15 Sentences That Can Change Your Life

If you want to change your life, willpower isn’t enough. Wanting it really badly isn’t enough. You must find the right kind of inspiration to get you from wanting to doing. Delight in the following quotes that can get you up and moving and change the way you think and feel abut life.

1. We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. 

Anais Nin offers a mind-altering phrase here that has the ability to change the way you think of the world. There’s the way things are, and then there’s the way we seem them through the lens that is us. This is why it’s always good to question your perception and see if that’s really how things are.

2. Remember that failure is an event, not a person.

Zig Ziglar has hundreds of quotes that motivate, inspire, and spur yourself onto a different path than you were on, and this is a shining example of one. It’s important to keep your head up and stay on the positive side, even when a situation arises where you don’t feel very effective or successful.

3. If you wait, all that happens is you get older.

Larry McMurtry reminds us that there’s never a better time to get started than right now. Waiting just lets time pass by with nothing getting done, and no progress made towards what you really want. Before long you could find yourself out of time and still waiting.

4. All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

Martin Buber is letting us know that the destination isn’t really that important as long as we’re up for the journey. Discovering places you love that were never on your radar is one of the hidden treasures that happen when you make the choice to venture in the direction of your dreams.

5. If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.

Milton Berle shows that it’s necessary to get the right pieces in place or it could be quite awhile before anything can happen. In order to opportunity to knock there needs to be a door first, which means conditions must be right for opportunity to present itself.

6. How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.

Annie Dillard points out something that most of us intrinsically know, but that is so easy to forget. It’s especially true when we get stuck in a rut and then end up living the result of that rut, and lose sight of the fact that your days will eventually make up your life.

7. Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.

Winston Churchill knew a thing or two about success and here he sums up the key he used to get there. This is a skill that must be learned, as human nature has our emotions linked to the outcome of the things we do and what happens to us.

8. The past has no power over the present moment.

Eckhart Tolle’s main thesis is that the past and present don’t exist outside of our own minds, and that all that really matters is right now. He makes the case that now is the only moment you ever have, and that this is your point of power, the point at which anything ever gets done or occurs.

9. In the middle of winter I at last discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

Albert Camus must have gone through a long period of time when things were rough in order to find the “invincible summer” inside him. It’s always intriguing to wonder just how much is inside us waiting to come to our aid when we need it most.

10. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.

Douglas Adams wants us to know that things might not always go the way we planned, but that the universe might have bigger plans for us than we can comprehend. It’s much more powerful to leave a bit of planning up to the bigger picture instead of thinking you need to control every detail.

11. There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Maya Angelou is beckoning you to tell your story with one simple statement. She seemingly had no trouble telling her story, but she must have gone through a period of time when she had a story inside her that just needed to come out.

12. I’ve had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.

Leave it to Mark Twain to put it so eloquently that worrying is pretty inefficient. The vast majority of things we worry about never actually happen, so it’s best not to worry at all since all that matters is what really happens, which is a fraction of what goes on in the worried mind.

13. Don’t let what you can’t do stop you from doing what you can do.

John Wooden is calling us out on one of the most popular excuses out there, and that’s on not moving forward because of a perceived limitation in a particular area or field.

14. It is better to know how to learn than to know.

Dr. Seuss is known for his quirky hyperbole, but this one is a sentence that is worth reading a few times. In a world where every answer is at your fingertips thanks to computers and smartphones, it truly is a great time to be alive and eager to learn.

15. Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein is often lauded as a genius and usually we think that he must have done everything perfectly. Surely he would have been the first to admit that he made plenty of mistakes, since he was always trying new things and thinking new thoughts.