There's more to positive thinking than just visualizing rainbows and butterflies: Scientists have proven it can actually help decrease stress and anxiety. But sometimes, it can be hard to change your mindset on your own—and you may need to turn to external sources. Fortunately, they're just as good. One 2021 study found that verbal encouragement can help students perform better on tests and in school. Experts have also linked praise and positive feedback with better behavior in kids. Keep reading for a list of positive quotes to get your thoughts moving in the right direction. These inspiring messages and happy adages can help banish your blues and jumpstart your day.
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Jump Ahead
- Short Positive Quotes
- Positive Quotes About Life
- Quotes About Personal Relationships
- Motivational Quotes From World Leaders
- Positive Quotes to Motivate You at Work
Short Positive Quotes
Best Life
- "Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." — Roald Dahl
- “Light tomorrow with today.” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
- "Lead from the heart, not the head." — Princess Diana
- "You cannot change what you are, only what you do." — Philip Pullman
- "Hope is the most exciting thing there is in life." — Mandy Moore
- "Say something positive, and you’ll see something positive.” — Jim Thompson
- "Every strike brings me closer to the next home run." — Babe Ruth
- "The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts." — Marcus Aurelius
- “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” — John Muir
- "Anything is possible with sunshine and a little pink." — Lilly Pulitzer
- You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated." — Maya Angelou
- "I dwell in possibility.” — Emily Dickinson
- “It is a happiness to wonder; it is a happiness to dream.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
- "Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life." — Omar Khayyam
- "You do not find the happy life. You make it." — Thomas S. Monson
- “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” ― John Keats
- "The next choice is the most important choice." — George Wells
- "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success." — Alexander Graham Bell
- "The most wasted of days is one without laughter." — E. E. Cummings
- "Do good and good will come to you." — Adam Lowy
- "Make your life matter and have fun doing it." — Aaron Hurst
- "An unexamined life is not worth living." — Socrates
- “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” ― George Eliot
- "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted." — Aesop
- "Happiness is not by chance but by choice." — Jim Rohn
- "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." — Oscar Wilde
Positive Quotes About Life
Best Life
- “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde
- “Everything you can imagine is real.” ― Pablo Picasso
- “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.” ― Thomas A. Edison
- "As we work to create light for others, we naturally light our own way." — Mary Anne Radmacher
- “When the sun is shining, I can do anything; no mountain is too high, no trouble too difficult to overcome.” — Wilma Rudolph
- “The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely.” ― Louisa May Alcott
- "In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." — Robert Frost
- “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
- "If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one." — Dolly Parton
- "Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius, and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring." — Marilyn Monroe
- "Great things happen to those who don't stop believing, trying, learning, and being grateful." ― Roy T. Bennett
- “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.” ― Epictetus
- "Be fanatically positive and militantly optimistic. If something is not to your liking, change your liking." — Rick Steves
- "Confidence isn't optimism or pessimism, and it's not a character attribute. It's the expectation of a positive outcome." — Rosabeth Moss Kanter
- “Only when we're drowning do we understand how fierce our feet can kick.” — Amanda Gorman
- "We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one." — Confucius
- "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “My God, a moment of bliss. Why, isn't that enough for a whole lifetime?” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky
- “The most important step a man can take. It's not the first one, is it? It's the next one. Always the next step.” ― Brandon Sanderson
- “My past has not defined me, destroyed me, deterred me, or defeated me; it has only strengthened me.” ― Steve Maraboli
- "To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "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
- "It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light." — Aristotle
- “Optimism is a huge asset. We can always use more of it. But optimism isn’t a belief that things will automatically get better; it’s a conviction that we can make things better.” — Melinda French Gates
- "All your dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them." — Walt Disney
- "Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not." — Oscar Wilde
- “And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” — John Steinbeck
- "Keep your face to the sunshine, and you cannot see a shadow." — Helen Keller
- "For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
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Quotes About Personal Relationships
Best Life
- "Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom." — Marcel Proust
- “Love is too precious to be ashamed of.” ― Laurell K. Hamilton
- "Life is made of ever so many partings welded together." — Charles Dickens
- "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage." — Laozi
