Inspiring Quotes from Literature: Wisdom to Live By (2024)

Explore a curated collection of inspiring quotes from renowned authors that celebrate the power of literature. These quotes remind us of the magic of reading and the wisdom it imparts. From the transformative journey of books to the profound insights they offer, this post highlights the voices of literary giants who have shaped our understanding of life, love, and the human experience. Dive into these powerful words and let them inspire your own journey through the pages of life.

Wisdom from the Masters

"Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home."

- Anna Quindlen

Inspiration

"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful."

- Mary Shelley

Courage

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

- Harper Lee

Courage

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

- Cicero

Inspiration

"This above all: To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

- William Shakespeare

Integrity

"Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they’ve got ambition, and they’ve got talent, as well as just beauty. I’m so sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for."

- Louisa May Alcott

Empowerment

"A word after a word after a word is power."

- Margaret Atwood

Creativity

"Love is or it ain’t. Thin love ain’t love at all."

- Toni Morrison

Love

"We accept the love we think we deserve."

- Stephen Chbosky

Love

"Reading is an exercise in empathy; an exercise in walking in someone else’s shoes for a while."

- Malorie Blackman

Empathy

"Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings."

- Ann Patchett

Empathy

"A book is a gift you can open again and again."

- Garrison Kellor

Inspiration

"Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers."

- Charles W. Eliot

Inspiration

"Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from one generation to the next. Books save lives."

- Laurie Anderson

Education

"Once you've read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

- Louis L'Amour

Personal Growth

"The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us."

- Ray Bradbury

Inspiration

"That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you to another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book."

- Mary Ann Shaffer

Inspiration

"There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Hope

"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Wisdom

"Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same."

- Emily Brontë

Love

"Books are easily destroyed. But words will live as long as people can remember them."

- Tahereh Mafi

Wisdom

"When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just as I did when I was young."

- Maya Angelou

Personal Growth

"Happiness can be found even in the darkest of times when one only remembers to turn on the light."

- J.K. Rowling

Hope

"Be who you are and say how you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind."

- Dr. Seuss

Self-confidence

"A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading."

- William Styron

Personal Growth

"Some books leave us free and some books make us free."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Empowerment

"Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat."

- Ralph Ellison

Courage

"The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it."

- J.M. Barrie

Facing Fears

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose."

- Dr. Seuss

Belief in Self

"The world may be mean, but people don’t have to be, not if they refuse."

- Colson Whitehead

Compassion

"Get busy living or get busy dying."

- Stephen King

Determination

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: They feed the soul."

- Anne Lamott

Connection to Earth

"You pierce my soul. I am half agony. Half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever."

- Jane Austen

Love

"Oh, the places you’ll go! You’ll be on your way up! You’ll be seeing great sights! You’ll join the high fliers who soar to high heights."

- Dr. Seuss

Aspirations

"For you, a thousand times over."

- Khaled Hosseini

Love

"Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere."

- Jean Rhys

Connection to Earth

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."

- Ernest Hemingway

Resilience

"Salvation is certainly among the reasons I read. Reading and writing have always pulled me out of the darkest experiences in my life."

- Roxane Gay

Healing

"Once upon a time there was a boy who loved a girl, and her laughter was a question he wanted to spend his whole life answering."

- Nicole Krauss

Love

"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities."

- J.K. Rowling

Choice

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read."

- James Baldwin

Healing

"Reading is important. If you know how to read, then the whole world opens up to you."

- Barack Obama

Education

"Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."

- Milan Kundera

Love

"Do I love you? My God, if your love were a grain of sand, mine would be a universe of beaches."

- William Goldman

Love

"There is always something left to love."

- Gabriel García Márquez

Love

"And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."

- Paulo Coelho

Aspirations

"Brave doesn’t mean you’re not scared. It means you go on even though you’re scared."

- Angie Thomas

Courage

"It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like, so long as somebody loves you."

- Roald Dahl

Love

"There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love."

- Dodie Smith

Love

"That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Connection to Earth

"One glance at a book and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for 1,000 years. To read is to voyage through time."

- Carl Sagan

Knowledge

"My life is my message."

- Mahatma Gandhi

Inspiration

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."

- Charlotte Brontë

Independence

"Books are, let's face it, better than everything else."

- Nick Hornby

Inspiration

"To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life."

- W. Somerset Maugham

Healing

"We read to know we are not alone."

