Inspirational Quotations

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

Where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no creation: know the nature of joy.
—The Upanishads

In any family, measles are less contagious than bad habits.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Habit is a cable.—We weave a thread of it every day, and at last we cannot break it.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

Men’s natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Habit with him was all the test of truth; “it must be right, I’ve done it from my youth.”
—George Crabbe

Nothing so needs reforming as other people’s habits.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Showing a profit means touching something and leaving it better than you found it.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Strength does not come from strength, but the denial of having strength.|Weakness does not come from weakness, but the denial of having weakness.
—Unknown

Love begins with a smile, grows with a kiss, and ends with a teardrop.
—Unknown

Look at frustration as a positive thing. It is the frustration that drives you to improve.
—John Lyons

What sunshine is to flowers, smiles are to humanity. They are but trifles, to be sure, but, scattered along life’s pathway, the good they do is inconceivable.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

A belief is not merely an idea the mind possesses; it is an idea that possesses the mind.
—Robert Bolton (English Clergyman)

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.
—John Marshall (American Judge)

If you don’t set goals for yourself, you are doomed to work to achieve the goals of someone else.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Man does not live by a turkey in every oven or a color TV set in every home. Man lives by faith and hope and love, by the star on the horizon, by the trumpet that will not call retreat.
—E. Merrill Root (American Educator)

What is to give light must endure the burning.
—Viktor Frankl (Austrian Physician)

Don’t wait for extraordinary circumstance to do good; try to use ordinary situations.
—Charles Francis Richter

I have lived in this world just long enough to look carefully the second time into things that I am most certain of the first time.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

When you follow your bliss… doors will open
where you would not have thought there would be doors;
and where there wouldn’t be a door for anyone else.
—Joseph Campbell

This above all—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Life is the soul’s nursery – its training place for the destinies of eternity.
—William Makepeace Thackeray (English Novelist)

If you do the best you can, you will find, nine times out of ten, that you have done as well as or better than anyone else.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

The whole world we travel with our thoughts, finding nowhere anyone as precious as one’s own self. Since each and every person is so precious to themselves let the self-respecting harm no other being.
—Samyutta Nikaya

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains.
—Dutch Proverb

It is in your moments of decision that your destiny is shaped.
—Tony Robbins (American Actor Author)

If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
—Joseph Campbell

There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.
—Unknown

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day.
—William C. Durant (American Entrepreneur)

The world of the 1990s and beyond will not belong to ‘managers’ or those who can make the numbers dance. The world will belong to passionate, driven leaders—people who not only have enormous amounts of energy but who can energize those whom they lead.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

The highest use of capital is not to make more money, but to make money do more for the betterment of life.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take firm root in our personal experience.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

99% of the time, in my experience, the hard part about creativity isn’t coming up with something no one has ever thought of before. The hard part is actually executing the thing you’ve thought of.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Dream what you dare to dream. Go where you want to go. Be what you want to be.
—Calvin Coolidge (American Head of State)

We have too many high-sounding words, and too few actions that correspond with them.
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

We judge ourselves by what we feel capable of doing, while others judge us by what we have already done.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times; but to make them truly ours, we must think them over again honestly, till they take root in our personal experience.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

A wise man hears one word and understands two.
—Yiddish Proverb

People don’t choose their careers; they are engulfed by them.
—John Dos Passos

Fate leads those who are willing. The unwilling it drags.
—Viggo Mortensen

Like the elephant, we are unconscious of our own strength. When it comes to understanding the power we have to make a difference in our own lives, we might as well be asleep. If you want to make your dreams come true, wake up. Wake up to your own strength. Wake up to the role you play in your own destiny. Wake up to the power you have to choose what you think, do, and say.
—Keith Ellis

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
—Pablo Picasso (Spanish Painter)

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Beware of people carrying ideas. Beware of ideas carrying people.
—Barbara Grizzuti Harrison (American Journalist)

Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?
—Bill Taylor

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is braver five minutes longer.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Even though you may want to move forward in your life, you may have one foot on the brakes. In order to be free, we must learn how to let go. Release the hurt. Release the fear. Refuse to entertain your old pain. The energy it takes to hang onto the past is holding you back from a new life. What is it you would let go of today?
—Mary Manin Morrissey (American Christian Religious Leader)