- "If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary." — Jim Rohn
- “The true meaning of life is to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.” — Nelson Henderson
- "Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile." — Albert Einstein
- "Deep in your wounds are seeds, waiting to grow beautiful flowers." — Niti Majethia
- “Things are never quite as scary when you’ve got a best friend.” — Bill Watterson
- "My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So, let us be loving, hopeful, and optimistic. And we'll change the world." — Jack Layton
- “There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.” ― Charlotte Brontë
- "If you see someone without a smile, give 'em yours." — Dolly Parton
- "Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others." — Rosa Parks
- Constant kindness can accomplish much. As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate." — Albert Schweitzer
- "Whoever is happy will make others happy too." — Anne Frank
- "Nobody has ever measured—not even poets—how much love the human heart can hold." — Zelda Fitzgerald
- "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
- "The person who can bring the spirit of laughter into a room is indeed blessed." — Bennett Cerf
- "Always find opportunities to make someone smile and to offer random acts of kindness in everyday life." — Roy T. Bennett
- "Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible." — Tony Robbins
Motivational Quotes From World Leaders
Best Life
- "Choose to be optimistic, it feels better." — Dalai Lama
- "Do one thing every day that scares you." — Eleanor Roosevelt
- "Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier." — Colin Powell
- “Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” — Winston Churchill
- "There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones.” — Anwar Sadat
- “The greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions and not upon our circumstances.” ― Martha Washington
- “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more, and become more, you are a leader.” — John Quincy Adams
- "The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process." — Andrew Carnegie
- “Do not let anyone ever tell you who you are.” — Kamala Harris
- “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi
- “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there.” — Theodore Roosevelt
- "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." — Martin Luther King Jr.
- "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." — Mahatma Gandhi
- “A leader is a dealer in hope.” — Napoleon Bonaparte
- "A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on." — John F. Kennedy
- "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” ― Paulo Coelho
- "The real test is not whether you avoid this failure because you won't. It's whether you let it harden or shame you into inaction, or whether you learn from it; whether you choose to persevere." — Barack Obama
- “Don’t follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you.” — Margaret Thatcher
- "I didn't fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong." — Benjamin Franklin
- "In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." — Abraham Lincoln
- "A winner is a dreamer who never gave up." — Nelson Mandela
- "Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose." — Lyndon B. Johnson
- "If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way." — Martin Luther King Jr.
- "The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall." — Nelson Mandela
Positive Quotes to Motivate You at Work
Best Life
- “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished” — Lao Tzu
- “When someone tells me ‘no,’ it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” — Karen E. Quinones Miller
- "If you're going, go all the way. If you’re not going all the way, then why go at all!" — Ernest Hemingway
- "The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." — Vidal Sassoon
- "If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you'll never get it done." — Bruce Lee
- "Be passionate and move forward with gusto every single hour of every single day until you reach your goal." — Ava DuVernay
- “A year from now, you may wish you had started today.” — Karen Lamb
- "The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity." — Amelia Earhart
- "The most important thing is to try and inspire people so that they can be great in whatever they want to do." — Kobe Bryant
- "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." — Albert Einstein
- "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people's thinking." — Steve Jobs
- “You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestation of your own blessings.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert
- “Someday is not a day of the week.” — Janet Dailey
- "Pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it." — Paulo Coelho
- “Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” — Earl Nightingale
- "If you want to make your dreams come true, the first thing you have to do is wake up." — J.M. Power
- “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald
- "Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him." — Booker T. Washington
- "Trust in dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity." — Khalil Gibran
- "Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined." — Henry David Thoreau
- "The bad news is time flies. The good news is you're the pilot." — Michael Altshuler
- “Spend so much time on the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.” — Christian Larson
- "The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now." — Chinese Proverb
- "To win big, you sometimes have to take big risks." — Bill Gates
- "I believe great people do things before they are ready." — Amy Poehler
- “Time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use." — Earl Nightingale