- C.S. Lewis

Connection to Earth

"It’s very hard to have ideas. It’s very hard to put yourself out there, it’s very hard to be vulnerable, but those people who do that are the dreamers, the thinkers and the creators. They are the magic people of the world."

- Amy Poehler

Creativity

"A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies... The man who never reads lives only one."

- George R.R. Martin

Inspiration

"All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost; The old that is strong does not wither, Deep roots are not reached by the frost."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Wisdom

"Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul."

- Joyce Carol Oates

Empathy

"A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe."

- Madeleine L'Engle

Inspiration

"Books are a uniquely portable magic."

- Stephen King

Inspiration

"The real courage is in living and suffering for what you believe."

- Christopher Paolini

Courage

"Today a reader, tomorrow a leader."

- Margaret Fuller

Education

"Reading was my escape and my comfort, my consolation, my stimulant of choice."

- Paul Auster

Healing

"Books can be dangerous. The best ones should be labelled 'This could change your life.'"

- Helen Exley

Inspiration

"There are some books that reached through the noise of life to grab you by the collar and speak only of the truest things."

- Jeffrey Eugenides

Inspiration

"Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."

- Frederick Douglass

Empowerment

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something–a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things–which you had thought special and particular to you."

- Alan Bennett

Connection to Earth

"Reading is essential for those who seek to rise above the ordinary."

- Jim Rohn

Ambition

"The story is truly finished–and meaning is made–not when the author adds the last period, but when the reader enters."

- Celeste Ng

Inspiration

"One must always be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us."

- Cassandra Clare

Awareness

"We who have means and a voice must use them to help those who have neither."

- Jennifer Donnelly

Compassion

"There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor."

- Charles Dickens

Happiness

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

- Maya Angelou

Personal Growth

"I love her and that’s the beginning and end of everything."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love

"The only way we will survive is by being kind. The only way we can get by in this world is through the help we receive from others. No one can do it alone, no matter how great the machines are."

- Amy Poehler

Compassion

"People are their most beautiful when they are laughing, crying, dancing, playing, telling the truth, and being chased in a fun way."

- Amy Poehler

Joy

"Anything worth dying for is certainly worth living for."

- Joseph Heller

Courage

"If he loved with all the powers of his puny being, he couldn’t love as much in eighty years as I could in a day."

- Emily Brontë

Love

"But soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun."

- William Shakespeare

Love

"Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

Connection to Earth

"A book is a garden, an orchard, a storehouse, a party, a company by the way, a counselor, a multitude of counselors."

- Charles Baudelaire

Inspiration

"Reading should not be presented to children as a chore, a duty. It should be offered as a gift."

- Kate DiCamillo

Education

"Books are mirrors: You only see in them what you already have inside you."

- Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Self-awareness

"If you don’t like to read, you haven’t found the right book."

- J.K. Rowling

Education

"I can feel infinitely alive curled up on the sofa reading a book."

- Benedict Cumberbatch

Happiness

"We tell ourselves stories in order to live."

- Joan Didion

Inspiration

"Books and doors are the same thing. You open them, and you go through into another world."

- Jeanette Winterson

Imagination

"As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation."

- Ursula K. Le Guin

Creativity

"Read a lot. Expect something big, something exalting or deepening from a book."

- Susan Sontag

Education

"A story can always break into pieces while it sits inside a book on a shelf; and, decades after we have read it even twenty times, it can open us up, by cut or caress, to a new truth."

- Andre Dubus

Inspiration

"Both reading and writing are experiences – lifelong – in the course of which we who encounter words used in certain ways are persuaded by them to be brought mind and heart within the presence, the power, of the imagination."

- Eudora Welty

Creativity

"The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries."

- Rene Descartes

Education

"I love the way that each book — any book — is its own journey. You open it, and off you go…"

- Sharon Creech

Inspiration

"Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we’re someone else."

- George Saunders

Meditation

"I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader... imaginative access to other selves."

- David Foster Wallace

Empathy

"Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up."

- Nora Ephron

Inspiration

"We don’t need a list of rights and wrongs, tables of dos and don’ts: We need books, time, and silence."

- Philip Pullman

Inspiration

"Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know."

- Alberto Manguel

Inspiration

"A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition."

- Henry Miller

Inspiration

"It is known that reading quickens the growth of a heart like nothing else."

- Catherynne M. Valente

Growth

"I don't read a book; I hold a conversation with the author."

- Elbert Hubbard

Connection to Earth

"Some books are so familiar that reading them is like being home again."

