Over the past months I’ve been collecting the second kind: proverbs from every corner of the world, lines from old novels, letters, small poems, and sentences that made me put my phone down and just sit for a minute. I kept saving them, and at some point I realized they were too good to keep in a folder.
So here they are, gathered by theme. Read them slowly. Take the ones that speak to you and leave the rest. This list will grow over the time, may be in a good organized manner.
Sentences That Made Me Stop and Think
You cannot use someone else’s map to find yourself.
Maybe your garden isn’t growing because every time a flower grows, you cut it to prove to someone you’re a gardener.
Both fear and faith ask you to believe in something you can’t see. You choose.
Maybe “forever” was a word meant for memories, not people.
At the end of the day it’s a simple question: do you like who you are when you’re with them?
I used to hate the cold until I stopped wishing it was warmer.
What a privilege it is to grow into someone I used to need.
You already know what to do. You’re just negotiating with comfort.
Today I woke up, my heart was beating, my lungs worked, the sun moved, and a million other things went right before my feet even touched the floor.
If you have a big enough cage, you never know you’re in one.
When things really hurt you, they make you quiet.
At your lowest, you realise a lot.
Reassurance is a love language for people healing from trauma, and for overthinkers.
A fresh start isn’t always a new place. It’s a mindset.
The meaning of life is to give life meaning.
We stress too much for a life that can end at any time. Make sure to live.
Choose a good heart, not a good face.
If you can overthink the worst, why can’t you overthink the best?
Be kind. Every person survives and struggles with something they never speak about.
You don’t have to be everyone’s butterfly. Be a bee. Mind your business, make your honey, and sting people when necessary.
Your time on earth is limited, so satisfy your soul, not society.
Do whatever makes you happy. The days aren’t coming back.
Don’t complicate life. We won’t be here forever. Once this day is over, it’s gone forever. Your time is too valuable to waste on nonsense.
Darling, a beautiful thing is never perfect.
And yes, you should ghost the whole world if you have to, to protect your peace.
Some of the words with deeper meaning.
Each of these comes with a small thought underneath, the meaning I took from it.
“Mountains are made from stones that refused to move.”
→ Strength begins with endurance.
“Every lighthouse is proof that darkness always arrives first.”
→ Guidance exists because storms do.
“A bridge exists because someone believed distance could be defeated.”
→ Connection is an act of courage.
“The tide never apologizes for returning.”
→ What belongs to you finds its rhythm.
“Rain never asks the earth if it is ready.”
→ Growth rarely waits for permission.
“Some souls speak in silence, yet say everything.”
→ Depth needs no words.
“The moon taught me that even in darkness, I can shine.”
→ Light exists within.
“I bloom quietly, for the world need not hear my becoming.”
→ Growth thrives in silence.
“You are not a storm, but the calm after it.”
→ Peace is your nature.
“Your eyes hold verses I’ll never finish reading.”
→ Infinite love, unreadable soul.
“When someone is drowning, that is not the time to teach them how to swim.”
→ Compassion comes before correction.
“You won’t see it for what it is until you stop looking at it through the lens of what you want it to be.”
→ Desire can blind you to reality.
“How can we judge people for their choices when we know nothing about their options?”
→ Every decision carries a story we cannot see.
“Never stay up late for something you wouldn’t wake up early for.”
→ Spend your time on what truly matters.
“It’s better to admit you went through the wrong door than to spend your whole life in the wrong room.”
→ A mistake becomes a prison only when you refuse to leave.
“A person who turns 30 is seen as old, but someone who dies at 30 is seen as young.”
→ Stop living according to someone else’s timeline.
“Bees don’t waste their time explaining to flies that honey is better.”
→ Not every opinion deserves your attention.
“Not all storms come to disrupt your life. Some come to clear your path.”
→ Sometimes destruction makes room for something better.
“Don’t take advice from someone who’s never been to the places you want to go.”
→ Be mindful of whose guidance you follow.
“The version of you someone created in their mind is not your responsibility to maintain.”
→ You owe no loyalty to someone else’s perception of you.
Words for Waiting That Ended
“I no longer checked the horizon.”
→ I stopped waiting for you.
“The letter yellowed before it was read.”
→ My love arrived too late.
