Top 160 Lisa Wingate Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The hardest thing about the road not taken is that you never know where it might have led.”

— Lisa Wingate

2. “Everything you want waits on the other side of fear.”

— Lisa Wingate

3. “The good life demands a lot of maintenance.”

— Lisa Wingate

4. “Your children are the greatest gift God will give to you, and their souls the heaviest responsibility He will place in your hands. Take time with them, teach them to have faith in God. Be a person in whom they can have faith. When you are old, nothing else you’ve done will have mattered as much.”

— Lisa Wingate

5. “But the love of sisters needs no words. It does not depend on memories, or mementos, or proof. It runs as deep as a heartbeat. It is as ever present as a pulse.”

— Lisa Wingate

6. “We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name.’ The first death is beyond our control, but the second one we can strive to prevent.”

— Lisa Wingate

7. “The beginning of a journey is always uncertainty, but with uncertainty comes hope.”

— Lisa Wingate

8. “Confidence is half the battle. You have to believe things will go according to plan, until events prove otherwise.”

— Lisa Wingate

9. “A bad past is like gristle. You can chew on it forever and starve yourself to death, or you can spit it out and see what else is on the table.”

— Lisa Wingate

10. “Don’t waste your time crying over what you’re not given. When you have tears in your eyes, you can’t see all the beautiful things around you.”

— Lisa Wingate

11. “Kids are supposed to grow up and cut the apron strings. I just never dreamed those sharp scissors would leave so many wounds.”

— Lisa Wingate

12. “A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses. Her own music. To hear the tune, she must only stop talking. To herself, I mean. We’re always trying to persuade ourselves of things.”

— Lisa Wingate

13. “People don’t come into our lives by accident.”

— Lisa Wingate

14. “We encourage vigorous debate. Civil debate is a healthy and democratic process. If one cannot make one’s point without yelling, name-calling, or insulting others, one should develop a stronger argument before speaking further.”

— Lisa Wingate

15. “We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name.”

— Lisa Wingate

16. “Life is not unlike cinema. Each scene has its own music, and the music is created for the scene, woven to it in ways we do not understand. No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn’t suit the moment.”

— Lisa Wingate

17. “Sometimes we must try to view the actions of those around us with forgiveness. We must realize that they are going on the only road they can see. Sometimes we cannot raise our chins and see eye to eye, so we must bow our heads and have faith in one another.”

— Lisa Wingate

18. “Life is a process of storms and rebuilding, of fires and regrowth, of loss and gain.”

— Lisa Wingate

19. “Prayers are answered in ways we don’t choose. The river of grace bubbles up in unexpected places.”

— Lisa Wingate

20. “I shush my mind, because your mind can ruin you if you let it.”

— Lisa Wingate

21. “That’s the only thing you can do with a mess. Start cleaning it up, a little at a time.”

— Lisa Wingate

22. “Other people’s judgment doesn’t have any power unless you offer yourself up for trial, so don’t.”

— Lisa Wingate

23. “Sometimes a world that doesn’t exist is the only escape from the one that does.”

— Lisa Wingate

24. “I’m hungry for water and sky and days that aren’t divided by the tiny squares in an appointment book.”

— Lisa Wingate

25. “Sometimes you need that soft place to fall. That’s your family, your faith. The stuff that doesn’t change when everything else does.”

— Lisa Wingate

26. “The future is a blank page, but not a mystery.”

— Lisa Wingate

27. “Maybe these are woodpile relatives? People my grandmother doesn’t want to acknowledge as part of the family tree? Every clan must have a few of those.”

— Lisa Wingate

28. “No matter how much we may love the melody of a bygone day or imagine the song of a future one, we must dance within the music of today, or we will always be out of step, stumbling around in something that doesn’t suit the moment.”

— Lisa Wingate

29. “What we cannot change we must endure without bitterness.”

— Lisa Wingate

30. “One of the best things a father can do for his daughter is let her know that she has met his expectations. My father did that for me, and no amount of effort on my part can fully repay the debt.”

— Lisa Wingate

31. “I want a pain I understand instead of the one I don’t. I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.”

— Lisa Wingate

32. “Well, that’s one of the paradoxes of life. You can’t have it all. You can have some of this and some of that or all of this and none of that. We make the trade-offs we think are best at the time.”

— Lisa Wingate

33. “A woman’s past need not predict her future. She can dance to new music if she chooses.”

— Lisa Wingate

34. “The great thing about literature is that it’s subjective. No two readers read the same book, because we all see the words through different eyes, filter the story through different life experiences.”

— Lisa Wingate

35. “I’ve found in life that bygones are a bit like collard greens. They tend to taste bitter. It’s best not to chew on them overly long.”

— Lisa Wingate

36. “What the mind don’t ’member, the heart still know. Love, the strongest thang of all. Stronger than all the rest.”

— Lisa Wingate

37. “The man who buys what he does not need will often need what he cannot buy.’”

— Lisa Wingate

38. “I learned that you need not be born into a family to be loved by one.”

— Lisa Wingate

39. “We’ve been joined at the heart since she was born. Now my heart’s gone.”

— Lisa Wingate

40. “I drop her on the cot and turn away and grab my hair and pull until it hurts. I want to pull all of it out. Every single piece. I want a pain I understand instead of the one I don’t. I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.”

— Lisa Wingate

41. “We plan our days, but we don’t control them.”

— Lisa Wingate

42. “For the hundreds who vanished and for the thousands who didn’t. May your stories not be forgotten. For those who help today’s orphans find forever homes. May you always know the value of your work and your love.”

— Lisa Wingate

43. “I realize it’s not the best timing-it’s only been a month, but life isn’t about waiting for perfect timing. If you’re not careful, life happens while your stuck in a holding pattern.”

— Lisa Wingate

44. “There will always be those memories that tie us together, those invisible strings. The careless stitches of mother and daughter. Suddenly.”

— Lisa Wingate

45. “Nothing takes you from thirty years old to thirteen faster than your mother’s voice rebounding up the stairs like a tennis ball after a forehand slice.”

— Lisa Wingate

46. “My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon.”

— Lisa Wingate

47. “At the very least, we must tell our stories, mustn’t we? Speak the names? You know, there is an old proverb that says, ‘We die once when the last breath leaves our bodies. We die a second time when the last person speaks our name.’ The first death is beyond our.”

— Lisa Wingate

48. “There is so much good. So much grace. So much pouring into the river. A quiet water, this river of grace. Its work done in ways that do not seek attention. Yet it is there. Always there. A.”

— Lisa Wingate

49. “You got to remember that when things are out of our hands, that doesn’t mean they’re not in God’s.”

— Lisa Wingate

50. “The river’s got her own magic. She takes care of her people. Always will. But tonight, that magic’s gone bad.”

— Lisa Wingate