Inspirational and famous quotes from literature about life can motivate us. It’s easier to feel bad when you have the words of someone you admire.
No matter who you are in this world — including those who seem like they’re too great to have any heartache or awful days — we all go through the same things.
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Reading inspirational quotes can be a wonderful way to deal with difficult days. Reading can take you to a completely different place where nothing bad could ever happen, or it can take you somewhere you can relate to — except this time, the bad things don’t seem as unmanageable.
And, believe it or not, even when the story is fiction, authors often find their inspiration from experiences they’ve already gone through, which means that bad time you’re having, they’ve had it, too. It can be motivating to see a quote about how someone you admire has overcome hardships.
But more than just writing about these not-so-great feelings and experiences, authors give you advice on how to deal with it, even if you don’t realize it’s advice at first.
Every bad experience is temporary. But, more importantly, there are always better days ahead. Although your journey may not take 200 pages, authors who write about love and life know that it takes time. A little encouragement can help you get on the right path.
100 Best Literary QuotesBy Famous Authors To Inspire You
1. “You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don’t help.” ―Bill Watterson
2. “Even if it is not possible to choose from where we are coming from, we still have the option of choosing where we want to go.” —Stephen Chbosky
3. “Now that you don’t have to be perfect you can still be good.” —John Steinbeck
4. “Outside the windows the day was bright: golden sunshine, blue sky, pleasant wind… I wanted to punch the happy day in the face, grab it by the hair, and beat it until it told me what the hell it was so happy about.” ―Ilona Andrews
5. “I haven’t had a very good day. I think I might still be hungover and everyone’s dead and my root beer’s gone.” ―Holly Black
6. “It is impossible not to fail at something unless you live so carefully that you may as well have never lived – in which case you will fail by default.” —J.K. Rowling
7. “But I am very poorly today & very stupid & I hate everybody & everything. One lives only to make blunders.” ―Charles Darwin
8. “We are cups that are constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is to know how to tip over and let the wonderful stuff out. —Ray Bradbury
9. “You might face many defeats, but it is not necessary to lose heart. It may even be necessary to face defeats in order to discover who you are, what you can do from it, and how you can get out of it. —Maya Angelou
10. “Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.” —Oscar Wilde
11. “Maybe it’s not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things, no matter how dark and ugly, there are shards of beauty if I look for them.” ―Anna White
12. “I’ve had the sort of day that would make St. Francis of Assisi kick babies.” ―Douglas Adams
13. 10.Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile, it happened. —Dr. Seuss
14. “Everything is hard before everything is easy.” —Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
15. “Anyone who’s never made a mistake never tried anything new.” —Albert Einstein
16. “These worst mornings with cold floors and hot windows and merciless light — the soul’s certainty that the day will have to be not traversed but sort of climbed, vertically, and then that going to sleep again at the end of it will be like falling, again, off something tall and sheer.” ―David Foster Wallace
17. “Don’t let happiness be tied to something you might lose.” —C.S. Lewis
18. It’s hard to forget about pain, but even more difficult to remember sweetness. There is no scar to prove our happiness. We can only learn so much from peace.” —Chuck Palahniuk
19. “We are all broken. That’s the way the light gets in.” —Ernest Hemingway
20. “Monsters and ghosts are real. They live within us, sometimes winning.” —Stephen King
21. “We are all ordinary. All of us are boring. All of us are amazing. All of us are shy. We all are brave. All of us are heroes. We all have the power to save ourselves. It just depends on the day.” —Brad Meltzer
22. “It hurt because that mattered.” 22. —John Green
23. 23. —Herman Hesse
24. “I want to enjoy every day and to be able to feel joy and taste it all. I will never be afraid of experiencing pain.” —Sylvia Plath
25.LifeIt’s unfair; why should I be? —Margaret Atwood
26. “Never look back, unless you’re planning to go that direction.” —Henry David Thoreau
27. “Sooner than later, even the fastest runners will have to stand up and fight.” —Stephen King
28. “We can only rise when we lift others up.” —Robert Ingersoll
29. “I can be transformed by what happens to my.” It is not possible for me to be diminished by it.” —Maya Angelou
30 “Things often work out in your favor in the end.” “What happens if they don’t work out in the end?” “ThatThis does not mean you have reached the end. —Jeanette Walls
31. “Life is a journey, not a destination.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
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32. 31.I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self-indulgent. Caring for oneself is an act of survival. —Audre Lorde
33. 33. The frost does not make the roots wither; they only reach deep roots. —J.R.R. Tolkien
34. “There are chords within the hearts of those who are most reckless that cannot be touched without emotion.” —Edgar Allen Poe
35 35. —John Muir
36 36. —Rumi
37. “It takes courage to see the whole world in its corrupt glory, yet still love it. —Oscar Wilde
38. 38. —William Shakespeare
39. “Never consider pain, danger, or enemies any longer than it is necessary to defeat them.” —Ayn Rand
40 “Straight roads don’t make skilled drivers.” —Paula Coelho
41 “And in the end, we were all just humans… drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness.” —F. Scott Fitzgerald
42 “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do not, be nothing.” —Aristotle
43 “Dwell in possibility.” —Emily Dickinson
44. “Trust your heart if seas catch fire, love the stars even though they walk backwards,” —E.E. Cummings
45 “When you cannot change the direction of wind, adjust your sails.” —H. Jackson Brown Jr.
