140 Wise Quotes About Love, Life, and Loving Friendships

Life is a gift.

When we embrace all that life has to offer, we can achieve success both personally and professionally. One way to do this is to surround ourselves with love. 

Love with a romantic partner, love for family and friends, and love for living life to the fullest.  When we set our goals to focus on what's truly important, it's easy to find meaning with our daily actions.

That's why in this post, you will discover 140 great quotes that focus on all aspects of love (i.e. romantic love, great friendships, and love for experiencing all that life has to offer.) And wise quotes about everything in between.

To help you out, we have separated this post into five sections, with a few large picture quotes to share with your loved ones.

What is the Meaning of Love?

If you have chosen to be your best even when the other person you are with isn't at their best, then you have chosen to love this person, and this person is likely your best friend. Love is more than a feeling; it should also be considered an enacted emotion.

And if you'd like to take your romance to the next level, then we recommend two things: 

1. Create a few of the 21 relationship goals that we cover here.
2. Scheduling regular date nights with your significant other.

Remember: Love is kindness, and love is an adventure.  So let's learn more about this by checking out the following short inspirational quotes:

RELATED: Habits that Stick!

Want to build a new habit that will stick for the rest of your lifetime? In this video, you will discover a simple 9-step process about building habits that you can immediately implement.

Love Quotes and Sayings

1. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”– Lao Tzu
2. “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”– Friedrich Nietzsche
3. Love is not only something you feel, it is something you do. – David Wilkerson

4. “Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”– Lucille Ball
5. “The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention.”– Richard Warren
6. “The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”– Victor Hugo

The greatest happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved; loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.”– Victor Hugo

7. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard but must be felt with the heart.”– Helen Keller
8. “Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.”– Thomas Merton
9. ​“Love is a friendship set to music.”– Joseph Campbell
10. ​“In order to be happy oneself, it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.”– Theodor Reik
11. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

12. ​“We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.”– George W. Melville
13. “Everyone in life is gonna hurt you; you just have to figure out which people are worth the pain.” – Erica Baican
14. “Age does not protect you from love, but love, to some extent, love protects you from age.”– Jeanne Moreau
15. ​“You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”– Sam Keen

16. ​“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”– Albert Ellis
17. “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” – Erich Segal
18. “Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up.” – Neil Gaiman
19. “There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.” – Sarah Dessen
20. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”– William Shakespeare
21. “We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.” – Robert Fulghum

We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.” – Robert Fulghum

22. “Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
23. “Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.” – Plato
24. “The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it. Sometimes love blinds us, other times it lets us see.” – George Bernard Shaw
25. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert Heinlein
26. “If you have it, Love, you don’t need to have anything else, and if you don’t have it, it doesn’t matter much what else you have.” – James M. Barrie
27. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
28. “A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.” – Thomas Carlyle
29. Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.” – H. L. Menken

Love is like war: easy to begin but very hard to stop.”

– H. L. Menken

30. “Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.” – Oscar Wilde
31. “Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
32. “It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.” – Thomas Mann
33. “If you would be loved, love and be lovable.” – Benjamin Franklin
34. “The mind cannot long act the role of the heart.” – Francois de la Rochefoucauld
35. “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” – Peter Ustinov
36. “This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

This is the miracle that happens every time to those who really love; the more they give, the more they possess.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

37. “Forgiveness is the final form of love.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
38. “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.” – 1 Corinthians 13:4
39. “Whoso loves believes the impossible.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
40. “Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.” – Rumi
41. “The world is indeed full of peril, and in it there are many dark places; but still there is much that is fair, and though in all lands love is now mingled with grief, it grows perhaps the greater.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
42. “What will survive of us is love.” – Philip Larkin
43. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
44. “I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.' … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” – Maya Angelou

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, ‘I love you.' … There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.” – Maya Angelou

45. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” – James Baldwin
46. “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” – Lord Byron
47. “Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.” – Dorothy Parker
48. “Love in its essence is spiritual fire.” – Seneca
49. “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.” – Lao Tzu
50. “The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.” – Henry Miller

The only thing we never get enough of is love; and the only thing we never give enough of is love.” – Henry Miller

