50 Burden Quotes to Lighten Life’s Heavy Load

By Clifton Sankofa | Updated April 16, 2024

Find out how to lighten your load with our burden quotes.

We have eight billion people on our planet, and each of us has unique burdens that bind us.

Burdens can be something we carry with pride, or they can be setbacks that inhibit our growth.

How we view our burdens will determine how they impact our lives.

What is a burden?

By definition, a burden is someone or something difficult to accept, do, or deal with.

A burden can be a heavy physical load that needs to be transported or carried.

Burdens can also be personal, spiritual, cultural, or professional.
Check out these interesting facts about burdens below:

Most burdens have solutions.
How burdens manifest varies across culture, sex, gender, and identity.
While many of life’s necessities require labor, most burdens are self-inflicted.

Be careful what you desire

It is essential to take an authentic and honest look at what we want in life.

It is easy to ask for something, receive it, and then wish we never got it.

This happens every day in both mundane and vital scenarios.

So how do we make sure we do not burden ourselves?

Being honest with ourselves is the key to lessening burdens and dropping weight that does not belong to us.

Is fame a burden?

It is said that anything can become a burden when it is out of balance.

Too much of anything can be bad for us.

Fame is a typical example of something people desire and wish they did not achieve.

Having everyone recognize you can be a burden.

Voltaire famously said, “What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.”

American icon Marilyn Monroe knew all too well the pitfalls and burdens of fame.

She once lamented, “All my stepchildren carried the burden of my fame. Sometimes they would read terrible things about me, and I’d worry about whether it would hurt them.”

Having your personal life on public display can be disheartening.

The faint of heart would feel crushed knowing the public was discussing and judging your personal affairs.

Monroe was strong and stood her ground.

She explained, “I would tell them: ‘Don’t hide these things from me. I’d rather you ask me these things straight out, and I’ll answer all your questions.’”

Not everyone has the same conviction as Marilyn Monroe.

Check out our burden quotes below to see how other influential figures dealt with life’s burdens.

Short Burden quotes about carrying the load

1. “Respect the burden.” — Napoleon Bonaparte

2. “The will is a beast of burden.” — Martin Luther

3. “Life is like unto a long journey with a heavy burden.” — Tokugawa Ieyasu

4. “No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days.” — Max Planck

5. “Questions are a burden to others; answers are a prison for oneself.” — Patrick McGoohan

6. “I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

7. “No one is useless in this world who lightens the burden of it to anyone else.” — Charles Dickens

8. “Never give up. Never give in. Never become hostile. Hate is too big a burden to bear.” — John Lewis

9. “Any concern too small to be turned into a prayer is too small to be made into a burden.” — Corrie Ten Boom

10. “Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.” — Coretta Scott King

The top burden quotes about life

11. “Every burden is a blessing.” — Walt Kelly

12. “I don’t want to be a burden on anybody.” — Cilla Black

13. “The burden which is well borne becomes light.” — Ovid

14. “There is no lighter burden, nor more agreeable, than a pen.” — Petrarch

15. “Being handsome wasn’t much of a burden. It worked for me.” — David Bailey

16. “God places the heaviest burden on those who can carry its weight.” — Reggie White

17. “Gratitude is a burden, and every burden is made to be shaken off.” — Denis Diderot

18. “The first day one is a guest, the second a burden, and the third a pest.” — Jean de la Bruyere

19. “A great burden was lifted from my shoulders the day I realized that no one owes me anything.” — Harry Browne

20. “Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.” — Gilbert K. Chesterton

Wise burden quotes and sayings

21. “What a heavy burden is a name that has become too famous.” — Voltaire

22. “The burden of the self is lightened with I laugh at myself.” — Rabindranath Tagore

23. “History is not a burden on the memory but an illumination of the soul.” — John Dalberg-Acton

24. “I don’t carry the burden of the past or the madness of the future. I live in the present.” — Narendra Modi

25. “Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.” — Samuel Smiles

26. “The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.” — Allen Ginsberg

27. “Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.” — Maya Angelou

28. “Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.” — Isaac Asimov

29. “He who is of calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition youth and age are equally a burden.” — Plato

30. “Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.” — William Pollard

The best burden quotes about strength and commitment

31. “The greater the burden a man takes upon his shoulders, the stronger he must be to carry it.” — Bjornstjerne Bjornson

32. “We have used the Bible as if it were a mere special constable’s handbook, an opium dose for keeping beasts of burden patient while they are overloaded.” — Charles Kingsley

33. “For the poison of hatred seated near the heart doubles the burden for the one who suffers the disease; he is burdened with his own sorrow and groans on seeing another’s happiness.” — Aeschylus

34. “Love feels no burden, thinks nothing of trouble, attempts what is above its strength, pleads no excuse of impossibility; for it thinks all things lawful for itself, and all things possible.” — Thomas a Kempis

35. “I have three lovely children. They are beautiful, talented, and kind-hearted. I’m most proud of them. I love them so much that I will never want to burden them with a large amount of inherited wealth.” — Li Lu

36. “Racism, xenophobia, and unfair discrimination have spawned slavery when human beings have bought and sold and owned and branded fellow human beings as if they were so many beasts of burden.” — Desmond Tutu

37. “Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” — John F. Kennedy

38. “The greatest development is achieved during the first years of life, and therefore it is then that the greatest care should be taken. If this is done, then the child does not become a burden; he will reveal himself as the greatest marvel of nature.” — Maria Montessori

39. “Ireland, in breadth, and for wholesomeness and serenity of climate, far surpasses Britain; for the snow scarcely ever lies there above three days: no man makes hay in the summer for winter’s provision, or builds stables for his beasts of burden the island abounds in milk and honey.” — Venerable Bede

40. “Calculate the public advantage, the welfare, and liberty of my country, and believe that I shall refuse no burden, no danger, provided that, at the hour of tranquillity, I may return to private life, for there now remains but one step for my ambition – that of arriving at zero.” — Marquis de Lafayette

Burden quotes to live by

41. “We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it.” — John Newton

42. “Grief can’t be shared. Everyone carries it alone. His own burden in his own way.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

43. “It is always easier to requite an injury than a service: gratitude is a burden, but revenge is found to pay.” — Tacitus

44. “What makes old age hard to bear is not the failing of one’s faculties, mental and physical, but the burden of one’s memories.” — W. Somerset Maugham

45. “If you really want to receive joy and happiness, then serve others with all your heart. Lift their burden, and your own burden will be lighter.” — Ezra Taft Benson

46. “The load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday’s burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.” — John Newton

47. “Bowed by the weight of centuries, he leans upon his hoe and gazes on the ground, the emptiness of ages in his face, and on his back the burden of the world.” — Edwin Markham

48. “Being a part of exhibitions is not a burden; it’s another way for an independent label such as mine to reach a larger audience by exposing them to my whole body of work.” — Hussein Chalayan

49. “The burden of poverty isn’t just that you don’t always have the things you need, it’s the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you’d do anything to lift that burden.” — Jay-Z

50. “I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as king as I would wish to do without the help and support of the woman I love.” — Edward VIII