46 “Have faith, believe.” Faith is the only thing you can have when you don’t have anything else. —Francine Rivers
47 “Rock solid was the foundation upon which I built my life.” —J.K. Rowling
48. “Let it be you. It will open your eyes. You can start there. —Cheryl Strayed
49. 49. —Chelsea Handler
50LifeMy darling, it is hard but so is you.” —Stephanie Bennett Henry
51 “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.” —Mark Twain
52 “There’s very little in my world that a foot massage and a thin-crust, everything-on-it pizza won’t set right.” ―G.A. McKevett
53 “No matter what the day brings and no matter how hard life hits you, if you can breathe, smile and keep moving on! Once you have life, know that God is alive!” ―Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
54. “When you’re having what you feel like is a ‘bad day’ and then someone comes along out of nowhere and extends to you the simplest of kind gestures, you feel it so deeply within your heart.” ―Miya Yamanouchi
55 “So you had a bad day. Kick it aside and be grateful for one less bad day to pass through.” ―Richelle E. Goodrich
56 “Keep calm when things don’t go according to your expectations! Beautiful things always meet friction!” ―Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
57. “Next to the day when I was almost shot by that arrow, the worst day of my life was when I was almost eaten.” ―Jennifer Frick-Ruppert
58 “Never give up on someone who is having a bad day. Tomorrow could be yours.” ―Giovannie de Sadeleer
59 “This is turning into an alcohol-will-cure-everything kind of day.” ―Kelly Moran
60 “A bad day doesn’t cancel out a good life. Keep going.” ―Richie Norton
61 “Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.” —Maya Angelou
62 “Anything worth dying is definitely worth living for” —Joseph Heller
63. “Today is a hard day. There are sometimes hard days. Days stretched so tight with pain that they seem as if they can allow no room for hope.” ―Libba Bray
64 “’How was your day?’ ought to be ‘How did you look at your day?’” ―Mokokoma Mokhonoana
65 “All heroes probably had doubts sometimes, she told herself. Maximal Star was the part where she felt like a failure. The parts where you feel like a big time faker and failure.” ―Cassie Beasley
66. “He couldn’t believe it was only Wednesday. And it was made worse when he realized it was actually Tuesday.” ―TJ Klune
67. “The first sign that Karma was now in cahoots with the Devil Incarnate to ruin her existence should’ve been before sunrise and pre-coffee.” ―Kelly Moran
68. “This day had officially punched every hole in her crazy ticket.” ―Kimberly Kincaid
69. “When you are having a really crappy day, and life seems to be kicking your ass, try to force your self to laugh. If you can achieve a smile and a laugh, you can chase any demons away” ―L.F. Young
70 “Never view obstacles in your path as the enemy. Rather, view any obstacles as detour signs to avoid pitfalls.” ―Donald L. Hicks
71. “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” —Alice Walker
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72. “Every single day is a good day no matter how bright or dark it is, because it always brings an opportunity to start a positive beginning in your life.” ―Edmond Mbiaka
73. “There is no good day or bad day, only good or bad actions.” ―Amit Kalantri
74. “Today might be shitty, tomorrow might be shitty, the next day might be s****y… but who’s to say that one of the next days won’t be the best day of your life?” ―Benjamin A. Collier
75. “It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.” —James Baldwin
76. “There have been times, lately, when I dearly wished that I could change the past. Well, I can’t, but I can change the present, so that when it becomes the past it will turn out to be a past worth having.” —Terry Pratchett
77. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.” —Neil Gaiman
78. “You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; everything else is grandiose romanticism or politics.” —Charles Bukowski
79 “There is always something left to love.” —Gabriel García Márquez
80 “Each moment is a place you’ve never been.” —Mark Strand
81. “Great works are performed not by strength but by perseverance.” —Samuel Johnson
82. “Feel, he told himself, feel, feel, feel. Even if what you feel is pain, only let yourself feel.” —P.D. James
83. “We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” —Kurt Vonnegut
84. “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” —Oscar Wilde
85 “A day is a day. It’s just a measure of time. You decide whether it’s good or bad. It’s all a matter of perception.” —Donald L. Hicks
86 “The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.” —Jack Kerouac
87 “You wanna fly, you got to give up the s*** that weighs you down.” —Toni Morrison
88 “Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. Let him die if he doesn’t agree with you. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.” —Carl Sagan
89. “The world spins. We keep going. It is enough.” —Colum McCann
90 “Challenges make life interesting, however overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.” —Mark Twain
91. “Sometimes you just have to put on lip gloss and pretend to be psyched.” —Mindy Kaling
92. “All of old. Nothing else. Never tried. Never failed. You don’t have to give up. Retry. Fail again. Fail better.” —Samuel Beckett
93. “Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.” —George Orwell
94 “Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.” —L. M. Montgomery
95 “Ride on! Rough-shod, if necessary, or smooth-shod if you prefer, but just ride on! You can ride over any obstacle and win the race! —Charles Dickens
96 “Enjoy the elastic present, which can accommodate as little or as much as you want to put in there. Stretch it out, live inside of it.” —Charles Yu
97 “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” —Franklin D. Roosevelt
98. “The only difference between a good day and a bad day is your attitude.” —Dennis S. Brown
99. “No one really has a bad life. No bad day. Just bad moments.” —Regina Brett
100. “I’m not afraid to storms, because I’m learning to sail my boat.” —Louisa May Alcott
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Emily Ratay lives in Pittsburgh and is a full time writer. She is passionate about the environment and feminism.
