Inspirational Quotations

If one sticks too rigidly to one’s principles, one would hardly see anybody.
—Agatha Christie (British Novelist)

The world isn’t going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was really like when you were really young.
—A. J. Liebling (American Journalist)

Praise the bridge that carried you over.
—George Colman the Younger (English Playwright)

The greatest truth is the most simple one.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

If you rest, you rust.
—Helen Hayes (American Actress)

Hunger will make a monkey eat pepper.
—Haitian Proverb

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
—Lillian Hellman (American Playwright)

Principles have a way of enduring, as do the few irreducible individuals who maintain allegiance to them.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

There comes a time when soft power or talking with evil will not work where, unfortunately, hard power is the only thing that works.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating.
—Luciano Pavarotti (Italian Tenor)

A man who tries to please all men by weakening his position or compromising his beliefs, in the end has neither position nor beliefs. A man must say what he believes clearly, without dogma, and without guile.
—Pierre Trudeau (Canadian Statesman)

Life has no meaning in itself but it is itself an opportunity to make it meaningful.
—Sri Rajneesh (Osho) (Indian Spiritual Teacher)

The difficult thing isn’t living with other people, it’s understanding them.
—Jose Saramago (Portuguese Novelist)

It is respectable to have no illusions, and safe, and profitable and dull.
—Joseph Conrad (Polish-born British Novelist)

To show pity is felt as a sign of contempt because one has clearly ceased to be an object of fear as soon as one is pitied.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Though a superior is rather to be loved, yet by the insolent he ought to be feared.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

A day’s impact is better than a month of dead pull.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist, Author)

There is no dealing with great sorrow as if it were under the control of our wills. It is a terrible phenomenon, whose laws we must study, and to whose conditions we must submit, if we would mitigate it.
—Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish Novelist)

Remember that in giving any reason at all for refusing, you lay some foundation for a future request.
—Arthur Helps (British Essayist, Historian)

Reason, sometimes, seems to me to be the faculty our soul possesses of understanding nothing about our body!
—Paul Valery (French Critic, Poet)

There are always people who will be better at something than you are. You have to learn to be a follower before you become a leader.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

The theological systems of men and schools are always determined by the character of their ideal of Christ, the great central fact of the Christian system.
—Josiah Gilbert Holland (American Editor, Novelist)

Learn to use time, think of it as a friend, not an enemy. Don’t waste it in going after things you don’t want.
—Michael Korda (English-born Writer, Novelist)

What office is there which involves more responsibility, which requires more qualifications, and which ought, therefore, to be more honourable, than that of teaching?
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

Anybody who says they’re not afraid of war is either a liar, or they’re crazy.
—H. Norman Schwarzkopf (United States Army Officer)

The unjust distribution of goods persists, creating a situation of social sin that cries out to Heaven and limits the possibilities of a fuller life for so many of our brothers.
—Pope Francis (Argentinean Catholic Religious Leader)

All men wish to have truth on their side: but few to be on the side of truth.
—Richard Whately (English Philosopher, Theologian)

The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.
—Thomas S. Kuhn (American Philosopher)

Hearty laughter is a good way to jog internally without having to go outdoors.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The difficulty lies, not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones, which ramify, for those brought up as most of us have been, into every corner of our minds.
—Oliver Sacks (British Neurologist, Writer)

Facts are stubborn things.
—Alain-Rene Lesage (French Novelist, Dramatist)

Not everything has a name. Some things lead us into a realm beyond words.
—Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (Russian Novelist)

Our sweat and our blood have fallen on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the suffering we have seen for generations.
—Cesar Chavez (American Labor Leader)

That’s what life is, just one learning experience after another, and when you’re through with all the learning experiences you graduate and what you get for a diploma is, you die.
—Frederik Pohl (American Author)

Boyhood is distracted for years with precepts of grammar that are infinitely prolix, perplexed and obscure.
—John Amos Comenius (Czech Educator)

The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.
—Upton Sinclair (American Novelist, Social Reformer)

Simple, clear purpose and principles give rise to complex and intelligent behavior. Complex rules and regulations give rise to simple and stupid behavior.
—Dee Hock (American Businessman)

No matter how cynical we become, it’s never enough to keep up.
—Lily Tomlin (American Comedy Actress)

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Love is the silent conversation between two hearts.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The perfection of art is to conceal art.
—Quintilian (Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic)

Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

It’s easier to hold your principles 100 percent of the time than it is to hold them 98 percent of the time.
—Clayton M. Christensen (American Academic, Business Consultant)

A country whose population gets its living by cheating is a bad country.
—Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Real love amounts to withholding the truth, even when you’re offered the perfect opportunity to hurt someone’s feelings.
—David Sedaris (American Humorist, Essayist)

A good rule in organizational analysis is that no meeting of the minds is really reached until we talk of specific actions or decisions.
—Joseph Juran (American Quality Scholar)

