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Looking for words with deeper meaning to ponder? These deep quotes are the place to start.
Some of the most profound quotes are not necessarily long, but packed with meaning. A short deep quote can often stimulate us more than a long one.
Sometimes a simple phrase contains enough meaning to change our day, or even our life.
So enjoy reflecting on these deep words to gain the perspective, insight, and mental stimulation that makes life more interesting.
Page Contents
Top 10 Deep Quotes
It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
Oscar Wilde
The unhappy derive comfort from the misfortunes of others.
Aesop
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Life is too deep for words, so don’t try to describe it, just live it.
C.S. Lewis
He who fears he will suffer, already suffers because he fears.
Michel De Montaigne
Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.
H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.
Harper Lee
More Deep Quotes and Sayings
People do not lack strength; they lack will.
Victor Hugo
To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.
Lao Tzu
Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
Soren Kierkegaard
I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship.
Michelle Williams
To think is easy. To act is hard. But the hardest thing in the world is to act in accordance with your thinking.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd
Without self knowledge, without understanding the working and functions of his machine, man cannot be free, he cannot govern himself and he will always remain a slave.
G.I. Gurdijieff
Maybe you are searching among the branches, for what only appears in the roots.
Rumi
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernhard Shaw
The most important things are the hardest to say because words diminish them.
Stephen King
There is nothing more unequal than the equal treatment of unequal people.
Thomas Jefferson
There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart’s desire. The other is to gain it.
George Bernhard Shaw
Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.
Teddy Roosevelt
Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.
Rita Mae Brown
If you are willing to do only what’s easy, life will be hard. But if you are willing to do what’s hard, life will be easy.
T. Harv Eker
Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
Neils Bohr
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.
Frederick Douglass
Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.
Maya Angelou
It is better to have a meaningful life and make a difference than to merely have a long life.
Bryant H. McGill
Consciousness is only possible through change; change is only possible through movement.
Aldous Huxley
Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?
Abraham Lincoln
The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.
Michel de Montaigne
It is the pursuit of happiness that makes people unhappy.
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Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
Martin Heidegger
Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.
Erol Ozan
If an egg is broken by an outside force, life ends. If broken by an inside force, life begins. Great things always begin from the inside.
Jim Kwik
We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.
Henry David Thoreau
The oak sleeps in the acorn. The bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul, a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of reality.
Napoleon Hill
Deepness of Self Quotes
It is a sad fate for a man to die too well known to everybody else, and still unknown to himself.
Francis Bacon
To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.
Oscar Wilde
You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him discover it in himself.
Galileo Galilei
If you’re not comfortable enough with yourself or with your own truth when entering a relationship, then you’re not ready for that relationship.
Steve Maraboli
We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
Jane Austen
The more you know who you are, and what you want, the less you let things upset you.
Stephanie Perkins
Your mind can be either your prison or your palace. What you make it is yours to decide.
Bernard Kelvin Clive
If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are a slave.
Dr. Wayne Dyer
Passion is born deaf and dumb.
Honoré de Balzac
Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.
Albert Camus
The only reason we get lost in thought, is because it is unfamiliar territory.
Ashton Leinen
No man is truly great who is great only in his lifetime. The test of greatness is the page of history.
William Hazlitt
A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart.
Rumi
A friend to all is a friend to none.
Aristotle
I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
Plato
Sometimes a man wants to be stupid if it lets him do a thing his cleverness forbids.
John Steinbeck
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Eric Hoffer
There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.
Soren Kierkegaard
Every impulse that we strive to strangle broods in the mind and poisons us.
Oscar Wilde
You don’t have to be a fantastic hero to do certain things; to compete. You can be just an ordinary chap, sufficiently motivated to reach challenging goals.
Sir Edmund Hillary
I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde
Too many people buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have to impress people they don’t like.
Dave Ramsey
When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Lao Tzu
I would rather die a meaningful death than to live a meaningless life.
Corazon Aquino
Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.
Stephen Covey
Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.
Arthur Rimbaud
I think, therefore I am.
René Descartes
What matters isn’t what a person has or doesn’t have; it is what he or she is afraid of losing.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb
On a deeper level you are already complete. When you realize that, there is a playful, joyous energy behind what you do.
