Inspirational Quotations

Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water.
—Zen Proverb (Japanese School of Mahayana Buddhism)

It is not money, nor is it mere intellect, that governs the world; it is moral character, and intellect associated with moral excellence.
—Theodore Dwight Woolsey (American Academic)

Each one, reach one. Each one, teach one. Until all are taught.
—Mark Victor Hansen (American Speaker, Author)

Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

In retrospect, all these exercises in self-gratification seem pure fantasy, what Pascal called, licking the earth.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (English Journalist)

We become moral when we are unhappy.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

Humor can help you cope with the unbearable so that you can stay on the bright side of things until the bright side actually comes along.
—Allen Klein (American Author)

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link, and life is after all a chain.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Men of principle are always bold, but those who are bold are not always men of principle.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

A rich man’s joke is always funny.
—Thomas Edward Brown (Manx Poet)

If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
—William Morris (British Artist, Author)

A poet’s pleasure is to withhold a little of his meaning, to intensify by mystification. He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it.
—E. B. White (American Essayist, Humorist)

Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.
—Orson Scott Card (American Author)

The more faithfully you listen to the voices within you, the better you will hear what is sounding outside.
—Dag Hammarskjold (Swedish Statesman)

The best theology would need no advocates; it would prove itself.
—Karl Barth (Swiss Protestant Theologian)

More joyful eyes look at the setting, than at the rising sun.—Burdens are laid down by the poor, whom the sun consoles more than the rich.—I yearn toward him when he sets, not when he rises.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

Live as long as you may, the first twenty years are the longest half of your life.
—Robert South (English Theologian)

I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him.
—Booker T. Washington (African-American Educationist)

He that never changes his opinion never corrects mistakes and will never be wiser on the morrow than he is today.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.
—Evelyn Waugh (British Novelist, Satirist)

We, the people, elect leaders not to rule but to serve.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

One arrow does not bring down two birds.
—Turkish Proverb

To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox.
—Mexican Proverb

So shines the setting sun on adverse skies, and paints a rainbow on the storm.
—Isaac Watts (English Hymn writer)

Those who place their affections at first on trifles for amusement, will find these become at last their most serious concerns.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet)

It is almost never when a state of things is the most detestable that it is smashed, but when, beginning to improve, it permits men to breathe, to reflect, to communicate their thoughts with each other, and to gauge by what they already have the extent of their rights and their grievances. The weight, although less heavy, seems then all the more unbearable.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Political Scientist)

Men are only as great as they are kind.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

It has yet to be proven that intelligence has any survival value.
—Arthur C. Clarke (English Science-fiction Writer)

Unless a reviewer has the courage to give you unqualified praise, I say ignore the bastard.
—John Steinbeck (American Novelist)

The condition of being forgiven is self-abandonment. The proud man prefers self-reproach, however painful—because the reproached self isn’t abandoned; it remains intact.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

The real object of the drama is the exhibition of the human character.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (English Writer, Politician)

The revenge that is postponed is not forgotten.
—Icelandic Proverb

The success of our popular government rests wholly upon the correct interpretation of the deliberate, intelligent, dependable popular will of America.
—Warren G. Harding (American Politician, Publisher)

The man who claims to be the boss in his own home will lie about other things as well.
—Amish Proverb

Better the friend we can see than the money we cannot.
—Greek Proverb

It is easier for a father to have children than for children to have a real father.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

It is very perplexing how an intrepid frontier people, who fought a wilderness, floods, tornadoes, and the Rockies, cower before criticism, which is regarded as a malignant tumor in the imagination.
—Edward Dahlberg

A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
—Carl Sagan (American Astronomer)

Prosperity is the best protector of principle.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Live as if you liked yourself—and it may happen.
—Marge Piercy (American Poet)

Democracy is an abuse of statistics.
—Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine Writer)

A man who exposes himself when he is intoxicated, has not the art of getting drunk.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

A proud man never shows his pride so much as when he is civil.
—George Greville, 2nd Earl of Warwick (British Nobleman)

Nature is always lovely, invincible, glad, whatever is done and suffered by her creatures. All scars she heals, whether in rocks or water or sky or hearts.
—John Muir (American Naturalist)

Did a woman ever love who would not give all the years of tasteless serenity for one year, for one month, for one day of uncalculating delirium of love poured out upon the man who returned it.
—Charles Dudley Warner (American Essayist)

When Fortune flatters, she does it to betray.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he entitled to happiness?
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

