The 15 Most Moving, Important Quotes From Cheryl Strayed's New Book

In this journey we call life, it's not always easy. We hit roadblocks, we meet people who pushes our buttons, and we make mistakes (a lot of mistakes). It's easy to just give up, so sometimes we need a reminder that life is still worth living even when it seems like it's not.

In Brave Enough, Cheryl Strayed's book of inspirational quotes, she gives us an instruction manual to "urge us toward the incredible capacity for love, compassion, forgiveness, and endurance that is within us all."

We picked out 15 of the best ones that stood out to us. Read them and remember:

1. We make a few wrong turns until we figure out the right way to go.

"Believe in the integrity and the value of the jagged path. We don’t always do the right thing on our way to rightness."

2. Be compassionate.

"Compassion isn't about solutions. It's about giving all the love you've got."

3. Trust yourself.

"Ask yourself. What is the best I can do? And then do that."

4. Realize that you deserve respect.

"F*cked-up people will try to tell you otherwise, but boundaries have nothing to do with whether you love someone or not. They are not judgments, punishments, or betrayals. They are a purely peaceable thing: the basic principles you identify for yourself that define the behaviors that you will tolerate from others, as well as the responses you will have to those behaviors. Boundaries teach people how to treat you and they teach you how to respect yourself."

5. Do the honorable thing.

"Honor is inconvenient and absolute. Honor is looking it square in the face and taking it on the chin. It’s having the guts to break someone’s heart so to avoid fucking with his or her head."

6. People change.

"Eight of the 10 things you have decided about yourself at the age of 20 will, over time, prove to be false. The other two things will prove to be so true that you’ll look back in 20 years and howl."

7. Move on from the past.

"If it is impossible for you to go on as you were before, so you must go on as you never have."

8. Confidence goes a long way.

"Be about 10 times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of being. Your life will be a hundred times better for it."

9. Things happen for a reason.

"What if I forgave myself? What if I forgave myself even though I’d done some things I shouldn’t have? What if I was sorry, but if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t do anything different from what I’d done? What if yes was the right answer instead of no? What if all those things I shouldn’t have done were what got me here? What if I was never redeemed? What if I already was?"

10. Your nerve is your strength.

"The unifying theme is resilience and faith. The unifying theme is being a warrior and a motherfucker. It is not fragility. It’s strength. It’s nerve. And 'if your Nerve, deny you-,' as Emily Dickinson wrote, 'Go above your Nerve.'"

11. Work for what you want.

"God is not a granter of wishes. God is a ruthless bitch."

12. Be present.

"It isn’t too late. Time is not running out. Your life is here and now. And the moment has arrived at which you’re finally ready to change."

13. Forgive yourself.

"The narratives we create in order to justify our actions and choices become in so many ways who we are. They are the things we say to ourselves to explain our complicated lives. Perhaps the reason you’ve not yet been able to forgive yourself is that you’re still invested in your self-loathing. Would you be a better or worse person if you forgave yourself for the bad things you did? If you perpetually condemn yourself, does that make you good?"

4. Don't be swayed by illusions.

"It is the plight of almost every monogamous person at one time or another to love X but fuck Z. Z is so gleaming, so crystalline, so unlikely to bitch at you for neglecting to take out the recycling. Nobody has to haggle with Z. Z doesn’t wear a watch. Z is like a motorcycle with no one on it. Beautiful. Going nowhere."

15. Don't be afraid to love.

"The whole deal about loving truly and for real and with all you’ve got has everything to do with letting those we love see us. Silence makes hard things harder than they need to be. It creates a secret you’re too beautiful to keep. Telling has a way of dispersing things."

If you're searching for the best quotes and memes to share with the people you love (or just want to feel inspired yourself) ... look no further! From the sweetest love quotes, inspirational sayings, and hilarious relationship truths, we've got you covered.