Sayings to think about help with reflection, create perspectives, or arouse feelings. They are an inspiration, can go to the heart, and at the same time offer the chance to calm down and to question. And of course, some of the short sayings to think about are exceptionally nice and make you smile. Here you will find an overview with the best profound pictures and sayings to think about – sometimes short, sometimes full of love, sometimes sad – but always free! Enjoy reading and contemplating…
Table of Contents
Profound sayings to think about
- “You have to live life forwards and understand it backward.” (Søren Kierkegaard)
- “Today we know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” (Oscar Wilde)
- “There is no such thing as a perfect time. If you want something, go ahead.”
- “Time we take is the time that gives us something.” (Ernst Ferstl)
- “Everyone sees how you shine. Few feel how you are.” (Niccolò Machiavelli)
- “No one can make other people happy. You can only do that yourself.”
- “There are 2 ways to live your life: either as if nothing were a miracle or as if everything were one.” (Albert Einstein)
- “Comparison is the end of happiness and the beginning of dissatisfaction.” (Søren Kierkegaard)
- “The happiness of your life depends on the nature of your thoughts.” (Marc Aurel)
- “If you’re looking for a helping hand, you’ll find it at the bottom of your arm.”
Ambiguous sayings to think about (short)
- “Anyone open on all sides is usually not completely sealed.”
- “Not everyone who is out of the ordinary was in the picture beforehand.”
- “Many a man who puts his hands on his head touches nothing.”
- “If you have both feet on the ground, you will not move forward.”
- “A little more humor would do us all a world of good”
- “He who sees only with the heart is blind.”
- “Those who never lose their way remain on the track.”
- “No one comes into your life without reason: one is a gift, another is a lesson.”
What makes sayings to think about?
There are many beautiful sayings. Often they are nothing more than that: an entertaining reading pleasure. Sent briefly via Whatsapp, then forgotten again. Instant joy via instant messenger.
Sayings to think about are different. They help you to introspect, ponder positively, and to question your views. Clever sayings have longer-lasting effects if you think about them. Below you will find sayings to think about feelings; Sayings that go to the heart; short sayings, long quotes, sad and funny sayings – also about love. We wish you good inspiration!
Sayings to think about feelings
- “Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who feel.” (Hippocrates)
- “There is hardly a happier feeling than feeling that you can be something for other people.” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)
- “You can know a lot unconsciously by only feeling it, but not knowing it.” (Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky)
- “The sorrow that does not speak gently gnaws at the heart until it breaks.” (William Shakespeare)
- “What is done out of love always happens beyond good and evil.” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
- “Finding people who feel with us is probably the best happiness on earth.” (Cal Spitteler)
Are you a heart person with intense feelings? Do you like to talk about your feelings – with friends, family or in love? Then feel free to use our sayings to think about feelings or love, to express yourself, or as an icebreaker for a conversation.
Sayings to think about love
- “Try to get who you love. Otherwise you have to love who you get.” (Albert Einstein)
- “Distance only separates bodies, never hearts.”
- “A love that thinks of the end never began.” (Alexander Engel)
- “Love me when I least deserve it because that’s when I need it most.”
- “Sun cannot be without shine, man cannot be without love.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- “You can’t do anything right with the wrong person. You can never go wrong with the right person.”
- “Love is just a word until someone comes along and gives it meaning.”
- “Love conquers everything.” (Virgil)
- “Meeting love without looking for it is the only way to find it.”
- “Love is when it’s fun to be faithful.”
Quotes to think about friendship
- “A friend is someone I can think out loud in front of.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- “Friendship is like money – easier won than received.” (Samuel Butler)
- “A little friendship is worth more to me than the admiration of the whole world.” (Otto von Bismarck)
- “A friend is someone who likes you even though they know you.” (Elbert Hubbard)
- “Friendship is one soul in two bodies.” (Aristotle)
- “It’s bad not to realize you have no friends until you need friends.” (Plutarch)
- “Words only connect where our wavelengths have long coincided.” (Max Frisch)
- “The best friends are the ones you can keep quiet about the same things with.”
- “A true friend contributes more to our happiness than a thousand enemies to our misfortune.” (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)
- “One recognizes a safe friend in uncertain matters.” (Cicero)
- “The best way to have a friend is to be one yourself.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
- “The friends you can call at four in the morning that count.” (Marlene Dietrich)
- “To the world you are anyone, but to me, you are the world.”
