Blur the edges between your memories and your imagination until everything feels like something you saw in a movie instead of your life. — Kami Garcia

It's ironic..here is life passing, like clouds drifting over the sky, yet they don't see what's in front of them. They believe there is something more substantial going on in that little screen in their hands. — Katie Kacvinsky

It's just a feeling I have. What you see with your eyes is not necessarily real. My enemy is, among other things, the me inside me. — Haruki Murakami

For the briefest moment, Jack's face formed the faintest smile as he considered fear and anxiety, the latter two of which often caused people to forget what truly mattered most. — Jermaine Watkins

Our entire neurobiology acts as a giant input-output system, that receives information from the outside world, processes that information and makes a person react accordingly. — Abhijit Naskar

Life would have been beautiful if there weren't any problems. — Santosh Avvannavar

God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly independent man depends on those around him for their insensible influence on his character - his life. — Elizabeth Gaskell

What happens when you don't know the truth but you can't believe the lies, when you can't find a way--through fact or fiction--to give meaning to your own existence? Without a narrative for your own life, do you ever really exist at all? — Maria Goodin

What life is this? Living in a world of hatred and lies, breathing the same air the dead breathed once, knowing we will wake up one day and find ourselves gone from time and space, and yet we still breathe the air without trembling from the thought. — Nour Zikra

It is the transience of life which proves its inestimable worth. — D.B. Harrop

Hatred only tarnishes the soul that carries it. — D.B. Harrop

As much as we strive towards the light, we still want to be embraced by the shadow. — Zoran Drvenkar

I have watched the tears of frustration of a stroke victim or the autistic child who struggles to communicate a need or thought, but no one understands. Eventually, the soul grows quiet and gives up. At every stage of life, and in every circumstance, we search for someone who understands what we are going through. — Donna Mull

Perhaps the most terrible (or wonderful) thing that can happen to an imaginative youth, aside from the curse (or blessing) of imagination itself, is to be exposed without preparation to the life outside his or her own sphere - the sudden revelation that there is a there out there. — Tom Robbins

But the fantasy kingdom and trappings of success soon lost their luster, as I discovered that the most prestigious and remunerative of my resume's way stations was also the most tedious and unfulfilling I had ever experienced. This paradox only made me more morose about modernity. Why was I going to watch my hairline recede in front of two-thousand-line spreadsheets staring at me from cold, glowing monitors? Why was everyone in my office apparently so happy to be spending so many hours there, when the things they really cared about - people, pets, pastimes - were all relegated to a few photographs on their desks? That seemed to be the formula: spend the best years of your life in an office with photos of what you really care about. — Zack Love

At what point in life should we stop searching for a better one? — Buffi Neal

At one point, I began to think that I had a divine doorman. Lenny was the most unlikely incarnation of God I could imagine, and yet, I kept drifting irresistibly towards this absurd conclusion. Despite my staunchly atheistic inclinations, I couldn't explain Lenny any other way. But eventually I came to my senses and realized that he was just one of those game show freaks with an encyclopedic memory. That didn't make him God, did it? Would God proclaim so regularly how much he likes Patsy's Pizza? — Zack Love

In these days Melissa's absorbed and provoking gentleness had all the qualities of a rediscovered youth. Her long uncertain fingers - I used to feel them moving over my face when she thought I slept, as if to memorize the happiness we had shared. In her there was a pliancy, a resilience which was Oriental - a passion to serve. My shabby clothes - the way she picked up a dirty shirt seemed to engulf it with an overflowing solicitude; in the morning I found my razor beautifully cleaned and even the toothpaste laid upon the brush in readiness. Her care for me was a goad, provoking me to give my life some sort of shape and style that might match the simplicity of hers. Of her experiences in love she would never speak, turning from them with a weariness and distaste which suggested that they had been born of necessity rather than desire. She paid me the comlpiment of saying: "For the first time I am not afraid to be light-headed or foolish with a man". — Lawrence Durrell

People like to pigeonhole. People like to label - not just books and movies, but everything in their life. If people want to call me 'literary horror,' I guess that's fine. What I'm trying to do is be both thrilling and thought-provoking. — Benjamin Percy

Keep your heart and mind open, Taylor. Don't make any rash decisions that you might regret later on. Sometimes things in life aren't as clear as we would like them to be, especially in the beginning. When the time is right, you'll know it. Just don't burn the bridge before you ever get the chance to cross it. — Rose Wynters

Self-pity is the worst disability a person can have, Callie. It's crippling. — Shelley D Terrell

Just when you've squared up to the solemn realisation that life is a bitch, it turns round and does something nice, just to confuse you. - Emily Spitzer, The Better Mousetrap — Tom Holt

A jellyfish, if you watch it long enough, begins to look like a heart beating. It doesn't matter what kind: the blooded Atolla with its flashing siren lights, the frilly flower hat variety, or the near-transparent moon jelly, Aurelia aurita. It's their pulse, the way they contract swiftly, than release. Like a ghost heart-- a heart you can see right through, right into some other world where everything you ever lost as gone to hide.
Jellyfish don't even have hearts, of course-- no heart, no brain, no bone, no blood. But watch them for a while. You will see them beating. — Ali Benjamin

My life is like an O Henry story ... the funniest girl in the world and the boy who never laughs. — Rainbow Rowell

While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story - their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done. — Alyson Noel

Normal people can become very annoying if put in annoying situations. — Jessica Park

