Top 160 Life is Hard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “When you get to the end of your rope. Tie a knot and hang on.”

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

Also featured in: Perseverance Quotes, Encouragement Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Survival Quotes

2. “It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

Also featured in: Happiness Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Pain Quotes

3. “Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside – remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”

— Charles Bukowski

4. “Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth.”

— Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes, Depressing Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Sorrow Quotes

5. “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

— C. S. Lewis

Also featured in: Spiritual Growth Quotes, Faith Quotes, Struggle Quotes

6. “It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Meaningful Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes

7. “If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.”

— Viktor E. Frankl

Also featured in: Sad Quotes, Existentialism Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Suffering Quotes

8. “I hate that word – “lucky.” It cheapens a lot of hard work. Living in Brooklyn in an apartment without any heat and paying for dinner at the bodega with dimes – I don’t think I felt myself lucky back then. Doing plays for 50 bucks and trying to be true to myself as an artist and turning down commercials where they wanted a leprechaun. Saying I was lucky negates the hard work I put in and spits on that guy who’s freezing his ass off back in Brooklyn. So I won’t say I’m lucky. I’m fortunate enough to find or attract very talented people. For some reason I found them, and they found me.”

— Peter Dinklage

Also featured in: Motivational Quotes, Hard Work Quotes, Struggle Quotes, Inspirational Career Quotes

9. “I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself. A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough without ever having felt sorry for itself.”

— D. H. Lawrence

Also featured in: Resilience Quotes

10. “Life’s hard. It’s even harder when you’re stupid.”

— John Wayne

Also featured in: Hilarious Quotes, Character Quotes

11. “Nothing that’s worthwhile is ever easy. Remember that.”

— Nicholas Sparks

Also featured in: Perseverance Quotes, Challenges Quotes, Monday Motivation Quotes

12. “The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.”

— Eminem

Also featured in: Short Quotes About Life, Artist Quotes, Crazy Quotes

13. “You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.”

— Denzel Washington

14. “Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Not Giving Up Quotes, Achievement Quotes, Keep Going Quotes

15. “The purpose of life is finding the largest burden that you can bear and bearing it.”

— Jordan B. Peterson

Also featured in: Struggle Quotes, Being Strong Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Responsibility Quotes

16. “In order to realize the worth of the anchor we need to feel the stress of the storm.”

— Corrie ten Boom

Also featured in: Christian Motivational Quotes, Adversity Quotes, Stress Quotes

17. “Life is rough so you gotta be tough.”

— Johnny Cash

Also featured in: Stay Strong Quotes, Being Strong Quotes

18. “Life isn’t fair. It never will be. Quit trying to make it fair. You don’t need it to be fair. Go make life unfair to your advantages.”

— Robert T. Kiyosaki

Also featured in: Hustle Quotes, Hard Hitting Quotes, Making Money Quotes

19. “Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.”

— Eknath Easwaran

Also featured in: Patience Quotes, Not Giving Up Quotes, Work Hard Quotes, Don't Give Up Quotes

20. “Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”

— C. S. Lewis

Also featured in: Experience Quotes, Lifelong Learning Quotes, Pain Quotes

21. “These things will be hard to do, but you can do hard things.”

— Glennon Doyle Melton

Also featured in: Quotes About Strength, Inspirational Quotes for Women, Journey Quotes, Obstacles Quotes

22. “Life is a storm, my young friend. You will bask in the sunlight one moment, be shattered on the rocks the next. What makes you a man is what you do when that storm comes.”

— Alexandre Dumas

Also featured in: Obstacles Quotes, Adversity Quotes

23. “No man is more unhappy than he who never faces adversity. For he is not permitted to prove himself.”

— Seneca the Younger

Also featured in: Obstacles Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Adversity Quotes

24. “The deepest level of worship is praising God despite pain, trusting Him during a trial, surrendering while suffering, and loving Him when He seems distant.”

— Rick Warren

Also featured in: Christian Quotes, Suffering Quotes

25. “Courage is when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what.”

