Life Lessons Quotes

You will never see a U-Haul behind a hearse.

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you're too busy, then you should sit for an hour. If Tetris has taught me anything, it's that errors pile up & accomplishments disappear. Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Everybody's got a right to be a sucker ... once.

To me who dreamed so much as a child, who made a dreamworld in which I was the heroine of an unending story, the lives of people around me continued to have a certain storybook quality. I learned something which has stood me in good stead many times - The most important thing in any relationship is not what you get but what you give.

Self-taught poverty is a help toward philosophy, for the things which philosophy attempts to teach by reasoning, poverty forces us to practice.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.

After 40, a man is responsible for his face.

The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire.

You don't get another chance, life is no Nintendo game.

I've been careful in love. I've been careless in love. And I've had adventures I wouldn't trade for anything.

Football is a great deal like life in that it teaches that work, sacrifice, perseverance, competitive drive, selflessness and respect for authority is the price that each and every one of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile.

I accumulated in those years so fine a surplus in the Book of Observance that I have been drawing confidently upon it ever since.

Everyone has a past, but that's just it--it's in the past. You can learn from it, but you can't change it.

Be a student. Stay open and willing to learn from everyone and anyone. Being a student means you have room for new input. When you are green you grow, when you are ripe you rot. By staying green you will avoid the curse of being an expert. When you know in your heart that every single person you encounter in your lifetime has something to teach you, you are able to utilize their offerings in a profound way.

I think it’s important to have a good hard failure when you're young. I learned a lot out of that. Because it makes you kind of aware of what can happen to you. Because of it I’ve never had any fear in my whole life when we’ve been near collapse and all of that. I’ve never been afraid. I’ve never had the feeling I couldn’t walk out and get a job doing something.

Poverty, Frost, Famine, Rain, Disease, are the beadles and guardsmen that hold us to Common Sense.

Some people, sweet and attractive, and strong and healthy, happen to die young. They are masters in disguise teaching us about impermanence.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn't everything.

We learned more from a 3 minute record than we ever learned in school

...I learned to be grateful no matter what happened in my life!

My father died very suddenly at sixty-three. Just dropped dead. For a long time afterward, I'd ask myself, Why didn't I ask him to play golf more? Why didn't I spend more time with him? But when you're off trying to get the brass ring, you forget and overlook those little things. It gives you a certain amount of regret later on, but there's nothing you can do about it. So you just forge on.

Experience is the only teacher, and we get his lesson indifferently in any school.

There are few things in life that are harder to find and more important to keep than love. Well, love and a birth certificate.

You never really learn to swear until you learn to drive.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

Love is a lesson worth learning.

Never regret anything because at one time it was exactly what you wanted.

It is a good idea to obey all the rules when you're young just so you'll have the strength to break them when you're old.

I think we have to go through everything we go through in our life, and I believe my purpose in life was to teach self-reliance. So I had the experience of relying on myself very early in life in order to have that knowing, because otherwise I would've just read about it. I think of it now as a great advantage that I had. It certainly taught me to rely upon myself at a very young age. And that's what I've been teaching since I was a little boy.

If things go wrong and you hit a dead end-as you will-it's just life's way of saying it's time to change course

Don't let the fear of the thorn keep you from the rose.

Everything that I've ever been able to accomplish in skating and in life has come out of adversity and perseverance.

We regret the things we don't do more than the things we do.

Try, start always at home. This is my encouragement to all writers, start at home. All virtues and vices begin at home, and then spread abroad.

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.

Things bring their own philosophy with them, that is, prudence.

This, I have seen in life - those who are overcautious about themselves fall into dangers at every step. Those who are afraid of losing honor and respect, get only disgrace; and those who are always afraid of loss, always lose.

I've learned that regardless of your relationship with your parents, you'll miss them when they're gone from your life.

I needn't tell you that success and failure prove nothing - the whole thing is a lottery. It's pleasant to succeed; but for a philosophic mind it oughtn't to be very upsetting to fail.

Live and learn and pass it on.

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.

It's good to learn from your mistakes. It's better to learn from other people's mistakes.

When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

My uncle ordered popovers from the restaurant's bill of fare. And, when they were served, he regarded them with a penetrating stare. Then he spoke great words of wisdom as he sat there on that chair: "To eat these things," said my uncle, "You must exercise great care. You may swallow down what's solid, but you must spit out the air!" And as you partake of the world's bill of fare, that's darned good advice to follow. Do a lot of spitting out the hot air. And be careful what you swallow.

The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes.

Other than my parents, no one had a bigger influence on my life than Coach Smith. He was more than a coach – he was my mentor, my teacher, my second father. Coach was always there for me whenever I needed him and I loved him for it. In teaching me the game of basketball, he taught me about life. My heart goes out to Linnea and their kids. We've lost a great man who had an incredible impact on his players, his staff and the entire UNC family.

I was a journeyman chef of middling abilities. Whatever authority I have as a commenter on this world comes from the sheer weight of 28 years in the business. I kicked around for 28 years and came out the other end alive and able to form a sentence.

So, that is my final lesson from the universe - you just do what you need to do, and stay on track.

Success is never found. Failure is never fatal. Courage is the only thing.

The day I stop giving is the day I stop receiving. The day I stop learning is the day I stop growing. You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

The secret to having everything you want out of life is the realization that you really don't want most of the things you think you want.

Regret is something you’ve got to just live with, you can’t drink it away. You can’t run away from it. You can’t trick yourself out of it. You’ve just got to own it.

Now understand me well. It is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary.

I couldn't imagine a more unreliable, more unprofitable way to make a living than writing. My advice? Show up, do the best you can. Keep your day job. If you get a lucky break, don't f*** up. It was helpful to be older because I had made all the really stupid mistakes already.

Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping - they called it opportunity.

Character isn't developed when we get what we want. Character is developed when we don't get what we want.

Just like in bodybuilding, failure is also a necessary experience for growth in our own lives, for if we're never tested to our limits, how will we know how strong we really are? How will we ever grow?

If The Beatles or the 60's had a message, it was 'Learn to swim. And once you've learned - swim!