The devil is God’s ape!
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

The Bible rose to the place it now occupies because it deserved to rise to that place, and not because God sent anybody with a box of tricks to prove its divine authority.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (American Advertising Executive)

In all climates, under all skies, man’s happiness is always somewhere else.
—Giacomo Leopardi (Italian Poet)

Old maids sweeten their tea with scandal.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

To love someone deeply gives you strength. Being loved by someone deeply gives you courage.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

If each of us hires people smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs.
—David Ogilvy (British Advertising Executive)

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

There will always be about the same percentage of people capable of real love, and there will always be about the same percentage of people who aren’t.
—John Galsworthy (English Novelist, Playwright)

Civilization is what makes you sick.
—Paul Gauguin (French Painter)

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are to finishing it. You take Diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
—Will Rogers (American Humorist, Actor)

Change yourself and your work will seem different.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

There is a great discovery still to be made in literature—that of paying literary men by the quantity they do not write.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian, Essayist)

The thing that eats the heart is mostly the heart.
—Stanley Kunitz (American Poet)

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
—Austin O’Malley (American Aphorist, Ophthalmologist)

The prayer that is faithless is fruitless.
—Thomas J. Watson, Sr. (American Business Executive)

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power.
—Milan Kundera (Czech Novelist)

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The man who says his evening prayer is a captain posting his sentinels. He can sleep.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

That one vast thought of God which we call the world.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (British Author, Politician)

There are only about a half dozen things that make 80% of the difference in any area of our lives.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

A good case is not difficult to state.
—African Proverb

Let us go singing as far as we go; the road will be less tedious.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

Good luck waits to come to that man who accepts opportunity.
—George Samuel Clason (American Writer)

There is a solitude which each and every one of us has always carried within. More inaccessible than the ice cold mountains, more profound than the midnight sea: the solitude of self.
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (American Social Reformer)

Have you ever seen a pedant with a warm heart?
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Theologian, Poet)

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
—Umberto Eco (Italian Novelist)

Why resist temptation? There will always be more.
—Don Herold (American Humorist)

Hell hath no limits, nor is circumscrib’d one self place; for where we are is Hell, and where Hell is, there must we ever be.
—Christopher Marlowe (English Playwright)

Children are given to us to discourage our better emotions.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The strength and safety of a community consist in the virtue and intelligence of its youth, especially of its young men.
—Joel Hawes (American Clergyman)

True courage is cool and calm.—The bravest of men have the least of a brutal, bullying insolence, and in the very time of danger are found the most serene and free.
—Anthony Ashley Cooper, 1st Earl of Shaftesbury (English Statesman)

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences. No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
—Thomas Henry Huxley (English Biologist)

How many of our daydreams would darken into nightmares, were there a danger of their coming true.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (American-British Essayist)

All emotions are pure which gather you and lift you up; that emotion is impure which seizes only one side of your being and so distorts you.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

Love must not touch the marrow of the soul. Our affections must be breakable chains that we can cast them off or tighten them.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Yoga is skill in action.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher)

The idea that seeing life means going from place to place and doing a great variety of obvious things is an illusion natural to dull minds.
—Charles Cooley (American Sociologist)

Nothing will come of nothing.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

All great truths begin as blasphemies.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Deny first-truths, and reasoning is void. If an opponent denies them, we can only add: “Be not as the horse and the mule, who have no understanding.”
—Charles Simmons (American Editor, Novelist)

Cats never strike a pose that isn’t photogenic.
—Lilian Jackson Braun (American Mystery Novelist)

We have it in our power to begin the world over again.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

Whatever needs to be maintained through force is doomed.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

Most people can’t understand how others can blow their noses differently than they do.
—Ivan Turgenev (Russian Novelist, Playwright)

In order to love simply, it is necessary to know how to show love.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Love’s like the measles, all the worse when it comes late in life.
—Douglas William Jerrold (English Dramatist)

A vile imagination, once indulged, gets the key of our minds, and can get in again very easily, whether we will or no, and can so return as to bring seven other spirits with it more wicked than itself; and what may follow no one knows.
—Charles Spurgeon (English Baptist Preacher)

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

It is the mind that makes the body.
—Sojourner Truth (African-American Abolitionist)

The only business of the head in the world is to bow a ceaseless obeisance to the heart.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)

To love and to be loved, one must do good to others. The inevitable condition whereby to become blessed, is to bless others.
—Mary Baker Eddy (American Religious Leader)

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

The journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step. So we must never neglect any work of peace within our reach, however small.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (British Philologist, Writer)

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God.
—Martin Buber (Austrian Jewish Philosopher)