Inspirational Quotations

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher, Writer)

Confidence in a forecast rises with the amount of information that goes into it. But the accuracy of the forecast stays the same.
—Dean Williams (Australian Leadership Consultant)

Love is so short, forgetting is so long.
—Pablo Neruda (Chilean Poet)

As a rock on the seashore he standeth firm, and the dashing of the waves disturbeth him not. He raiseth his head like a tower on a hill, and the arrows of fortune drop at his feet. In the instant of danger, the courage of his heart here, and scorn to fly.
—Akhenaten (Egyptian Monarch)

Prayer is first of all listening to God. It’s openness. God is always speaking; he’s always doing something. Prayer is to enter into that activity. … Convert your thoughts into prayer. As we are involved in unceasing thinking, so we are called to unceasing prayer. The difference is not that prayer is thinking about other things, but that prayer is thinking in dialogue, … a conversation with God.
—Henri Nouwen (Dutch Catholic Priest)

The ideals and objectives of yesterday was still ideals of today, but they lost some of their luster and even, as one seemed to go towards them, they lost the shining beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and distortion of what seemed so right. Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training, through suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and raise man above the creature of lust and violence and deceit that he now was? And, meanwhile, was every effort to change radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

Despite some of the horrors and barbarisms of modern life which appall and grieve us, life in the twentieth century undeniably has—or has the potentiality of—such richness, joy and adventure as were unknown to our ancestors except in their dreams.
—Arthur Compton (American Physicist)

A human life is a story told by God.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)

It is strange that men will talk of miracles, revelations, inspiration, and the like, as things past, while love remains.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

Modesty is to merit, what shade is to figures in a picture; it gives it strength and makes it stand out.
—Jean de La Bruyere (French Author)

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
—Russell Baker (American Journalist, Humorist)

There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened people, there is only enlightened activity.
—Shunryu Suzuki (Buddhist Monk, Author)

Every human life involves an unfathomable mystery, for man is the riddle of the universe, and the riddle of man in his endowment with personal capacities. The stars are not so strange as the mind that studies them, analyzes their light, and measures their distance.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (American Baptist Minister)

One thing only has been lent to youth and age in common—discontent.
—Matthew Arnold (English Poet, Critic)

The first principle of success is desire—knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed. Very few persons, comparatively, know how to Desire with sufficient intensity. They do not know what it is to feel and manifest that intense, eager, longing, craving, insistent, demanding, ravenous Desire which is akin to the persistent, insistent, ardent, overwhelming desire of the drowning man for a breath of air; of the shipwrecked or desert-lost man for a drink of water; of the famished man for bread and meat.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Taoist Philosopher)

When you are a pessimist and the bad thing happens, you live it twice. Once when you worry about it, and the second time when it happens.
—Amos Tversky (Israeli Cognitive Psychologist)

Pleasure is a poor substitute for happiness.
—Akbarali H. Jetha (Indian Author)

A living entity cannot derive real benefit by reading hundreds of books or pretending to render devotional service according to his own ideas.
—Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

You believe easily that which you hope for earnestly.
—Terence (Roman Comic Dramatist)

Like other traditions, the tradition of reason is learnt, not innate. It too lies between instinct and reason; and the question of the real reasonableness and truth of this tradition of proclaimed reason and truth must now also scrupulously be examined.
—Friedrich Hayek (British Economist, Social Philosopher)

All art a new combination of the work of previous generations. For no artist is so self-sufficient that he will shape his course unaffected by, and apart from, what has been done before. It is impossible to wipe one’s mind entirely clear of what one has seen and read and heard in intercourse with other beings. Every work of art must necessarily bear influences of previous accomplishments.
—Sadakichi Hartmann (American Art Critic)

The most important job is not to be governor, or first lady in my case.
—George W. Bush (American Head of State)

Reason has built the modern world. It is a precious but also a fragile thing, which can be corroded by apparently harmless irrationality. We must favor verifiable evidence over private feeling. Otherwise we leave ourselves vulnerable to those who would obscure the truth.
—Richard Dawkins (British Ethologist, Atheist)

There is a glorious rainbow that beckons those with the spirit of adventure. And there are rich findings at the end of that rainbow. To the young and the not too old, I say look at the horizon, find that rainbow, go ride it. Not all will be rich; quite a few will find a vein of gold; but all who pursue that rainbow will have a joyous and exhilarating ride and some profit.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