“The stars kept their distance.”
→ Some beauty was never mine.
“The last page turned itself.”
→ The ending came without permission.
“The lighthouse dimmed at dawn.”
→ I stopped waiting for your return.
Proverbs of the Wise
Proverbs are what’s left when a whole culture has thought about something for a few hundred years.
“When elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.” - African proverb
“Better to bend than to break.” - Chinese proverb
“The empty wagon makes the most noise.” - Irish proverb
“An empty barrel makes the loudest sound.” - Russian proverb
“A hungry stomach has no ears.” - French proverb
“No matter how long the night, the day is sure to come.” - African proverb
“Life is a dream for the wise, a game for the fool, a comedy for the rich, a tragedy for the poor.” - Indian proverb
“Give a man a hoe and he will die digging.” - Romanian proverb
“The heart of a man is a mirror of the universe.” - Persian proverb
“If you want to be safe, make a deal with the devil.” - Indonesian proverb
“Where there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” - African proverb
“The youth walk faster, but the elderly know the road.” - African proverb
“A bad wound heals; a bad name kills.” - Irish saying
“The wolf changes his coat, but not his nature.” - Latin proverb
“The rich man does not know who is his friend.” - Gascon proverb
“The bread eaten, the company departed.” - Spanish proverb
“At the end of the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.” - Irish proverb
Old Japanese Wisdom
“No road is too long in the company of a friend.”
“One kind word can warm three winter months.”
“After the rain, earth hardens.”
“Even monkeys fall from trees.”
“If you do not enter the tiger’s cave, you will not catch its cub.” - Miyamoto Musashi
A Wise Man Once Said
“The cow drinks water, and it turns to milk; the snake drinks water, and it turns to poison.”
“When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.”
“If you forgive the fox for stealing your chickens, he will take your sheep.”
“If your dog starts barking at you, it means that someone else is feeding it.”
“When the mouse laughs at the cat, there is a hole nearby.”
“You cannot convince a monkey that honey is sweeter than a banana.”
“They found nothing wrong with the rose, so they complained it had thorns.”
“Only a fool tests the water with both feet.”
“If things are getting easier, maybe you’re heading downhill.”
The Darkest Proverbs You’ve Never Heard
Not every piece of wisdom is gentle. Some of it is a warning.
“The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth.” - African proverb
“If you seek revenge, dig two graves.” - Chinese proverb
“The snow that falls on the grave does not warm the living.” - Japanese proverb
“Better to see something once than hear about it a thousand times.” - Mongolian proverb
“When a man chases two rabbits, he catches neither; when a man chases lust and love, he destroys both.” - Japanese proverb
“A thief thinks everyone steals.” - Haitian proverb
“A man who brings home an ant-infested piece of wood invites lizards.” - Nigerian proverb
“The graveyard is full of people who thought they were indispensable.” - Scottish proverb
“Trust, but keep your axe ready.” - Russian proverb
“One who is afraid of the future will have no future.” - Tibetan proverb
“A starving man does not choose his meal.” - Greek proverb
“Trust is good, but control is better.” - German proverb
“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” - Japanese proverb
“Dead men tell no tales.” - English proverb
“A person who has not travelled thinks their mother’s cooking is the best in the world.” - Luganda proverb
“Do not stand in a dangerous place hoping not to be hit.” - Ethiopian proverb
“The one who climbs the highest tree sees the furthest, but also falls the hardest.” - Persian proverb
“A man drowning in honey still drowns.” - Turkish proverb
“No matter how high a bird flies, it must come down for food.” - Chinese proverb
Quotes That Hit Differently
“The best thing a therapist ever told me is, ‘You’re not lazy; you only have a certain amount of energy, and right now you’re using it all to survive.’”
“Stop letting people that add so little to your life take so much of your peace.” - Morgan Richard Olivier
“There was a whole you before them, and there will be a whole you after them.”
“The world will ask who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.” - Carl Jung
“One day you’ll realize no one was really watching, and you could’ve done whatever you wanted.”
“If hard work led to success, the donkey would own the farm.”
“Don’t forget how badly you once wanted what you have now.”
“Do not pray for an easy road, pray for stronger legs.”
“No matter how good you are, people will treat you according to their mood and needs.”
