Inspirational Quotations

Fun gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter out of you, whether you will or no.
—David Garrick (English Playwright, Actor)

The poet enjoys the incomparable privilege of being able to be himself and others, as he wishes.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

Let those who would affect singularity with success, first determine to be very virtuous, and they will be sure to be very singular.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

Biology gives you a brain. Life turns it into a mind.
—Jeffrey Eugenides (American Novelist)

Innovators are inevitably controversial.
—Eva Le Gallienne (American Actress)

Breath by breath, let go of fear, expectation, anger, regret, cravings, frustration, fatigue. Let go of the need for approval. Let go of old judgments and opinions. Die to all that, and fly free. Soar in the freedom of desirelessness.
—Lama Surya Das (American Buddhist Scholar)

Love touched her heart, and lo! It beats high, and burns with such brave hearts.
—Richard Crashaw (British Poet)

It’s essential to tell the truth at all times. This will reduce life’s pain. Lying distorts reality. All forms of distorted thinking must be corrected.
—John Bradshaw (American Educator)

You have to deal with the fact that your life is your life.
—Alex Haley (American Novelist, Biographer)

The world consists almost exclusively of people who are one sort and who behave like another sort.
—Zona Gale (American Novelist, Playwright)

With years a richer life begins, the spirit mellow: ripe age gives tones to violins, wine, and good fellows.
—John Townsend Trowbridge (American Author)

He who is prepared for the future and he who deals cleverly with any situation that may arise are both happy; but the fatalistic man who wholly depends on luck is ruined.
—Chanakya Neeti (Anthology of Indian Aphorisms)

We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
—Charles Bukowski (American Writer)

Something which we think is impossible now is not impossible in another decade.
—Constance Baker Motley (American Jurist)

Fear of death has been the greatest ally of tyranny past and present.
—Sidney Hook (American Social Philosopher)

Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze.
—Elinor Glyn (British Novelist)

Have you noticed that life, real honest-to-goodness life, with murders and catastrophes and fabulous inheritances, happens almost exclusively in the newspapers?
—Jean Anouilh (French Playwright)

It is a feeble compassion that pulls up short where self-interest begins.
—Norm Phelps (American Animal Rights Activist)

Inspiration is the act of drawing the chair up to the writing table.
—Orhan Pamuk (Turkish Author)

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.
—A. J. Ayer (English Philosopher)

No one is innocent after the experience of governing. But not everyone is guilty.
—Daniel Patrick Moynihan (American Academic, Politician)

Since it is not granted to us to live long, let us transmit to posterity some memorial that we have at least lived.
—Pliny the Younger (Roman Senator, Writer)

Some people bear three kinds of trouble—all they ever had, all they have now, and all they expect to have.
—Edward Everett Hale (American Unitarian Clergyman)

Caution is the parent of safety.
—Common Proverb

Facts, according to my ideas, are merely the elements of truths, and not the truths themselves; of all matters there are none so utterly useless by themselves as your mere matters of fact.
—Henry Mayhew (English Journalist)

As for courage and will—we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.
—Andre Norton (American Science Fiction Writer)

Don’t be too harsh to these poems until they’re typed. I always think typescript lends some sort of certainty: at least, if the things are bad then, they appear to be bad with conviction.
—Dylan Thomas (Welsh Poet)

It is an iron rule of history that what looks inevitable in hindsight was far from obvious at the time.
—Yuval Noah Harari (Israeli Historian)

Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.
—Isabel Allende (Chilean Novelist)

There is no complete life. There are only fragments. We are born to have nothing, to have it pour through our hands.
—James Salter (American Fiction Writer)

Duty largely consists of pretending that the trivial is critical.
—John Fowles (English Novelist)

The tolerance of the skeptic … accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”
—Jean Guitton (French Catholic Philosopher)

The heaviest penalty for deciding to engage in politics is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt.
—George Sewell (English Physician, Poet)

History is a story. If history forgets or neglects to tell a story, it will inevitably forfeit much of its appeal and much of its authority as well.
—Henry Steele Commager (American Historian)

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
—Robert Wilson (American Theatremaker)