51. “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” – Khalil Gibran
52. “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
53. “We are most alive when we're in love.” – John Updike
54. “If you aren’t good at loving yourself, you will have a difficult time loving anyone, since you’ll resent the time and energy you give another person that you aren’t even giving to yourself.” – Barbara De Angelis
55. “You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” – Dr. Seuss
56. “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” – Carl Sagan
57. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle
58. “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” – Charles Dickens
59. “Love alone can rekindle life.” – Henri Frederic Amiel
60. “Love doesn’t make the world go around. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Franklin P. Jones

“Love doesn’t make the world go around. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile.” – Franklin P. Jones

61. “Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time; effaces all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end.” – Madame de Stael
62. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust
63. “Nobody has ever measured — not even poets — how much love the human heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald
64. “Never love anybody that treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
65. “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” – Joan Crawford
66. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.” – Kahlil Gibran
67. “Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.” – James Baldwin
68. “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

“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

69. “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” – Bertrand Russell
70. “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love.” – Sophocles
71. “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
72. “It isn't possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.” – E. M. Forster
73. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” – Maya Angelou
74. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” – Kurt Vonnegut
75. “Love is not affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate good as far as it can be obtained.” – C. S. Lewis
76. “Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.” – Oscar Wilde

77. “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy
78. “Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that's all. You can't see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it.” – Mitch Albom
79. “Trust your heart if the seas catch fire, live by love though the stars walk backward.” – E. E. Cummings

Want some more wise quotes related to love? Check out some of these affirmation and quote posts dealing with self-love, happiness, and all the good stuff in life.

• 20 Affirmations for Self Esteem That Build Confidence and Worth
• Self Love Affirmations (Large Positive Picture Quotes for Daily Affirmations)
• 9 Tips on How to Be Happy (and Live) Alone

The Meaning of Life

What is the meaning of life? That is a question we aren't sure can really be answered fully. But a good way to describe life is to find meaning in everything you do, learn to love every aspect of your daily routine, and embrace its seasons. Put simply: You to understand “your why” behind everything that you do.

Aristotle said, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim, and end of human existence.” The following inspirational quotes about life may be just what you need today:

Wise Quotes About Life

80. “If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn
81. ​“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”– Franklin D. Roosevelt
82. ​“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”– Voltaire
83. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” – Oprah Winfrey

84. “There is no life as complete as the life that is lived by choice.” – Shad Helmstetter
85. ​“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”– George Bernard Shaw
86. “No one ever finds life worth living – one has to make it worth living.” – Winston Churchill
87. ​“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”– Abraham Lincoln

​“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.”– Abraham Lincoln

88. ​“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”– Les Brown
89. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
90. ​“Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.”– Dale Carnegie
91. ​“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.”– Alexander Graham Bell
92. ​“An unexamined life is not worth living.”– Socrates
93. ​“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”– Ralph Waldo Emerson
94. “If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn

“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” – Jim Rohn

95. ​“You can never plan the future by the past.”– Edmund Burke
96. ​“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”– Dennis P. Kimbro
97. ​“At the end of their lives, people assess how they've done not in terms of their income but in terms of their spirit, and I beg you to do the same, even if those who came before sometimes failed to do so.”– Anna Quindlen
98. “Life is much more fun if you live it in the spirit of play and collaboration, working with instead of against others.” – Wally Amos
99. ​“Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.”– Vivian Komori
100. ​“In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”– Robert Frost
101. ​“The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”– W. M. Lewis

“​The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.”– W. M. Lewis

102. “Almost all of the research strongly supports the benefits of using humor to maximize living.” – Mary Kay Morrison
103. ​“Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.”– Denis Waitley
104. ​“The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.”– Vince Lombardi

Quotes on Loving Life

One of the sad things in life is that we don’t live our life backward, Benjamin Button style. How great would it be to couple the wisdom of age with the energy of youth by living backward?

Unfortunately, that is not the way things work.

In life, we gain important pieces of wisdom through experience and practicing a few of the 23 strategies for daily self-improvement.

