“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
Rumi (1207–1273) Iranian poet
As quoted in Path for Greatness : Spiritualty at Work (2000) by Linda J. Ferguson, p. 51
Cute quotes
A collection of quotes on the topic of funny, positive, cute, love.
Best cute quotes
“There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.”
George Sand (1804–1876) French novelist and memoirist; pseudonym of Lucile Aurore Dupin
“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
William Shakespeare All's Well That Ends Well
Variant: Love all, trust a few.
Source: All's Well That Ends Well
“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
Hermann Hesse book Narcissus and Goldmund
Narcissus and Goldmund (1930)
“Love is so short and forgetting is so long.”
Pablo Neruda book Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair
Es tan corto el amor y tan largo el olvido.
"Tonight I Can Write" (Puedo Escribir), XX, p. 51.
Variant: Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
Source: Veinte Poemas de Amor y una Canción Desesperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) (1924)
“The secret of getting ahead is getting started.”
Agatha Christie (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer
“You will always love, and you will always be loved.”
Oscar Wilde book The Picture of Dorian Gray
Source: The Picture of Dorian Gray
“When I fall in love, it will be forever.”
Jane Austen (1775–1817) English novelist
Source: Sense and Sensibility: The Screenplay
“Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.”
John C. Maxwell (1947) American author, speaker and pastor
Cute quotes
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.”
Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher
Attributed on the internet but not found in print prior to an attribution in Aero Digest, Vols. 58–59, 1949, p. 115 https://books.google.com/books?id=q2ofAQAAMAAJ&dq=%22Life+is+simple%22+but+we+insist+on+making+it+complicated&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=%22Life+is+simple%22+ <br class="br">Misattributed, Not Chinese
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
'Where Do We Go From Here?" as published in Where Do We Go from Here : Chaos or Community? (1967), p. 62; many statements in this book, or slight variants of them, were also part of his address Where Do We Go From Here?" which has a section below. A common variant appearing at least as early as 1968 has "Returning violence for violence multiplies violence..." An early version of the speech as published in A Martin Luther King Treasury (1964), p. 173, has : "Returning hate for hate multiplies hate..."
1960s
Source: A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches
Context: The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. … Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”
Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights
Variant: Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same
Source: Wuthering Heights
“The secret to getting ahead is getting started.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
“It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
Variant: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
James Baldwin book Nobody Knows My Name
"In Search of a Majority: An Address" (Feb 1960); reprinted in Baldwin, "Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobody_Knows_My_Name (1961)
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Variant: You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.”
Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet
Variant: I love you as one loves certain dark things, secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
Source: 100 Love Sonnets
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
As quoted in Journal of France and Germany (1942–1944) by Gilbert Fowler White, in excerpt published in Living with Nature's Extremes: The Life of Gilbert Fowler White (2006) by Robert E. Hinshaw, p. 62. From the context http://books.google.com/books?id=_2qfZRp9SeEC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f=false it seems that White did not specify whether he had heard Einstein himself say this or whether he was repeating a quote that had been passed along by someone else, so without a primary source the validity of this quote should be considered questionable.<br>Some have argued that elsewhere Einstein defined a "miracle" as a type of event he did not believe was possible—Einstein on Religion by Max Jammer (1999) quotes on p. 89 from a 1931 conversation Einstein had with David Reichinstein, where Reichinstein brought up philosopher Arthur Liebert's argument that the indeterminism of quantum mechanics might allow for the possibility of miracles, and Einstein replied that Liebert's argument dealt "with a domain in which lawful rationality [determinism] does not exist. A 'miracle,' however, is an exception from lawfulness; hence, there where lawfulness does not exist, also its exception, i.e., a miracle, cannot exist." ("Dort, wo eine Gesetzmässigkeit nicht vorhanden ist, kann auch ihre Ausnahme, d.h. ein Wunder, nicht existieren." D. Reichenstein, Die Religion der Gebildeten (1941), p. 21). However, it is clear from the context that Einstein was stating only that miracles cannot exist in a domain (quantum mechanics) where lawful rationality does not exist. He did not claim that miracles could never exist in any domain. Indeed, Einstein clearly believed, as seen in many quotations above, that the universe was comprehensible and rational, but he also described this characteristic of the universe as a "miracle". In another example, he is quoted as claiming belief in a God, "Who reveals Himself in the lawful harmony of the world." <br class="br">As quoted in From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (1993) by David T. Dellinger, p. 418 <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. <br class="br">Variant: There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you, I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement
1960s, The Trumpet of Conscience (1967)
Variant: In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower
Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower
“There is no remedy for love but to love more.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Variant: The only remedy for love is to love more.