Prune these alleged friends ruthlessly from your life. You need all the positive reinforcement you can get. You need friends who think you’re fabulous, an angel in human shape, and a breath of springtime.
—Cynthia Heimel (American Humor Columnist)

When a peasant gives me his bit of cheese he’s making me a bigger present than the Prince of Làscari when he invites me to dinner. That’s obvious. The difficulty is that the cheese is nauseating. So all that remains is the heart’s gratitude which can’t be seen and the nose wrinkled in disgust which can be seen only too well.
—Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian Author)

No good work is ever done while the heart is hot and anxious and fretted.
—Olive Schreiner (South African Novelist, Feminist)

If Nature had arranged that husbands and wives should have children alternately, there would never be more than three in a family.
—Laurence Housman (English Novelist, Dramatist)

There isn’t a plant or a business on earth that couldn’t stand a few improvements—and be better for them. Someone is going to think of them. Why not beat the other fellow to it?
—Roger Babson (American Economist)

Don’t worry when you are not recognized, but strive to be worthy of recognition.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Boys will be boys. And even that wouldn’t matter if only we could prevent girls from being girls.
—Anthony Hope (English Author)

How little do they see what really is, who frame their hasty judgment upon that which seems.
—Robert South (English Theologian)

Nothing recedes like success.
—Bryan Forbes (English Actor, Film Director)

A thick skin is a gift from God.
—Konrad Adenauer (German Statesman)

The upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.
—Sheryl Sandberg (American Executive, Author)

The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.
—Edward Thorndike (American Psychologist)

It takes a kind of shabby arrogance to survive in our time, and a fairly romantic nature to want to.
—Edgar Z. Friedenberg (American Sociologist)

There is no more interesting place in the world to meet characters than a movie set. If you have lost anybody anywhere in the World and don’t know where they are, they are in Hollywood trying to get in the Movies.
—Will Rogers (American Humorist, Actor)

Cynicism is what passes for insight when courage is lacking.
—Anita Roddick (English Businessperson)

The essence of risk management lies in maximizing the areas where we have some control over the outcome while minimizing the areas where we have absolutely no control over the outcome and the linkage between effect and cause is hidden from us.
—Peter L. Bernstein (American Economist, Author)

It is not the size of a man but the size of his heart that matters.
—Evander Holyfield (American Boxer)

When you get right down to it, one of the most important tasks of a leader is to eliminate his people’s excuse for failure.
—Robert C. Townsend (American Businessman)

A good holiday is one spent among people whose notions of time are vaguer than yours.
—J. B. Priestley (British Novelist, Playwright, Essayist)

If it’s intuitive, it’s probably wrong. The absolutely distinguishing quality of a leader is that a leader takes us elsewhere.
—Bob Galvin (American Business Executive)

This is where you will win the battle—in the playhouse of your mind.
—Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

Once you have been confronted with a life-and-death situation, trivia no longer matters. Your perspective grows and you live at a deeper level. There’s no time for pettiness.
—Happy Rockefeller (American Philanthropist)

I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill, or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.
—Billie Holiday (American Jazz Singer)

It’s just as easy to be happy with a lot of money as with a little.
—Marvin Traub (American Businessman)

We are only vulnerable and ridiculous through our pretensions.
—Delphine de Girardin (French Novelist)

Collect impressions. Don’t be in a hurry to write them down. Because that’s something music can do better than painting: it can centralise variations of colour and light within a single picture—a truth generally ignored, obvious as it is.
—Claude Debussy (French Composer)

If heaven had granted me five more years, I could have become a real painter.
—Hokusai (Japanese Artist, Wood Engraver)

A fault confessed is half redressed.
—African Proverb

One ought to go too far, in order to know how far one can go.
—Heinrich Boll (German Writer)

You gotta play the hand that’s dealt you. There may be pain in that hand, but you play it.
—James Brady (American Government Official)

An alleged scientific discovery has no merit unless it can be explained to a barmaid.
—Ernest Rutherford (New Zealand-born Physicist)

It is not the answer that enlightens, but the question.
—Eugene Ionesco (French Dramatist)

The function of literature, through all its mutations, has been to make us aware of the particularity of selves, and the high authority of the self in its quarrel with its society and its culture. Literature is in that sense subversive.
—Lionel Trilling (American Critic)