If we maintain the open-mindedness of children, we challenge fixed ideas and established structures, including our own. We listen to people in other denominations and religions. We don’t find demons in those with whom we disagree. We don’t cozy up to people who mouth our jargon. If we are open, we rarely resort to either-or: either creation or evolution, liberty or law, sacred or secular, Beethoven or Madonna. We focus on both—and, fully aware that God’s truth cannot be imprisoned in a small definition.
—Brennan Manning (American Franciscan Priest Theologian, Author)

For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.
—Zoroaster (Persian Religious Leader, Prophet)

Love means the body, the soul, the life, the entire being. We feel love as we feel the warmth of our blood, we breathe love as we breathe air, we hold it in ourselves as we hold our thoughts. Nothing more exists for us.
—Guy de Maupassant (French Short-story Writer)

I believe that a man is converted when first he hears the low, vast murmur of life, of human life, troubling his hitherto unconscious self.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

He who laughs most learns best.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)

Old age is fifteen years older than I am.
—Bernard M. Baruch (American Financier)

Experience is what you get looking for something else.
—Mary Pettibone Poole ((fl.1938) American Aphorist)

When your heart becomes the grave of your secrets, that desire of yours will be gained more quickly. The prophet said that anyone who keeps secret his inmost thought will soon attain the object of his desire. When seeds are buried in the earth, their inward secrets become the flourishing garden.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Measure a man by his actions fully, from the beginning to the end. Don’t take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I’m about, because you know better than that.
—Tupac Shakur (American Rapper, Actor)

The thinner the ice, the more anxious is everyone to see whether it will bear.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

Taking responsibility means never blaming anyone else for anything you are being, doing, having, or feeling.
—Susan Jeffers (American Self-Help Author)

I don’t pick subjects because I know about them. I pick subjects because I want to know about them … Everything comes with a blizzard of new things you learn.
—Ken Burns (American Documentary Filmmaker)

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.
—Pablo Picasso (Spanish Painter)

There is a real magic in enthusiasm. It spells the difference between mediocrity and accomplishment.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Go first to your highest thought about yourself. Imagine the you that you would be if you lived that thought every day. Imagine what you would think, do, and say, and how you would respond to what others would do and say … Do you see any difference between that projection and what you think, do, and say now?
—Neale Donald Walsch (American Spiritual Writer)

Youth covets; let not this covetousness seduce you.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

It is only when the maker of things is a maker of things by vocation, and not merely holding down a job, that the price of things is approximate to their real value.
—Ananda Coomaraswamy (Indian Art Historian)

The excellence of the soul is understanding; for the man who understands is conscious, devoted, and already godlike.
—Hermes Trismegistus (Greek-Egyptian Author)

Any truth is only true up to a certain point. When one oversteps the mark, it becomes a non-truth.
—Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

What is food to one man is bitter poison to others.
—Lucretius (Roman Epicurean Philosopher)

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

That which exercises reason is more excellent than that which does not exercise reason; there is nothing more excellent than the universe, therefore the universe exercises reason.
—Zeno of Citium (Greek Philosopher)

Every one of us, whatever our speculative opinions, knows better than he practices, and recognizes a better law than he obeys.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Little by little, through patience and repeated effort, the mind will become stilled in the Self.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

It might be a good idea if the various countries of the world would occasionally swap history books, just to see what other people are doing with the same set of facts.
—Burton Hillis (William E. Vaughan) (American Columnist)

An ignorant doctor is the aide-de-camp of death.
—Avicenna (Persian Physician, Philosopher, Polymath)

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
—Truman Capote (American Novelist)

Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires.
—Michael Faraday (British Physicist, Chemist)

The secrets of life are not shown except to sympathy and likeness.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Familiarity breeds contempt, while rarity wins admiration.
—Apuleius (Roman Prose Writer)

We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist.
—Queen Victoria (British Royal)

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Nothing in the world delights a truly religious people so much, as consigning them to eternal damnation.
—James Hogg (Scottish poet)

His daily prayer, far better understood in acts than in words, was simply doing good.
—John Greenleaf Whittier (American Poet, Abolitionist)

A special kind of beauty exists which is born in language, of language, and for language.
—Gaston Bachelard (French Philosopher)

Much of the modern resistance to chastity comes from men’s belief that they “own” their bodies—those vast and perilous estates, pulsating with the energy that made the worlds, in which they find themselves without their consent and from which they are ejected at the pleasure of Another!
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.
—Alfred Adler (Austrian Psychiatrist)