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
Victor Hugo book Things Seen
Often attributed to Churchill, this thought was originally expressed by the French author Victor Hugo in Villemain (1845), as follows: You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. Do not bother yourself about it; disdain. Keep your mind serene as you keep your life clear.
Villemain is a brief segment taken from Hugo’s Choses Vues (Things Seen), a running journal Hugo kept of events he witnessed. The original French versions of these journals were published after Hugo's death.
Misattributed
“Life will bring you pain all by itself. Your responsibility is to create joy.”
Milton H. Erickson (1901–1980) American psychiatrist
“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. That's why it's called the present.”
Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) American historian
“Love is not what you do. Love is what you are.”
Sadhguru (1957) Yogi, mystic, visionary and humanitarian
“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician
“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.”
Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997) Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, and Holocaust survivor
Source: book Man's Search For Meaning
“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”
Coco Chanel (1883–1971) French fashion designer
As quoted in The Gospel According to Coco Chanel : Life Lessons from the World's Most Elegant Woman (2009) by Karen Karbo
“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”
Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter
Variant: Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.
Source: Letter to My Daughter
“Grow old with me! The best is yet to be.”
Robert Browning (1812–1889) English poet and playwright of the Victorian Era
“I have learned not to worry about love; but to honor its coming with all my heart.”
Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist
Source: Revolutionary Petunias
“It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
“A life without love is like a tree without fruit.”
Stephen King book Doctor Sleep
Source: Doctor Sleep
“The only thing worse than a boy who hates you: a boy that loves you.”
Markus Zusak book The Book Thief
Source: The Book Thief
Dale Carnegie How to Win Friends and Influence People
Variant: You can make more friends in two months by being interested in them, than in two years by making them interested in you.
Source: How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), p. 52 (in 1998 edition)
“If you let your head get too big, it'll break your neck.”
Elvis Presley (1935–1977) American singer and actor
Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy
“And it was pretty much the best underwater kiss of all time.”
Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian
Source: The Last Olympian
“No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Red Symons (1949) Australian broadcaster and musician
Attributed quotes
“Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift. ”
Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) American historian
“We do not remember days, we remember moments.”
Cesare Pavese (1908–1950) Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator
This Business of Living (1935-1950)
“Wrinkles should merely indicate where the smiles have been.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“Life is not breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away.”
George Strait (1952) American country music singer, actor and music producer
Variant: Life is not the breaths you take but the moments that take your breath away.
“To lose balance sometimes for love is part of living a balanced
life.”
Elizabeth Gilbert (1969) American writer
Source: Eat, pray, love: one woman's search for everything
“It is better to be hated for what you are than to be loved for what you are not.”
André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist
Frequently misattributed to Marilyn Monroe or Kurt Cobain.
Source: https://books.google.com/books?id=xUtdDnEhkMMC&pg=PT12&lpg=PT12#v=onepage&q&f=false
Source: Autumn Leaves, Philosophical eLibrary, 2012, (Feuillets d'automne, 1941, trans. Jeanine Parisier Plottel)
“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
Source: Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations - 1841-1844
“I would rather walk with a friend in the dark, than alone in the light.”
Helen Keller (1880–1968) American author and political activist
Variant: Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light.
“We can only learn to love by loving.”
Iris Murdoch book The Bell
The Bell (1958), ch. 19; 2001, p. 219.
“Sometimes things fall apart so that better things can fall together.”
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
Variant: Sometimes good things fall apart so that better things can fall together.
“Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.”
Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924) American politician, 28th president of the United States (in office from 1913 to 1921)
Red Cross Speech http://books.google.com/books?id=f6l-dsvnjhEC&pg=PA406&dq=%22Friendship+is+the+only+cement%22, New York (18 May 1918) <br class="br">1910s
“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.”
Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist
“It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) German philosopher, poet, composer, cultural critic, and classical philologist
“Whoever is happy will make others happy.”
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
“Happiness is the readiness to be happy.”
