Positive Quotes

Positive Quotes for the Day

Most of these are about mornings. Read one before the day gets loud.

1. The world has opened its heart of light in the morning. Come out, my heart, with thy love to meet it.

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2. Every morning was a cheerful invitation to make my life of equal simplicity, and I may say innocence, with Nature herself.

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3. Give me health and a day, and I will make the pomp of emperors ridiculous.

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4. I will be the gladdest thing
   Under the sun!
   I will touch a hundred flowers
   And not pick one.

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5. And 'tis my faith that every flower
   Enjoys the air it breathes.

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Short Positive Quotes

1. Know your own happiness.

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2. I never saw a discontented tree.

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3. Things do not change; we change.

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4. My heart is like a singing bird.

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5. Reminiscences spring up, like flowers, about uninteresting corners.

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6. I'm so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers.

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Positive Thinking Quotes

Most of these are about how much depends on the way you look at things.

1. There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

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2. Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of things.

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3. Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.

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4. Things looked at patiently from one side after another generally end by showing a side that is beautiful.

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5. The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

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6. The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

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7. Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.

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Positive Life Quotes About Small Joys

1. Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
   And I was filled with such delight
   As prisoned birds must find in freedom.

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2. And then my heart with pleasure fills,
   And dances with the Daffodils.

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3. What a happy woman I am living in a garden, with books, babies, birds, and flowers, and plenty of leisure to enjoy them!

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4. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.

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5. It is not when he is working in his office but when he is lying idly on the sand that his soul utters, "Life is beautiful."

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6. There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good-humour.

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7. I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy.

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Quotes About Gratitude

1. The test of all happiness is gratitude; and I felt grateful, though I hardly knew to whom.

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2. I felt so absolutely happy, and blest, and thankful, and grateful, that I really cannot describe it.

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3. I can no other answer make but thanks,
   And thanks, and ever thanks.

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4. Thank the flame for its light, but do not forget the lampholder standing in the shade with constancy of patience.

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5. Nature indeed provides without stint the main requisites of human happiness.

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Positive Quotes About Kindness and Friendship

1. Every one must have felt that a cheerful friend is like a sunny day, which sheds its brightness on all around.

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2. Chearfulness keeps up a kind of Day-light in the Mind, and fills it with a steady and perpetual Serenity.

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3. I count myself in nothing else so happy
   As in a soul rememb'ring my good friends.

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4. If I can stop one heart from breaking,
   I shall not live in vain.

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5. How far that little candle throws his beams!
   So shines a good deed in a naughty world.

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6. There are two ways of spreading light; to be
   The candle or the mirror that reflects it.

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7. I feel that there's nothing more genuinely artistic than to love people.

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8. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.

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Famous Misquotes, and Who Really Said Them

Feel-good quotes travel fast, and the names on them often change along the way.

• "The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper."

  Not by W. B. Yeats or Bertrand Russell. Reworded from Eden Phillpotts, A Shadow Passes (1918). His version is in the positive thinking quotes above. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence."

  Not quite Helen Keller's words. Her 1903 essay Optimism ends the sentence "nothing can be done without hope." The words "and confidence" were added later. Source: Optimism on Project Gutenberg.

• "So shines a good deed in a weary world."

  Not quite William Shakespeare's words. The Merchant of Venice says "naughty world", which meant a wicked world in Shakespeare's day. Source: Folger Shakespeare Library.

• "Be the change you wish to see in the world."

  Not by Mahatma Gandhi. In 1913 Gandhi wrote "If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change." The short modern wording is from Arleen Lorrance in 1974. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

  Not by Abraham Lincoln. The columnist Frank Crane first credited it to Lincoln in 1914, nearly fifty years after Lincoln died. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

  Not by Mark Twain. It grew from a line by Christian Nestell Bovee in 1857. Twain's name was attached in 1942. Source: Quote Investigator.

• "Comparison is the thief of joy."

  Not by Theodore Roosevelt. There's no evidence for Roosevelt, and the first Roosevelt credit is from 2012. The exact phrasing appears in religious books from 2003 and 2004.

• "A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."

  Not by Winston Churchill. Churchill by Himself, the standard collection of his words, lists it as a false attribution. Quote Investigator tentatively credits Bertram Carr, Mayor of Carlisle, who used it in 1919.

• "Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

  Not by Nathaniel Hawthorne or Thoreau. J. Richard Lessor wrote it, and it spread on posters in the 1970s. Source: Walden Woods Project.

FAQs

What's a good positive quote for the day?

The one at the top of this page changes at midnight. For one to keep, "Things do not change; we change," from Thoreau's Walden, is six words long.

Are these positive quotes real?

Every quote links to the source we checked it against. Famous lines we couldn't trace, or that belong to someone else, are under Famous Misquotes instead.

Where can I find positive things to say to someone?

Try the compliments for friends and coworkers, or the words of encouragement for a hard week.