Inspirational Quotations

Every place is a good place, only time goes wrong.
—Yiyun Li (Chinese-American Writer)

Most people would succeed in small things, if they were not troubled with great ambitions.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.
—Arnold Glasow (American Businessman)

It is most reasonable men should value that benefit, which is most durable. Now tongues shall cease, and prophecy fail, and faith shall be consummated in sight, and hope in enjoyment; but love remains.
—William Penn (English Quaker Leader)

Love at first sight is a revival of an infantile impression. The first love object reappears in a different disguise.
—Wilhelm Stekel (Austrian Physician)

He who forgiveth, and is reconciled unto his enemy, shall receive his reward from God; for he loveth not the unjust doers.
—The Holy Quran (Sacred Scripture of Islam)

When the People contend for their liberty, they seldom get anything for their Victory but new Masters.
—George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax (British Statesman, Writer)

Life without prejudice, were it ever to be tried, would soon reveal itself to be a life without principle.
—Richard M. Weaver (American Rhetorician)

The Devil turns his back to a door that is shut.
—James Howell (Anglo-Welsh Writer)

Love heals. … It doesn’t always cure. There’s a difference between healing and curing. You can heal spiritually. You can heal emotionally. You can heal psychologically and socially, even if you don’t heal physically.
—Charles A. Garfield (American Psychologist)

Great occasions make great men.
—U.S. Proverb

When good men die their goodness does not perish,
But lives though they are gone. As for the bad,
All that was theirs dies and is buried with them.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

People should be beautiful in every way – in their faces, in the way they dress, in their thoughts and in their innermost selves.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

It is the lone worker who makes the first advance in a subject: the details may be worked out by a team, but the prime idea is due to the enterprise, thought, and perception of an individual.
—Alexander Fleming (Scottish Bacteriologist)

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

The minds of some human beings are as moles, grubbing in the earth for worms. They have no eyes to see God’s sky with the stars in it.
—Elinor Glyn (British Novelist)

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

The difference between men and boys is the price of their toys.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (American Publisher)

It is no great thing to be humble when you are brought low; but to be humble when you are praised is a great and rare attainment.
—Bernard of Clairvaux (French Catholic Religious Leader)

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Mystical references to society and its programs to help may warm the hearts of the gullible but what it really means is putting more power in the hands of bureaucrats.
—Thomas Sowell (American Conservative Economist)

Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
—Susan Sontag (American Writer, Philosopher)

A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
—Douglas Adams (British Author)

The more destruction there is everywhere, the more it shows the activity of town authorities.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

Nobody can really guarantee the future. The best we can do is size up the chances, calculate the risks involved, estimate our ability to deal with them and then make our plans with confidence.
—Henry Ford II (American Industrialist)

Everything passes, everything perishes, everything palls.
—French Proverb

Men of the noblest dispositions think themselves happiest when others share their happiness with them.
—Jeremy Taylor

These written laws are just like spiders’ webs; the small and feeble may be caught and entangled in them, but the rich and mighty force through and despise them.
—Anacharsis (Scythian Prince)

Nothing is more the child of art than a garden.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

He works and blows the coals, and has plenty of other irons in the fire.
—Aristophanes (Greek Comic Playwright)

The virtue of a person is measured not by his outstanding efforts, but by his everyday behavior.
—Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

Anger is an expensive luxury in which only men of a certain income can indulge.
—George William Curtis (American Essayist)

To know where you are going, you first have to know where you have come from.
—Inuit Proverb

Though all men be made of one metal, yet they be not cast in one mold.
—John Lyly (English Dramatist, Author)

In order to be a realist you must believe in miracles.
—David Ben-Gurion (Russian-born Israeli Head of State)

Be more splendid, more extraordinary. Use every moment to fill yourself up.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
—Desiderius Erasmus (Dutch Humanist, Scholar)

Pleasure is always in the past or in the future, never in the present.
—Giacomo Leopardi (Italian Poet)

Men and women go to the theatre only to hear of love, and to take part in the pains or in the joys that it has caused. All the other interests of humanity remain at the door.
—Alexandre Dumas fils (French Dramatist, Novelist)

To be upset over what you don’t have is to waste what you do have.
—Ken Keyes Jr. (American Self-Help Author)

