Nobody really enjoys learning life lessons, but we all seem to agree that they are necessary and useful. The tough times we go through inevitably teach us something valuable. Sometimes what we learn is that everybody needs a smile sometimes. Other times we learn that everyone needs a little help now and then. Often we learn we are not alone in this world, and we need others as much as they need us.
Some other life lessons that most of us learn are accepting defeat with grace and facing our fears with courage. We learn to love, even though it hurts sometimes. And we learn to keep trying, even in the face of repeated mistakes. Because there are so many lessons, we have compiled a list of life lesson quotes from the best minds of the past and present. This list of 60 helpful life lessons can guide and encourage us as we experience life’s ups and downs.
Life Lessons Quotes
- “The only mistake in life is the lesson not learned.” Albert Einstein
- “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” Maya Angelou
- “Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.” Roy T. Bennett
- “Pause and remember – Every single event in your life, especially the difficult lessons, have made you smarter, stronger, and wiser than you were yesterday. Be thankful!” Jennifer Young
- “Instructions for living a life. Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” –Mary Oliver
- “It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection.” Bhagavad Gita
- “Don’t waste another moment crying over what went wrong! If it wasn’t a blessing – it was a lesson.” Paula White
- “You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.” Mandy Hale
- “If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” Maya Angelou
- “Courage is feeling fear, not getting rid of fear, and taking action in the face of fear.” Roy T. Bennett
- “Four Lessons on Life 1. Never take down a fence until you know why it was put up. 2. If you get too far ahead of the army, your soldiers may mistake you for the enemy. 3. Don’t complain about the bottom rungs of the ladder; they helped to get you higher. 4. If you want to enjoy the rainbow, be prepared to endure the storm.” Warren W. Wiersbe
- “I have learned all kinds of things from my many mistakes. The one thing I never learn is to stop making them.”Joe Abercrombie
- “Guard well your thoughts when alone and your words when accompanied.” Roy T. Bennett
- “A tough lesson in life that one has to learn is that not everybody wishes you well.” Dan Rather
- “Just a reminder, what other people think of you is none of your business.” Ze Frank
- “How hurtful it can be to deny one’s true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” June Ahern
- “I’m grateful for every scar, some pages turned, some bridges burned, but there were lessons learned” Carrie Underwood
- “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Maya Angelou
- “If you love deeply, you’re going to get hurt badly. But it’s still worth it.” C.S. Lewis
- “The meaning and the purpose behind some events are unknowable. This is the ultimate test of our faith. We must trust that everyone in life is here to learn different lessons at different times, that good and bad experiences are only the perceptions of man. After all, some of your worst experiences have truly been your best. They’ve sculpted you, trained you, developed within you a sensitivity and set you in a direction that reaches out to impact your ultimate destiny.” Tony Robbins
- “There are no mistakes or failures, only lessons.” Denis Waitley
- “The most valuable lessons in life cannot be taught, they must be experienced.”Liam Payne
- “There is no wealth but life.” John Ruskin
- “Always be fearless. Walk like lions, talk like pigeons, live like elephants and love like an infant child.” Santosh Kalwar
- “You will have bad times, but they will always wake you up to the stuff you weren’t paying attention to.” Robin Williams
- “Never respond to an angry person with a fiery comeback, even if he deserves it…Don’t allow his anger to become your anger.” Bohdi Sanders
- “Most of us must learn to love people and use things rather than loving things and using people.” Roy T. Bennett
- “One of my biggest lessons in life is, we heal at the speed of our forgiveness.” Romany Malco
- “Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.” Irving Berlin
- “Life is a long lesson in humility.” James M. Barrie
- “To love someone whom you like is insignificant. To love someone because they love you is of no consequence. To love someone whom you do not like means you have learned a lesson in life. To love someone who blames you for no reason shows that you have learned the art of living.” –Sri Sri Ravi Shankar
- “There will be a few times in your life when all your instincts will tell you to do something, something that defies logic, upsets your plans, and may seem crazy to others. When that happens, you do it. Listen to your instincts and ignore everything else. Ignore logic, ignore the odds, ignore the complications, and just go for it.” Judith McNaught
- “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.” Steve Jobs
- “That’s the thing about lessons, you always learn them when you don’t expect them or want them.” Cecelia Ahern
- “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” Helen Keller
- “Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.” Rumi
- “You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun.” Shaun Hick
- “A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” Albert Einstein
- “I’ve learned… . That being kind is more important than being right.” H. Jackson Brown
- “There is a lesson we learn early and harmlessly, or late and traumatically – that there are things we can break that our parents can’t fix.” Robert Breault
- “He has not learned the first lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.” John Dryden
- “Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost.” Erol Ozan
- “Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do.” Paulo Coelho
- “Things turn out best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out.” John Wooden
- “I like to think that life lessons are learned and re-learned every day and take on importance at different times in life.” Julianne Malveaux
- “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” J.K. Rowling
- “The splendid thing about falling apart silently… is that you can start over as many times as you like.” Sanober Khan
- “We are supposed to enjoy the good stuff now, while we can, with the people we love. Life has a funny way of teaching us that lesson over and over again.” Sheena Easton
- “Betray a friend, and you’ll often find you have ruined yourself.” Aesop
- “The universe does not judge us; it only provides consequences and lessons and opportunities to balance and learn through the law of cause and effect. Compassion is the recognition that we are each doing the best we can within the limits of our current beliefs and capacities.” Dan Millman
- “It took a long time, but I have learned that you just can’t take anything you want out of life without putting something back in exchange.” Piper Laurie
- “Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity.” Brian Rathbone
- “My new one (tattoo) says ‘Never a failure, always a lesson’ and is kind of my mantra to life, just a reminder. My life is just a crazy rollercoaster every day and whenever I read that it just reassures me.” Rihanna
- “The more a man can forget, the greater the number of metamorphoses which his life can undergo; the more he can remember, the more divine his life becomes.” Soren Kierkegaard
- “First find out what you are capable of, then decide who you are.” Tara Westover
- “Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” Shel Silverstein
- “Success is a poor teacher. We learn the most about ourselves when we fail, so don’t be afraid of failing. Failing is part of the process of success. You cannot have success without failure.” Robert Kiyosaki
- “Don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself.” Lena Dunham
- “In breaking away from the familiar and the expected, you’ll be forced and privileged to face greater challenges, learn harder lessons, and really get to know yourself.” Kelly Cutrone
- “We all learn lessons in life. Some stick, some don’t. I have always learned more from rejection and failure than from acceptance and success.” Henry Rollins
Summary
As we can see from these quotes, even the experiences we see as disasters are valuable. In fact, they are the lessons that teach us courage, compassion, resilience, strength, and determination. Without the painful times, we cannot grow and change.
We hope this list has given you an overview of life’s most important lessons. We also hope you are encouraged by knowing that we all make mistakes and we all learn the same lessons in much the same way.
I’m Alice Judy and AnQuotes is a fun hobby for me. We know that everyone loves a great quote and our mission here is simple – to be the best and most interesting quote site in the world! If you have quotes you would like us to cover, please contact us.