All that said, there is a lot of wisdom that can be found by looking at quotes from people who have learned to love life.  Here are a few of our favorites:

105. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
106. “How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?” – Robert Frost
107. “The problem is that when you get it, you're too damned old to do anything about it.”​– Jimmy Connors
108. “Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity.”​ – Briane Rathbone

109. “All teachings are mere references. The true experience is living your own life. Then, even the holiest of words are only words.”– Ming-Dao Deng
110. “You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.” – Mary Tyler Moore
111. “…talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”– Patrick Süskind

“…talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”– Patrick Süskind

112. “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” ​– Eleanor Roosevelt
113. “Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.” – John Keats
114. “He who has a way to live can bear almost anyhow.”​– Friedrich Nietzsche
115. “I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”– Thomas Carlyle
116. “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”– C.G. Jung
117. “Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience, and being persistent.” – Billy Graham
118. “Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” ​– Auguste Rodin

“Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely.” ​– Auguste Rodin

119. “People never learn anything by being told; they have to find out for themselves.”– Paulo Coelho
120. “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”– John Gardner
121. ​“Life isn't sure; life is scary. It doesn't mean you stop living it.”– Susan May Warren
122. “Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later.” – Bob Goff
123. ​“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for a newer and richer experience.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
124. “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”– Stephen Chbosky
125. “Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.”– Pete Seeger
126. “I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”– Harold Kushner

“I think of life as a good book. The further you get into it, the more it begins to make sense.”– Harold Kushner

127. “Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain.”– William Faulkner

The Meaning of Friendship

One thing that life experiences teach us is that you never get “something for nothing”.

Even when you are only dealing with yourself, having some sort of a reason for doing an action is integral to the success of that action. Perhaps you can think of it as “bribing yourself”.

To see what I’m talking about, check out these 155 Methods of Rewarding Yourself.

Love is another area where time and experience bring wisdom. Love is something most people are looking for, either directly or indirectly.

The following wise quotes talk about the importance of forming lifelong friendships that enrich and enhance your daily routine. In essence, when you have great friends, you’ll surround yourself with great conversations where you can know one another on a deep level.    

When discovering the real meaning of friendship, you need to realize that the friendship goes beyond simply sharing your time together; it is sharing long-lasting time together while developing a meaningful connection.

However, it is also important to remember that friendship can mean different things to different people, but it is all around inspiring as you will see by all of the inspiring quotes we have included below.

[Feeling Lonely and Friendless. See that you are not alone with these quotes.]

​Quotes About Friendship ​

128. ​“Growing apart doesn’t change the fact that for a long time, we grew side by side; our roots will always be tangled. I’m glad for that.” – Ally Condie
129. ​“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you; spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” – Amy Poehler
130. ​“One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.​” – Clifton Fadiman

131. ​“Anybody can sympathize with the sufferings of a friend, but it requires a very fine nature to sympathize with a friend's success.” – Oscar Wilde
132. “Make a friend when you don't need one.” – Jamaican Proverb
133. ​“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” – Jim Morrison
134. “No friendship is an accident.” – O. Henry
135. ​“Friends are God's way of taking care of us.” – Author unknown
136. ​“True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” – David Tyson

“True friendship comes when the silence between two people is comfortable.” – David Tyson

137. ​“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” – Arnold H. Glasgow
138. “The best mirror is an old friend.” – George Herbert
139. “Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” – Miles Franklin
140. “Friends show their love in times of trouble, not in happiness.” – Euripides

Some of these quotes on friendship are wonderful. In some ways, I feel good friendship can be as important as love. Actually, friendship can be a form of love itself.

When it comes to habits, one of the most important aspects of friendship is the “mirror” a good friend can provide, like in the George Herbert wise friendship quote above.

This “mirror” is essentially accountability and is one of the single most powerful tools for achieving success with your habits. Find out more about accountability and what it can do for you here.

Final Thoughts on Wise Quotes About Love

Love is all around us!  Whether it’s your partner, family, friends, or even the activities you enjoy on a deep level, you can find plenty of examples of this powerful emotion.  Hopefully, these love quotes inspired you and gave you something to think about.

And if you like these quotes, then be sure to check out the others that we have:

• 76 Inspiring Hard Work Quotes to Help You Get the Job Done
• 85 Quotes About Being Yourself
• Success Quotes from the Most Successful People in History
• Quotes About Success to Help You Achieve Your Dreams
• 41 Songs About Loving Yourself for Who You Are
• 13 Tips on How to Love Yourself More

Thanks for checking out this wisdom, love, and friendship quote post.  I would appreciate it if you would save your favorite quote on your “go-to” social media platform. And hope you are having a wonderful, loving day!

Finally, if you want to use these quotes to make a lasting change to your life, then watch this free video that details the 7-minute habit for planning your day to focus on what's truly important to you..