Inspirational Quotations

Errors of taste are very often the outward sign of a deep fault of sensibility.
—Jonathan Miller (English Stage Director)

Virtue is the first title of nobility.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible.
—Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

I think there is something, more important than believing: Action! The world is full of dreamers, there aren’t enough who will move ahead and begin to take concrete steps to actualize their vision.
—W. Clement Stone (American Self-help Guru)

Though we come and go, and pass into the shadows, where we leave behind us stories told—on paper, on the wings of butterflies, on the wind, on the hearts of others—there we are remembered, there we work magic and great change—passing on the fire like a torch—forever and forever. Till the sky falls, and all things are flawless and need no words at all.
—Tanith Lee (British Science Fiction Writer)

Many men build as cathedrals were built, the part nearest the ground finished; but that part which soars toward heaven, the turrets and the spires, forever incomplete.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

Mankind must destroy anti-humanity before it becomes extinct itself.
—John Hersey (American Novelist, Journalist)

Money is a tool—know how much is enough.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Life is not to live, but to be well.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

Loneliness is not cured by human company. Loneliness is cured by contact with reality.
—Anthony de Mello (Indian-born American Theologian)

Our own faults are those we are the first to detect, and the last to forgive, in others.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet, Novelist)

Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.
—Ivan Turgenev (Russian Novelist, Playwright)

Pay as little attention to discouragement as possible. Plough ahead as a steamer does, rough or smooth—rain or shine. To carry your cargo and make your port is the point.
—Maltbie Davenport Babcock (American Clergyman)

The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land.
—Aldo Leopold (American Conservationist)

It doesn’t matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice.
—Deng Xiaoping (Chinese Statesman)

The best way to lose weight is to put the handle of the fridge two inches from the ground.
—Dawn French (Welsh Comedienne, Actress)

Right action is not a fixed right action, it is an action that is conditioned by love and respect. It is an action that considers the consequences of our actions in terms of whether or not they cause suffering.
—Martine Batchelor (French Buddhist Teacher)

The true measure of a career is to be able to be content, even proud, that you succeeded through your own endeavors without leaving a trail of casualties in your wake.
—Alan Greenspan (American Economist)

Words do not change their meanings so drastically in the course of centuries as, in our minds, names do in the course of a year or two.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

Even the bitterest words that people say to one another seldom seem as divisive as the unspoken words that one expects from the other in vain.
—Hans Carossa (German Novelist)

The only reason people do not know much is because they do not care to know. They are incurious. Incuriousity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.
—Stephen Fry (English Actor, Writer)

Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.
—Zen Proverb (Japanese School of Mahayana Buddhism)

When the adulation of life is gone, the coward sneaks to his death, but the brave live on.
—George Sewell (English Physician, Poet)

Wisdom is one thing, to know how to make true judgment, how all things are steered through all things.
—Heraclitus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

A great writer is the friend and benefactor of his readers.
—Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay (English Writer, Politician)

The magic formula that successful businesses have discovered is to treat customers like guests and employees like people.
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what you want most for what you want right now.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

When your own life is threatened, your sense of empathy is blunted by a terrible, selfish hunger for survival.
—Yann Martel (Canadian Novelist)

Successful careers are those that realize in the man the dreams of the child.
—Wallace Stevens (American Poet)

Because it is dangerous to ignore the existence of the irrational. The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he’s worked so hard to subdue. Otherwise those powerful old forces will mass and strengthen until they are violent enough to break free, more violent for the delay, often strong enough to sweep the will away entirely.
—Donna Tartt (American Novelist)

We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog has made an alliance with us.
—Max De Pree (American Businessman)

Trifles make perfection, and perfection is no trifle.
—Michelangelo (Italian Painter)

Pain was their body’s way of telling them that they’d pushed themselves to their limits—which was exactly where they were supposed to be.
—Richard Marcinko (American Navy Officer)

Ignorance is not merely a deficiency of knowledge but, in addition, it positively apprehends reality in a distinctive way. And being a distorted mode of conception, it creates a view of the world that is in opposition to, and in conflict with, the actual way the world is.
—Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

A man’s doubts and fears are his worst enemies.
—William Wrigley, Jr. (American Businessman)

There is nothing like a challenge to bring out the best in man.
—Sean Connery (Scottish Actor)

The hardest trial of the heart is, whether it can bear a rival’s failure without triumph.
—John Aikin (British Educator)

Base-minded they that lack intelligence; for God himself for wisdom most is praised, and men to God thereby are highest raised.
—Edmund Spenser (English Poet)

History is neither more nor less than biography on a large scale.
—Alphonse de Lamartine (French Poet, Politician, Historian)

There is no perfect fit when you’re looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.
—Sheryl Sandberg (American Executive, Author)

He never is alone that is accompanied with noble thoughts.
—John Fletcher (English Dramatist)

Whoever is happy will make others happy too.
—Anne Frank (German Holocaust Victim)

Most footprints on the sands of time were made with work shoes.
—Caroline Schoeder (American Aphorist)