Except that right side up is best, there is not much to learn about holding a baby. There are one hundred and fifty-two distinctly different ways—and all are right! At least all will do.
—Heywood Broun (American Journalist)

You will never know a man till you do business with him.
—Scottish Proverb

We find it hard to believe that other people’s thoughts are as silly as our own, but they probably are.
—James Harvey Robinson (American Historian)

The formula for success is simple: practice and concentration then more practice and more concentration.
—Babe Didrikson Zaharias (American Athlete)

By bourgeoisie is meant the class of modern capitalists, owners of the means of social production and employers of wage labor. By proletariat, the class of modern wage laborers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labor power in order to live.
—Friedrich Engels (German Socialist Political Philosopher)

We have, as human beings, a storytelling problem. We’re a bit too quick to come up with explanations for things we don’t really have an explanation for.
—Malcolm Gladwell (Canadian Journalist, Author)

Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence.
—Robert Andrews Millikan (American Physicist)

God has so made the mind of man that a peculiar deliciousness resides in the fruits of personal industry.
—William Wilberforce (English Social Reformer)

What you lose as you age is witnesses, the ones that watched from early on and cared, like your own little grandstand.
—John Updike (American Author)

Go on—but don’t think you can kill my confidence. I’ve had experts doing it for years.
—John Osborne (English Playwright, Actor)

The one predominant duty is to find one’s work and do it.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American Feminist, Writer)

Self esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves.
—Nathaniel Branden (American Psychotherapist)

So great is the effect of cleanliness upon man, that it extends even to his moral character.—Virtue never dwelt long with filth; nor do I believe there ever was a person scrupulously attentive to cleanliness who was a consummate villain.
—Benjamin Thompson (American-British Scientist)

An “unemployed” existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.
—Jose Ortega y. Gasset (Spanish Philosopher)

Persecution was at least a sign of personal interest. Tolerance is composed of nine parts of apathy to one of brotherly love.
—Frank Moore Colby (American Writer, Editor)

Persevering mediocrity is much more respectable, and unspeakably more useful, than talented inconstancy.
—James Hamilton (Scottish Protestant Minister)

You will never change your life until you change something you do daily. The secret of your success is found in your daily routine.
—Darren Hardy (American Author)

Human memory is a marvelous but fallacious instrument. The memories which lie within us are not carved in stone; not only do they tend to become erased as the years go by, but often they change, or even increase by incorporating extraneous features.
—Primo Levi (Italian Novelist, Poet)

The criterion of simplicity requires that the minimum number of assumptions be postulated.
—Albert Low (Canadian Zen Master)

I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old, familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet
The words repeat
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

The paradox is really the pathos of intellectual life and just as only great souls are exposed to passions it is only the great thinker who is exposed to what I call paradoxes, which are nothing else than grandiose thoughts in embryo.
—Soren Kierkegaard (Danish Philosopher, Theologian)

Although there may be nothing new under the sun, what is old is new to us and so rich and astonishing that we never tire of it. If we do tire of it, if we lose our curiosity, we have lost something of infinite value, because to a high degree it is curiosity that gives meaning and savour to life.
—Robertson Davies (Canadian Novelist, Playwright)

You can’t start worrying about what’s going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what’s happening now.
—Lauren Bacall (American Actress)

When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that person is crazy.
—Dave Barry (American Humorist)

Smiles are the language of love.
—David Hare (British Playwright, Director)

If I had my career over again? Maybe I’d say to myself, speed it up a little.
—James Maitland Stewart (American Film Actor)

Good writers define reality; bad ones merely restate it. A good writer turns fact into truth; a bad writer will, more often than not, accomplish the opposite.
—Edward Albee (American Playwright)

A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
—Alexander Claud Cockburn (Irish American Journalist)

Hard work has made it easy. That is my secret. That is why I win.
—Nadia Comaneci (Romanian-American Gymnast)

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.
—Julia Ward Howe (American Poet, Author)

There are two great rules of life: never tell everything at once.
—Ken Venturi (American Golfer, Sportscaster)

Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.
—Hamilton Wright Mabie (American Essayist, Editor)

It is the weak and confused who worship the pseudo-simplicities of brutal directness.
—Marshall Mcluhan (Canadian Thinker)