We are taught that the body should be obedient servant of the mind but there are times when servants know better than their masters.
—Irene Claremont de Castillejo (British Psychoanalyst)

When the superficial wearies me, it wearies me so much that I need an abyss in order to rest.
—Antonio Porchia (Italian Poet)

He who trusts secrets to a servant makes him his master.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

Although human beings are incapable of talking about themselves with total honesty, it is much harder to avoid the truth while pretending to be other people.
—Akira Kurosawa (Japanese Film Director)

When we buckle on our armour in any cause, we are apt to go on buckling it, let the cause become as weak as it may.
—Anthony Trollope (English Novelist)

The ability to discipline yourself to delay gratification in the short term in order to enjoy greater rewards in the long term is the indispensable prerequisite for success.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Faithful women are all alike, they think only of their fidelity, never of their husbands.
—Jean Giraudoux (French Novelist, Playwright)

Discovering “who I’ve been” is a prelude to finding out “who I’m becoming.” You have to understand the dynamics that have energized your life and how they’ve changed over the years. Then you can begin to see the change that will shape the next phase of your life.
—Shoshana Zuboff (American Social Psychologist)

If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow man.
—Francis of Assisi (Italian Monk)

It is easy to be beautiful; it is difficult to appear so.
—Frank O’Hara (American Poet, Art Critic)

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.
—Frederic Chopin (Polish Composer, Pianist)

There can be no liberty that isn’t earned.
—Robert R. Young (American Financier)

Regret not that which is past; and trust not to thine own righteousness.
—Anthony of Padua (Portuguese Friar)

Argument, again, is the death of conversation, if carried on in a spirit of hostility.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

There is no religion in which everyday life is not considered a prison; there is no philosophy or ideology that does not think that we live in alienation.
—Eugene Ionesco (French Dramatist)

Adversity reminds men of religion.
—Livy (Titus Livius) (Roman Historian)

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
—Thomas Paine (American Nationalist)

Words should not seek to please, to hide the wounds in our bodies, or the shameful moments in our lives. They may hurt, give us pain, but they can also provoke us to question what we have accepted for thousands of years.
—Nawal El Saadawi (Egyptian Writer, Activist)

I get it now; I didn’t get it then. That life is about losing and about doing it as gracefully as possible…and enjoying everything in between.
—Mia Farrow (American Actress, Activist)

Quiet is peace. Tranquility. Quiet is turning down the volume knob on life. Silence is pushing the off button. Shutting it down. All of it.
—Khaled Hosseini (Afghan-American Author)

Where duty is plain delay is both foolish and hazardous; where it is not, delay may be both wisdom and safety.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)

Each new generation is a fresh invasion of savages.
—Hervey Allen (American Author)

When a man is kind to dumb animals, I always say he has got some good in him.
—Owen Wister (American Novelist)

To a person in love, the value of the individual is intuitively known. Love needs no logic for its mission.
—Charles Lindbergh (American Aviator, Conservationist)

Every religion is the product of the conceptual mind attempting to describe the Mystery.
—Ram Dass (American Hindu New Age Pioneer)

Sin brought death, and death will disappear with the disappearance of sin.
—Mary Baker Eddy (American Christian Science Religious Leader)

Borrow trouble for yourself if that’s your nature, but don’t lend it to your neighbors.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

Love can’t mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That’s the only real path to love.
—Leon Uris (American Writer)

Not the fruit of experience but experience itself, is the end.
—Walter Pater (English Critic, Essayist)

It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.
—Dolores Ibarruri (Spanish Communist Leader)

No one is so miserable as the poor person who maintains the appearance of wealth.
—Charles Spurgeon (English Baptist Preacher)

There is a destiny which makes us brothers; none goes his way alone. All that we send into the lives of others comes back into our own.
—Edwin Markham (American Poet)

All tales may come true; and yet, at the last, redeemed, they may be as like and unlike the forms that we give them as Man, finally redeemed, will be like and unlike the fallen that we know.
—J. R. R. Tolkien (British Philologist, Writer)

In doing what we ought we deserve no praise, because it is our duty.
—Augustine of Hippo (Roman-African Christian Philosopher)

What a woman says to her avid lover should be written in wind and running water.
—Catullus (Roman Latin Poet)

The more immoral we become in big ways, the more puritanical we become in little ways.
—Florence King (American Essayist)

First, I do not sit down at my desk to put into verse something that is already clear in my mind. If it were clear in my mind, I should have no incentive or need to write about it. We do not write in order to be understood; we write in order to understand.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (British Poet, Critic)

The proper office of a friend is to side with you when you are in the wrong. Nearly anybody will side with you when you are in the right.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

There shall be eternal summer in the grateful heart.
—Celia Thaxter (American Poet)

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
—Dorothea Lange (American Photographer)

Words today are like the shells and rope of seaweed which a child brings home glistening from the beach and which in an hour have lost their luster.
—Cyril Connolly (British Literary Critic)

