100 Inspiring Quotes For Staying Positive In Tough Times (2024)

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Earlier I made a collection of uplifting quotes for hard times that can cheer you up when life doesn’t exactly go your way. Today, I’d like to share another 100 inspiring quotes about staying positive in tough times and to focus specifically on keeping a positive mindset no matter what.

Why is staying positive important during a tough time?

According to research, replacing negative self-talk with positive thoughts helps reduce stress, minimize anxiety, and reduce the risk of serious diseases. Staying positive during tough times is especially important as we already have enough negativity surrounding us and we should bring our own positivity into the picture to balance it.

If you give in to negative feelings and continue feeding them with blame, anger, frustration, or self-pity, it’ll be harder and harder to go back to happiness when tough times pass. Instead of complaining about the same thing all the time, shift your focus on things that you actually can control at the moment, and try to improve the situation from there.

You’ll never know how much power is hidden inside you unless you look. Try to find it in you to cheer up, show your cute smile to the world (or even just to the mirror), and concentrate on whatever good’s left. Who knows, you might surprise yourself with a creative solution or a new way of overcoming your struggle.

Do tough times make you stronger?

They say what doesn’t break you, makes you stronger.

Difficult times make us realize how much good in life we were taking for granted. They teach us appreciation and make us work hard to overcome challenges life throws at us, which results in our growth and character development.

Going through a tough time will make you stronger if you make an actual effort to survive it, keep a positive attitude when it’s the hardest, and have the willingness to enjoy life no matter what. Overcoming difficulties in life usually involves stress, pain, and even heartbreak, and if you keep your head up through all that it will toughen you up.

That said, you don’t ever have to go through hard times alone. Reach out to a friend, a family member who cares about you, or send a message to an online therapist whenever you feel like you need an extra hand of support. There is no shame in asking for help and sharing your pain with other people, and it doesn’t make you less strong.

Do tough times last forever?

Tough times never last forever, and the Universe never gives you a challenge that you can’t overcome. The better days will come eventually, and you’ll be able to enjoy life again, even if you don’t feel like it’s possible right now. Trust the process, keep smiling, learn your lessons, and wait for the good days.

One of my favorite quotes that I always remind myself of in difficult times is this:

Everything will be okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’snot the end.

Keep this in mind whenever you start losing hope or giving in to the fear of the future.

Can you stay positive when life is hard?

Life is not black and white, and even in hardship, there are always things to be grateful for and reasons to smile about. Focus on the good you still have, try to be more present to notice the moments of joy, and distract yourself with various productive things to do that will take your mind off your struggles.

Every morning you have a choice: you can complain and indulge in self-destroying thoughts or you can put a smile on your face and try to make the world a better place.

These positive quotes will help you lean toward the latter if you read a couple of them as soon as you wake up!

10 best quotes for staying positive in tough times

1. Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise. – Victor Hugo

2. A lot of things are going to happen that you can’t necessarily control all the time, but you can control what you do after it happens. So that’s what I try to do, keep my head up, keep moving forward, stay positive and just work hard. – Lonzo Ball

3. A sense of humor helps us to get through the dull times, cope with the difficult times, enjoy the good times and manage the scary times. – Steve Goodier

4. At times the world may seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe that there is much more good in it than bad. – Lemony Snicket

5. Successful people maintain a positive focus in life no matter what is going on around them. They stay focused on their past successes rather than their past failures, and on the next action steps they need to take to get them closer to the fulfillment of their goals rather than all the other distractions that life presents to them. – Jack Canfield

6. Things turn out the best for the people who make the best of the way things turn out. – John Wooden

7. You will be fine. There may be decisions to make, and surprises in store. Life takes us to unexpected places sometimes. – Erin Morgenstern

8. Inspiration comes from within yourself. One has to be positive. When you’re positive, good things happen. – Deep Roy

9. If we don’t have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there; we can try to feel okay about it. – Stephen Chbosky

