Short Quotes: The Top 120 for Every Occasion
Short quotes are easy to send. You can remember them quickly, and they are great for any kind of card or WhatsApp message. We have compiled short sayings for every occasion in different categories for you. There’s something here for every topic: deep, motivational, funny, or thought-provoking.
Short sayings are always suitable if you do not want to spend too long searching for a suitable quote. You can get an overview in no time and thus quickly find out which saying is the right one for you.
Short Quotes for Every Occasion
Below you will find short quotes of all kinds and for every occasion. We have categorized them for you so you can find what you are looking for faster.
Send your best friend a nice saying about friendship, make someone laugh with a funny quote, send a nice quote as a message on WhatsApp or post a short saying to think about as your status.
Short Inspirational Quotes
You can’t go far wrong with deep and inspirational quotes. You can use them anytime and anywhere. There doesn’t need a special reason to use them, but they are suitable for almost any occasion.
You can easily remember them, write them in a card for every joyous event, and quickly jot them down when you discover one that’s right for you. They’re worded in a simple, appealing way and represent an optimistic outlook on life.
- "Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow."
(Mahatma Gandhi) - "Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."
(Henry David Thoreau) - "You learn more from failure than from success. Don’t let it stop you. Failure builds character."
(Unknown) - "I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it."
(Thomas Jefferson) - "You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction."
(George Lorimer) - "The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity."
(Amelia Earhart) - "What makes the desert beautiful is that somewhere it hides a well."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) - "Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you."
(Walt Whitman) - "Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself."
(Plato) - "Of all things visible, the highest is the heaven of the fixed stars."
(Nicolaus Copernicus) - "What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality."
(Plutarch) - "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry) - "The power of imagination makes us infinite."
(John Muir) - "Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over."
(F. Scott Fitzgerald) - "No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
(Aesop)
Short Quotes about Love
In this section you will find various sayings about love. Some of them are rather wise and general and are suitable for wedding cards, for example, while others are suitable to send to a loved one.
As a great way to prove your love, you can also set a short saying about love as your WhatsApp status. This way all your contacts can see how you feel about your partner.
- "Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage."
(Lao Tzu) - "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
(Alfred Lord Tennyson) - "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."
(Aristotle) - "Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity."
(Henry van Dyke) - "Where there is love there is life."
(Mahatma Gandhi) - "True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen."
(François de La Rochefoucauld) - "Love has no age, no limit; and no death."
(John Galsworthy) - "I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people."
(Vincent van Gogh) - "Love is space and time measured by the heart."
(Marcel Proust) - "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction."
(Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
Occasions for which such a love saying is particularly suitable are Valentine’s Day, your partner’s birthday, Christmas or New Year’s Eve.
Embellish your card with one of the quotes above or even compose a love letter yourself. For a romantic gesture, you can also write a love note yourself.
Short Quotes about Life
The following short quotes about life are as multifaceted as life itself. They deal with the ups, the downs and the meaning of life. They make you think, can strengthen your self-confidence or provide new motivation.
But they can also make you melancholic – and sometimes that’s just what you need and want.
It doesn’t take a special occasion to send short messages about life. Sometimes they are perfect as a new life motto.
- "Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."
(George Bernard Shaw) - "Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated."
(Confucius) - "Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment."
(Buddha) - "We do not remember days, we remember moments."
(Cesare Pavese) - "Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less."
(Marie Curie) - "Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued."
(Socrates) - "Into each life some rain must fall."
(Henry Wadsworth Longfellow) - "It is not length of life, but depth of life."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson) - "A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life."
(Charles Darwin) - "Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale."
(Hans Christian Andersen)
Positive and Motivational Quotes
You can send motivational quotes to someone as well-intentioned advice, write them in a card, or post them as life wisdom in your WhatsApp status. This way, all your contacts can see what’s on your mind or what you’ve been thinking about for a while.
It is always worthwhile to read through motivational and positive quotes and thus reflect on life and people.
- "Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind."
(Johannes Brahms) - "Give light, and the darkness will disappear of itself."
(Desiderius Erasmus) - "Believe you can and you’re halfway there."
(Theodore Roosevelt) - "Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."
(Francis of Assisi) - "It is never too late to be what you might have been.
(George Eliot) - "Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success."
(Henry Ford) - "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."
(Confucius) - "Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."
(Thomas A. Edison) - "Good, better, best. Never let it rest. 'Til your good is better and your better is best."
(St. Jerome) - "The secret of getting ahead is getting started."
(Mark Twain)
Short Quotes about Friendship
Show your friends what they mean to you. What qualities do you love about them and what have you always wanted to tell them?
Friendship quotes don’t need an occasion: surprise a good friend with a loving friendship quote, or write a wise saying about friendship in a card for someone.
Make sure the friendship quote really fits your friendship or the occasion, so you don’t offend anyone.
- "Let us be grateful to people who make us happy, they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom."
(Marcel Proust) - "There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship."
(Thomas Aquinas) - "One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood."
(Lucius Annaeus Seneca) - "It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them."
(Ralph Waldo Emerson) - "One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."
(Euripides) - "I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."
(Walt Whitman) - "A man’s friendships are one of the best measures of his worth."
(Charles Darwin) - "My best friend is the one who brings out the best in me."