James Richardson (1950) American poet
Aphorism #33
Interglacial (2004)
“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”
Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet
“It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Paulo Coelho book Manuscript Found in Accra
Manuscript Found in Accra (2012), Love has always passed me by
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer
Source: A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”
Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism
Attributed to Kierkegaard in a number of books, the earliest located on Google Books being the 1976 book Jack Kerouac: Prophet of the New Romanticism by Robert A. Hipkiss, p. 83 http://books.google.com/books?id=g_JaAAAAMAAJ&q=%22problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor. In the 1948 The Hibbert Journal: Volumes 46-47 the quote is referred to as "the famous Kierkegaardian slogan" on p. 237 http://books.google.com/books?id=UuDRAAAAMAAJ&q=%22the+famous+Kierkegaardian+slogan+life+is+not+a+problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor, which may be intended to suggest the phrase is Kierkegaard-esque rather than being something written by Kierkegaard. In reality this seems to be a slightly altered version of the quote "The mystery of life is not a problem to be solved; it is a reality to be experienced" which appeared in the 1928 book The Conquest of Illusion by Jacobus Johannes Leeuw, p. 9 http://books.google.com/books?id=OFdVAAAAMAAJ&q=%22not+a+problem+to+be+solved%22#search_anchor. <br class="br">Misattributed
“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you”
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861) English poet, author
“the purpose of life is the life of purpose”
Robin S. Sharma book The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
Source: The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
“Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
frequently attributed to Lennon, but entirely unsourced
Disputed
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.”
Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer
Quoted in: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=9EgEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA9, Vol. 57, nr. 11 (11 September 1964). p. 9. <br class="br">1960s
“I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there’s a life after that, I’ll love you then.”
Cassandra Clare book City of Glass
Jace to Clary, pg. 331
Variant: There is no pretending, I love you, and I will love you until I die, and if there is life after that, I'll love you then.
Source: The Mortal Instruments, City of Glass (2009)
“To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone and a funnybone.”
Reba McEntire (1955) American country music artist and actress
“No matter where you go, there you are”
Yogi Berra (1925–2015) American baseball player, manager, coach
Source: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!: Inspiration and Wisdom from One of Baseball's Greatest Heroes
“Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eyes”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Robert Fulghum (1937) American writer
Variant: You want my opinion? We're all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness — and call it love — true love.
Source: True Love (1998)
“The chief danger in life is that you may take too many precautions.”
Alfred Adler (1870–1937) Medical Doctor, Psychologist, Psychiatrist, Psychotherapist, Personality Theorist
“We are here to add what we can to, not to get what we can from, Life.”
William Osler (1849–1919) Canadian pathologist, physician, educator, bibliophile, historian, author, cofounder of Johns Hopkins Hospi…
Vol. I, ch. 14.
The Life of Sir William Osler (1925)
“We were together. I forget the rest.”
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
“It's a helluva start, being able to recognize what makes you happy.”
Lucille Ball (1911–1989) American actress and businesswoman
“Without love, there's nothing without love.”
Jon Bon Jovi (1962) American singer and musician
Without Love
Music, Slippery When Wet (1986)
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. ”
Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892) British poet laureate
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American cartoonist
“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not of.”
Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher
“There is, in the end, the letting go.”
Marya Hornbacher book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
Source: Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
“Better by far you should forget and smile
Than that you should remember and be sad.”
Christina Rossetti (1830–1894) English poet
Remember, l. 13-14.
Source: Pre-Raphaelite Poetry: An Anthology
“Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.”
Oscar Wilde book Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
Source: Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories
“It is true if you believe it to be true.”
Louise L. Hay (1926–2017) American writer
Source: You Can Heal Your Heart: Finding Peace After a Breakup, Divorce, or Death
“Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.”
Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …
As quoted in The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004) edited by Geoff Tibballs, p. 299
General sources
“I love her and that's the beginning of everything…”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter
Variant: I love her, and that's the beginning and end of everything.
Source: Dear Scott, Dearest Zelda: The Love Letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald
“Sanity and happiness are an impossible combination.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
“As long as there's life, there's hope.”
Tamora Pierce (1954) American writer of fantasy novels for children
“What we are looking for is what is looking.”
Francis of Assisi (1182–1226) Catholic saint and founder of the Franciscan Order
“A smile is the best way to get away with trouble even if it’s a fake one.”
Masashi Kishimoto book Naruto
Source: Naruto, Vol. 01: The Tests of the Ninja
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Disputed <br class="br">Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. <br class="br">Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.
“Love is the condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land
"Jubal Harshaw" in the first edition (1961); the later 1991 "Uncut" edition didn't have this line, because it was one Heinlein had added when he went through and trimmed the originally submitted manuscript on which the "Uncut" edition is based. Heinlein also later used a variant of this in The Cat Who Walks Through Walls where he has Xia quote Harshaw: "Dr. Harshaw says that 'the word "love" designates a subjective condition in which the welfare and happiness of another person are essential to one's own happiness.'"
Source: Stranger in a Strange Land (1961; 1991)