When I was a kid, my parents gave me a book of quotations about life by famous curmudgeons. It was an excellent move on their part, as it showed that they wanted to nurture their daughter’s burgeoning sense of dry humor. When life gives kicks you in the face, having a sarcastic outlook or retort can soften its blow. The world is filled with many confusing and frustrating moments and one of the only ways to push through is to keep the right attitude. A little cynicism never hurt anyone. Just take a look at all the literary greats and celebrities below that had sharp and sassy critiques on their own lives.
Life is funny and sometimes it’s hard to explain or understand everything you experience. Some days things are so bad, you can’t help but laugh. However, nothing gets you through the extreme highs and lows of this existence like sarcasm. When facing trials, adopting an attitude of resilience is helpful, but embracing humor is a must. Sometimes, the only thing you can do during a rough patch is find a reason to smile. We get it. So we’ve curated the perfect list of dry and witty quotes that’ll make the hard days manageable.
Sharing wit and wisdom about our confounding time on this rock called Earth can connect us, so bring your family together with these clean, kid-friendly, funny and inspirational quotes about life.
Looking for more quotes to help you through your day to day? We have quotes pages for sadness, honesty, love, and more.
1. “A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold.” — Ogden Nash
2. “If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.” — George Bernard Shaw
3. “As a child my family’s menu consisted of two choices: take it or leave it.” — Buddy Hackett
4. “Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.” – Albert Camus
5. “The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us.” – Bill Watterson
6. “Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.” — Oscar Wilde
7. “If you’re going to tell people the truth, be funny or they’ll kill you.” — Billy Wilder
8. “Don’t worry about the world coming to an end today. It is already tomorrow in Australia.” — Charles M. Schulz
9. “If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.” — The Dalai Lama
10. “Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.” — Daniel J. Boorstin
11. “A failure is like fertilizer; it stinks to be sure, but it makes things grow faster in the future.” — Denis Waitley
12. “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” – Dorothy Parker
13. “Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family in another city.” – George Burns
14. “The road to success is always under construction.” — Lily Tomlin
15. “Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.” — Margaret Mead
16. “Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.” — Mark Twain
17. “Always borrow money from a pessimist. He won’t expect it back.” — Oscar Wilde
18. “Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.” — Rita Mae Brown
19. “Folks, I don’t trust children. They’re here to replace us.” — Stephen Colbert
20. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas A. Edison
21. “Never put off till tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” — Mark Twain
22. “I can resist everything except temptation.” — Oscar Wilde
23. “Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.” — Elbert Hubbard
24. “Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming ‘Wow! What a Ride!’” — Hunter S. Thompson
25. “Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.” — Albert Einstein
26. “There is no sunrise so beautiful that it is worth waking me up to see it.” — Mindy Kaling
27. “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” — Blaise Pascal
28. “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” — George Bernard Shaw
29. “Age is of no importance unless you’re a cheese.” — Billie Burke
30. “Too much of a good thing can be wonderful.” — Mae West
31. “You grow up the day you have your first real laugh – at yourself.” — Ethel Barrymore
32. “A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.” — Frank Zappa
33. “Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.” — Alan Dundes
34. “I’ve learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the way (s)he handles these three things: a rainy day, lost luggage, and tangled Christmas tree lights.” — Maya Angelou
35. “I have never developed indigestion from eating my words.” — Winston Churchill
36. “Live in such a way that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” — Will Rogers
37. “I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.” — Benjamin Franklin
38. “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” — Jack London
39. “A smile is a curve that sets everything straight.” — Phyllis Diller
40. “Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.”— Neil Gaiman
41. “Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.” — Dr. Seuss
42. “If you’re going to be able to look back on something and laugh about it, you might as well laugh about it now.” — Marie Osmond
“43. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder and it may be necessary from time to time to give a stupid or misinformed beholder a black eye.” — Jim Henson
44. “Be nice to nerds. You may end up working for them. We all could.” — Charles J. Sykes
45. “People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” — A.A. Milne
