A compilation of the best quotes I’ve come across over the years that I go back to time and again, covering different facets of life. May these words also inspire you the way it has, me.
Disclaimer: Do drop me a comment if you know the author/source of the anonymous quotes!
On emotions
“I believe that feelings are real and substantiative. I believe many of our big words and politics and ideas can be distilled down to, “I am hurt.” I am inspired by most people who are fluent in the language of hurt — people who have the language and skills to navigate complex feelings with sincerity and conviction, people who understand and respect that we do not always move from reason, but often from pain. I am most impressed by people who can process jealousy and loneliness and fear. I wish we could understand work as another form of heartbreak. I often look forward to the debrief of an event more than the event itself. I think “how are you” is simultaneously one of the most beautiful and tragic questions in the world: the promise of engagement, the reality of ennui. I hate the way we are required to cleave ourselves from our feelings in order to be regarded as legitimate. I hate that we are celebrated for doing this. I believe there is a bruise there — a deep and sustained grief that lives in a space between what we feel and what we are able to say. That’s why it is often hard for me to tell the difference between mouth and a gaping wound, a word and a drop of blood, a belief and a funeral.
— ALOK
“You can measure time in wrinkles, bursts of clarity and insight, warm beds, waiting in line at the bank or the distance between two kisses. It stretches and shrinks and sometimes even bends. That’s why your heart will always keep better time than a clock.”
— Anonymous
On relationships & love
“It’s about who shows up for you and who you show up for. When you’re young you learn this, when you have children you teach this. When you’re old, you hope you remember.”
— Galina ‘Red’ Reznikov, Orange is the New Black
“Writing a relationship contract may sound calculating or unromantic, but every relationship is contractual; we’re just making the terms more explicit. It reminds us that love isn’t something that happens to us — it’s something we’re making together.”
— Mandy Len Catron of ‘To Stay in Love, Sign on the Dotted Line’ on the NYTimes.com
“Everyone has something of beauty about them. But loving lets you look, and look, and look again. You notice the back of a hand, the turn of a head, the way of a walk. When you first love, you look blind and you see it all as the glorious, beloved whole, or a beautiful sum of beautiful parts. But when you see the one you love as pieces, as why’s, you can love those parts too, and it’s a love at once more complicated and more complete.”
— Crossed by Ally Condie
On courage
“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
— Anaïs Nin
On learning
“Nothing I say this day will teach me anything. So if I’m going to learn, I must do it by listening.”
— Larry King
On life
“Get curious. Make your health a priority. Keep good company. Shut up and listen. Keep moving. Stop living in fear. Don’t keep score. Embrace simplicity. Be kind. Don’t make it harder than it has to be.”
— Anonymous
“We’re living our lives depending on the space we’ve got rather than creating our space to fit our lives.”
— Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus, The Minimalists
On achieving
“In order to ‘have’ you must ‘do’, and in order to ‘do’, you must ‘be’.”
— Terry Crews