- Louisa May Alcott

Happiness

"Some books should be tasted, some devoured, but only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly."

- Sir Francis Bacon

Inspiration

"Books have a unique way of stopping time in a particular moment and saying: Let's not forget this."

- Dave Eggers

Inspiration

"The best books... are those that tell you what you know already."

- George Orwell

Insight

"Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self."

- Franz Kafka

Self-awareness

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal."

- John Green

Inspiration

"Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?"

- Christopher Paolini

Inspiration

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will, which I now exert to leave you."

- Charlotte Brontë

Independence

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."

- Charles Dickens

Reflection

"A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of his life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well — or ill?"

- John Steinbeck

Reflection

"The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."

- John Green

Forgiveness

"‘Why did you do all this for me?’ he asked. ‘I don’t deserve it. I’ve never done anything for you.’ ‘You have been my friend,’ replied Charlotte. ‘That in itself is a tremendous thing.’"

- E.B. White

Connection to Earth

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am."

- Sylvia Plath

Inner Peace

"And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

- F. Scott Fitzgerald

Reflection

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."

- Louisa May Alcott

Courage

"It is nothing to die; it is dreadful not to live."

- Victor Hugo

Courage

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."

- George Orwell

Awareness

"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."

- J.K. Rowling

Awareness

"When you play the game of thrones you win or you die."

- George R. R. Martin

Courage

"From that time on, the world was hers for the reading. She would never be lonely again, never miss the lack of intimate friends. Books became her friends and there was one for every mood."

- Betty Smith

Education

"Anyone who ever gave you confidence, you owe them a lot."

- Truman Capote

Empowerment

"Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

- L.M. Montgomery

New Beginnings

"I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it."

- Ernest Hemingway

Awareness

"The same substance composes us — the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star — we are all one, all moving to the same end."

- P.L. Travers

Connection to Earth

"Love is holy because it is like grace – the worthiness of its object is never really what matters."

- Marilynne Robinson

Love

"Each time you happen to me all over again."

- Edith Wharton

Love

"Life, with its rules, its obligations, and its freedoms, is like a sonnet: You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself."

- Madeleine L’Engle

Personal Growth

"Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever."

- Amy Tan

Hope

"All human wisdom is summed up in these two words – ‘Wait and hope.’"

- Alexandre Dumas

Hope

"Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever."

- Anthony Doerr

Awareness

"As he read, I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once."

- John Green

Love

"‘But man is not made for defeat,’ he said. ‘A man can be destroyed but not defeated.’"

- Ernest Hemingway

Resilience

"Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything."

- Sally Rooney

Happiness

"Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant."

- Joan Didion

Change

"Remember, what is given from the heart reaches the heart."

- Patricia C. McKissack

Compassion

"Tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it … yet."

- Lucy Maud Montgomery

New Beginnings

"You may be born into a family, but you walk into friendships. Some you’ll discover you should put behind you. Others are worth every risk."

- Adam Silvera

Relationships

"I am coming to terms with the fact that loving someone requires a leap of faith, and that a soft landing is never guaranteed."

- Sarah Dessen

Love

"All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts."

- William Shakespeare

Philosophy

"One day I will find the right words, and they all will be simple."

- Jack Kerouac

Inspiration

"You can’t pick out the pieces and leave the rest. Being part of the whole thing, that’s the blessing."

- Natalie Babbitt

Connection to Earth

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

- George Orwell

Philosophy

"Don’t waste your energy trying to change opinions. … Do your thing, and don’t care if they like it."

- Tina Fey

Empowerment

"What’s so wrong with effort, anyway? It means you care."

- Mindy Kaling

Motivation

"Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy."

- William Golding

Adversity

"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that’s the height of human wisdom."

- Leo Tolstoy

Wisdom

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

- Zora Neale Hurston

Reflection

"Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger."

- Yann Martel

Courage

"There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm."

- Willa Cather

Learning

"It is dreadful that one cannot tear out the past by the roots. We cannot tear it out but we can hide the memory of it."

- Leo Tolstoy

Reflection

"And may the odds be ever in your favor."

- Suzanne Collins

Courage

"I had the epiphany that laughter was light, and light was laughter, and that this was the secret of the universe."

- Donna Tartt

Joy

"If you have the guts to be yourself, other people’ll pay your price."

- John Updike

Self-confidence

"So many things are possible just as long as you don’t know they’re impossible."

- Norton Juster

Optimism

"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living."

