Life is not unlike a stream of water that flows downhill. It is constantly moving and changing, ebbing and flowing.
There are times when the current is strong and we feel like we can ride it to wherever we want to go. And there are other times when the stream seems calm and peaceful, a time for rest and reflection.
No matter what the circumstances, we must always remember that we are in control of how we choose to think and act. We can overcome any obstacle if we believe that no matter what happens, everything will be okay. This is the power of riding the wave mentality.
Here are 70 quotes about riding the waves of life that can help you to have confidence and bravery when moving forward in life.
Famous Ride the Wave Quotes
1. “I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” – Louisa May Alcott
2. “If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.” – E. Joseph Cossman
3. “All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
4. “There was a time when I felt I should do everything that was offered to me, you know, ride the wave.” – Christian Slater
5. “When I got on stage, I would have a rush of adrenaline, everybody gets it. Normally, after the first night, it becomes more controllable, and as long as I could ride the wave, I was still in charge.” – Samantha Bond
6. “There are two types of people who will tell you that you cannot make a difference in this world: those who are afraid to try and those who are already trying.” – Ray Bradbury
7. “I’m talking to myself in two different personas now. I’m reaching for a full-throttle meltdown and why not? Why stop halfway? Why not just go for it, jump on and ride the wave?” – C.K. Kelly Martin
8. “Our Constitution was not written in the sands to be washed away by each wave of new judges blown in by each successive political wind.” – Hugo Black
9. “When you were riding on the crest of a wave, you were most likely to be missing out on something.” – Knute Rockne
10. “Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is ride the wave.” – Eckhart Tolle
11. “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph! What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price on its goods.” – Thomas Paine
12. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the best.” – John D. Rockefeller
13. “It was time to ride the wave or drown in a sea of crazy.” – Jesse Andrews
14. “Perhaps this is the most important thing for me to take back from beach-living: simply the memory that each cycle of the tide is valid; each cycle of the wave is valid; each cycle of a relationship is valid.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh
15. “Such is an actor’s life. We must ride the waves of every film, barfing occasionally, yet maintain our dignity, even as the bulk of our Herculean efforts are keel-hauled before our very eyes.” – Bruce Campbell
16. “Give me a wave I can ride upon, come and show your strength to me.” – Gordon Lightfoot
17. “You know what else I’ve learned? That it’s all right not to ride the crest of the wave. Every time a wave comes along I retreat, and I haven’t come to any harm yet.” – Jennifer Ehle
18. “As people get more desperate, history suggests that they’re not going to rise in a mighty proletarian tidal wave and wash away their oppressors. They’re gonna turn on each other.” – Alan Moore
19. “One moment you appear to be riding the crest of a wave, only to have the rug pulled away from you, bringing you back down to earth with a sickening thud.” – John Barrow
20. “You absolutely feel, as a black actress, that you’ve got to ride the wave because there’s just so few roles. I hate to play that card, but it’s the truth. There’s not a lot of roles.” – Viola Davis
21. “Let your heart become so saturated with love that you are able to ride the waves of change with equipoise, and find new meaning in everything that happens.” – Gurumayi Chidvilasananda
22. “Rooting from the sidelines is the most democratic of sporting rites: no skyboxes, no tickets required, just an unabashed will to holler and wave.” – Nancy Gibbs
23. “There aren’t that many policy changes you can do, so I’d say you ride the wave and hope that maybe some of the external events help you.” – Brad Carson
24. “Love is a wave building to a crescendo. Ride if you will, ride it with me.” – Jimmy Buffett
25. “You can never ride on the wave that came in and went out yesterday.” – John Wanamaker
26. “Through loyalty to the past, our mind refuses to realize that tomorrow’s joy is possible only if today’s makes way for it; that each wave owes the beauty of its line only to the withdrawal of the preceding one.” – Andre Gide
27. “You can’t surf all the time. You’ve got to get out of the water and work.” – Kelly Slater
