140 Wise Quotes About Love, Life, and Loving Friendships

Home » Quotes & Affirmations » 140 Wise Quotes About Love, Life, and Loving Friendships
Click Here to Get a FREE Printable Worksheet for Setting Effective SMART Goals

There might be affiliate links on this page, which means we get a small commission of anything you buy. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Please do your own research before making any online purchase.

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
Be inspired by the best Wise Quotes About Love. #lovequotes #quoteoftheday #quotesoftheday #quotestoliveby #motivationalquotes #inspirationalquotes #mindset #selfimprovement
  1. “Love yourself first, and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”– Lucille Ball
  2. “The most desired gift of love is not diamonds or roses or chocolate. It is focused attention.”– Richard Warren
  3. “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

  1. “The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard but must be felt with the heart.”– Helen Keller
  2. “Love is, in fact, an intensification of life, a completeness, a fullness, a wholeness of life.”– Thomas Merton
  3. ​“Love is a friendship set to music.”– Joseph Campbell
  4. ​“In order to be happy oneself, it is necessary to make at least one other person happy.”– Theodor Reik
  5. “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.

  1. “We always believe our first love is our last, and our last love our first.”– George W. Melville
  2. “Everyone in life is gonna hurt you; you just have to figure out which people are worth the pain.” – Erica Baican
  3. “Age does not protect you from love, but love, to some extent, love protects you from age.”– Jeanne Moreau
  4. “You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.”– Sam Keen
You come to love not by finding the perfect person, but by seeing an imperfect person perfectly.– Sam Keen #lovequotes #wisequotes #wisdom #truth
  1. ​“The art of love is largely the art of persistence.”– Albert Ellis
  2. “True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.” – Erich Segal
  3. “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
  4. “There is never a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.” – Sarah Dessen
  5. “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”– William Shakespeare
  6. “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

  1. “Where there is love there is life.” – Mahatma Gandhi
  2. “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
  3. “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
  4. “Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.” – Robert Heinlein
  5. “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
  6. “There is no remedy for love but to love more.” – Henry David Thoreau
  7. “A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.” – Thomas Carlyle
  8. 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
  1. “Men always want to be a woman’s first love – women like to be a man’s last romance.” – Oscar Wilde
  2. “Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
  3. “It is love, not reason, that is stronger than death.” – Thomas Mann
  4. “If you would be loved, love and be lovable.” – Benjamin Franklin
  5. “The mind cannot long act the role of the heart.” – Francois de la Rochefoucauld
  6. “Love is an act of endless forgiveness, a tender look which becomes a habit.” – Peter Ustinov
  7. “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

  1. “Forgiveness is the final form of love.” – Reinhold Niebuhr
  2. “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
  3. “Whoso loves believes the impossible.” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning
  4. “Lovers don't finally meet somewhere. They're in each other all along.” – Rumi
  5. “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
  6. “What will survive of us is love.” – Philip Larkin
  7. “Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
  8. “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

  1. “Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.” – James Baldwin
  2. “Love will find a way through paths where wolves fear to prey.” – Lord Byron
  3. “Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays. Clutch it, and it darts away.” – Dorothy Parker
  4. “Love in its essence is spiritual fire.” – Seneca
  5. “Love is of all passions the strongest, for it attacks simultaneously the head, the heart and the senses.” – Lao Tzu
  6. “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

  1. “Life without love is like a tree without blossoms or fruit.” – Khalil Gibran
  2. “Love does not dominate; it cultivates.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  3. We are most alive when we're in love.” – John Updike
  4. “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
  5. “You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” – Dr. Seuss
  6. “For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.” – Carl Sagan
  7. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” – Aristotle
  8. “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” – Charles Dickens
  9. “Love alone can rekindle life.” – Henri Frederic Amiel
  10. “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

  1. “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
  2. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.” – Marcel Proust
  3. “Nobody has ever measured — not even poets — how much love the human heart can hold.” – Zelda Fitzgerald
  4. “Never love anybody that treats you like you’re ordinary.” – Oscar Wilde
  5. “Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.” – Joan Crawford
  6. “If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours. If they don't, they never were.” – Kahlil Gibran
  7. “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
  8. “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

  1. Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.” – Bertrand Russell
  2. “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love.” – Sophocles
  3. “What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
  4. “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
  5. “Have enough courage to trust love one more time and always one more time.” – Maya Angelou
  6. “A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved.” – Kurt Vonnegut
  7. “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
  8. “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

  1. “Respect was invented to cover the empty place where love should be.” – Leo Tolstoy
  2. “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
  3. “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.