A Few From the Stoics
“Devote the rest of your life to making progress.” - Epictetus
“Someone despises me. That’s their problem.” - Marcus Aurelius
“To love only what happens… No greater harmony.” - Marcus Aurelius
“If it’s endurable, then endure it. Stop complaining.” - Marcus Aurelius
“What are you afraid of losing, when nothing in this world truly belongs to you?” - Marcus Aurelius
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.” - Marcus Aurelius
“The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.” - Marcus Aurelius
“If something is humanly possible, it’s attainable by you too.” - Marcus Aurelius
“Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for a kindness.” - Seneca
“To be free, you must first eliminate two things: the fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past.” - Seneca
“Bitter are the roots of study, but how sweet their fruit.” - Cato
Quotes You Wish You Had Heard Sooner
“No man is perfect, but a trying man is everything.”
“It’s just a matter of perspective. If you ask the grass, the deer is the monster and the lion is the protector.”
“When you start realizing that you are the creator of your suffering, this is the first step toward maturity.”
“Cry as hard as you want, but make sure that when you stop crying, you never cry for the same reason again.”
“Our identity is fictional, written by parents, relatives, education, and society.”
“No matter how pretty the words sound, actions always reveal where you stand in someone’s life.”
“Learn who you are; unlearn who they told you to be.”
“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” - Alan Watts
“Because you are alive, everything is possible.” - Thich Nhat Hanh
“As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
“No matter what has occurred in your life up to this point, it should have no bearing at all on how you live from now on.” - Ichiro Kishimi
“Choose to be optimistic. It feels better.” - Dalai Lama
With a Little Reflection
→ “Never tell a person to be strong when they come to you to be weak.”
Sometimes people don’t need advice or courage. They need one place where they don’t have to pretend they’re okay.
→ “The world around you is beautiful when the world within you is peaceful.”
Peace changes nothing outside of you, yet somehow changes the way you see everything.
→ “Maybe you didn’t get what you wanted because you deserved more.”
Some disappointments only make sense once you see where they were quietly leading you.
→ “If your life were a 24-hour day, it would only be 7 a.m. when you’re 30. Relax. Breathe.”
We spend so much of our youth feeling late to a life that has barely begun.
→ “In a world obsessed with being extraordinary, there is a deep peace in just being a good human.”
A meaningful life doesn’t always need to be impressive. Sometimes being kind, honest, and good is enough.
→ “I don’t think bad things happen to good people. I think bad things happen to everyone, and the way good people respond is what makes them good.”
Goodness isn’t a reward that protects us from suffering. It’s the person we choose to remain when suffering finds us.
Short, Deep Quotes
“Treat people with your manners, not theirs.”
“When the world pushes you to your knees, you’re in the perfect position to pray.” - Rumi
“If you are constantly in a storm, don’t check the weather, check your decisions.”
“I didn’t know how hurt I was until someone was kind to me.” - C. C. Aurel
“Nobody is more inferior than those who insist on being equal.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“To offend a strong man, tell him a lie. To offend a weak man, tell him the truth.” - Marcus Aurelius
“The price of loving someone very much is never loving anyone again.” - Ernest Hemingway
“Who am I to judge another, when I myself walk imperfectly?”
“Remember that you will die. Let this truth humble your pride and sharpen your purpose.”
“If the truth shall kill them, let them die.”
“How can I blame the wind for the mess it made, when it was I who opened the window?”
“Never trust a person who betrays others, even if they betrayed them for you.”
“Judge me by the people I avoid.”
The Darkest Quotes You’ve Never Heard
“You can miss someone every day and still be glad that they are no longer in your life.”
“Everybody’s a saint when they talk about someone else’s sins.”
“You can’t heal in the same place that broke you. Get out.”
“Lust is the craving for salt of a man who is dying of thirst.” - Frederick Buechner
“There are two reasons I’m scared to let people in: the damage they can do, and the damage they can find.”
“I have a good poker face because I am half dead inside.” - Colson Whitehead
“The sky looks different when you have someone you love up there.”