10. The essence of optimism is that it takes no account of the present, but it is a source of inspiration, of vitality and hope where others have resigned; it enables a man to hold his head high, to claim the future for himself and not to abandon it to his enemy. – Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Quotes about being happy when things are hard

1. Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you. – Walt Whitman

2. Today I choose: calm over chaos, serenity over stress, peace over perfection, grace over grit, faith over fear. – Mary Davis

3. Love yourself. It is important to stay positive because beauty comes from the inside out. – Jenn Proske

4. And hard times are good in their own way, too. Because the only way you can achieve true happiness is if you experience true sadness as well. – Gabrielle Williams

5. You do not find a happy life. You make it. – Thomas S. Monson

6. Much of life isn’t fair. It’s how you live that matters. It’s how you deal with the bumps in the road. – Maya Banks

7. Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. – Nathaniel Hawthorne

8. Everything is either an opportunity to grow or an obstacle to keep you from growing. You get to choose. – Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

9. The music we do is for people to enjoy, dance and sing to it. Dreamers – keep on dreaming and keep working hard to achieve your goals. There are many difficulties, but what matters is to stay focused and have perseverance. – Bad Bunny

10. The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper. – Bertrand Russell

Quotes about trying to stay positive no matter what

1. Even if happiness forgets you a little bit, never completely forget about it. – Jacques Prevert

2. My optimism has helped me through some hard times. If you try to send out good things, good things come back to you. – Jan Brett

3. Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. – Vaclav Havel

4. Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. – Thomas Edison

5. Stay true to yourself, yet always be open to learn. Work hard, and never give up on your dreams, even when nobody else believes they can come true but you. These are not cliches but real tools you need no matter what you do in life to stay focused on your path. – Phillip Sweet

6. 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

7. Never give up, and be confident in what you do. There may be tough times, but the difficulties which you face will make you more determined to achieve your objectives and to win against all the odds. – Marta

8. We can choose to wake up and grumble all day and be bitter and angry and judge others and find satisfaction in others doing bad instead of good. Or we can we wake up with optimism and love and say, ‘Just what is this beautiful day going to bring me?’ – Margaret Trudeau

9. Stay positive and happy. Work hard and don’t give up hope. Be open to criticism and keep learning. Surround yourself with happy, warm and genuine people. – Tena Desae

10. If you are feeling low or trampled, unappreciated or forgotten, and you are reading this, realize it is an illusion. The hope is real, you are valued, and what lies ahead is brilliance. – Tom Althouse

Really inspirational quotes for tough times

1. When you come to the edge of all that you know, you must believe one of two things: There will be ground to stand. Or you will grow wings to fly. – O.R. Melling

2. 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. – Thisuri Wanniarachchi

3. I will love the light for it shows me the way, yet I will endure the darkness for it shows me the stars. – Og Mandino

4. If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. – Bruce Lee

5. Accept responsibility for your life. Know that it is you who will get you where you want to go, no one else. – Les Brown

6. Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place. – Rumi

7. The climb might be tough and challenging, but the view is worth it. There is a purpose for that pain; you just can’t always see it right away. – Victoria Arlen

8. Joy is sometimes a blessing, but it is often a conquest. Our magic moment help us to change and sends us off in search of our dreams. Yes, we are going to suffer, we will have difficult times, and we will experience many disappointments – but all of this is transitory it leaves no permanent mark. And one day we will look back with pride and faith at the journey we have taken. – Paulo Coelho

9. Though no one can go back and make a brand new start, anyone can start from now and make a brand new ending. – Carl Bard

10. There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow. – Aaron Lauritsen

Tough life quotes to stay positive and strong

1. Sometimes we fall, sometimes we stumble, but we can’t stay down. We can’t allow life to beat us down. Everything happens for a reason, and it builds character in us, and it tells us what we are about and how strong we really are when we didn’t think we could be that strong. – Gail Devers

2. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today. – Thich Nhat Hanh

3. That which does not kill us makes us stronger. – Friedrich Nietzsche

4. Life is full of tough decisions, and nothing makes them easy. But the worst ones are really your personal koans, and tormenting ambivalence is just the sense of satori rising. Try, trust, try, and trust again, and eventually you’ll feel your mind change its focus to a new level of understanding. – Martha Beck

5. Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. – Confucius

6. Being brave isn’t the absence of fear. Being brave is having that fear but finding a way through it. – Bear Grylls

7. Be willing to be uncomfortable. Be comfortable being uncomfortable. It may get tough, but it’s a small price to pay for living a dream. – Peter McWilliams

8. Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness. – Ayn Rand

9. The challenge is to stay cool enough to handle the pressure in the moment so that you can succeed in the future. – Jurgen Klopp

10. Never give up. There are always tough times, regardless of what you do in anything in life. Be able to push through those times and maintain your ultimate goal. – Nathan Chen

Quotes for staying positive around negativity

1. If we never experience the chill of a dark winter, it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day. Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation. In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully, it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom, and find the blessing in every curse. – Anthon St. Maarten

2. Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning how to dance in the rain. – Vivian Greene

3. People tend to be generous when sharing their nonsense, fear, and ignorance. And while they seem quite eager to feed you their negativity, please remember that sometimes the diet we need to be on is a spiritual and emotional one. Be cautious with what you feed your mind and soul. Fuel yourself with positivity and let that fuel propel you into positive action. – Steve Maraboli

4. If someone decides they’re not going to be happy, it’s not your problem. You don’t have to spend your time and energy trying to cheer up someone who has already decided to stay in a bad mood. Believe it or not, you can actually hurt people by playing into their self-pity. – Joyce Meyer

5. If you want to bring the world closer to peace, be a peacemaker by creating peace whenever you can. If you find yourself engaged in an argument that only stirs anger in the heart, quickly make peace and carry on. – Suzy Kassem

6. When you are joyful, when you say yes to life and have fun and project positivity all around you, you become a sun in the center of every constellation, and people want to be near you. – Shannon L. Alder

7. In the midst of happiness or despair in sorrow or in joy in pleasure or in pain: Do what is right and you will be at peace. – Jess Rothenberg

8. Human spirit is the ability to face the uncertainty of the future with curiosity and optimism. It is the belief that problems can be solved, differences resolved. It is a type of confidence. And it is fragile. It can be blackened by fear and superstition. – Bernard Beckett

9. Know that joy is rarer, more difficult, and more beautiful than sadness. Once you make this all-important discovery, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation. – André Gide

10. To balance the balance sheet of life, concentrate on your assets of positivity while managing your liabilities of negativities. – Vikrmn

Quotes for staying positive in a bad situation

1. One of the things I learned the hard way was that it doesn’t pay to get discouraged. Keeping busy and making optimism a way of life can restore your faith in yourself. – Lucille

2. You’re going to go through tough times – that’s life. But I say, ‘Nothing happens to you, it happens for you.’ See the positive in negative events. – Joel Osteen

3. You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun. – Shaun Hick

4. What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you. – Ralph Waldo Emerson

5. When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight. – Kahlil Gibran

6. If it’s not exactly like you thought it would be, you think it’s a failure. What about the spectrum of colors in between. – Sara Evans

7. When you get into a tight place, and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not 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

8. Sometimes the worst thing happens to you, the thing you think you can’t survive… it’s the thing that makes you better than you used to be. – Jennifer Weiner

9. Just for the record darling, not all positive change feels positive in the beginning. – S. C. Lourie

10. When tough times come, it is particularly important to offset them with much gentle softness. Be a pillow. – Vera Nazarian

“I will get through this” quotes for self-encouragement

1. Tough times never last, but tough people do. – Robert H. Schuller

2. If you’re going through hell, keep going. – Winston Churchill

3. Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A world of optimism and hope. A ‘you can do it’ when things are tough. – Richard M. DeVos

