65 Short Positive Quotes To Brighten Your Day (2024)

Caffeine can only do so much to brighten your day when you’re feeling beat down and overwhelmed.

Often, it’s the words of a fellow human that help you turn the day around by inviting you to slow down and savor the present.

It’s a bonus that the encouraging quotes in this article help you do just that without charging you a cent.

Just being more mindful of the present moment and of your own emotions, thoughts, and sensations is more powerfully awakening than any stimulant (but without the jitters).

Short positive quotes are inspiring and can truly improve your life when you let them speak to you. These inspirational quotes can:

• Help you practice mindfulness, enabling you to live a fuller and more intentional life, one day at a time.
• Afford more self-awareness about your own state of mind.
• Help you prioritize what's really important in your life.
• Comfort you during difficult or challenging situations.
• Inspire you to take action to improve your life.
• Make you realize that you share common emotions and needs with others.
• Guide you to make wise and well-considered decisions.

When someone puts into words (or other artistic expressions) a message that feeds you exactly what you need at this time, that someone makes a connection that goes soul-deep, meeting you where we are and challenging you to respond to your most urgent emotions with love, acceptance, and hope.

Take a few minutes to enjoy the short but powerful positive quotes in this article. Choose one as your quote of the day to set a more positive, intentional, and transformative tone for this instant and for those to come.

65 of The Best Short Positive Quotes

Short Daily Quotes Of Inspiration

The quotes that follow are short inspirational quotes; each quote contains a challenge as well as a reminder of how beautiful life can be. Make one of these quotes of the day something that you write down so you can see it again and again.

Repeat the words to yourself — out loud, if you can. And try to link them with a happy memory or with a visualization of something good you want to bring into your life. Allow yourself to feel the emotions that go with those mental pictures.

1. “Find joy in everything you choose to do.” — Chuck Palahniuk

2. “Positive energy knows no boundaries.” — Lu Wei

3. “A good laugh is sunshine in the house.” — William Makepeace Thackeray

4. “Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.” — Colin Powell

5. “Every moment is a fresh beginning.” — T.S. Eliot

Famous Short Positive Quotes

These famous short positive quotes that follow are well-known and their authors have contributed several others worth considering.

Enjoy them and let the words soak in. Each one is short enough to memorize easily and repeat many times throughout the day.

6. “Your big opportunity may be right where you are now.” — Napoleon Hill

7. “It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” — Confucius

8. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” — Aesop

9. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” — Henry David Thoreau

10. “Change your thoughts, and you change your world.” — Norman Vincent Peale

Positive Quotes About Life

Check out these 5 positive quotes about life and its purpose in a few words.

Whatever difficulties you may be going through right now, the most helpful words are those that make you more aware of the goodness in the present, enabling you to accept what you’re going through at face value and respond more thoughtfully.

Pick one of these five positive quotes about life to take with you as you go about your daily activities:

11. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw

12. “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” — Omar Khayyam

13. “The purpose of life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.” — Albert Schweitzer

14. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein

15. “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted, and behold, service was joy.” — Rabindranath Tagore

Positive Quotes For Kids

As a rule, kids are more receptive to positive quotes that speak to them at eye level and respect their capacity for understanding more than their behavior might sometimes suggest.

Kids aren’t the only ones, after all, who occasionally need time out for unsociable behavior.

Maybe time-out rooms (for kids and grown-ups alike) should be wallpapered with quotes like the following.

Pick one of these five positive quotes for kids and share them with your child as a positive thought of the day:

16. “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

17. “Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
— Dr. Seuss

18. “Confidence comes not from always being right but from not fearing to be wrong.” — Peter McIntyre

19. “Because of your smile, you make life more beautiful.” — Thich Nhat Hanh

20. “Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.” — Hans Christian Andersen

Positive Relationship Quotes

Here are just a few of the many positiverelationship quotes that celebrate connections — particularly those that make life worth living.

Whether the relationship you want to honor at this time is strictly platonic or has a romantic element, you have centuries of quotes to choose from. Take some time to savor each one of the following.

21. “The grass is greener where you water it.” — Neil Barringham

22. “Our chief want is someone who will inspire us to be what we know we could be.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

23. “I love you. I am at rest with you. I have come home.” — Dorothy L. Sayers

24. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” — Lao Tzu

25. “Love is a friendship set to music.” — Joseph Campbell

Positive Quotes For Depression

The best quotes for depression are those that neither paint depression as something strong people easily shake off nor portray it as an unbeatable and unmitigated evil.

Those who suffer from depression benefit from reminders that they’re not alone, that their depression is not their fault, and that their response to it (not their present mood) is what defines them. May the following quotes help us all to remember and celebrate that.