“Death is the most blessed dream.” - Georg Büchner
“Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.” - Thomas Hardy
“The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.” - Leo Tolstoy
“Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils…” - Giacomo Leopardi
“The lie we need in order to live dooms us to a life that is never really ours.” - Ernest Becker
Lines From Classic Novels
“We are all broken, that’s how the light gets in.” - Ernest Hemingway
“And then I realized the fire was always burning within me, but the flames were busy keeping everyone else warm.” - Morgan Richard Olivier
“Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” - Kahlil Gibran
“Oh Nastenka! You know, we thank some people for merely living at the same time as we do.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky, White Nights
“To whom do I owe the biggest apology? No one’s been crueler than I’ve been to me.” - Alanis Morissette
“Milena, if a million loved you, I am one of them, and if one loved you, it was me. If no one loved you, then know that I am dead.” - Franz Kafka
“Learn this once and learn it well, my daughter: like a compass needle always points north, a man’s accusing finger always finds a woman.” - Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
“People, people, people - an ocean of people, but I can’t find even a drop of humanity.” - Sádia Hakim
“The seats are empty, the theatre is dark, why do you keep acting?” - Charles Bukowski
“It’s easier to fool people than it is to convince them they’ve been fooled.” - Mark Twain
Lines Attributed to Dostoevsky
“All this struggle for life that just ends on a random day.”
“Look at you, comforting others with the words you wish someone had said to you.”
“Loving someone means giving them the power to destroy you, and trusting they won’t.”
“I was burning, while you came blaming me for the smell of ashes.”
The Empty Cup
A crazy man that found a cup,
When all but dead of thirst,
Hardly dared to wet his mouth
Imagining, moon accursed,
That another mouthful
And his beating heart would burst.
October last I found it too
But found it dry as bone,
And for that reason am I crazed
And my sleep is gone.
- W. B. Yeats
Sometimes, hope becomes its own kind of suffering. After enough disappointment, even the promise of happiness begins to feel frightening. We grow so accustomed to emptiness that the thought of finally having what we desire seems almost unbearable. Yet there is something worse than waiting for what may never come. It is finding what we have longed for, only to discover that it was empty all along.
There Is a Japanese Legend That Says…
If you miss the bus, maybe you avoided the accident.
If you got rejected, maybe you were saved from the wrong place.
If they left, maybe they made room for who is coming.
The universe protects you in ways that look like bad luck at first.
Congrats On…
A little reminder that the things we’re embarrassed about are often the things we should be proud of.
- Congrats on being rejected. It means you were brave enough to ask.
- Congrats on starting late. Some people never start.
- Congrats on changing your mind. You’re allowed to outgrow your old decisions.
- Congrats on disappointing someone. Maybe you finally chose yourself.
- Congrats on being misunderstood. You finally stopped explaining yourself to everyone.
- Congrats on being a beginner again. Your ego survived.
- Congrats on being scared. You’re probably doing something that matters.
- Congrats on choosing the harder path. Easy doesn’t always take you where you want to go.
- Congrats on making the wrong decision. Now you know something you couldn’t have learned by thinking.
- Congrats on starting over. Most people stay unhappy because starting again scares them.
A Handful That Stand on Their Own
“If you like a flower, you pick it. If you love a flower, you water it.” - Lao Tzu
“I will never forget those who came with a lamp when I was in the dark.”
“A man doesn’t want money to be happy. A man wants money to make the people he loves happy.”
“How beautiful to find a heart that loves you, without asking you for anything, but to be okay.” - Kahlil Gibran
“He in his madness prays for storms, and dreams that storms will bring him peace.” - Leo Tolstoy
“I will live, even if life betrays me, and I will dream, even if dreams abandon me.” - Mahmoud Darwish
“Very early in my life it was too late.” - Marguerite Duras
“The saddest thing is learning to comfort yourself as no one does.”
And some other once I love it.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” - Abraham Lincoln
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies… a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” - Theodore Roosevelt
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” - Robert F. Kennedy
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress… Those who profess to favor freedom… are men who want crops without plowing up the ground.” - Frederick Douglass
Your perception impacts your conception. Your conception impacts how you think, and your thinking tends to shape your beliefs. Your beliefs tend to shape your decisions, your decisions form your actions, your actions become habits, and those habits shape your character. And Allah judges you based on your character.
- Ousama Iyad Alshurafa