28. “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny, and then do it.” – Henry Ford
29. “Riding the waves of change means accepting that everything in our lives is in a state of flux.” – Pema Chodron
30. “So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
31. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
32. “We are not islands, entire of ourselves; we are but parts of the continent, pieces of the main.” – John Donne
33. “Life is either a great adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
34. “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places.” – Ernest Hemingway
35. “Without a dream, we are just animals. With a dream, we are something more.” – Unknown
36. “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.” – Albert Einstein
37. “It’s very dangerous to wave to people you don’t know because what if they don’t have hands? They’ll think you’re cocky.” – Mitch Hedberg
38. “I’m just riding the wave until it hits the shore.” – Joe Schmidt
39. “Delay is natural to a writer. He is like a surfer-he bides his time, waits for the perfect wave on which to ride in. Delay is instinctive with him. He waits for the surge (of emotion? of strength? of courage?) that will carry him along.” – E.B. White
40. “I think love is kind of like those waves out there,” she said. “You ride one into the beach, and it’s the most amazing thing you’ve ever felt. But at some point the water goes back out; it has to. And maybe you’re lucky. Maybe you’re both too busy to do anything drastic. Maybe you’re good as friends, so you stay. And then something happens-maybe it’s something as big as a baby, or as small as him unloading the dishwasher-and the wave comes back in again. And it does that, over and over. I just think sometimes people forget to wait. – Erica Bauermeister
41. “I believe in what I call ‘the surfer’s theory.’ You see a really, really big wave. You keep surfing, keep going forward. You just don’t look back.” – Howard Lutnick
42. “If you want to succeed in the world you must make your own opportunities as you go on. The man who waits for some seventh wave to toss him on dry land will find that the seventh wave is a long time a-coming. You can commit no greater folly than to sit by the roadside until someone comes along and invites you to ride with him to wealth or influence. – John B. Gough
43. “In the pathway of the sun, In the footsteps of the breeze, Where the world and sky are one, He shall ride the silver seas, He shall cut the glittering wave. I shall sit at home, and rock; Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock; Brew my tea, and snip my thread; Bleach the linen for my bed. They will call him brave.” – Dorothy Parker
44. “And in me too the wave rises. It swells; it arches its back. I am aware once more of a new desire, something rising beneath me like the proud horse whose rider first spurs and then pulls him back. What enemy do we now perceive advancing against us, you whom I ride now, as we stand pawing this stretch of pavement? It is death. Death is the enemy. It is death against whom I ride with my spear couched and my hair flying back like a young man’s, like Percival’s, when he galloped in India. I strike spurs into my horse. Against you, I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!” – Virginia Woolf
45. “In real estate, you make 10% of your money because you’re a genius and 90% because you catch a great wave.” – Jeff Greene
46. “It’s cyclical. I’m riding a wave right now, and I recognize that. I wanna do as much work as I can, do the best I can. And when it’s all said and done and they say, “Get outta the water, you’re done,” I wanna be so exhausted that I look forward to it.” – Bryan Cranston
47. “It is as true for individuals as it is for the world itself: everything comes in waves. If you ride the waves of change, you succeed. If you ignore them, you fail. When the wave is down, most people resist it by trying to go up. When the wave goes up, you should go up with it. When it comes down, you go down.” – Koichi Tohei
48. “Unless you paddle for the wave, you’ll never know if you could catch it. But once you do … Ride it as long as you can. Love as long as you can.” – Abigail Spencer
49. “Just take your time – wave comes. Let the other guys go, catch another one.” – Duke Kahanamoku
50. “I remember thinking, “Far out, I can’t believe this,” when I started riding waves. Then I was starting to imagine where it could take me.” – Mark Occhilupo
51. “It’s rare when you’re actually making a movie and it feels like you’re watching a movie in the theater. You feel like a surfer in a wave, catching the wave, going for it every time, there’s electricity in the room, it doesn’t feel like acting, you ride the wave.” – Jon Lovitz