4. I get it now; I didn’t get it then. That life is about losing and about doing it as gracefully as possible… and enjoying everything in between. – Mia Farrow

5. I’m going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life. – Elsie De Wolfe

6. We face up to awful things because we can’t go around them. The sooner you say ‘Yes, it happened,’ the sooner you can get on with your own life. – Annie Proulx

7. You don’t drown by falling into water. You only drown if you stay there. – Zig Ziglar

8. It’s not that I’m so smart, it’s just that I stay with problems longer. – Albert Einstein

9. To succeed, you have to do something and be very bad at it for a while. You have to look bad before you can look really good. – Barbara DeAngelis

10. The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide that you are not going to stay where you are. – Chauncey Depew

Staying positive in difficult times is possible quotes

1. If we can just let go and trust that things will work out the way they’re supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experience itself. – Goldie Hawn

2. Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. – Christopher Reeve

3. Confidence isn’t optimism or pessimism, and it’s not a character attribute. It’s the expectation of a positive outcome. – Rosabeth Moss

4. You will always have ups and downs in your life and your career, but just stay positive and go for it. – Angelique Kerber

5. We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. – Martin Luther King

6. There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. – Nicholas Sparks

7. I’m continually inspired by nature, and the rainbow is one of nature’s greatest optical phenomenons. The sighting of a rainbow never fails to bring a smile to people’s faces. They signify optimism and positivity: with them comes the sunshine after the rain. – Matthew Williamson

8. When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. – Franklin D. Roosevelt

9. Among the tales of sorrow and of ruin that came down to us from the darkness of those days there are yet some in which amid weeping there is joy and under the shadow of death light that endures. – J.R.R. Tolkien

10. Any day above ground is a good day. Before you complain about anything, be thankful for your life and the things that are still going well. – Germany Kent

Quotes about smiling through the hard times

1. Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile, but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy. – Thich Nhat Hanh

2. The good life is not built on a foundation of ease… it’s the hard times that give us a rock-solid foundation. – Richie Norton

3. Laughter is wine for the soul – laughter soft, or loud and deep, tinged through with seriousness – the hilarious declaration made by man that life is worth living. – Sean O’Casey

4. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. – Ernest Hemingway

5. The struggles we endure today will be the ‘good old days’ we laugh about tomorrow. – Aaron Lauritsen

6. Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared. – Buddha

7. The most wasted of all days is one without laughter. – Nicolas Chamfort

8. Feel what you need to feel and then let it go. Don’t let it consume you. – Dhiman

9. There are random moments – tossing a salad, coming up the driveway to the house, ironing the seams flat on a quilt square, standing at the kitchen window and looking out at the delphiniums, hearing a burst of laughter from one of my children’s rooms – when I feel a wavelike rush of joy. This is my true religion: arbitrary moments of of nearly painful happiness for a life I feel privileged to lead. – Elizabeth Berg

10. We are not going to change the whole world, but we can change ourselves and feel free as birds. We can be serene even in the midst of calamities and, by our serenity, make others more tranquil. Serenity is contagious. If we smile at someone, he or she will smile back. And a smile costs nothing. We should plague everyone with joy. If we are to die in a minute, why not die happily, laughing? – Sri S. Satchidananda

Final thoughts on staying positive in tough times

These were 100 inspiring quotes to help you stay positive in difficult times!

I wish you find enough strength in yourself to look for the little things to be happy about every day until the storm passes. And hopefully, you’ll see the light sooner than you think!

More motivational quotes to help you through challenges:

• 100 Inspirational Quotes About Life Struggles And Challenges
• 100 Better Days Are Coming Quotes To Keep Your Head Up
• 270 Positive Quotes For Monday Motivation
• 101 Positive Uplifting Quotes For Hard Times
• 150 Quotes About Being Positive And Happily Enjoying Life