50 Quotes About Moving On

Moving on is something we all have to do now and again.  But many times we don’t like to do it.

Leaving behind relationships, careers, the cities we live in, or even just a version of yourself that you have outgrown is painful, albeit necessary, to continue growing and moving forward.

Here are 50 quotes about the emotions, the process and the results of moving on.  Enjoy.

“There is a time for departure, even when there is no certain place to go.”  –  Tennessee William

“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” – Albert Einstein

“You are responsible for your life. You can’t keep blaming somebody else for your dysfunction. Life is really about moving on.” – Oprah Winfrey

“Moving on, is a simple thing, what it leaves behind is hard.” – Dave Mustaine

“One must be thrust out of a finished cycle in life, and that leap is the most difficult to make – to part with one’s faith, one’s love, when one would prefer to renew the faith and recreate the passion.”  – Anais Nin

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”  – Helen Keller

“I have accepted fear as a part of life – specifically the fear of change…I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says: turn back…”  – Erica Jong

“One change always leaves the way open for the establishment of others.”  – Niccolo Machiavelli

“Change means the unknown.”  – Eleanor Roosevelt

“To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard.  If one changes internally one should not continue to live with the same objects.  They reflect one’s mind and psyche of yesterday.  I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.”  – Anais Nin

“Let the past drift away with the water.”  – Japanese saying

“I demolish my bridges behind me…then there is no choice but forward.”  – Firdtjof Nansen

“Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.”  – Sholem Asch

“The worst thing you can do is to try to cling to something that’s gone, or to recreate it.”  – Johnette Napolitano

“Don’t look back.  Something may be gaining on you.”  – Satchel Paige

“Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it is good only for wallowing.”  – Katherine Mansfield

“Tis better to have loved and lost then never to have loved at all.”  – Alfred Lord Tennyson

“Sadness flies away on the wings of time.”  – Jean de La Fontaine

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

“There is something beautiful about all scars of whatever nature. A scar means the hurt is over, the wound is closed and healed, done with.” – Harry Crews

“I thought when love for you died, I should die. It’s dead. Alone, most strangely, I live on.” – Rupert Brooke

“No yesterdays are ever wasted for those who give themselves to today.” – Brendan Francis

“Let the dead Past bury its dead!”  – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”  – Charles Dickens

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forward.”  – Soren Kierkegaard

“Living in the past is a dull and lonely business; looking back strains the neck muscles, causes you to bump into people not going your way.”  – Edna Ferbe

“The biggest thing in today’s sorrow is the memory of yesterday’s joy.”  – Kahlil Gibran

“Anyone who limits her vision to memories of yesterday is already dead.”  – Lily Langtry

“I like the dreams for the future better than the history of the past.”  – Thomas Jefferson

“The past is a funeral gone by.”  – Edmund Gosse

“Never let yesterday use up today.”  – Richard H. Nelson

“Fear not for the future, weep not for the past.”  – Percy Bysshe Shelley

“This, too, shall pass.”  – William Shakespeare

“What we call the beginning is often an end.  And to make an end is to make a beginning.  The end is where we start from.”  – T.S. Eliot

“Time is like a river of fleeting events, and its current is strong; as soon as something comes into sight, it is swept past us, and something else takes its place, and that too will be swept away.”  – Marcus Aurelius

“Make voyages.  Attempt them.  There’s nothing else.”  – Tennessee Williams

“I was never one to patiently pick up broken fragments and glue them together again and tell myself that the mended whole was as good as new. What is broken is broken, and I’d rather remember it as it was at its best than mend it and see the broken pieces as long as I lived.”  – Margaret Mitchell

“With the past, I have nothing to do; nor with the future.  I live now.”  – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now.”  – Carl Sandburg

“Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again.  Wisely improve the present, it is thine.  Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.”  – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“Don’t waste today regretting yesterday instead of making a memory for tomorrow.”  – Laura Palmer

“I just take one day.  Yesterday is gone.  Tomorrow has not come.  We have only today to love Jesus.”  – Mother Teresa

“The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.”  – Mignon McLaughlin

“When I look at the future, it’s so bright, it burns my eyes.”  – Oprah Winfrey

“Everything passes; everything wears out; everything breaks.”  – French Proverb

“Life is always at some turning point.”  – Irwin Edman

“Everything flows, nothing stays still.”  – Heraclitus

“One must never lose time in vainly regretting the past or in complaining against the changes which cause us discomfort, for change in the essence of life.”  – Anatole France

“Each new season grows from the leftovers from the past.  That is the essence of change, and change is the basic law.”  – Hal Borland

“Readjusting is a painful process, but most of us need it at one time or another.”  – Arthur Christopher Benson

Do you have any other “Moving On” quotes to add?  Please share in the comments!

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Amanda Linehan is the author of North, about a young woman on the run from her past, the law and an old adversary out to get her. Her newest release is Bored To Death: A Vampire Thriller, about a 300-year-old vampire trying to restore the balance between life and death. She has published five novels.