- Jonathan Safran Foer

Reflection

"Time moves slowly, but passes quickly."

- Alice Walker

Time Management

"You forget what you want to remember, and you remember what you want to forget."

- Cormac McCarthy

Awareness

"Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody."

- J. D. Salinger

Relationships

"Why, sometimes, I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."

- Lewis Carroll

Imagination

"It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words."

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Connection to Earth

"Tomorrow I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day."

- Margaret Mitchell

Hope

"Just like a murderer jumps out of nowhere in an alley, love jumped out in front of us and struck us both at once."

- Mikhail Bulgakov

Love

"There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

Insight

"A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly."

- Roald Dahl

Self-esteem

"It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else."

- John Waters

Personal Growth

"Memories warm you up from the inside. But they also tear you apart."

- Haruki Murakami

Reflection

"All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

- Leo Tolstoy

Reflection

"A good book should take you out of yourself and then stuff you back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit."

- David Sedaris

Personal Growth

"Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading."

- Lena Dunham

Inspiration

"Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."

- Margery Williams

Self-awareness

"The place where you made your stand never mattered. Only that you were there… and still on your feet."

- Stephen King

Courage

"My advice is, never do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time."

- Charles Dickens

Time Management

"Stay gold, Ponyboy, stay gold."

- S. E. Hinton

Courage

"Isn't it odd how much fatter a book gets when you've read it several times?"

- Cornelia Funke

Reflection

"I think books are like people, in the sense that they’ll turn up in your life when you most need them."

- Emma Thompson

Connection to Earth

"I wish, as well as everybody else, to be perfectly happy; but, like everybody else, it must be in my own way."

- Jane Austen

Happiness

"If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads, but what he rereads."

- François Mauriac

Self-awareness

"Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work."

- Khaled Hosseini

Creativity

"How easy it was to lie to strangers, to create with strangers the versions of our lives we imagined."

- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Awareness

"That’s the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet."

- Jhumpa Lahiri

Imagination

"Memories, even your most precious ones, fade surprisingly quickly. But I don’t go along with that. The memories I value most, I don’t ever see them fading."

- Kazuo Ishiguro

Reflection

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep."

- William Shakespeare

Philosophy

"So it goes…"

- Kurt Vonnegut

Reflection

"Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you."

- Haruki Murakami

Inspiration

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."

- Jane Austen

Reflection

"You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, but that ain’t no matter."

- Mark Twain

Reflection

"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

- Oscar Wilde

Awareness

"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again."

- Daphne du Maurier

Reflection

"All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts."

- William Shakespeare

Reflection

"He has put a knife on the things that held us together and we have fallen apart."

- Chinua Achebe

Adversity

"All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust."

- J.M. Barrie

Belief

"Think before you speak. Read before you think."

- Fran Lebowitz

Awareness

"It’s funny. All one has to do is say something nobody understands and they’ll do practically anything you want them to."

- J.D. Salinger

Insight

"Time is the longest distance between two places."

- Tennessee Williams

Reflection

"The voice of the sea is seductive, never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wander in abysses of solitude."

- Kate Chopin

Nature

"We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep."

- Nathaniel Hawthorne

Imagination

"The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past."

- William Faulkner

Reflection

"I have a theory that selflessness and bravery aren’t all that different."

- Veronica Roth

Courage

"’And now,’ cried Max, ‘let the wild rumpus start!’"

- Maurice Sendak

Joy

"You can’t expect everyone to have the same dedication as you."

- Jeff Kinney

Teamwork

"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42."

- Douglas Adams

Philosophy

"Call me Ishmael."

- Herman Melville

Independence

"It was a pleasure to burn."

- Ray Bradbury

Reflection

Bite-sized Inspirational Quotes

"You never really know how far a smile can go."

Empathy

Inspiring Quotes from Literature: Wisdom to Live By (2024)
Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Lakeisha Bayer VM

Last Updated:

Views: 6107

Rating: 4.9 / 5 (49 voted)

Reviews: 88% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Lakeisha Bayer VM

Birthday: 1997-10-17

Address: Suite 835 34136 Adrian Mountains, Floydton, UT 81036

Phone: +3571527672278

Job: Manufacturing Agent

Hobby: Skimboarding, Photography, Roller skating, Knife making, Paintball, Embroidery, Gunsmithing

Introduction: My name is Lakeisha Bayer VM, I am a brainy, kind, enchanting, healthy, lovely, clean, witty person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.