Sometimes, life feels directionless. You feel like you're just trotting along, not sure where you're going or why; you feel alone. You feel like you aren't enough. I could tell you that it's going to be OK, that you aren't the only one to have felt that way, but instead, I thought I'd let some people smarter than me tell you. Here are 24 quotes from writers, singers, poets and philosophers to help you find a little direction and peace.
"The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness." - Virginia Woolf
“We cannot change, we cannot move away from what we are until we thoroughly accept what we are. Then change seems to come about almost unnoticed.” - Carl Rogers
“People are good or half good or a quarter good, and it changes all the time—but even on the best day nobody's perfect.” - Colum McCann
"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." - John Steinbeck
"It does not do well to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that." - J.K. Rowling
"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." - J.R.R. Tolkien
“Don’t lose yourself trying to hang on to someone. Those who are meant to be in your life have a way of coming back.” - Chris O’Flyng
“Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can’t survive…it’s the thing that makes you better than you used to be.” - Jennifer Weiner
“Real love is always chaotic. You lose control; you lose perspective. You lose the ability to protect yourself. The greater the love, the greater the chaos. It’s a given and that’s the secret.” - Jonathan Carroll
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” - Michel de Montaigne,
“I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use—silence, exile and cunning.” - James Joyce
“Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.” - Stephen King
“Be the one who nurtures and builds. Be the one who has an understanding and forgiving heart. Be the one who looks for the best in people. Leave people better than you found them.” - Marvin J. Ashton
“Cherish your solitude. Take trains by yourself to places you have never been. Sleep out alone under the stars. Learn how to drive a stick shift. Go so far away that you stop being afraid of not coming back. Say no when you don’t want to do something. Say yes if your instincts are strong, even if everyone around you disagrees. Decide whether you want to be liked or admired. Decide if fitting in is more important than finding out what you’re doing here. Believe in kissing.” - Eve Ensler
“None of us want to be in calm waters all our lives.” - Jane Austen
“The most important things are the hardest things to say. They are the things you get ashamed of because words diminish your feelings—words shrink things that seem timeless when they are in your head to no more than living size when they are brought out.” - Stephen King
“Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.” - Ernest Hemingway
Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. - F. Scott Fitzgerald
