Riot Headline Book Riot’s 2025 Read Harder Challenge
Lists

30 Bookish Positive Life Quotes Short Enough To Write On Your Mirror

This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Beth O'Brien

Staff Writer

Beth is an east coast Canadian, born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is (unsurprisingly) obsessed with books and is a public library assistant and book blogger. When she’s not convincing all her friends to be friends with each other, she’s trying to convince them to read YA. She likes poetry and coffee and the ocean, but her true love is her cat Edith.

I love quotes. I collect them and turn to them often. They are beautiful little collections of words with some sort of wisdom tucked in. I’ve done several posts about quotes, and I’ll gladly continue. Sometimes quotes are great for a little boost of confidence or a needed reminder to keep going. A great place to highlight positive quotes is around your mirror—a place most people look in the morning. A little positivity makes a great start to the day. If you’re looking for some motivation, I got you. Here are some bookish positive life quotes that you can write on your mirror.

30 bookish positive life quotes

“I can be changed by what happens to me. But I refuse to be reduced by it.”

—Maya Angelou

“Do what you need to and enjoy life as it happens.”
—John Scalzi

“There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.”

—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Two Towers

“It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.”
—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

“Tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it yet.”

—L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

cheryl strayed positive life quote

“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
—J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

“Only connect.”
—E.M. Forester, Howard’s End

“God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.”
—Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
—Anne Frank

george eliot positive life quote

“Life appears to me too short to be spent in nursing animosity or registering wrongs.”
—Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“We must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy.”
—J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

“[N]ever do tomorrow what you can do today. Procrastination is the thief of time.”
—Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

“Trust life, and it will teach you, in joy and sorrow, all you need to know.”
—James Baldwin

toni morrison positive life quote

“I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing.”
—Herman Melville, Moby Dick

“Change requires intent and effort. It really is that simple.”
—Roxane Gay, Bad Feminist

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”
—John Steinbeck, East of Eden

“Don’t take life too seriously. Punch it in the face when it needs a good hit.”
—Colleen Hoover, Slammed

emile zola positive life quote

“You don’t have to live forever, you just have to live.”
—Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

“Living simply makes loving simple.”
—bell hooks

“There is light in darkness, you just have to find it.”
—bell hooks

“Life is very short and what we have to do must be done in the now.”
—Audre Lorde

roxane gay positive life quote

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself.”
—Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
—Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“how you love yourself/is how you teach others/to love you”
—Rupi Kaur, Milk & Honey

Looking for more? Check out these must read books about happiness, these 100 happy bookish feelings, and these poems about life.