- “Only those who have true friends are rich.” (Thomas Fuller)
Sayings to think about life
- “It’s better to decide roughly right than exactly wrong.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- “There is no way to luckiness. Happiness is the way.” (Buddha)
- “Doing what you like is freedom. Like what you do is happiness.”
- “Everyone has stupid thoughts, but the wise man keeps them silent.” (Wilhelm Busch)
- “Don’t let your glow take away from you just because it blinds others.”
- “In life, you always have to choose between sincerity and politeness.” (Sophia Loren)
- “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.” (Albert Einstein)
- “Life isn’t about having good cards, it’s about playing well even with a bad hand.”
- “Time may heal all wounds, but it is a miserable beautician.” (Mark Twain)
- “Whoever has made a mistake and does not correct it, makes another mistake.” (Confucius)
- “A meaningful life is better than just having a long life.”
- “Without suffering, no character is formed.” (Ernst Freiherr vonFeuchtersleben)
- “It is better to kindle a single small light than to curse the darkness.” (Confucius)
- “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is a quality of the strong.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
Not all of the sayings to think about listed here are dead serious. Some sayings are ambiguous and contain a wink or a pinch of humor. This can also be a wonderful stimulus to ponder and reflect and provide food for thought. Especially the sayings about love, friendship, or death encourage you to become clear about your feelings.
Sad sayings to think about
- “No reason to stay is a good reason to go.”
- “Everyone sees what you seem. Few feel how you are.” (Niccolò Machiavelli)
- “It’s the people you love the most that can hurt you the most.”
- “Do what you have to do until you can do what you want to do.” (Oprah Winfrey)
- “Most of the time it’s only the loss that teaches us about the value of things.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- “A pessimist is an optimist with experience.”
- “Those who have not carried your burden have no idea how much it weighs.”
- “No matter how many qualities we have, the world pays particular attention to our bad ones.” (Molière)
- “The less you expect of other people, the less you can be disappointed by them.”
- “Second place is always the first loser.” (proverb)
- “Every person in your life should be a part of your journey. But not everyone should stick with it to the end.”
- “It’s sad when a person you know becomes someone you knew.”
- “A mouth can laugh even when the heart weeps.”
Thoughtful sayings about death
- “To himself, everyone is immortal. He may know he must die, but he can never know he is dead.” (Samuel Butler)
- “In the end, everything will be fine. If it’s not good, it’s not the end.” (Oscar Wilde)
- “Happy is he who dies before he calls death.” (Francis Bacon)
- “One should not fear death, but that one will never begin to live.” (Mark Aurel)
- “We live in boredom, in fear of death.” (Plato)
- “I have nothing to do with death. I am, he is not. If he is, I am not.” (Epicure)
- “A man who is willing to die for nothing does not deserve to live.” (Martin Luther King)
- “If you don’t fear death, you don’t appreciate life.”
- “Whoever no longer loves and no longer makes mistakes, let himself be buried.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- “People are only really dead when no one thinks of them anymore.” (Bertolt Brecht)
Short sayings that go to the heart
Do you want to post thoughtful sayings on Instagram, Facebook, or Whatsapp? Then there are some more thought-provoking and heartfelt suggestions:
- “Take the first step with confidence. You don’t need to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” (Martin Luther King)
- “Judge each day not by the harvest you reap, but by the seed you plant.” (Robert Louis Stevenson)
- “You have to try the impossible to achieve the possible.” (Hermann Hesse)
- “Everything we are is the result of what we have thought.” (Buddha)
- “As you wish to have lived at the end of your life, you can live now.” (Marc Aurel)
- “Words show what someone would like to be. Actions show what someone is.”
- “Whoever is in a hurry meets no one – not even himself.” (Proverb)
- “Even what we are most, we are not always.” (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)
- “It’s not too little time that we have, it’s too much time that we don’t use.” (Seneca)
- “Doubt grows with knowledge.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- “Everything clever has already been thought, you just have to try to think it again.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- “Because thinking is the hardest work, few engage in it.” (Henry Ford)
- “The soul has the color of your thoughts.” (Marc Aurel)
Have you already found quotes in our list of profound sayings to think about that you want to forward to friends or acquaintances? If not: there’s more to come! After the sayings about feelings love sayings and sayings about grief and death, things are now getting more thoughtful again… with beautiful sayings about truth, gratitude, or character.
