Do you ever just sit around pondering life? Whether you’re feeling sentimental or just want a lighter way of looking at things, sometimes it can help think about life quotes from others over the years. Quotes about life can make you laugh, make you cry, or just help you think about things from a different perspective.

Here are some of my own favorite quotes about life. These are in no particular order. I hope you’ll share your own favorite life quotes.

Some of the Best Life Quotes

“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.”

– Robert Byrne

“Life is the sum of all your choices.”

– Albert Camus

“Every man dies. Not every man really lives.”

– William Wallace

“Life isn’t worth living unless you’re willing to take some big chances and go for broke.”

– Eliot Wigginton

“Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.”

– e.e. cummings

“People living deeply have no fear of death.”

– Anais Nin

“It is not length of life but depth of life.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Maybe all one can do is hope to end up with the right regrets.”

– Arthur Miller

“Life is what we make of it. Always has been, always will be.”

– Grandma Moses

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make, the better.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Don’t dwell in the past, don’t dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”

– Buddha

“Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”

– Forrest Gump

“Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.”

– Martin H. Fischer

“A great part of life consists of contemplating what we cannot cure.”

– Robert Louis Stevenson

“I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.”

– E.B. White

“Life is so largely controlled by chance that its conduct can be but a perpetual improvisation.”

– W. Somerset Maugham

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life. It goes on.”

– Robert Frost

“Life is like a coin. You can spend it any way you wish, but you can only spend it once.”

– Lillian Dickson

“Life is what happens while you’re busy making other plans.”

– John Lennon

“Life is the game that must be played.”

– Edwin Arlington Robinson

“The art of life is the art of avoiding pain.”

– Thomas Jefferson

“Life is a great big canvas and you should throw all the paint on it that you can.”

– Danny Kaye

“The miracle is not to fly in the air or to walk on water, but to walk on the earth.”

– Chinese proverb

“In the book of life, the answers aren’t in the back.”

– Charles Schulz / Charlie Brown

“Here is the test to find out whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”

– Richard Bach

“People find it hard to be both comic and serious, though life manages it easily enough.”

– Mignon McLaughlin

“The art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”

– Henry Ellis

“Any idiot can face a crisis. It’s day to day living that wears you out.”

– Anton Chekhov

“He who has nothing to die for has nothing to live for.”

– Moroccan proverb

“Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.”

– Socrates

“In spite of the art of living, it’s still popular.”

– Kathy Norris

“Life resembles a novel more often than novels resemble life.”

– George Sand

“Life is something to do when you can’t get to sleep.”

– Fran Lebowitz

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”

– Charles Darwin

“The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.”

– Henry David Thoreau

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“Don’t think of retiring from the world until the world will be sorry that you retire.”

– Samuel Johnson

“I think I’ve discovered the secret of life. You just hang around until you get used to it.”

– Charles Schulz

“You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”

– Albert Camus

“Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.”

– Bruce Crampton

“Life is a long process of getting tired.”

– Samuel Butler

“Life is a long lesson in humility.”

– James M. Barrie

“To succeed in life you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone.”

– Reba McEntire

“Not a shred of evidence exists in favor of the idea that life is serious.”

– Brendan Gill

“Life is wasted on the living.”

– Douglas Adams

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.”

– William James

“There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.”

– Christopher Morley

“The aim of life is to live. And to live means to be aware — joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

– Henry Miller

“It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you.”

– Phillips Brooks

“The shoe that fits one person pinches another. There is no recipe for living that suits all cases.”

– Carl Jung

I saved my own favorite for last. I think it’s a great thing to remind ourselves from time to time — that not everyone has to live life the way we do or the way we want them to for their lives to be happy and successful.

Do you have a favorite quote about life that isn’t included here? Leave a comment to share your favorites (or even share a quote of your own). And don’t forget to tell us why you love it!