WAR CHILD is the true story of Magdalena (Leni) Janic whose name appears on The Welcome Wall at Sydney's Darling Harbour. The story spans 100 years starting in pre WWII Nazi Germany and ends in the suburbs of Adelaide. It's a window into what life was like for a young illegitimate German girl growing up in poverty, coping with ostracism, bullying, abuse and dispossession as society was falling down around her and she becomes a refugee. But it's also a story of a woman's unconditional love for her family, the sacrifices she made and secrets she kept to protect them. Her ultimate secret was only revealed in a bizarre twist after her death and much to her daughter's (and author) surprise involved her. A memorable tear-jerker! A sad cruel story told with so much love. — Annette Janic

Why spend your whole life on the high seas looking for treasure,' Peter asked, talking to the clouds as he scaled a rope up what remained of the half-crumbled mast, 'when you could have a promised pay check in exchange for all the life you'd live between nine-and-five. — Audrey Greathouse

Live My Life provides a much needed shot of timely, thought-provoking, musically forward, irreverence to the status quo, — Nomi Prins

If people can't stand being alone, they have no choice but to die — Natsuo Kirino

Some pasts exist as a fog that rolls in and out of the present, formed not by air that condenses into mist but memories that condense into tiny doors that open to forgotten moments. Maybe you glance at a stranger on a crowded street who reminds you of a childhood friend or hear a song that was popular the first summer you fell in love, and in the space of that single beat of time you are flung backward to a who or when long past. And yet it is only for that one beat. Those tiny doors never remain open for long for most of us. They ensure our former times are kept as relics, and the dust upon them is wiped clean only occasionally — Billy Coffey

As long as there's life, there's hope. — Tamora Pierce

The people who believe themselves superior to you will reveal themselves in how they respond to criticism from you. An opinion of anyone carries as much weight as whatever value that person's social currency has. A poor man spouting words more thought provoking than plato would not be credit for his prudence for his social currency and not his wisdom decides the value of his life. — Crystal Evans

If life and youth were not immune to the corrosive effects of time, why should love be any different? — Jill Archer

Perfectionism is a delusion that can rob one of a very successful, enriching life if not careful. — April Bryan

And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshipers of the sun's passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don't keep the schedule tight. — Harlan Ellison

That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. — Haruki Murakami

If you had to pack your whole life into a suitcase-not just the practical things, like clothing, but the memories of the people you had lost and the girl you had once been-what would you take? — Jodi Picoult

Don't use yesterday's state of mind, to make today's decision. — C. Nzingha Smith

You should have a little "too much personality," be a little "too focused" on your goals, be a little "too different," be a little "too confident," take "too many" chances, go after your dreams a little "too much," be a little "too strong," be a little "TOO RELENTLESS" in the PURSUIT of WHAT YOU WANT, and be a little "TOO PASSIONATE" about the LOVE you feel towards YOUR LIFE and your TEAMMATES so that YOU begin to FEEL a little "TOO ALIVE!" AYYYYYY! — Shay Dawkins

Is a dream the ultimate freedom, or the ultimate prison? — Buffi Neal

And courage to me meant ploughing through that dull gray mist that comes down on life
not only overriding people and circumstances but overriding the bleakness of living. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Perhaps we all said the right things at the wrong time; perhaps we couldn't help it. Perhaps words became too heavy to haul, and the moment we let them loose was always the wrong one, but they needed to be free. — Mackenzi Lee

When we are babies ... we need an authoritative figure to guide and take care of us. We ask no questions about that authority and imagine that the small circumference of family life is the limit of the universe ... As we mature, our horizon expands and we begin to question. This continues until we either throw over our creators
our parents
for good and take their place as the creative force in our lives or find replacements for them because the terror and responsibility are too great. People go one way or the other, and this accounts for all of the great personal and political divides throughout history. — Charlotte Rogan

Nothing important happens in life without a cost. — Jacqueline Novogratz

Give us everything we ask for and suddenly it's too much. — Mark Lawrence

I want my life to have had more value than just acquiring stuff and living comfortably. I may die rich, or I may die broke. But I won't die with my music still in me. — Steve Pavlina

Many people pretend to be in thought, proving thought to be a beautiful thing.
But the bald man doesn't need a comb, the tiger doesn't need weapons, the fool doesn't need thought. The person with no needs is practically a sage, but the sage also needs to count the rivers across the iron bridge to pass the time. This is the difference between the sage and the fool. — Xi Chuan

Over the course of your life you are actually hundreds of different people. You are a different person at the coffee shop than you are at the bar, and a different person for the dry cleaner than you are for your boyfriend, and a different person at work than you are on vacation. You are nobody in particular. But once somebody finds you and loves you, you have to keep being the person that they love. You want thier love. You need to keep getting it even if it means pretending ... but no one loved her and so she could keep changing. — Jenny Hollowell

Once they had been equal in their separate freedoms. They had set out to have children as lightly as if they were playing house, and now her necessarily domestic life bored him, and she was bound to it in her body and imagination. This imbalance was fated, built into their biology. — Tessa Hadley

If you don't start going after WHAT YOU WANT, then you will NEVER GET WHAT YOU WANT! Do you want to be on your death bed wondering, 'WHAT IF? WHAT IF I would've quit letting life pass me by and just went for it?!' JUST GO FOR IT! LIVE ALL OUT! — Shay Dawkins