52 Uplifting & Inspirational Self-Care Quotes

Looking for some quotes about self-care to elevate your thinking? Look no further! These inspirational self-care quotes are perfect to add to your self-care routine or to help you reset.

Self-care is a great way to reduce stress and increase your sense of well-being. If you want to learn more about self-care, check out this article I wrote all about it.

If you already do self-care and just want to know how to make it better, try this article instead. But if you are here just for the quotes, that is fine too! There are quotes specifically about self-care, as well as about the three tiers of self-care: enhancing your sense of relief, satisfaction, and wonder.

After all, self-care is flexible and can target different areas depending on what you need. Whether you are looking for increased peace, motivation, creativity, or confidence, you are sure to find something that resonates in these inspirational self-care quotes that I have curated for you here.

(And if you are just here for the printables, you will find them at the end of the article.)

If you want to skip ahead...

52 Inspirational Self-Care Quotes

Relief Focused Self-Care Quotes

Any list of inspirational self-care quotes is incomplete without some quotes about relief. Increasing a sense of relief is one of the go-to goals of self-care. While increasing a sense of satisfaction and wonder are not as high on some people’s priorities (even though they should be!), usually increasing one’s sense of relief is.

It is very common to only resort to self-care when feeling particularly worn down and drained. That is why increasing relief is so high on most people’s lists when they pursue self-care.

These inspirational self-care quotes about relief are meant to specifically target relief. Even if these quotes do not change your life, they may help you to increase your ability to breathe and relax.

“It’s a relief to hear the rain. It’s the sound of billions of drops, all equal, all equally committed to falling, like a sudden outbreak of democracy. Water, when it hits the ground, instantly becomes a puddle or rivulet or flood.”
-Alice Oswald

“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.”
-Washington Irving

“Without the dark there isn’t light. Without the pain there is no relief.”
-Jenny Lawson

“Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me–I am happy.”
-Hamlin Garland

“It is a feeling of relief, almost of pleasure, at knowing yourself at last genuinely down and out. You have talked so often of going to the dogs–and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.”
-George Orwell

“We are all of us not merely liable to fear, we are also prone to be afraid of being afraid, and the conquering of fear produces exhilaration… The contrast between the previous apprehension and the present relief and feeling of security promotes a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage.”
-Malcolm Gladwell

“Just relieve your mind of the job of making sure that everyone and everything will be the way you need them to be so that you can feel better inside.”
-Michael A. Singer

“Faith doesn’t always instantly deliver you, but it always carries you through.”
-Joel Osteen

“For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”
-Lily Tomlin

“To experience peace does not mean that your life is always blissful. It means that you are capable of tapping into a blissful state of mind amidst the normal chaos of a hectic life.”
-Jill Bolte Taylor

“Laughter is the tonic, the relief, the surcease for pain.”
-Charlie Chaplin

“There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in storm.”
-Willa Cather

“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
-William James

Satisfaction Focused Self-Care Quotes

Being able to increase your sense of satisfaction is another important aspect of self-care. We generally feel a lot better about life when we are satisfied with it. Satisfaction focused quotes for self-care help to bring an attitude of accomplishment and competence.

Increasing your sense of satisfaction also helps with increasing motivation. When you feel good about what you have accomplished thus far, it helps you feel more optimistic about what you can accomplish in the future.

The following inspirational self-care quotes about satisfaction are meant to specifically target and increase your sense of satisfaction.

“It was hard work, but it was exhilarating–the kind of feeling that comes from being alive and taking part in some great common enterprise.”
-Laurence Yep

“Those three things–autonomy, complexity, and a connection between effort and reward—are, most people will agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.”
-Malcolm Gladwell

“She liked the dabbling. She felt in it a satisfaction of a kind which no other employment afforded her.”
-Kate Chopin

“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud.”
-C. S. Lewis

“These are the sort of things people ought to look at. Things without pretensions, satisfied to be merely themselves.”
-Aldous Huxley

