Contemplation is the only way to broaden your consciousness. The more you contemplate and the more questions you ask, the deeper your understanding becomes.
This article is a collection 82 short and pithy quotes (mostly one sentence quotes) that carry within them profound wisdom on life. Reflecting on these quotes will help greatly expand your thinking and consciousness.
Here are the quotes.
Mistakes are the portals of discovery.
– James Joyce
Be curious, not judgmental.
– Walt Whitman
Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait.
– Leo Tolstoy
It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
– Eugène Ionesco
The fact that life has no meaning is a reason to live – moreover, the only one.
– Emil Cioran
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
– Voltaire
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
– Baruch Spinoza
One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.
– Aldous Huxley
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Meditation is a balancing act between attention and relaxation.
― B. Alan Wallace, The Attention Revolution
I can’t go back to yesterday – because I was a different person then.
– Lewis Carroll
Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
– Lao Tzu
Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
― Robert Louis Stevenson
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
– Jonathan Swift
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
– Søren Kierkegaard
The first duty of love is to listen.
– Paul Tillich
Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
– Zhuangzi
To a mind that is still, the entire universe surrenders.
– Zhuangzi
Teach thy tongue to say ‘I do not know,’ and thou shall progress.
– Moses Maimonides
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
– Thomas Hobbes
Practice is the best of all instructors.
– Publilius Syrus
Music is the shorthand of emotion.
– Leo Tolstoy
To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
– Lewis B. Smedes
If you focus on what’s left behind, you will never be able to see what lies ahead.
– Anon
You can never be free of their criticism until you no longer seek their praise.
– Dennis Ruane
If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.
– Anton Chekhov
To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of the ignorant.
– Amos Bronson Alcott
Authority has every reason to fear the skeptic, for authority can rarely survive in the face of doubt.
– Vita Sackville-West
If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.
– Sylvia Plath
Believe those who are seeking the truth, doubt those who find it.
– André Gide
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
― Jonathan Swift
A man trusts another man when he sees enough of himself in him.
– Gregory David Roberts
Do not seek after the sages of the past. Seek what they sought.
– Basho
Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.
– Confucius
It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.
– Henry David Thoreau
That government is best which governs least.
– Henry David Thoreau
The less routine the more life.
– Amos Bronson Alcott
Observation more than books and experience more than persons, are the prime educators.
– Amos Bronson Alcott
We’re our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.
― Tom Robbins
Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner.
– Lao Tzu
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
– Lao Tzu
“Death, so called, is a thing which makes men weep, And yet a third of life is passed in sleep.”
― Lord George Gordon Byron
We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
– Aristotle
A friend to all is a friend to none.
– Aristotle
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
– Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
– Margaret Fuller
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
– Leonardo da Vinci
Genius is eternal patience.
– Michelangelo
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein
Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.
– Alfred North Whitehead
To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.
– Henri Bergson
Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.
– Harriet Martineau
Explanation separates us from astonishment, which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible.
– Eugène Ionesco
Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.
– Karl Barth
In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
– René Descartes
The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.
– David Hume
“Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your mind off your goals.”
– anon
“You aren’t just the age you are. You are all the ages you ever have been!”
– Kenneth Koch
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
– Marie Curie
Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
– Søren Kierkegaard
To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.
– unknown
Don’t let schooling interfere with your education.
– Mark Twain
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.
– Walter Lippman
The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.
– Søren Kierkegaard
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.
– Augustine of Hippo
Patience is the companion of wisdom.
– Augustine of Hippo
The sweetest of all sounds is praise.
– Xenophon
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
– William James
Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.
– Democritus
We may pass violets looking for roses. We may pass contentment looking for victory.
– Bernard Williams
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
– John Dewey
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
– Sydney J. Harris
The Quieter You Become, The More You Are Able To Hear.
– Rumi
Life is a balance between holding on and letting go.
– Rumi
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.
– Galileo Galilei
Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity.
– Hippocrates
A physicist is just an atom’s way of looking at itself.
– Niels Bohr
Time is the father of truth, its mother is our mind.
– Giordano Bruno
Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
– Pablo Picasso
Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.
– Guillaume Apollinaire
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
Imagination decides everything.
– Blaise Pascal
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but also by the heart.
– Blaise Pascal
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
– Gustave Flaubert
Who in the world am I? Ah, that’s the great puzzle.
– Lewis Carroll
People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.
– Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I do not wish women to have power over men; but over themselves.
– Mary Wollstonecraft
The beginning is always today.
– Mary Wollstonecraft
Educated people can be easily governed.
– Frederick the Great
There is nothing new except what has been forgotten.
– Marie Antoinette
Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism.
– David Suzuki
There is no truth. There is only perception.
– Gustave Flaubert
One can be the master of what one does, but never of what one feels.
– Gustave Flaubert
Commune with your own heart on your bed and be still.
– Maimonides Moses 1135-1204
In love, one and one are one.
― Jean-Paul Sartre
If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.
― Jean-Paul Sartre
The best fighter is never angry.
– Lao Tzu
Life is not what we live; it is what we imagine we are living.
– Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon
Each of us carries a unique world within our hearts.
– John O’Donohue, Eternal Echoes
Man is what he reads.
– Joseph Brodsky
I don’t live in France, I live in myself.
– Alejandro Jodorowsky
we never really encounter the world; all we experience is our own nervous system.
– Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, The Bhagavad Gita
Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
– David Hume
Habits change into character.
– Ovid
All things change; nothing perishes.
– Ovid
There are no facts, only interpretations.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Conquer yourself rather than the world.
– René Descartes
To understand is to forgive.
– Pascal
Light tomorrow with today.
― Elizabeth Barrett Browning