When an artist holds up a mirror to nature he finds out who and what he is; but the knowledge may change him irredeemably so that he becomes that image.
—Al Alvarez (English Critic, Poet, Novelist)

Speak your mind, even if your voice shakes.
—Maggie Kuhn (American Activist)

We pity in others only those evils which we have ourselves experienced.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

One often has need of one, inferior to himself.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truths.
—Philip James Bailey (English Poet)

Connecting is a constant process of giving and receiving—of asking for and receiving help.
—Keith Ferrazzi (American Author)

All our failures are ultimately failures in love.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Don’t throw away the old bucket until you know whether the new one holds water.
—Swedish Proverb

Take counsel of your prudence, take counsel of your caution, but never take counsel of your fears.
—James Walker (American Clergyman)

A fool and his money are soon parted. The rest of us wait for tax time.
—Common Proverb

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Intellectuals are cynical and cynics have never built a cathedral.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

People say I’m around because I have a lot of heart, but I know all the heart in the world couldn’t have helped me if I wasn’t physically fit.
—Jimmy Connors (American Tennis Player)

Among all the diseases of the mind there is not one more epidemical or more pernicious than the love of flattery.
—Richard Steele (Irish Writer, Journalist)

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.
—Etty Hillesum (Jewish Diarist)

Considering the downside is the single most important thing an investor must do. This task must be dealt with before any consideration can be made for gains. The problem is that people nowadays think they’re pretty smart because they can do something quite rapidly. You can make the horse gallop. But are you on the right path? Can you see where you’re going?
—Irving Kahn (American Investor)

Nostalgia is denial. Denial of the painful present. The name for this denial is Golden Age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one’s living in – it’s a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.
—Woody Allen (American Film Actor, Director)

True heroism is remarkably sober, very undramatic. It is not the urge to surpass all others at whatever cost, but the urge to serve others at whatever cost.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

Courage is the most important of all the virtues … One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.
—Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

Beware of the man of one book.
—Latin Proverb

Never talk rich, never talk poor, never talk money.
—Clementine Churchill (British Humanitarian)

How we think shows through in how we act. Attitudes are mirrors of the mind. They reflect thinking.
—David J. Schwartz (American Self-help Author)

In the employment of labour and machinery, it is often found that the effects can be increased by skilful distribution, by separating all those operations which have any tendency to impede one another, and by bringing together all those operations which can be made in any way to aid one another.
—James Mill (Scottish Philosopher)

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns; and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God, is most unfaltering.
—William Ellery Channing (American Theologian, Poet)

Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.
—Edward Payson Powell (American Author, Journalist)

As land is improved by sowing it with various seeds so is the mind by exercising it with different studies.
—Pliny the Younger (Roman Senator, Writer)

Spiritual evolution occurs as the result of removing obstacles and not actually acquiring anything new. Devotion enables surrender of the mind’s vanities and cherished illusions so that it progressively becomes more free and more open to the light of Truth.
—David R. Hawkins (American Physician)

Never open the door to the least of evils, for many other, greater ones lurk outside.
—Baltasar Gracian (Spanish Philosopher, Prose Writer)

Having a calling or meaningful and fulfilling purpose in life does not necessarily mean being drawn to a certain kind of job, task, or professional mission. Many people are compelled instead to commit themselves to a particular set of values – ones that they infuse into every aspect of their life, regardless of the various roles they play or situations they address as they go through their daily lives.
—Lama Surya Das (American Buddhist Scholar)

You’ve reached middle age when all you exercise is caution.
—Modern Proverb

No one is more profoundly sad than he who laughs too much.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

Doubt is the father of invention.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend.
—Theophrastus (Greek Philosopher)

The curious thing is the righter you do the wrong thing the wronger you become. If you’re doing the wrong thing and you make a mistake and correct it you become wronger. So it’s better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right. Almost every major social problem that confronts us today is a consequence of trying to do the wrong things righter.
—Russell L. Ackoff (American Management Consultant)

A cheerful temper joined with innocence will make beauty attractive, knowledge delightful and wit good-natured. It will lighten sickness, poverty and affliction, convert ignorance into an amiable simplicity, and render deformity itself agreeable.
—Joseph Addison (English Poet, Playwright, Politician)