Society can only pursue its normal course by means of a certain progression of changes.
—John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (British Statesman)

Just because your mind tells you that something is awful or evil or unplanned or otherwise negative doesn’t mean you have to agree. Just because other people say that something is hopeless or crazy or broken to pieces doesn’t mean it is. We decide what story to tell ourselves.
—Ryan Holiday (American Author)

It is in the character of very few men to honor without envy a friend who has prospered.
—Aeschylus (Greek Playwright)

Evil he overcame by righteousness.
—Nagasena (Buddhist Intellectual)

No one can understand love who has not experienced infatuation. And no one can understand infatuation, no matter how many times he has experienced it.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day. The housewife wears herself out marking time: she makes nothing, simply perpetuates the present … Eating, sleeping, cleaning—the years no longer rise up towards heaven, they lie spread out ahead, grey and identical. The battle against dust and dirt is never won.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

One of the difficult things of so much travelling is to say goodbye.
—Michael Palin (English Actor, Writer, Television Traveler)

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don’t turn against him, they crush those beneath them.
—Emily Bronte (English Novelist, Poet)

As on a heap of rubbish cast upon the highway the lily will grow full of sweet perfume and delight, thus the disciple of the truly enlightened Buddha shines forth by his knowledge among those who are like rubbish, among the people that walk in darkness.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

It is as absurd to argue men, as to torture them, into believing.
—John Henry Newman (British Theologian, Poet)

Every time you confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your life—you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or unhealthy but comfortable delusion.
—Ray Dalio (American Investor)

There is nothing else that so kills the ambitions of a person as criticism from superiors. I never criticize anyone. I believe in giving a person incentive to work. So I am anxious to praise but loath to find fault. If I like anything, I am hearty in my appreciation and lavish in my praise.
—Charles M. Schwab (American Businessperson)

The flood of money that gushes into politics today is a pollution of democracy.
—Theodore H. White (American Journalist)

In order to get rich you do not need a “sweet hour of prayer;” you need to “pray without ceasing.” And by prayer I mean holding steadily to your vision, with the purpose to cause its creation into solid form, and the faith that you are doing so.
—Wallace Wattles (American New Thought Author)

Fashion is made to become unfashionable.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

Proverbs are short sentences drawn from long experience.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

A fanatic is one who can’t change his mind and won’t change the subject.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Our choice of partners is perhaps the clearest single statement of our choice of values. Therefore, when we blame our partner for anything, we should really be confronting ourselves. Not as in “Yes, I made a bad choice,” but as in “How does this choice reflect my values?”
—Warren Farrell (American Educator, Activist)

The task of worrying is to come up with positive solutions for life’s perils by anticipating dangers before they arise. If we are preoccupied by worries, we have that must less attention to expend on figuring out the answers. Our worries become self-fulfilling prophecies, propelling us toward the very disaster they predict.
—Daniel Goleman (American Psychologist, Author)

It appears to me that almost any man may like the spider spin from his own inwards his own airy citadel.
—John Keats (English Poet)

Spectacular achievement is always preceded by unspectacular preparation.
—Robert H. Schuller (American Televangelist, Author)

To teach a child an instrument without first giving him preparatory training and without developing singing, reading and dictating to the highest level along with the playing is to build upon sand.
—Zoltan Kodaly (Hungarian Composer)

Mindfulness gives you time. Time gives you choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom.
—Henepola Gunaratana (Sri Lankan Buddhist Monk)

Logic is a large drawer, containing some useful instruments, and many more that are superfluous. A wise man will look into it for two purposes, to avail himself of those instruments that are really useful, and to admire the ingenuity with which those that are not so, are assorted and arranged.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

Our home joys are the most delightful earth affords, and the joy of parents in their children is the most holy joy of humanity. It makes their hearts pure and good, it lifts men up to their Father in heaven.
—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (Swiss Educator)

The true wealth of a nation consists not in the stored-up gold but in the intellectual and physical strength of its people.
—C. V. Raman (Indian Physicist)

It is safer to be a speculator than an investor in the sense that a speculator is one who runs risks of which he is aware and an investor is one who runs risks of which he is unaware.
—John Maynard Keynes (English Economist)

An anthill increases by accumulation. Medicine is consumed by distribution. That which is feared lessens by association. This is the thing to understand.
—Nagarjuna (Indian Buddhist Philosopher)