How much a dunce that has been sent to roam, excels a dunce that has been kept at home.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

Thinking should become your capital asset, whatever ups and downs you may come across in your life.
—A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Indian Head of State, Scientist)

In the real world, equal respect for all cultures doesn’t translate into a rich mosaic of colorful and proud peoples interacting peacefully while maintaining a delightful diversity of food and craftwork. It translates into closed pockets of oppression, ignorance, and abuse.
—Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Dutch Politician, Activist)

When I think of vision, I have in mind the ability to see above and beyond the majority.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

Perfect works are rare, because they must be produced at the happy moment when taste and genius unite; and this rare conjuncture, like that of certain planets, appears to occur only after the revolution of several cycles, and only lasts for an instant.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (French Writer, Statesman)

I’m carrying on a tradition. But I’d rather be a first-rate version of myself than a second-rate version of somebody else. I’m proud of my parents, and the only way that I can prove it to them is to take what they gave me and work my head off.
—Liza Minnelli (American Singer, Actress)

Let gratitude be the pillow upon which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.
—Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Be glad of life because it gives you to chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.
—Henry van Dyke Jr. (American Author, Educator, Clergyman)

Individualism is cherished because it produces freedom, but the gift is conditional.
—Garrett Hardin (American Ecologist)

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

Prejudice renders a man’s virtue his habit, and not a series of unconnected acts. Through just prejudice, his duty becomes a part of his nature.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)

History has now been for the first time systematically considered, and has been found, like other phenomena, subject to invariable laws.
—Auguste Comte (French Philosopher)

When crisis hits, we don’t turn against each other. No, we listen to each other, we lean on each other, because we are always stronger together.
—Michelle Obama (American First Lady)

It’s very, very hard to affect culture. And you can get surprised thinking you’re farther down the path of change than you really are because, frankly, most of us like the way things are.
—Carol Bartz (American Businesswoman)

You need people who can walk their companies into the future rather than back them into the future.
—Warren Bennis (American Management Consultant)

The story of a man’s soul, however trivial, can be more interesting and instructive than the story of a whole nation.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)

Life is complicated. It’s filled with nuance. It’s unsatisfying. If I believe in anything, it is doubt.
—Anthony Bourdain (American Chef, TV Personality)

The most hateful human misfortune is for a wise man to have no influence.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

Always remember, money isn’t everything—but also remember to make a lot of it before talking such fool nonsense.
—Earl Wilson (American Newspaper Columnist)

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

Public opinion is always in advance of the law.
—John Galsworthy (English Novelist, Playwright)

It is not fit that every man should travel; it makes a wise man better, and a fool worse.
—Owen Feltham (English Essayist)

Those who have succeeded at anything and don’t mention luck are kidding themselves.
—Larry King (American TV Personality)

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

What people with disabilities want is to relate. This is something unique. It makes people who are closed up in the head become human. The wonderful thing about people with disabilities is that when someone important comes, they don’t care. They care about the relationship. So they have a healing power, a healing power of love.
—Jean Vanier (French-Canadian Humanitarian)

Hope not for impossibilities.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time.
—E. B. White (American Essayist, Humorist)

If a scientist were to cut his ear off, no one would take it as evidence of a heightened sensibility.
—Peter Medawar (British Immunologist, Writer)

Two are an army against one.
—Icelandic Proverb

It has ever been since time began, and ever will be, till time lose breath, that love is a mood—no more—to man, and love to a woman is life or death.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (American Poet, Journalist)

Take risks … be willing to put your mind and your spirit, your time and your energy, your stomach and your emotions on the line. To search for a safe place, to search for an end to a rainbow, is to search for a place that you will hate once you find it. The soul must be nourished along with the bank account and the resume. The best nourishment for any soul is to create your own risks.
—Jim Lehrer (American Television Journalist)

A mighty flame followeth a tiny spark.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Poet, Philosopher)

Cheerful looks make every dish a feast; and it is that which crowns a welcome.
—Philip Massinger (English Playwright)

All that is human must retrograde if it does not advance.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part.
—Annie Dillard (American Writer)

Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is essentially your own.
—Bruce Lee (American Martial Artist)

Each man must grant himself the emotions that he needs and the morality that suits him.
—Remy de Gourmont (French Poet, Writer)

Nature provides exceptions to every rule.
—Margaret Fuller (American Journalist, Feminist)

There is no prison like a guilty conscience.
—Welsh Proverb

Faith is not a commodity that you either have or don’t have enough of, or the right kind of. It’s an ongoing process.
—Sharon Salzberg (Buddhist Teacher)

Wisdom is the daughter of experience.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Most of us are umpires at heart; we like to call balls and strikes on somebody else.
—Leo Aikman (American Columnist, Humorist)

The big money is not in the buying or the selling, but in the sitting.
—Jesse Lauriston Livermore (American Investor)

I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift would be curiosity.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)