If you love men and they are unfriendly, look into your love; if you rule men and they are unruly, look into your wisdom; if you are courteous to them and they do not respond, look into your courtesy. If what you do is vain, always seek within.
—Mencius (Chinese Philosopher, Sage)

If courtesans and strumpets were to be prosecuted with as much rigor as some silly people would have it, what locks or bars would be sufficient to preserve the honor of our wives and daughters?
—Bernard Mandeville (British Writer)

Let thy vices die before thee.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

The education provided must therefore encourage the development in each citizen of three things; an inquiring mind; and ability to learn from what others do, and reject or adapt it to his own needs; and a basic confidence in his own position as a free and equal member of the society, who values others and is valued by them for what he does and not for what he obtains.
—Julius Nyerere (Tanzanian Statesman)

Traditional scientific method has always been at the very best, 20-20 hindsight. It’s good for seeing where you’ve been. It’s good for testing the truth of what you think you know, but it can’t tell you where you ought to go.
—Robert M. Pirsig (American Writer)

One look before is better than two behind.
—Irish Proverb

Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
—William Dean Howells (American Writer, Critic)

I’ve been on a calendar, but never on time.
—Marilyn Monroe (American Actor)

The significance of man is that he is insignificant and aware of it.
—Carl L. Becker (American Historian)

isn’t the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty? Those first images that crack your heart wide open and you spend the rest of your life chasing, or trying to recapture, in one way or another?
—Donna Tartt (American Novelist)

A man demonstrates his rationality, not by a commitment to fixed ideas, stereotyped procedures, or immutable concepts, but by the manner in which, and the occasions on which, he changes those ideas, procedures, and concepts.
—Stephen Toulmin (British Philosopher)

Our actual enemy is not any force exterior tourselves, but our own crying weaknesses, our cowardice, our selfishness, our hypocrisy, our purblind sentimentalism.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

It seems to me probably that any one who has a series of intolerable positions to put up with must have been responsible for them to some extent … they have contributed to it by impatience or intolerance, or brusqueness—or some provocation.
—Robert Hugh Benson (English Author, Clergyman)

The poem in the head is always perfect. Resistance starts when you try to convert it into language. Language itself is a kind of resistance to the pure flow of self.
—Stanley Kunitz (American Poet)

Many are studying how to extend life, when instead it should be enlarged.
—Luciano De Crescenzo (Italian Film Actor, Director, Engineer)

Commit a sin twice, and you will think it perfectly allowable.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

If you decide that you’re going to do only the things you know are going to work, you’re going to leave a lot of opportunity on the table.
—Jeff Bezos (American Businessman)

Pennies don’t fall from heaven. They have to be earned on earth.
—Margaret Thatcher (British Head of State)

It isn’t by size that you win or fail—be the best of whatever you are.
—Douglas Malloch (American Poet, Short-story Writer)

It always stimulates me to discover new examples of my own prejudice and stupidity, to realize that I don’t know half as much as I think I do.
—Paul Auster (American Novelist, Poet)

When you really believe—in yourself, in your dream—you just have to do everything you possibly can to take control and make your vision a reality. No great achievement happens by luck.
—Howard Schultz (American Businessman)

Decisiveness is often the art of timely cruelty.
—Henri Becquerel (French Physicist)

Reality is not always probable, or likely.
—Jorge Luis Borges (Argentine Writer)

All the joy the world contains
Has come through wishing happiness for others.
All the misery the world contains
Has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.
—Shantideva (Indian Buddhist Scholar)

Certainly it is a heaven upon earth to have a man’s mind to move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the poles of truth.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Resolution is omnipotent.—Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something.—Aim at excellence, and excellence will be attained.—This is the great secret of effort and eminence.—“I cannot do it,” never accomplished anything; “I will try,” has wrought wonders.
—Joel Hawes (American Clergyman)

He that will learn to pray, let him go to sea.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

There is no fact that cannot be vulgarized and presented in a ludicrous light.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.
—Cynthia Heimel (American Humor Columnist)

A small but brilliant advance made today by someone’s awareness may for the moment reach a very small audience, but insofar as it’s valid and beautiful, it will make its way and become part of the whole world of consciousness. So in that sense it’s all working toward this huge audience, and all working toward a better man.
—Conrad Aiken (American Poet, Novelist)