After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, and so on—have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear—what remains? Nature remains.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.
—Protagoras (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Perhaps 90 percent of its desires, psychologists say, are unconscious; in other words, many of our deepest commitments to symbols of security, power, and affection in the culture are rooted in desires that are absolutely impossible to achieve.
—Thomas Keating (American Trappist Monk)

The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else.
—Frederic Bastiat (French Political Economist)

People are crying up the rich and variegated plumage of the peacock, and he is himself blushing at the sight of his ugly feet.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (Persian Poet)

Anxiety is the poison of human life; the parent of many sins and of more miseries.—In a world where everything is doubtful, and where we may be disappointed, and be blessed in disappointment, why this restless stir and commotion of mind?—Can it alter the cause, or unravel the mystery of human events?
—Hugh Blair (Scottish Minister, Scholar)

Before a thunderstorm there is a build-up of tension which is only relieved by the explosive force of thunder and lightning. In human affairs there must be a clear distinction between the penalties for small and great crimes. Retribution for wrongdoing must be swiftly and surely applied if greater problems are to be prevented.
—I Ching (Ancient Chinese Divination Text)

It is sure to be dark if you close your eyes.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Spiritual Teacher)

Gratitude is a gracious acknowledgement of all that sustains us, a bow to our blessings, great and small. Gratitude is the confidence in life itself. In it, we feel how the same forces that pushes grass through cracks in the sidewalk invigorates our own life.
—Jack Kornfield (American Buddhist Teacher, Author)

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

Reason in man is rather like God in the world.
—Thomas Aquinas (Italian Catholic Priest)

Among the virtues and vices that make up the British character, we have one vice, at least, that Americans ought to view with sympathy. For they appear to be the only people who share it with us. I mean our worship of the antique. I do not refer to beauty or even historical association. I refer to age, to a quantity of years.
—William Golding (English Novelist)

Love thy neighbor as thyself: Do not to others what thou wouldst not wish be done to thyself: Forgive injuries. Forgive thy enemy, be reconciled to him, give him assistance, invoke God in his behalf.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Inspiration is needed in geometry, just as much as in poetry.
—Alexander Pushkin (National Poet of Russia)

If one looks with a cold eye at the mess man has made of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he has been afflicted by some built-in mental disorder which drives him towards self-destruction.
—Arthur Koestler (British Writer, Journalist)

Curiosity is the one thing invincible in Nature.
—Freya Stark (British Explorer, Writer)

Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we’re here for something else besides ourselves.
—Eric Sevareid (American Broadcast Journalist)

Not to be bound by rules, but to be creating one’s own rules—this is the kind of life which Zen is trying to have us live.
—D. T. Suzuki (Japanese Buddhist Philosopher)

Human nature is not simple and any classification that roughly divides men into good and bad, superior and inferior, slave and free, is and must be ludicrously untrue and universally dangerous as a permanent exhaustive classification.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Sociologist, Activist)

He who knoweth not what he ought to know, is a brute beast among men; he that knoweth no more than he hath need of, is a man among brute beasts; and he that knoweth all that may be known, is as a God among men.
—Pythagoras (Greek Philosopher)

To lay aside all prejudices, is to lay aside all principles.—He who is destitute of principles is governed by whims.
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Animals are born, are sentient and are mortal. In these things they resemble man. In their superficial anatomy—less in their deep anatomy—in their habits, in their time, in their physical capacities, they differ from man. They are both like and unlike.
—John Berger (English Art Critic, Essayist, Novelist)

The methods of science aren’t foolproof, but they are indefinitely perfectible. Just as important: there is a tradition of criticism that enforces improvement whenever and wherever flaws are discovered.
—Daniel C. Dennett (American Philosopher, Atheist)

Nature never deserts the wise and pure; no plot so narrow, be but nature there; no waste so vacant, but may well employ each faculty of sense, and keep the heart awake to love and beauty!
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

In every work of art the subject is primordial, whether the artist knows it or not. The measure of the formal qualities is only a sign of the measure of the artist’s obsession with his subject; the form is always in proportion to the obsession.
—Alberto Giacometti (Swiss Sculptor, Painter)

The best way to keep good acts in memory is to refresh them with new.
—Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato) (Roman Statesman)

People who fear death live no longer than those who don’t, and live scared.
—Gene Wolfe (American Science Fiction, Fantasy Writer)

Not prayer without faith, nor faith without prayer, but prayer in faith, is the cost of spiritual gifts and graces.
—Henry Clay Trumbull (American Clergyman)