26. “Embrace the glorious mess that you are.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

27. “The best way out is always through.” — Robert Frost

28. “And still I rise.” — Maya Angelou

29. “Hope begins in the dark.” — Anne Lamott

30. “Out of the fires of desperation burn hope and solidarity.” — Sharan Burrow

Positive Quotes On Imagination

As natural-born creators, we learn at some point that life is better when we use our imagination to supplement (or overrule) what we know and believe.

The happiest and most connected among us are those whose imaginations are wide awake but not running the show. These imagination quotes offer a taste of the benefits.

31. “Everything you can imagine is real.” — Pablo Picasso

32. “The power of imagination makes us infinite.” — John Muir

33. “What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth.” — John Keats

34. “The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.” — Albert Einstein

35. “Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.” — Edgar Allan Poe

36. “Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” — John Lennon

37. “Imagination is the real and eternal world of which this vegetable universe is but a faint shadow.” — William Blake

Positive Love Quotes

Love is the topic of countless poems, songs, and stories — as well as inspirational quotes like the ones that follow.

When you practice mindfulness, you’re much better able to appreciate your connections to others and to respond to their words and actions consciously and with love, rather than automatically.

So many of us have gotten into the habit of assigning a self-centered meaning to the things other people say and do. Practicing mindful awareness of the present helps us to see those words and actions without the strings we attach to them (often without realizing).

Mindfulness makes you more capable of self-giving love, which makes every relationship better. Read the following quotes slowly and choose one as your love quote of the week.

38. “If you love it enough, anything will talk to you.” — George Washington Carver

39. “If a thing loves, it is infinite.” — William Blake

40. “Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.” — William Shakespeare

41. “No matter how dark the moment, love and hope are always possible.” — George Chakiris

42. “We are born of love. Love is our mother.” — Rumi

Positive Quotes About Aging

Aging isn’t something to avoid, and these quotes about aging bring that message home. Youth is not something you grow out of but rather something you spend your life growing into and learning to appreciate.

Read the following positive quotes and ask yourself what you can do today to restore your own awareness of the youth you may have forgotten.

43. “I think being in love with life is the key to eternal youth.” — Doug Hutchinson

44. “Youth has no age.” — Pablo Picasso

45. “I love aging. Why would I want to be 21 for the rest of my life?” — Zoe Saldana

46.“A man is not old until his regrets take the place of his dreams.” — John Barrymore.

47. “Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” — Stanislaw Jerzy Lec

Positive Quotes About Risk and Perseverance

Living life to the fullest means taking risks, which means stepping outside your comfort zone and courting the possibility of failure.

The following positive sayings can remind you to face each day with courage and stubborn curiosity.

48. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” — Neale Donald Walsch

49. “All life is an experiment; the more experiments you make, the better.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

50. “Don’t quit. Never give up trying to build the world you can see, even if others can’t see it.” — Simon Sinek

51. “There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail.” — Erich Fromm

Positive Quotes on Ideas

As R.W. Emerson said, “All life is an experiment,” and what’s an experiment without an idea to test? We learn early that not every idea is gold, but the more ideas we have, the odds of finding gold get better and better.

Have you brainstormed a list of ideas today — whether for a book, a new creative project, or your next road trip? Try giving yourself permission to just write down the first ten ideas that come to mind, even if your inner editor starts to twitch a little.

Remind yourself that, in flash of time, you’re giving your inner creator the freedom to make mistakes without judgment. It’s all part of learning to accept yourself as you are — before you expect others to.

52. “An idea is salvation by imagination.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

53.“It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas.” — Charles Peguy

54. “The history of innovation is the story of ideas that seemed dumb at the time.” — Andy Dunn

55. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” –John Steinbeck

56. “Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them.”— Alfred North Whitehead

57. “No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.” — Robin Williams

58.“An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.”— Charles Dickens

Positive Quotes on Gratitude

This list would not be complete without some positive gratitude quotes on the power and importance of being grateful.

Let this final set remind you to be thankful for all the good in your life — and for all the good you’ll do (or have done) today.

59. “It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.” — Eckhart Tolle

60. “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

61. “Have gratitude for all that you have, and you can be happy exactly as you are.” — Mandy Ingber

62. “This a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” –Maya Angelou

63. “If the only prayer you said in your whole life was “thank you” that would suffice.” — Meister Eckhart

64. “We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.” — Cynthia Ozick

65. “Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” — William Arthur Ward

More Related Articles:

119 Of The Most Positive, Uplifting Affirmations For Women

100 Of The Best Inspirational Quotes and Sayings

101 Of The Best Short Quotes of All Time

Did you enjoy these positive quotes? Please spread the love.

I hope you enjoyed the uplifting quotes in this article and that some, at least, have stuck in your memory and brightened your day.

If so, this probably isn’t the first time a handful of words from someone else opened your eyes to the beauty right in front of you. Consider this article a loving reminder of your right to enjoy all that this juncture of time holds for you.

If you’ve found value and refreshment in this article, please share it with others to make their days better, too. And may your thoughtfulness and gratitude infuse everything else you do today.