Eckhart Tolle
Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.
Oscar Wilde
Until you value yourself, you won’t value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it.
M. Scott Peck
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Anaïs Nin
We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves.
Bruce Lee
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.
Leo Tolstoy
Deep Paradox Quotes
Victory is sweetest when you’ve known defeat.
Malcolm S. Forbes
Every strength is also a weakness. The opposite is true as well.
Neil Strauss
Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes.
Francis Bacon
The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.
Voltaire
The paradox of simplicity is that making things simpler is hard work.
Bill Jensen
Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.
Gustave Flaubert
Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth.
Pablo Picasso
There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.
Friedrich Nietzche
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
Thomas Merton
Never to suffer would never to have been blessed.
Edgar Allan Poe
Love is the foolishness of men, and the wisdom of God.
Victor Hugo
If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong
A fear of weakness only strengthens weakness.
Chris Jami
Extraordinary men are always tempted by the most ordinary things.
C.G.B. Spender,
The X-Files
Dead people receive more flowers than the living ones because regret is stronger than gratitude.
Anne Frank
The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
Carl Jung
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Bertrand Russell
A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.
Charles Darwin
He has the most who is most content with the least.
Diogenes
What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.
Mark Twain
He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.
Lao Tzu
The most selfish thing we can do is to be unselfish because it frees us.
Dean Ornish
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.
Carl Rogers
All generalizations are dangerous, even this one.
Alexandre Dumas
Stupidity lies in wanting to draw conclusions.
Gustave Flaubert
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
Nikola Tesla
When you’re young, you want to be rich. When you’re rich, you want to be young.
James Pierce
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers.
Kahlil Gibran
Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.
Albert Einstein
We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.
Leo Tolstoy
Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.
Voltaire
Not until we are lost, do we begin to find ourselves.
Henry David Thoreau
Only a life lived for others is a life worthwhile.
Albert Einstein
A great man is always willing to be little.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.
John F. Kennedy
A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.
Michele de Montaigne
I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.
Mark Twain
Deeper Perspectives
Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.
Oscar Wilde
A thousand words will not leave so deep an impression as one deed.
Henrik Ibsen
Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.
Robert Louis Stevenson
The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.
Bob Marley
Knowing what must be done does away with fear.
Rosa Parks
You are only as free as you think you are and freedom will always be as real as you believe it to be.
Robert M. Drake
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Voltaire
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
Tom Wilson
No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn’t trying.
Anthony Robbins
Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.
Isaac Asimov
The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it but that it is too low and we reach it.
Michelangelo
You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.
Mark Twain
Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.
Bill Gates
Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.
Roy T. Bennett
Do not let your grand ambitions stand in the way of small but meaningful accomplishments.
Bryant H. McGill
For every minute you are angry you lose 60 seconds of happiness.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity.
Henry van Dyke
You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.
Buddha
There is no truth. There is only perception.
Gustave Flaubert
Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.
Honoré de Balzac
We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize we only have one.
Confucius
The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.
Elie Wiesel
Wisdom is always an overmatch for strength.
Phil Jackson
Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world.
Albert Camus
All the problems of older times were scarcity… now they’re all abundance based.
Naval Ravikant
Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.
Leonardo da Vinci
Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Arthur C. Clarke
A likely impossibility is always preferable to an unconvincing possibility.
Aristotle
Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.
William Shaekspeare
The reason why we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.
Stephen Furtick
Sometimes the best thing to do is to take a step back and get a little bit of a different perspective and re-evaluate things.
Austin Aries
In chaos, there is fertility.
Anaïs Nin
Someone I once loved gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift.
Mary Oliver
The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
Gilbert K. Chesterton
If you don’t pay appropriate attention to what has your attention, it will take more of your attention than it deserves.
David Allen
Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.
Earl Nightingale
Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.
Thich Nhat Hanh
If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
Abraham Maslow
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
Bertrand Russell
We hope these deep quotes and sayings gave you a lot to consider and encourage you to look at the world in new ways.
The deep paradoxes we face are a key part of life, and understanding them is to understand ourselves and our existence better.
So whatever your outlook or philosophy is, never be afraid to expand it by thinking and feeling a little deeper than you’re used to. If we left off your favorite deep thought, let us know in the comments.