(Henry Ford) - "Friends are the siblings God never gave us."
(Mencius) - "Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant."
(Socrates) - "Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence."
(George Washington) - "Friendship improves happiness and abates misery, by the doubling of our joy and the dividing of our grief."
(Marcus Tullius Cicero) - "If you have one true friend you have more than your share."
(Thomas Fuller) - "A friend is what the heart needs all the time."
(Henry van Dyke) - "My friends are my estate."
(Emily Dickinson)
Short Quotes about Family
A quote about family may make you think about what family actually means to you.
For one person, family comes first; for another, friends may be more important. So before you send any of the family quotes to someone, you should make sure you know their relationship with their family beforehand.
- "You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth."
(Khalil Gibran) - "A happy family is but an earlier heaven."
(George Bernard Shaw) - "The family is one of nature’s masterpieces."
(George Santayana) - "A family can develop only with a loving woman as its center."
(Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel) - "Happy is said to be the family which can eat onions together. They are, for the time being, separate, from the world, and have a harmony of aspiration."
(Charles Dudley Warner) - "Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother’s love is not."
(James Joyce) - "Little children are still the symbol of the eternal marriage between love and duty."
(George Eliot) - "I would rather start a family than finish one."
(Don Marquis) - "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
(Leo Tolstoy) - "In time of test, family is best."
(Burmese Proverb)
Short Quotes about Happiness
Sometimes a quote about happiness can help you feel a little better. All people probably strive to be happy.
However, depending on your situation in life, this goal can be difficult to achieve. Hopefully at least one of these quotes will make you smile, or at least think about life a little differently.
- "Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."
(Nathaniel Hawthorne) - "Happiness resides not in possessions, and not in gold, happiness dwells in the soul."
(Democritus) - "Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared."
(Buddha) - "The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life."
(William Morris) - "Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life."
(Omar Khayyam) - "Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go."
(Oscar Wilde) - "Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony."
(Mahatma Gandhi) - "Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."
(Abraham Lincoln) - "If you want to be happy, be."
(Leo Tolstoy) - "Happiness depends upon ourselves."
(Aristotle) - "There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will."
(Epictetus) - "Happiness can exist only in acceptance."
(George Orwell) - "True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future."
(Lucius Annaeus Seneca) - "Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy."
(Guillaume Apollinaire) - "Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action."
(Benjamin Disraeli)
Short and Funny Quotes
The following funny short sayings will lighten the mood and make your friends laugh. They are suitable for speeches on joyful occasions, for cards or simply as a funny WhatsApp status.
However, make sure that you don’t hurt anyone with a funny saying and that you also understand the other person’s sense of humor. With self-deprecating funny sayings, you don’t need to worry, as they usually have a pleasant effect on others.
- "I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying." (Oscar Wilde)
- "Waiting until the movie starts to eat your popcorn, hardest thing in the world."
(Unknown) - "No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."
(Abraham Lincoln) - "If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month."
(Theodore Roosevelt) - "I am on a seafood diet. I see food, and I eat it."
(Unknown) - "If we shouldn’t eat at night, why is there a light in the fridge?"
(Unknown) - "I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food."
(W. C. Fields) - "Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy."
(Benjamin Franklin) - "A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul."
(George Bernard Shaw) - "The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around."
(Thomas A. Edison) - "Paper cut: A tree’s final moment of revenge."
(Unknown) - "I don’t need a hair stylist, my pillow gives me a new hairstyle every morning."
(Unknown) - "Silence is golden, unless you have kids, then silence is just plain suspicious."
(Unknown) - "When nothing is going right, go left."
(Unknown) - "My bed is a magical place where I suddenly remember everything I forgot to do."
(Unknown)
Find more funny quotes for every occasion here.
Short Meaningful Quotes
When quotes have a deeper meaning, they are great to share with other people. You can express your thoughts with them and show what’s going on in your mind.
You can also use meaningful quotes for gifts. For example, you can write them on small pieces of paper, roll them up and put them in a jar. Every day, the recipient can draw a little wisdom from the jar.
- "Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step."
(Lao Tzu) - "Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."
(Theodore Roosevelt) - "What we think, we become."
(Buddha) - "Life is short, the art long."
(Hippocrates) - "With life as short as a half-taken breath, don’t plant anything but love."
(Rumi) - "Die with memories, not dreams."
(Unknown) - "Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained."
(Stendhal) - "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."
(Leonardo da Vinci) - "After all, life is too short to be anything but happy."
(Karl Marx) - "Never regret anything that made you smile."
(Mark Twain)
Powerful and Savage Short Quotes
Savage and powerful short quotes are perfect for your WhatsApp status or the caption under an Instagram post. With the latter, however, you should make sure that the caption also fits the image or video.
- "Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too."
(Mark Twain) - "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."
(Thomas A. Edison) - "To the mind that is still, the whole universe surrenders".
(Lao Tzu) - "I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse."
(Florence Nightingale) - "Quality is not an act, it is a habit."
(Aristotle) - "Every man dies. Not every man really lives."
(William Wallace) - "What consumes your mind controls your life."
(Unknown) - "I will remember and recover, not forgive and forget."
(Unknown) - "Normality is a paved road: it’s comfortable to walk but no flowers grow."
(Vincent van Gogh) - "A happy soul is the best shield for a cruel world."
(Atticus)