“Life sucks” quotes capture the nature of those moments when the world seems extremely intolerant and challenges feel overwhelming.
These quotes resonate greatly with anyone who has faced hardship, disappointment, or heartbreak. They offer an honest reflection of the hardships you experience at different points in your life, providing a voice to your frustrations and pain.
While usually blunt, these quotes also serve as a collective acknowledgment that no one is alone in their struggles, making them a source of unpredictable comfort and solidarity.
Top 10 Life Sucks Quotes
“Sometimes life sucks, and all we can do is hang onto our hopes for tomorrow.” – Robert M. Drake
“Life sucks, and then you die.” – Stephenie Meyer
“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
“Just when I think I have learned the way to live, life changes.” – Hugh Prather
“Life sucks, but you have the option to sit there and cry or to stand up and turn it into something profoundly beautiful.” – Elizabeth Gilbert
“Life is tough, my darling, but so are you.” – Stephanie Bennett-Henry
“No matter how much it sucks, never give up. It’s just a bad day, not a bad life.” – Anonymous
“Sometimes life’s going to hit you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.” – Steve Jobs
“The trick is to enjoy life. Don’t wish away your days, waiting for better ones ahead.” – Marjorie Pay Hinckley
“Life sucks sometimes, but remember, it beats the alternative.” – Peter Dinklage
Also Reads: NF Quotes (with Commentary)
Inspirational Life Sucks Quotes
“When life sucks, throw yourself into art.” – Rainbow Rowell
“When life is sweet, say thank you and celebrate. And when life is bitter, say thank you and grow.” – Shauna Niequist
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford
“When you can’t find the sunshine, be the sunshine.” – Unknown
“Tough times never last, but tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller
“Life sucks a lot less when you add mountain air, a campfire and some peace and quiet.” – Brooke Hampton
“Just because today is a terrible day doesn’t mean tomorrow won’t be the best day of your life. You just gotta get there.” – Unknown
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” – Mark Twain
“We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.” – Margaret Thatcher
Life Sucks Quotes on Overcoming Adversity
“The human capacity for burden is like bamboo – far more flexible than you’d ever believe at first glance.” – Jodi Picoult
“Turn your wounds into wisdom.” – Oprah Winfrey
“It is under the greatest adversity that there exists the greatest potential for doing good, both for oneself and others.” – Dalai Lama
“Sometimes adversity is what you need to face in order to become successful.” – Zig Ziglar
“The gem cannot be polished without friction, nor man perfected without trials.” – Confucius
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford
“There is no education like adversity.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which, in prosperous circumstances, would have lain dormant.” – Horace
“Adversity is the first path to truth.” – Lord Byron
“You never know how strong you are, until being strong is your only choice.” – Bob Marley
Humorous Life Sucks Quotes
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.” – William Goldman, The Princess Bride
“I told my psychiatrist that everyone hates me. He said I was being ridiculous – everyone hasn’t met me yet.” – Rodney Dangerfield
“My life has a superb cast, but I can’t figure out the plot.” – Ashleigh Brilliant
“The best things in life are actually really expensive.” – Unknown
“Life is like a sewer… what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.” – Tom Lehrer
“Life is short. Smile while you still have teeth.” – Unknown
“If life gives you lemons, squirt someone in the eye.” – Cathy Guisewite
“Life is like a very long TV show, without a remote control.” – Unknown
“The road to success is always under construction.” – Lily Tomlin
“Remember, if you’re going through hell, keep going.” – Winston Churchill
Life Sucks Quotes on Betrayal
“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” – William Blake
“Betrayal is the only truth that sticks.” – Arthur Miller
“Every betrayal contains a perfect moment, a coin stamped heads or tails with salvation on the other side.” – Barbara Kingsolver
“For there to be betrayal, there would have to have been trust first.” – Suzanne Collins
“When you care about someone, you can’t just turn that off because you learn they betrayed you.” – Paula Stokes
“Betrayal does that — betrays the betrayer.” – Erica Jong
“It was never my enemies I had to watch out for, it was the ones shouting out my name that I had to be wary about.” – Unknown
“Sometimes the people closest to you betray you, and your home isn’t a place you can be happy anymore.” – Kristin Cast
“Nothing hurts more than being disappointed by the single person you thought would never hurt you.” – Gugu Mofokeng
“Shattered legs may heal in time, but some betrayals fester and poison the soul.” – George R.R. Martin
Life Sucks Quotes on Loss and Grief
“Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.” – Anne Roiphe
“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.” – Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.” – John Green
“The darker the night, the brighter the stars, The deeper the grief, the closer is God!” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” – C.S. Lewis
“You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news.” – Anne Lamott
“Grief, no matter where it comes from, can only be resolved by connecting to other people.” – Thomas Horn
“Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim.” – Vicki Harrison
“When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.” – Unknown