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

  1. “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
  2. ​“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.”– Franklin D. Roosevelt
  3. ​“God gave us the gift of life; it is up to us to give ourselves the gift of living well.”– Voltaire
  4. “You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.” – Oprah Winfrey
Check out these Wise Quotes About Life and other wise quotes to live by.
  1. “There is no life as complete as the life that is lived by choice.” – Shad Helmstetter
  2. ​“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”– George Bernard Shaw
  3. “No one ever finds life worth living – one has to make it worth living.” Winston Churchill
  4. “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

  1. ​“Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else.”– Les Brown
  2. “To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.” – Oscar Wilde
  3. ​“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
  4. ​“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
  5. ​“An unexamined life is not worth living.”– Socrates
  6. ​“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
  7. “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

  1. ​“You can never plan the future by the past.”– Edmund Burke
  2. ​“Life is 10% what happens to us and 90% how we react to it.”– Dennis P. Kimbro
  3. ​“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
  4. “Life is much more fun if you live it in the spirit of play and collaboration, working with instead of against others.” – Wally Amos
  5. ​“Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb, but how well you bounce.”– Vivian Komori
  6. ​“In three words, I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.”– Robert Frost
  7. “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

  1. “Almost all of the research strongly supports the benefits of using humor to maximize living.” – Mary Kay Morrison
  2. ​“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
  3. ​“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:

  1. “Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
  2. “How many things have to happen to you before something occurs to you?” – Robert Frost
  3. “The problem is that when you get it, you're too damned old to do anything about it.”​– Jimmy Connors
  4. Wisdom is the reward for surviving our own stupidity.”​ – Briane Rathbone
Read the best Quotes on Life Experiences and other wise quotes.
  1. “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
  2. “You can't be brave if you've only had wonderful things happen to you.” – Mary Tyler Moore
  3. “…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

  1. “People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” ​– Eleanor Roosevelt
  2. “Nothing ever becomes real 'til it is experienced.” – John Keats
  3. “He who has a way to live can bear almost anyhow.”​– Friedrich Nietzsche
  4. “I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom.”– Thomas Carlyle
  5. “I am not what happened to me; I am what I choose to become.”– C.G. Jung
  6. “Each life is made up of mistakes and learning, waiting and growing, practicing patience, and being persistent.” – Billy Graham
  7. “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

  1. “People never learn anything by being told; they have to find out for themselves.”– Paulo Coelho
  2. “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.”– John Gardner
  3. “Life isn't sure; life is scary. It doesn't mean you stop living it.”– Susan May Warren
  4. “Embrace uncertainty. Some of the most beautiful chapters in our lives won’t have a title until much later.” – Bob Goff
  5. ​“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
  6. “Things change. And friends leave. Life doesn’t stop for anybody.”– Stephen Chbosky
  7. “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
  8. “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

  1. “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 ​

  1. ​“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
  2. ​“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
  3. ​“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
Be inspired by the best Wise Friendship Quotes and other wise quotes about life and love.
  1. ​“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
  2. “Make a friend when you don't need one.” – Jamaican Proverb
  3. ​“A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.” – Jim Morrison
  4. “No friendship is an accident.” – O. Henry
  5. ​“Friends are God's way of taking care of us.” – Author unknown
  6. 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

  1. ​“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” – Arnold H. Glasgow
  2. “The best mirror is an old friend.” – George Herbert
  3. “Someone to tell it to is one of the fundamental needs of human beings.” – Miles Franklin
  4. “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:

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..

wise quotes about love | funny wise quotes | wise inspirational quotes | wise quotes about time | wise quotes to live by - wide image

17 thoughts on “140 Wise Quotes About Love, Life, and Loving Friendships”

  1. Live, Love and Laugh is the main aim for everybody’s life. Because everyone wants to be happy, love their children. All these quotes describe the love in many ways i.e for friendship, for couples and much more which makes anyone happy and feel special.

  2. Thanks, when ears hears, minds interpret and heart understand then eyes seeth hands and foot move forward to implement.

  3. These quotes really motivated me a lot since I was going through a tough period these quotes really make me feel relaxed thanks to you.

  4. Excellent quote. this one is my favorite from your collection: “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.” Thanks for sharing these amazing quotes dude.

  5. Thank you very much for compiling these beautiful quotes, I really enjoyed reading them. Thanks Again!

  6. These are very significant, meaningful quotes a which are Devine gifts. Out tour on Earth is only complete when wisdom is in play otherwise one lives without realizing the true meaning of life.

  7. This qoutes inspired me a lot.. I’d like to read all of it.. thanks for the writers of each qoutes, I enjoy reading.. having this life just once is precious,so live it and ride on it.. we just live once,enjoy it while we are living..

  8. Thank you very much for compiling these beautiful quotes,great quotes this is really motivated and inspired me a lot.

  9. Great quotes collected by you. I follow every article you post and wait for next. when I am in trouble I feel positiveness when reading your article. This one gives me extra energy for a stay motivated in my life
    I am really thankful to you for sharing such a motivational post.

  10. I follow every article you post and wait for next. when I am in trouble I feel positiveness when reading your article. This one gives me extra energy for a stay motivated in my life
    I am really thankful to you for sharing such a motivational post.

  11. Hi Scott,

    Every time I see this post, the more I wish to share with my friends.

    Wonderful collection.

    Thanks once again!

  12. Love must come unconditionally; you say if you love someone, they should reciprocate. Well . . . that’s the end of love. If you get back love and respect, you are lucky, but if you don’t, you still have to love. Do not expect something in return.

Comments are closed.