The first time I read an excellent work, it is to me just as if I had gained a new friend; and when I read over a book I have perused before, it resembles the meeting with an old one.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet)

Affectation hides three times as many virtues as charity does sins.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

We usually meet all of our relatives only at funerals where somebody always observes: “Too bad we can’t get together more often.”
—Bernard Berenson (American Art Critic)

Carry on any enterprise as if all future success depended on it.
—Cardinal Richelieu (French Cardinal, Statemesan)

To be an ideal guest, stay at home.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

A sage thing is timely silence, and better than any speech.
—Plutarch (Greek Biographer)

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

Too many cousins ruin the shopkeeper.
—Jamaican Proverb

We must have a weak spot or two in a character before we can love it much. People that do not laugh or cry, or take more of anything than is good for them, or use anything but dictionary-words, are admirable subjects for biographies. But we don’t care most for those flat pattern flowers that press best in the herbarium.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Scientist)

Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
—Isaac D’Israeli (English Writer, Scholar)

The greatest happiness is to transform one’s feelings into action.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael (French Woman of Letters)

We have a fear all the time. But that’s what keeps us going, that’s what keeps us focused. People who say ‘I have no fear. I’m not afraid of ever failing,’ are kidding themselves. It’s the fear of failure, of not wanting to fail, that makes people as great as they are. I know that’s what pushes me.
—Henry R. Kravis (American Businessman)

I have always felt that a woman has the right to treat the subject of her age with ambiguity until, perhaps, she passes into the realm of over ninety. Then it is better she be candid with herself and the world.
—Helena Rubinstein (American Cosmetician)

A person may desire to live for hundreds of years if he works according to this truth because that sort of work will not bind him to the law of karma. And there is no alternative to this way for man.
—The Upanishads (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

Because we grew up surrounded by big dramatic story arcs in books and movies, we think our lives are supposed to be filled with huge ups and downs! That’s why we act like everything that happens to us is such a big deal. We’re trying to make our life into a fairy tale.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they’re gone.
—George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans) (English Novelist)

When prosperous the fool trembles for the evil that is to come; in adversity the philosopher smiles for the good that he has had.
—Ambrose Bierce (American Journalist, Author)

Children are born with imaginations in mint condition, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Then life corrects for grandiosity.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)

You cannot put a rope around the neck of an idea; you cannot put an idea up against the barrack-square wall and riddle it with bullets; you cannot confine it in the strongest prison cell your slaves could ever build.
—Sean O’Casey (Irish Dramatist)

It is an eternal law that man cannot be redeemed by a power external to himself.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)

All the world is a very narrow bridge, but the main thing is to have no fear at all.
—Nachman of Breslov (Ukrainian Jewish Religions Leader)

The outward and visible way in which we move through our daily round—the time, creative energy, emotion, attitude, and attention with which we endow our tasks—is how we elevate the mundane to the transcendent. Moments of illumination aren’t just experienced by saints, mystics, and poets.
—Sarah Ban Breathnach (American Self-help Author)

Night, the beloved. Night, when words fade and things come alive. When the destructive analysis of day is done, and all that is truly important becomes whole and sound again. When man reassembles his fragmentary self and grows with the calm of a tree.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

It’s on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
—Claude Monet (French Painter)

When we are depressed, being reminded of other people’s suffering only serves to increase our self-hatred.
—Dorothy Rowe (Australian Psychologist)

Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge.
—Benjamin Jowett (British Theologian)

Objectivity cannot be equated with mental blankness; rather, objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences and then subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny — and also in a willingness to revise or abandon your theories when the tests fail (as they usually do).
—Stephen Jay Gould (American Paleontologist)

There are remarks that sow and remarks that reap.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian-born British Philosopher)

Silence is the ornament and safeguard of the ignorant. Silence is the safest response for all the contradiction that arises from impertinence, vulgarity, or envy.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann (Swiss Philosopher, Physician)

Whoever admits that he is too busy to improve his methods, has acknowledged himself to be at the end of his rope. And that is always the saddest predicament which anyone can get into.
—J. Ogden Armour (American Businessperson)

As time is the most valuable thing that we have, because it is the most irrevocable, the thought of any lost time troubles us whenever we look back. Time lost is time in which we have failed to live a full human life, gain experience, learn, create, enjoy, and suffer; it is time that has not been filled up, but left empty.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

Surely the world we live in is but the world that lives in us.
—Daisy Bates (American Civil Rights Activist)

Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
—Enoch Powell (British Politician)

People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

It is much more difficult to measure non-performance than performance. Performance stands out like a ton of diamonds. Non-performance can almost always be explained away.
—Harold S. Geneen (American Businessman)

If the world despises hypocrites, what must be the estimate of them in heaven?
—Jean-Marie Roland de la Platiere (French Statesman)

The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the embarrassment he can tolerate.
—Douglas Engelbart (American Inventor)

We cannot possibly reconcile the principle of democracy, which means co-operation, with the principle of governmental omniscience under which everyone waits for an order before doing anything. That way lies loss of freedom, and dictatorship.
—Lewis H. Brown (American Businessperson)

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
—William C. Durant (American Industrialist)

