Words of wisdom worth considering

Medically reviewed by April Brewer
Updated January 3, 2024by BetterHelp Editorial Team

Life comes with many challenges, and it can sometimes help to receive words of wisdom at just the right time. Below are some words of wisdom you might find helpful on a variety of topics, including marriage, leadership, parenting, health, and confidence. Some are from famous authors, while others are from leaders across a diverse array of fields.

When it comes to marriage, leadership, parenting, and more, you may have a lot of questions. To help make it easy, here are some words of wisdom you might find helpful.

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Words of wisdom for marriage

"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person." -Mignon McLaughlin

"Happy is the man who finds a true friend and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife." -Franz Schubert

"It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages." -Friedrich Nietzsche

"Marriages, like careers, need constant nurturing…the secret of having it all is loving it all." -Joyce Brothers

"Chains do not hold a marriage together. It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years." -Simone Signoret

"Marriage is not a noun; it's a verb. It isn't something you get. It's something you do. It's the way you love your partner every day." -Barbara De Angelis

"A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. -John C. Maxwell

"There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage." -Martin Luther

"The secret to a happy marriage is if you can be at peace with someone within four walls, if you are content because the one you love is near to you, either upstairs or downstairs, or in the same room, and you feel that warmth that you don't find very often, then that is what love is all about." -Bruce Forsyth

Words of wisdom for leaders

"Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business." -John C. Maxwell

"Efficiency is doing the thing right. Effectiveness is doing the right thing." -Peter Drucker

"The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality. The last is to say thank you. In between, the leader is a servant." -Max DePree

"Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work." -Seth Godin

"As a leader, I am tough on myself, and I raise the standard for everybody; however, I am very caring because I want people to excel at what they are doing so that they can aspire to be me in the future." -Indra Nooyi

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"The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor but without folly." -Jim Rohn

"What you do has a far greater impact than what you say." -Steven Covey

"To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority." -Ken Blanchard

"No man will make a great leader who wants to do it all himself, or to get all the credit for doing it." -Andrew Carnegie

Words of wisdom about parenting

"Be the parent today that you want your kids to remember tomorrow." -Unknown

"In bringing up children, spend on them half as much money and twice as much time." - Unknown

"There is no such thing as a perfect parent so just be a real one." -Sue Atkins

"I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside." -Whitney Houston

"Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them." -James Baldwin

"Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands." -Anne Frank

"What it's like to be a parent: It's one of the hardest things you'll ever do, but in exchange, it teaches you the meaning of unconditional love." -Nicholas Sparks

"Children are made readers on the laps of their parents." -Emilie Buchwald

"Your kids require you most of all to love them for who they are, not to spend your whole time trying to correct them." -Bill Ayers

"But kids don't stay with you if you do it right. It's the one job where the better you are, the more surely you won't be needed in the long run." -Barbara Kingsolver

"Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl into a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kids' hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were." -Haruki Murakami

Words of wisdom about your health

"Take care of your body. It's the only place you have to live." -Jim Rohn

"Today, more than 95% of all chronic disease is caused by food choice, toxic food ingredients, nutritional deficiencies, and lack of physical exercise." -Mike Adams

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"The higher your energy level, the more efficient your body. The more efficient your body, the better you feel and the more you will use your talent to produce outstanding results." -Anthony Robbins

"Those who think they have no time for exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness." -Edward Stanley

"Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy wealthy and wise." -Benjamin Franklin

Words of wisdom about confidence

"The way to develop self-confidence is to do the thing you fear and get a record of successful experiences behind you." -William Jennings Bryan

"Always be yourself and have faith in yourself. Do not go out and look for a successful personality and try to duplicate it." -Bruce Lee

"Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles, and less than perfect conditions. So what? Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident, and more and more successful." -Mark Victor Hansen

"You wouldn't worry so much about what others think of you if you realized how seldom they do." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"Low self-confidence isn't a life sentence. Self-confidence can be learned, practiced, and mastered-just like any other skill. Once you master it, everything in your life will change for the better." -Barrie Davenport

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement." -Golda Meir

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Words of wisdom about failure

"Failure isn't fatal, but failure to change might be." -John Wooden

"Success is most often achieved by those who don't know that failure is inevitable." -Coco Chanel

"If you don't try at anything, you can't fail…it takes backbone to lead the life you want." -Richard Yates

"Failure should be our teacher, not our undertaker. Failure is a delay, not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead end. Failure is something we can avoid only by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing." -Denis Waitley

"It's failure that gives you the proper perspective on success." -Ellen DeGeneres

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas A. Edison

"Success is not final; failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts." -Winston Churchill

"Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm." -Winston Churchill

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing." -Henry Ford

"Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success." -Robert T. Kiyosaki

"You build on failure. You use it as a stepping stone. Close the door on the past. You don't try to forget the mistakes, but you don't dwell on it. You don't let it have any of your energy, or any of your time, or any of your space." -Johnny Cash

If you need more advice

Words of wisdom can be helpful, but what if you need more guidance and support? If you are looking for a safe place to process your questions, it can help to talk to a licensed therapist.

Online therapy has many benefits for people interested in getting treatment for a number of mental health issues. You don’t have to seek out a nearby therapist with an available appointment or risk being put on a waiting list. With BetterHelp, you are matched with a therapist who is available to begin treatment right away. You can reach out anytime you need them, and they will get back to you as soon as they can.

Research shows that online therapy is effective, too. One review reported that online treatment may be more effective than in-person sessions for treating depression and that participants were equally satisfied with either treatment. 

Takeaway

Everyone needs advice sometimes, but if you think you need more than inspiring words of wisdom, connecting with a therapist can help you work through your questions and feel supported in facing challenges.
Wisdom can be learned with support
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