“Do the kinds of things that come from the heart. When you do, you won’t be dissatisfied, you won’t be envious, you won’t be longing for somebody else’s things. On the contrary, you’ll be overwhelmed with what comes back.”
-Mitch Albom

“To be able to look back upon one’s past life with satisfaction is to live twice.”
-Martial

“Human life may be regarded as a succession of frontispieces. The way to be satisfied is never to look back.”
-William Hazlitt

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.”
-Walt Whitman

“The miracle is not that we do this work, but that we are happy to do it.”
-Mother Teresa

“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.”
-Leonardo da Vinci

“Somehow, we’ll find it. The balance between whom we wish to be and whom we need to be. But for now, we simply have to be satisfied with who we are.”
-Brandon Sanderson

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

Wonder Focused Self-Care Quotes

Wonder is an often forgotten facet of self-care. If relief is not the focus, satisfaction usually is, and wonder rarely comes into the mix.

However, increasing your sense of wonder can go a long way towards increasing your contentment with your life. We all need a reminder sometimes that life can be good, beautiful, and wholesome.

If your sense of wonder could use a boost, the following inspirational self-care quotes should help.

“Always be on the lookout for the presence of wonder.”
-E. B. White

“I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.”
-Gerry Spence

“There are no great limits to growth because there are no limits of human intelligence, imagination, and wonder.”
-Ronald Reagan

“I believe that curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do.”
-Kay Redfield Jamison

“Once we believe in ourselves, we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight, or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
-E. E. Cummings

“You will enrich your life immeasurably if you approach it with a sense of wonder and discovery, and always challenge yourself to try new things.”
-Nate Berkus

“We carry within us, the wonders we seek around us.”
-Sir Thomas Browne

“It is not ignorance but knowledge which is the mother of wonder.”
-Joseph Wood Krutch

“Every moment of light and dark is a miracle.”
-Walt Whitman

“Look at everything in the world as if you are seeing it for the first time, and paint everything as if you were seeing it for the last time.”
-Andrew Hamilton

“The moments that I feel the most imbued with a sense of awe are always the moments when I am outdoors. I can’t help but feel a certain sense of wonder–I become almost filled with it.”
-Kathi Appelt

“I think on some level, you do your best things when you’re a little off-balance, a little scared. You’ve got to work from mystery, from wonder, from not knowing.”
-Willem Dafoe

“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
-Socrates

Inspirational Quotes for Self-Care

Maybe you came here for some general quotes about self-care, and just want to feel like life is okay for a minute. If the previous inspirational self-care quotes have not quite hit the mark, this section should do the trick.

After all, while self-care can be boiled down to the three facets of relief, satisfaction, and wonder, the overall goal is the same. Ultimately self-care is meant to increase your feelings of well-being and care. It is meant to validate your struggle, your accomplishments, your hopes and dreams.

Self-care is all about creating space for yourself in your life. The following quotes about self-care focus on this overall intention to care for and love yourself.

“Write it on your heart that every day is the best day in the year.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

“There are days I drop words of comfort on myself like falling leaves and remember that it is enough to be taken care of by myself.”
-Brian Andreas

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”
-Oprah

“Invent your world. Surround yourself with people, color, sounds, and work that nourish you.”
-Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy

“Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it’s holy ground. There’s no greater investment.”
-Stephen Covey

“Love yourself first, and everything else falls in line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
-Lucille Ball

“Accept yourself, love yourself, and keep moving forward. If you want to fly, you have to give up what weighs you down.”
-Roy T. Bennett

“Nourishing yourself in a way that helps you blossom in the direction you want to go is attainable, and you are worth the effort.”
-Deborah Day

“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”
-Anne Lamott

“Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.”
-Christopher Germer

“Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept.”
-Anna Taylor

“The challenge is not to be perfect–it is to be whole.”
-Jane Fonda

“Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love.”
-Brené Brown

In Conclusion

These inspirational self-care quotes are a little dip into the ocean of self-care. If they are your introduction into the world of caring for yourself, you will also find this article about self-care tips helpful.

Please feel free to share your own favorite self-care quotes in the comments below!