— Harper Lee

Also featured in: Courage Quotes, Never Give Up Quotes, Values Quotes, Adversity Quotes

26. “However dark the night, however dim our hopes, the light will always follow darkness.”

— Louis Zamperini

Also featured in: Quotes About Hope, Darkness Quotes, Keep Your Head Up Quotes

27. “No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown.”

— William Penn

Also featured in: Suffering Quotes, Sacrifice Quotes

28. “When you're struggling with something, look at all the people around you and realize that every single person you see is struggling with something, and to them, it's just as hard as what you're going through.”

— Nicholas Sparks

Also featured in: Empathy Quotes, Suffering Quotes, Sympathy Quotes

29. “When you hit rock bottom, you have nowhere to go but up.”

— Pattie Mallette

Also featured in: Never Give Up Quotes, Recovery Quotes, Keep Your Head Up Quotes

30. “I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape.”

— Charles Dickens

31. “There is no better than adversity. Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time.”

— Malcolm X

Also featured in: Being Strong Quotes, Adversity Quotes

32. “A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”

— Helen Keller

Also featured in: Obstacles Quotes

33. “One of the hardest decisions you’ll ever face in life is choosing whether to walk away or try harder.”

— Ziad K. Abdelnour

Also featured in: Quotes for Better Decisions

34. “Tough times are inevitable in life and in business. But how you compose yourself during those times defines your spirit and will define your future.”

— Richard Branson

Also featured in: Obstacles Quotes, Professional Growth Quotes, Resilience Quotes

35. “There are no happy endings.”

— George R.R. Martin

Also featured in: Sad Quotes, Sadness Quotes

36. “I don’t know how to live well. I only know how to suffer.”

— Bob Marley

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes, Sad Quotes About Life, Suffering Quotes

37. “Some days, doing “the best we can” may still fall short of what we would like to be able to do, but life isn’t perfect on any front-and doing what we can with what we have is the most we should expect of ourselves or anyone else.”

— Fred Rogers

38. “Life is not what it’s supposed to be. It’s what it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference.”

— Virginia Satir

Also featured in: Acceptance Quotes, Mental Health Quotes, Resilience Quotes, Adaptability Quotes

39. “If you find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.”

— Frank A. Clark

Also featured in: Obstacles Quotes, Path Quotes

40. “Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can’t get any better, it can.”

— Nicholas Sparks

41. “Suddenly you’re ripped into being alive. And life is pain, and life is suffering, and life is horror, but my god you’re alive and its spectacular.”

— Joseph Campbell

42. “Sometimes you’ve got to go through hell to get to heaven.”

— Dean Karnazes

Also featured in: Running Quotes, Suffering Quotes

43. “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

— Thomas Hobbes

Also featured in: Human Nature Quotes, Depressing Quotes

44. “Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work and driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for – in order to get to the job you need to pay for the clothes and the car, and the house you leave vacant all day so you can afford to live in it.”

— Ellen Goodman

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes

45. “Sometimes God lets you hit rock bottom so that you will discover He is the Rock at the bottom.”

— Tony Evans

Also featured in: Scripture Quotes, Sunday Morning Quotes, Salvation Quotes

46. “No one can tell what goes on in between the person you were and the person you become. No one can chart that blue and lonely section of hell. There are no maps of the change. You just come out the other side. Or you don’t.”

— Stephen King

Also featured in: Sad Quotes, Lonely Quotes

47. “Rome was not built in a day. Opposition will come your way. But the harder the battle you see, it’s the sweeter the victory.”

— Jimmy Cliff

Also featured in: Never Give Up Quotes, Resilience Quotes, Victory Quotes

48. “Work every day. No matter what has happened the day or night before, get up and bite on the nail.”

— Ernest Hemingway

Also featured in: Quotes About Night

49. “Successful people don’t have any fewer problems than unsuccessful people; they just have a different mindset in dealing with them.”

— John C. Maxwell

Also featured in: Growth Mindset Quotes, Mental Strength Quotes, Problem-Solving Quotes

50. “The courage it took to get out of bed each morning to face the same things over and over was enormous.”

— Charles Bukowski

Also featured in: Depressing Quotes