“There is no pain so great as the memory of joy in present grief.” – Aeschylus
Life Sucks Quotes on Loneliness
“Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.” – Mother Teresa
“The eternal quest of the individual human being is to shatter his loneliness.” – Norman Cousins
“Sometimes it’s better to be alone, nobody can hurt you that way.” – Unknown
“What a lovely surprise to finally discover how unlonely being alone can be.” – Ellen Burstyn
“Loneliness adds beauty to life. It puts a special burn on sunsets and makes night air smell better.” – Henry Rollins
“If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
“The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to oneself.” – Michel de Montaigne
“Loneliness is my least favorite thing about life. The thing that I’m most worried about is just being alone without anybody to care for or someone who will care for me.” – Anne Hathaway
“The loneliest moment in someone’s life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
“It’s weird to feel like you miss someone you’re not even sure you know.” – David Foster Wallace
Life Sucks Quotes on Failure
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” – Thomas A. Edison
“Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.” – Truman Capote
“It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.” – Robert F. Kennedy
“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” – Henry Ford
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
“What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?” – John Green
“Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.” – Napoleon Hill
“The phoenix must burn to emerge.” – Janet Fitch
Life Sucks Quotes from Literature
“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” – John Green, ‘The Fault in Our Stars’
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” – Zora Neale Hurston, ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God’
“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, ‘Diary’
“Human life is but a series of footnotes to a vast obscure unfinished masterpiece.” – Vladimir Nabokov, ‘Lolita’
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.” – Jonathan Safran Foer, ‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat.” – Ralph Ellison, ‘Invisible Man’
“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway, ‘A Farewell to Arms’
“What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.” – Charles Bukowski
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
Life Sucks Quotes on Unrequited Love
“The worst feeling is to be ignored once, then twice, then again and again by someone you consider precious.” – Betsy Farrell
“It’s hard to pretend you love someone when you don’t but it’s harder to pretend that you don’t love someone when you really do.” – Unknown
“I knew I was in love with you. Was I an idiot for thinking you were in love with me too?” – Jesu Nadal
“Unrequited love is the infinite curse of a lonely heart.” – Christina Westover
“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” – Federico García Lorca
“If only, if only,” the woodpecker sighs, “The bark on the tree was as soft as the skies.” While the wolf waits below, hungry and lonely, crying to the moon, “If only, If only.” – Louis Sachar
“The saddest thing in the world, is loving someone who used to love you.” – Anonymous
“Nothing takes the taste out of peanut butter quite like unrequited love.” – Charles M. Schulz
“I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace, against hope, against happiness, against all discouragement that could be.” – Charles Dickens
“It hurts to breathe because every breath I take proves I can’t live without you.” – Unknown
Philosophical Life Sucks Quotes
“Life is suffering. It is hard. The world is cursed. But still, you find reasons to keep living.” – Osa
“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – Dalai Lama
“Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.” – Søren Kierkegaard
“To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” – Confucius
“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” – Albert Camus
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” – Haruki Murakami
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Sometimes even to live is an act of courage.” – Seneca
“Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” – John Lennon
Life Sucks Quotes on Hopelessness
“When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” – Theodore Roosevelt
“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” – Desmond Tutu
“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” – William Shakespeare
“Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.” – Richard Brautigan
“To live without hope is to cease to live.” – Fyodor Dostoevsky
“Life begins on the other side of despair.” – Jean-Paul Sartre
“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“In all things it is better to hope than to despair.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” – Haruki Murakami
“I am not an optimist, but a great believer of hope.” – Nelson Mandela
Also Reads: Maria Telkes Quotes (with Commentary)
Final Thoughts
Though “life sucks” quotes may underline the darker moments of human experience, they play a vital role in the emotional landscape of your life.
By giving voice to sorrow and frustration, they help you process your emotions and often lead to a cleansing release. Moreover, these quotes remind you that adversity is a universal part of the human condition, promoting a sense of shared experience and empathy among those who find themselves in difficult times.
Finally, while these quotes acknowledge the reality that life can indeed suck, they also subtly motivate you to keep moving forward, often with a hint of wit or a promise of hope.