52. “Freedom of choice is possible. Life is going to unfold however it does: pleasant or unpleasant, disappointing or thrilling, expected or unexpected, all of the above! What a relief it would be to know that whatever wave comes along, we can ride it out with grace. – Sylvia Boorstein
53. “It’s a wonderful metaphor, catching a wave, for how you can look at other challenges in your life.” – Jeff Bridges
54. “Sailing heart-ships through broken harbors out on the waves of the night, still the searcher must ride the dark horse racing alone in his fright. – Neil Young
55. “I remember surfing in Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, even Madeira, when local fishermen had never seen a surfboard before and refused to believe that we could ride a wave on one.” – William Finnegan
56. “When your arms are out wide, you’ll capture love and joy and golden moments but other things, too. Mistrust will sneak in on a wave of that joy, and complications will ride the backs of the golden moments, and there will be both love and the risks of love. That’s the way it is. That’s the design.” – Deb Caletti
57. “Everything we do, even the slightest thing we do, can have a ripple effect and repercussions that emanate. If you throw a pebble into the water on one side of the ocean, it can create a tidal wave on the other side.” – Victor Webster
58. “My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let’s all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I’m not that kind of guy. It’s an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it’s not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.” – Billy Corgan
59. “Nearly everyone is aware of dramatic changes in the world. Yet we continue to live in the assumption that we can ride out the changes without changing ourselves, coasting, as we have always coasted, on the historic wave of human development. What it will take to wake us up is a wave of equal size traveling in the opposite direction. That wave is already on its way.” – Verlyn Klinkenborg
60. “The short story can be hot and sweet or hot and fierce. You get it in one sitting or you don’t get it. It’s like a shore break. It happens quickly, and is right there in front of you, menacing you. First you’re looking at the shore break, and then if you don’t back up, it’s on you. The novel is the long, low wave that you ride south from the Arctic Circle. It’s powerful, but its power accumulates over a very long time as it rolls towards the reef.” – Stephanie Vaughn
61. “I’m surfing the giant life wave.” – William Shatner
62. “In the pathway of the sun, In the footsteps of the breeze, Where the world and sky are one, He shall ride the silver seas, He shall cut the glittering wave. I shall sit at home, and rock; Rise, to heed a neighbor’s knock; Brew my tea, and snip my thread; Bleach the linen for my bed. They will call him brave. – Dorothy Parker
63. “The first time you get a ride on a surf board and you are being propelled along by a wave, it’s probably as close as humans can get to being able to fly like a bird” – Gerry Lopez
64. “I’m still figuring out how to ride the wave, and I want it to last as long as possible.” – Linda Evangelista
65. “Those swirls in the cream mixing into the coffee? That’s us. Ephemeral patterns of complexity, riding a wave of increasing entropy from simple beginnings to a simple end. We should enjoy the ride.” – Sean Carroll
66. “Don’t fight the waves. Dive under, bob up, or catch the curl and ride the wave. The ocean is stronger than you; you might as well be a matchstick in comparison. But if you yield to the waves, they carry you, their power becomes you.” – Elizabeth Cunningham
67. “I did not want to be a tree, a flower, or a wave. In a dancer’s body, we as the audience must see ourselves, not the imitated behavior of everyday actions, not the phenomena of nature, not exotic creatures from another planet, but something of the miracle that is a human being.” – Martha Graham
68. “Across all countries and cultures, surfers are connected not by nationality, religion, politics, age … but by their experience riding waves. This is a powerful experience both in the waves themselves and inside each surfer. – Shaun Tomson
69. “When you ride the wave, the thrill is so exhilarating that you forget everything else. You live in the moment where nothing else matters, so intent on riding the wave perfectly that you and the wave become one. Pain and worry disappear, replaced by euphoria, akin to flow. Similarly, when giving empathy, you want to strive for this kind of total presence for the person you are listening to.” – Marshall B. Rosenberg
70. “Sometimes we have one chance to ride that wave, one opportunity to jump on, take a deep breath, and feel the rush of adrenaline. Don’t miss your chance.” – Heidi Reagan