Scholars, who pride themselves on speaking their minds, often engage in a form of self-censorship which is called “realism.” To be “realistic” in dealing with a problem is to work only among the alternatives which the most powerful in society put forth.
—Howard Zinn (American Historian, Activist)

Intrigue is a court distemper.
—Dorothee Luzy Dotinville (French Dancer, Actress)

Where all is but dream, reasoning and arguments are of no use, truth and knowledge nothing.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

Wonders are many, and none is more wonderful than man; the power that crosses the white sea, driven by the stormy wind, making a path under surges that threaten to engulf him…
—Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Great thoughts are nourishment for our soul. If you do not have such thoughts of your own, you can always borrow them from some of the great ones of humanity.
—Dada J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

You can’t base your life on other people’s expectations.
—Stevie Wonder (American Singer, Songwriter)

People feel at home with low moral standards. It is scruples that put them off.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)

Memory is the thread of personal identity, history of public identity.
—Richard Hofstadter (American Historian)

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.
—Evelyn Waugh (British Novelist, Satirist)

Each moment in history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. But some stand out as moments of beginning, in which courses are set that shape decades or centuries.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)

The disesteem and contempt of others is inseparable from pride. It is hardly possible to overvalue ourselves but by undervaluing our neighbors.
—Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (English Statesman, Historian)

Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one’s aim.
—John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (American Philanthropist)

Inner peace is important, but I have always felt that living a daily life with peace is the end. So in reality individual peace and global peace are not separate. They are one and the same.
—Ela Bhatt (Indian Labor Activist)

Seeing the full bosom of young maidens and their navel, do not fall a prey to maddening delusion. This is but a modification of flesh and fat. Think well thus in your mind again and again.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Your tears come easy , when you’re young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you’re old, and leaving it.
—Wilkie Collins (English Novelist, Playwright)

Speak roughly to your little boy, and beat him when he sneezes: he only does it to annoy, because he knows it teases.
—Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) (British Anglican Author)

Vice is like a fury to the vicious mind, And turns delight itself to punishment.
—Ben Jonson (English Dramatist)

A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
—Max Planck (German Theoretical Physicist)

When a member of our physical body is diseased and the whole body has to labor to restore it to health, we do not despise this diseased member or hold it under obligation because it needs all this assistance.
—John Calvin (French Theologian)

Every age has its peculiar folly: Some scheme, project, or fantasy into which it plunges, spurred on by the love of gain, the necessity of excitement, or the force of imitation.
—Charles Mackay (Scottish Poet, Journalist)

How many serious family quarrels, marriages out of spite, and alterations of wills, might have been prevented by a gentle dose of blue pill!—What awful instances of chronic dyspepsia in the characters of Hamlet and Othello! Banish dyspepsia and spirituous liquors from society, and you have no crime, or at least so little that you would not consider it worth mentioning.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

We’re like children who always want to take apart watches to see how they work.
—Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand-born Physicist)

Everybody ought to do at least two things each day that he hates to do, just for practice.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Separation penetrates the disappearing person like a pigment and steeps him in gentle radiance.
—Walter Benjamin (German Literary Critic)

As it is our nature to be more moved by hope than fear, the example of one we see abundantly rewarded cheers and encourages us far more than the sight of many who have not been well treated disquiets us.
—Francesco Guicciardini (Italian Historian)

The inward sighs of humble penitence rise to the ear of heaven, when pealed hymns are scattered to the common air.
—Joanna Baillie (Scottish Dramatist, Poet)

Our natures are a lot like oil, mix us with anything else, and we strive to swim on top.
—Francis Beaumont (English Playwright)

The want of logic annoys. Too much logic bores. Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

I used to think that a man was sentenced to death or imprisonment because he was guilty; now I know that he is found guilty because he is disliked.
—Lu Xun (Chinese Writer)

Christians have oppressed Jews, Moslems, Buddhists, Pagans, and each other throughout their centuries of power, preaching religious intolerance as the word of Jehovah whenever they had the military, political, or economic power to make it stick — and then piously preaching brotherhood, peace, and toleration when they didn’t.
—Isaac Bonewits (American Neopagan)

No doubt the reason is that character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

The secret of business is to know something that nobody else knows.
—Aristotle Onassis (Greek Shipping Magnate)

The travel writer seeks the world we have lost—the lost valleys of the imagination.
—Alexander Claud Cockburn (Irish American Journalist)

We can’t all be stars because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as I go by.
—Sebastian Horsley (English Painter, Author)

Deliberation is the work of many men. Action, of one alone.
—Charles de Gaulle (French General, Statesman)

The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing.
—Jean-Baptiste Colbert (French Statesman)

Defer not till tomorrow to be wise. Tomorrow’s sun to thee may never rise.
—William Congreve (English Dramatist)

Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he is alone.
—Octavio Paz (Mexican Poet, Diplomat)

We are firm believers in the maxim that, for all right judgment of any man or thing, it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian, Essayist)

Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

One day, when spring has gone and youth has fled,
The Maiden and the flowers will both be dead.
—Cao Xueqin (Chinese Writer)