A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

Laugh to forget, but don’t forget to laugh.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

Quality questions create a quality life. Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.
—Tony Robbins (American Actor Author)

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
—Igor Stravinsky (Russian-born American Composer)

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one has not time to write down.
—Hector Berlioz (French Composer)

Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one’s levels of aspiration and expectation.
—Jack Nicklaus (American Sportsperson)

Ideas, like individuals, live and die. They flourish, according to their nature, in one soil or climate and droop in another. They are the vegetation of the mental world.
—William Macneile Dixon

You accomplish victory step by step, not by leaps and bounds.
—Lyn St. James (American Sportsperson)

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
—Igor Stravinsky (Russian-born American Composer)

Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

Remember that time is money. He that can earn ten shillings a day by his labor, and goes abroad or sits idle one half of that day, though he spends but sixpence during his diversion or idleness, ought not to reckon that the only expense; he has really spent, or rather thrown away, five shillings besides.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

True friendship is like sound health; the value of it is seldom known until it is lost.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

To achieve more and better results, more resourcefulness is as important as more resources.
—Tony Alessandra

It is time for us all to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever—the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.
—Vince Lombardi, Jr.

If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
—Common Proverb

It takes courage to live a life, any life.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist)

If you ever get a second chance in life for something, you’ve got to go all the way.
—Lance Armstrong

It is time for us all to cheer for the doer, the achiever – the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it.
—Vince Lombardi (American Sportsperson)

If it’s worth doing,
it’s worth doing well.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Know that although in the eternal scheme of things you are small, you are also unique and irreplaceable, as are all your fellow humans everywhere in the world.
—Margaret Laurence (Canadian Novelist)

It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

One cannot get through life without pain … What we can do is choose how to use the pain life presents to us.
—Bernie Siegel

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

One of the most tragic things I know about human nature is that all of us tend to put off living. We are all dreaming of some magical rose garden over the horizon—instead of enjoying the roses that are blooming outside our windows today.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word – excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

We are face to face with our destiny and we must meet it with a high and resolute courage. For us is the life of action, of strenuous performance of duty; let us live in the harness, striving mightily; let us rather run the risk of wearing out than rusting out.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

To love what you do and feel that it matters—how could anything be more fun?
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now.
—James Baldwin

Anything’s possible. You can be told you have a 90% chance or a 50% chance or a 1% chance, but you have to believe, and you have to fight.
—Lance Armstrong

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

Happiness grows in our own gardens, and it is not to be picked up in strangers garden.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep. I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by a conscious endeavor.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

It may be doubtful, at first, whether a person is an enemy or friend. Meat, if not properly digested, becomes poison; but poison, if used rightly, may turn medicinal.
—Sakya Pandita

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining, elusive element which is life itself.
—Willa Cather (American Novelist)

Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time… it tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

To be idle is a short road to death and to be diligent is a way of life; foolish people are idle, wise people are diligent.
—Buddhist Teaching

Nurture your mind with great thoughts; to believe in the heroic makes heroes.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

Salvation of the Dawn
Look to this day,
For it is life,
The very life of life.
In its brief course lie all the truths
And realities of your existence;
The bliss of growth
The glory of action, and
The splendor of beauty;
For yesterday is but a dream
And tomorrow is only a vision,
But today well lived makes
Every yesterday a dream of happiness
And every tomorrow a vision of hope.
Look well, therefore, to this day.
Such is the salvation of the dawn.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in stranger’s gardens.
—Douglas William Jerrold (English Dramatist)

A wise man is superior to any insults which can be put upon him, and the best reply to unseemly behavior is patience and moderation.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

None are so hopelessly enslaved, as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

We become what we think about all day long. The question is, ‘What do you think about?’
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)

One can make a day of any size, and regulate the rising and the setting of his own sun and the brightness of its shining.
—John Muir (Scottish-born American Naturalist)

Unless commitment is made, there are only promises and hopes … but no plans.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

The hopeful man sees success where others see failure; sunshine where others see shadows and storm.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

Act as though what you do makes a difference. It does.
—William James (American Philosopher)