46. “To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funny bone.” — Reba McEntire
47. “It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Eliot
48. “Do one thing every day that scares you.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
49. “The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate.” — Oprah Winfrey
Related: 100+ Self Care Quotes To Soothe Your Mind, Body, And Soul
50. “Don’t be so humble – you are not that great.” – Golda Meir
51. “You got to be careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.” — Yogi Berra
52. “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.” — Bob Dylan
53. “Don’t waste a minute not being happy. If one window closes, run to the next window. Or break down a door.” — Brooke Shields
54. “Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” — Will Rogers
55. “When life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.” — Cathy Guisewite
56. “You’re only as good as your last haircut.” — Fran Lebowitz
57. “People are like music. Some speak the truth, and others are just noise.” — Bill Murray
58. “Follow your passion. Stay true to yourself. Never follow someone else’s path unless you’re in the woods and you’re lost and you see a path. By all means, you should follow that.” — Ellen DeGeneres
59. “When you’re in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, ‘Damn, that was fun’.” — Groucho Marx
60. “You’re only given a little spark of madness. You mustn’t lose it.” — Robin Williams
61. “Don’t be afraid to be a fool. Remember, you cannot be both young and wise.” — Stephen Colbert
62. “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” — John Lennon
64. “It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.” — Abraham Lincoln
65. “The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.” — Dolly Parton
66. “Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.” — Oscar Wilde
67. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker
68. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” — Farrah Gray
69. “Nothing will work unless you do.” — Maya Angelou
70. “Build a man a fire and he’ll be warm for an hour. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.” — Terry Pratchett
71. “Humor is just another defense against the universe.” — Mel Brooks
72. “Don’t sweat the petty things, and don’t pet the sweaty things.” — George Carlin
73. “Life is like a ten-speed bike. Most of us have gears we never use.” — Charles M. Schulz
74. “If you are the smartest person in the room, then you are in the wrong room.” — Confucius
75. “If you are always trying to be normal, you will never know how amazing you can be.” — Maya Angelou
76. “When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.” — Franklin Roosevelt
77. “You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?” — Steven Wright
78. “The trouble with being punctual is that nobody’s there to appreciate it.” — Franklin P. Jones
79. “Love is being stupid together.” — Paul Valery
80. “Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.'” — Yoda from Star Wars
81. “Some people can’t believe in themselves until someone else believes in them first.” — Good Will Hunting
82. “The best revenge is massive success.” — Frank Sinatra
83. “It is a curious thought, but it is only when you see people looking ridiculous that you realize just how much you love them.” — Agatha Christie
84. “Nothing in the world is ever completely wrong. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.” — Paulo Coehlo
85. “How many times do I have to teach you: just because something works doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.”— from Black Panther
86. “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” — George Bernard Shaw
87. “It’s kind of fun to do the impossible.” — Walt Disney
88. “Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.” — Voltaire
89. “My only advice is to stay aware, listen carefully, and yell for help if you need it.” — Judy Blume
90. “Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about.” — Oscar Wilde
91. “If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn’t sit for a month.” — Theodore Roosevelt
92. “It’s a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best, you very often
get it.” — W. Somerset Maugham
93. “It is not our abilities that show what we truly are…it is our choices.” — Dumbledore from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
94. “If my life wasn’t funny, it would just be true, and that’s unacceptable.” — Carrie Fisher
95. “You can’t really be strong until you see a funny side to things.” — Ken Kesey
96. “Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.” — William Thackeray
97. “Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures.” — Sam Walton
98. After a while, you learn to ignore the names people call you and just trust who you are. — Shrek
99. “It’s good to be able to laugh at yourself and the problems you face in life. Sense of humor can save you.” — Margaret Cho
100. “Go through life like a duck: Majestic on top, kicking like hell underneath.” — Anonymous
101. “Try to be a rainbow in someone’s cloud.” — Maya Angelou
102. “A person with a sharp tongue will eventually cut themselves.” — J. Robson Koenig
103. “A skunk is better company than a person who prides himself on being ‘frank’.” — Robert Heinlein
Related: 100+ Positive Affirmations Because Self-Love Is The Best Kind Of Love
Read more inspirational quotes here.
