There is a specific kind of tired that has nothing to do with sleep. It is the tiredness that comes from trying, repeatedly, in the face of setbacks that feel less like obstacles and more like messages: maybe this isn’t for you, maybe you were wrong about yourself, maybe the people who doubted you had a point. Most people know this tiredness. Very few talk about it honestly. What they talk about instead are the results, the comeback stories, the moment the tide finally turned. But the weeks before the tide turned, when nothing was working and the effort was not yet paying off and there was no particular reason to believe it ever would? That is where most of life actually happens.

The words gathered here come from people who lived in that stretch of time and came out the other side with something worth saying about it. Marie Curie worked in poverty, was denied recognition for years because of her gender, and won two Nobel Prizes anyway. Churchill delivered some of the most galvanizing speeches in the English language during the period when Britain had the least reason for confidence. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote about the tide turning precisely when there seemed no reason to expect it. These are not theoretical encouragements. They are dispatches from the front.

80 Best Encouraging Quotes

Each section below targets a different dimension of the hard stretch: the waiting, the doubt, the exhaustion, the slow rebuild. 

Encouraging Quotes

Encouraging Quotes About Keeping Going When It’s Hard

  • “It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” Confucius
  • “If you’re going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill
  • “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” A.A. Milne
  • “Run when you can, walk if you have to, crawl if you must; just never give up.” Dean Karnazes
  • “Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence, is the key to unlocking our potential.” Winston Churchill
  • “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” Thomas A. Edison
  • “Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • “Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.” Dale Carnegie
  • “All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Samuel Beckett
  • “It is not enough that we do our best; sometimes we must do what is required.” Winston Churchill

Encouraging Quotes About Strength You Didn’t Know You Had

  • “You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.” Bob Marley
  • “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.” Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Courage isn’t having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have strength.” Napoleon Bonaparte
  • “I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.” Henry David Thoreau
  • “You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” Maya Angelou
  • “Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” A.A. Milne
  • “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” Friedrich Nietzsche
  • “Anyone can give up; it is the easiest thing in the world to do. But to hold it together when everyone would expect you to fall apart, now that is true strength.” Unknown
  • “Life is very interesting; in the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.” Drew Barrymore
  • “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” Marcus Aurelius

Quotes About Hope in the Dark

  • “We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.” Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “Hope begins in the dark, the stubborn hope that if you just show up and try to do the right thing, the dawn will come. You wait and watch and work: you don’t give up.” Anne Lamott
  • “If you lose hope, somehow you lose the vitality that keeps you moving, the courage to be, that quality that helps you go on in spite of it all.” Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “Only in the darkness can you see the stars.” Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “I find hope in the darkest of days, and focus in the brightest. I do not judge the universe.” Dalai Lama
  • “Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow. It empties today of its strength.” Corrie Ten Boom
  • “The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope.” Barbara Kingsolver
  • “There is an alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmuted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness.” Pearl S. Buck
  • “When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as if you couldn’t hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.” Harriet Beecher Stowe
  • “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Joseph Campbell

Encouraging Quotes About Believing in Yourself

  • “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” Theodore Roosevelt
  • “Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained.” Marie Curie
  • “It always seems impossible until it is done.” Nelson Mandela
  • “Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you are right.” Henry Ford
  • “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” Nora Ephron
  • “Don’t ever allow yourself to feel trapped by your choices. You are a unique person created for a specific purpose. Your gifts matter. Your story matters. Your dreams matter. You matter.” Michael Oher
  • “Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other one thing.” Abraham Lincoln
  • “The beautiful thing about setbacks is they introduce us to our strengths.” Robin Sharma
  • “Correction does much, but encouragement does more.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
  • “You are your greatest asset. Put your time, effort and money into training, grooming, and encouraging your greatest asset.” Tom Hopkins

Quotes About Starting Again

  • “Failure is only the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” Henry Ford
  • “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” Robert Frost
  • “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Francis of Assisi
  • “It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.” Edmund Hillary
  • “Rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” J.K. Rowling
  • “Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.” John Lennon
  • “Never cut a tree down in the wintertime. Never make a negative decision in the low time.” Robert H. Schuller
  • “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” R. Buckminster Fuller
  • “Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.” Robert F. Kennedy
  • “Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.” Ruth Gordon

Quotes About Small Steps and Slow Progress

  • “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt
  • “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.” Napoleon Hill
  • “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” Mother Teresa
  • “A man on a thousand-mile walk has to forget his goal and say to himself every morning, ‘Today I’m going to cover twenty-five miles and then rest up and sleep.'” Leo Tolstoy
  • “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” Arthur Ashe
  • “Patience and perseverance have a magical effect before which difficulties disappear and obstacles vanish.” John Quincy Adams
  • “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” Mark Twain
  • “Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” Harper Lee
  • “Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.” Eleanor Roosevelt
  • “Courage is being scared to death and saddling up anyway.” John Wayne

Encouraging Quotes About What Difficulty Is Actually For

  • “The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” Randy Pausch
  • “There is a saying in Tibetan: tragedy should be utilized as a source of strength. No matter what sort of difficulties you face, if you lose your hope, that is your real disaster.” Dalai Lama
  • “Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.” Mary Anne Radmacher
  • “Far better is it to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much, because they live in a gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt
  • “The way I see it, hard times aren’t only about money, or drought, or dust. Hard times are about losing spirit, and hope, and what happens when dreams dry up.” Karen Hesse
  • “Life is at its best when everything has fallen out of place, and you decide that you’re going to fight to get them right, not when everything is going your way.” Thisuri Wanniarachchi
  • “Grit grows as we figure out our life philosophy, learn to dust ourselves off after rejection and disappointment, and develop the capacity for long-term passion and perseverance.” Angela Duckworth
  • “What we’ve got to do is keep hope alive. Because without it we’ll sink.” Neil Kinnock
  • “Problems are not stop signs; they are guidelines.” Robert H. Schuller
  • “Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work.” Martin Luther King Jr.

Short Encouraging Quotes Worth Keeping

  • “This too shall pass.” Persian proverb
  • “Head up, heart open. To better days.” T.F. Hodge
  • “If not us, who? If not now, when?” John F. Kennedy
  • “In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.” Albert Einstein
  • “Don’t pray for an easy life; pray to be a stronger person.” John F. Kennedy
  • “If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “I shall either find a way or make one.” Hannibal
  • “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” Henry Ford
  • “Perhaps I am stronger than I think.” Thomas Merton
  • “Today I will do what others won’t, so tomorrow I can accomplish what others can’t.” Jerry Rice

Final Thoughts

What separates the lines in this collection from ordinary positive thinking is that most of them were written by people who had strong reasons to stop and didn’t. Beckett’s “fail better” came from a man who had spent decades being misunderstood. Marie Curie’s insistence on confidence in oneself came from a woman who had been systematically excluded from the institutions that should have celebrated her. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s image of the tide turning came from someone who wrote it down because she needed to believe it herself, not because she already had proof.

That is what makes encouragement real rather than hollow: it has to come from somewhere honest. The easy version tells you that everything happens for a reason and the universe is on your side. The harder, more useful version is what most of these voices are offering: that the tide turns, but not on a schedule; that strength reveals itself under pressure, not before it; that getting through the difficult stretch is not a detour from the life you are supposed to be living, it is the life. Come back to these on the days that make you doubt that. They were written for exactly those days.

Inspirational Quotes