Sayings to think about the truth
- “But life is short and the truth works further and for a long time: Let’s tell the truth.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- “I know that I know nothing. By this difference I am probably smarter than the others.” (Socrates)
- “Every little honesty is better than a big lie.” (Leonardo da Vinci)
- “All truth goes through three stages: first it is ridiculed or distorted, then it is fought, and finally it is taken for granted.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- “One feels hit the hardest by the truth that one wanted to keep secret.” (Friedl Beutelrock)
- “To investigate the truth, it necessarily requires the method.” (Rene Descartes)
- “Have the courage to use your understanding.” (Immanuel Kant)
- “What we know is a drop. What we don’t know is an ocean.” (Isaac Newton)
- “The harmony that is found among the truths is like the correspondence in a painting.” (Immanuel Kant)
- “Truth can only be effective when the recipient is ready for it.” (Christian Morgenstern)
Sayings to think about character
- “If you want to know the character of a man, give him power.” (Abraham Lincoln)
- “Smooth words and flattering faces are rarely combined with a decent character.” (Confucius)
- “Work is one of the best builders of character.” (Samuel Smiles)
- “Even what we are most, we are not always.” (Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach)
- “Everyone makes mistakes. However, admitting a mistake requires character.”
- “If you have no enemies, then you have no character.” (Paul Newman)
- “Clothes make the man, but character makes the man.”
- “Character is part of resignation.” (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
- “Character is what’s left of a person when things get uncomfortable.”
- “A good weakness is better than a bad strength.” (Charles Aznavour)
Thoughtful sayings about personality
- “Only those who grow up and remain a child are human.” (Erich Kästner)
- “When someone keeps hurting you, ask yourself not why they do it, ask yourself why you keep letting them do it.”
- “We are only limited by the limits that we set for ourselves.”
- “These are the strong ones in the world: those who laugh through tears, hide their worries and make others happy.” (Franz Grillparzer)
- “When we doubt our strengths, we strengthen our doubts.” (Tse Tang)
- “Everyone wants honesty, but few can handle the truth.”
- “What you have, many can have. But what you are, no other can be.” (Wisdom)
- “Nobody knows what it’s like inside a person, but everyone is free to judge.”
Sayings to think about gratitude
- “We rarely think of what we have, but always of what we lack.” (Arthur Schopenhauer)
- “The best things in life are not what you get for the money.” (Albert Einstein)
- “When you’re happy, you shouldn’t want to be even happier.” (Theodor Fontane)
- “You rarely feel what happiness is, but you usually know what happiness was.” (Françoise Sagan)
- “Anyone satisfied with their own life looks less at the lives of others.”
- “One cannot be grateful and unhappy at the same time.”
- “You smile – and the world changes.” (Buddha)
- “To whom enough is too little, nothing is enough.” (Epicure)
- “The highest pleasure consists in being satisfied with oneself.” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)
- “It’s the moments that count, not the things.”
Sayings to think about motivation
- “Courage is good, but perseverance is better. Endurance, that’s the main thing.” (Theodor Fontane)
- “There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, don’t be.” (Aristotle)
- “It doesn’t matter how slowly you go as long as you don’t stop.” (Confucius)
- “The trick is to get up one more time than you are knocked over.” (Winston Churchill)
- “Curiosity always comes first in a problem that needs to be solved.” (Galileo Galilei)
- “Action separates the goal from the dream.”
- “We do not dare not because it is difficult, but because we do not dare, it is difficult.” (Seneca)
- “If you’re being criticized, you must be doing something right. You only attack whoever has the ball.” (Bruce Lee)
- “The solution is always simple, you just have to find it.” (Alexander Solzhenitsyn)
- “Whoever stops getting better has stopped being good.” (Philip Rosenthal)
Speaking of motivation: We hope the collection with the best quotes and sayings to think about has inspired you and given you new ideas. Perhaps you have gained a new perspective on what you already know. Good this way! Then don’t keep it to yourself, but also make others think – and simply forward a few of the free quotes, pictures, and sayings to think about…