The soul’s impurity consists in bad judgments, and purification consists in producing in it right judgments, and the pure soul is one which has right judgments.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

It’s of no use to look back and say, “I should have been different.” At any given moment, we are the way we are, and we see what we’re able to see. For that reason, guilt is always inappropriate.
—Joko Beck (American Zen Teacher)

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.
—Dashiell Hammett (American Crime Writer)

Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.
—Claude Debussy (French Composer)

If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through it will blow up everything in its way.
—Emile Zola (French Novelist)

However big the fool, there is always a bigger fool to admire him.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (French Literary Critic)

It is useless to talk with those who do not understand one and troublesome to talk with those who criticize from a feeling of superiority. Especially one-sided persons are troublesome. Few are accomplished in many arts and most cling narrowly to their own opinion.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

The hardest decisions are the ones that don’t maximize upside, but merely avoid a greater loss.
—Jeffrey Immelt (American Businessperson)

A man in good health is always full of advice to the sick.
—Menander (Greek Comic Dramatist)

Youth is not the age to seduce, it’s the age to be seduced.
—Colette (French Novelist, Performer)

All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance.”
—Max Muller (German-British Orientalist)

A nation’s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Any committee that is the slightest use is composed of people who are too busy to want to sit on it for a second longer than they have to.
—Katharine Whitehorn (English Journalist)

A good conscience is a continual feast.
—Robert Burton (English Scholar, Clergyman)

The danger inherent in all force grows stronger when it is likely to gain success, for then it becomes temptation.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

Society presses upon us all the time. The progress of the last half century is the progress of the frog out of his well.
—R. K. Narayan (Indian Novelist, Short-story Writer)

The enemy is at home.
—Karl Liebknecht (German Socialist)

A man that hath no virtue in himself, ever envieth virtue in others. For men’s minds, will either feed upon their own good, or upon others’ evil; and who wanteth the one, will prey upon the other; and whoso is out of hope, to attain to another’s virtue, will seek to come at even hand, by depressing another’s fortune.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

It is a mark of wisdom not to kick away the very step from which we have risen higher. The removal of one step from a staircase brings down the whole of it.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

When overwhelmed, after doing any needed planning, just stay in the moment and put one foot in front of the other.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach)

Chastity is not chastity in an old man, but a disability to be unchaste.
—John Donne (English Poet, Cleric)

The sure sign of a weak man who ascends to glory is that he can’t tolerate having strong men around him.
—Clive James (Australian Writer, Broadcaster, TV Critic)

Regrets are idle; yet history is one long regret. Everything might have turned out so differently!
—Charles Dudley Warner (American Essayist)

Anyone who has ever scanned the bookshelves of a new girlfriend or boyfriend- or peeked inside his or her medicine cabinet- understands this implicitly; you can learn as much – or more – from one glance at a private space as you can from hours of exposure to a public face.
—Malcolm Gladwell (Canadian Journalist, Author)

You cannot change your destination overnight, but you can change your direction overnight.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Nobody likes to be criticized, but unless their faults are pointed out to them every time, football players just don’t develop, regardless of how much talent they have.
—Harland Svare (American Football Player, Coach)

Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, the scriptures assures us the Lord will provide.
—Isaac Newton (English Physicist)

Anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity.
—Thomas Merton (American Trappist Monk)

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.
—James Clerk Maxwell (Scottish Physicist)

In our factory, we make lipstick. In our advertising, we sell hope.
—Charles H. Revson (American Businessman)

Invincibility lies in the defence; the possibility of victory in the attack.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

Each of the arts whose office is to refine, purify, adorn, embellish and grace life is under the patronage of a muse, no god being found worthy to preside over them.
—Eliza Farnham (American Reformer)

My principal method for defeating error and heresy, is, by establishing the truth. One purposes to fill a bushel with tares; but if I can fill it first with wheat, I may defy his attempts.
—John Newton (English Clergyman, Writer)

Our most valuable possessions are those which can be shared without lessening-those which, when shared, multiply. Our least valuable possessions, on the other hand, are those which, when divided, are diminished.
—William H. Danforth (American Businessman)

Some of the best navigators don’t know where they’re going until they get there, then they’re still not sure!
—Jimmy Buffett (American Singer-Songwriter)