73 Really Deep Quotes That Hit Different

Some quotes stick with you for days.

They’re not just nice words. They shift something in how you see things. They make you question what you thought you knew.

Really deep quotes do that. They hit a layer most people don’t touch. They’re about life, existence, meaning. The big stuff we don’t always have answers for.

You don’t stumble across them often. But when you do, they change your perspective.

These really deep quotes are the kind that stay in your head long after you read them.

Short Really Deep Quotes

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” — Rumi

“It is not length of life, but depth of life.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” — William Faulkner

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” — Mary Oliver

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” — Albert Camus

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.” — Ferdinand Foch

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.” — Anaïs Nin

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” — Buddha

“In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” — Robert Frost

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” — Socrates

“You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Eliot

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” — Khalil Gibran

“The only journey is the one within.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” — Zig Ziglar

“The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” — Joseph Campbell

“The quieter you become, the more you can hear.” — Ram Dass

“Don’t wait. The time will never be just right.” — Napoleon Hill

“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” — Rumi

“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” — Winston Churchill

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

“Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” — Maya Angelou

“We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.” — Anaïs Nin

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” — Albert Einstein

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain

“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” — Carl Jung

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” — Alan Watts

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” — Maya Angelou

“The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be kindled.” — Plutarch

“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.” — Virginia Woolf

“We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” — Ernest Hemingway

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” — Charles Darwin

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Nelson Mandela

“To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” — Oscar Wilde

“Do not fear mistakes. There are none.” — Miles Davis

“The only thing standing between you and your goal is the story you keep telling yourself.” — Jordan Belfort

“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” — Joseph Campbell

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” — Mahatma Gandhi

“A man is but what he knows.” — Francis Bacon

“The way to right wrongs is to turn the light of truth upon them.” — Ida B. Wells

“You do not write your life with words. You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.” — Patrick Ness

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” — Oscar Wilde

“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” — Amelia Earhart

“A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.” — Charles Darwin

“The only limits for tomorrow are the doubts we have today.” — Pittacus Lore

“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” — James A. Garfield

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” — Maya Angelou

“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” — Michel de Montaigne

“The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.” — Marcus Aurelius

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.” — Albert Einstein

“The only way to learn strong faith is to endure great trials.” — George Müller

“Don’t count the days, make the days count.” — Muhammad Ali

“You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.” — Galileo Galilei

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.” — G.K. Chesterton

“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

“The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones.” — Confucius

“You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.” — Aristotle

“The most wasted of all days is one without laughter.” — Nicolas Chamfort

“The best dreams happen when you’re awake.” — Cherie Gilderbloom

“The more I see, the less I know for sure.” — John Lennon

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.” — Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

“The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.” — Ursula K. Le Guin

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.” — Marcel Proust

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” — Helen Keller

“The universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you already are.” — Rumi

“The greatest wealth is to live content with little.” — Plato

“We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.” — Seneca

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.” — Buddha

“The most powerful words in the universe are the ones you say to yourself.” — Marie Forleo