It is not worth an intelligent man’s time to be in the majority. By definition, there are already enough people to do that.
—G. H. Hardy (English Mathematician)

Men are the dreams of a shadow.
—Pindar (Greek Lyric Poet)

The money you have gives you freedom; the money you pursue enslaves you.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Not many people are interested in what somebody else is thinking, or what they have to say. The best you can hope for is they’ll listen to you just so you’ll have to listen to them.
—William Wharton (American Novelist, Painter)

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory mentioned, which states that this has already happened.
—Douglas Adams (British Author)

Comedy in painting as well as in writing ought to be allotted the first place.
—William Hogarth (English Painter, Engraver)

It is a mistake to imagine that potentially great men are rare. It is the conditions that permit the promise of greatness to be fulfilled that are rare. What is so difficult to achieve is the cultural background that permits potential greatness to be converted into actual greatness.
—Fred Hoyle (English Astrophysicist)

The more the world is specialized the more it will be run by generalists.
—Marcel Masse (Canadian Politician, Bureaucrat)

A good friend can tell you what is the matter with you in a minute. He may not seem such a good friend after telling.
—Arthur Brisbane (American Editor)

Style is an expression of individualism mixed with charisma. Fashion is something that comes after style.
—John Fairchild (American Publisher)

Poor is the pupil who does not surpass his master.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Our lives carry us along in ways we cannot control, and almost nothing stays with us. It dies when we do, and death is something that happens to us every day.
—Paul Auster (American Novelist, Poet)

Don’t put limitations on yourself. Other people will do that for you. Don’t do that to yourself. Don’t bet against yourself. And take risk.
—James Cameron (Canadian Filmmaker)

Never deceive a friend.
—Hipparchus (Greek Astronomer, Mathematician)

It is not the hours we put in on the job, it is what we put into the hours that counts.
—Sidney Madwed (American Poet, Author, Public Speaker)

I would rather be adorned by beauty of character than jewels. Jewels are the gift of fortune, while character comes from within.
—Plautus (Titus Maccius Plautus) (Roman Comic Playwright)

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
—Mark Van Doren (American Poet, Critic)

Goodness thinks no ill where no ill seems.
—John Milton (English Poet)

Happiness comes more from loving than being loved; and often when our affection seems wounded it is only our vanity bleeding. To love, and to be hurt often, and to love again—this is the brave and happy life.
—J. E. Buckrose

Man never made any material as resilient as the human spirit.
—Bernard Williams (English Philosopher)

After about three lessons my voice teacher said, ‘Don’t take voice lessons. Do it your way. You’re a song stylist. Always do it your way.’
—Johnny Cash (American Country Musician)

A bureaucrat is one who has the power to say “no” but none to say “yes”. Bureaucrats can find an infinite number of reasons for rejecting any proposed change, but can find none for accepting it.
—Russell L. Ackoff (American Management Consultant)

Ideals do exist, the rest is just temporary interruption.
—Vanna Bonta (American Writer)

Many a secret that cannot be pried out by curiosity can be drawn out by indifference.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
—George Mason (American Revolutionary Statesman)

Night is the other half of life, and the better half.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

We have no problems, only situations. Not all problems have solutions, but all situations have outcomes.
—John Edward Gray (British Zoologist)

A library may be regarded as the solemn chamber in which a man may take counsel with all who have been wise, and great, and good, and glorious among the men that have gone before him.
—George Dawson (English Preacher, Activist)

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.
—Henry Adams (American Historian)

One rotten apple rots a bagful.
—Irish Proverb

You can’t write about people out of textbooks, and you can’t use jargon. You have to speak clearly and simply and purely in a language that a six-year-old child can understand; and yet have the meanings and the overtones of language, and the implications, that appeal to the highest intelligence.
—Katherine Anne Porter (American Writer)

There’s two kinds of coaches, them that’s fired and them that’s gonna be fired.
—Bum Phillips (American Football Coach)

People who devote their lives to studying something often come to believe that the object of their fascination is the key to understanding everything.
—Jonathan Haidt (American Social Psychologist)

Whatever we call reality, it is revealed to us only through the active construction in which we participate.
—Ilya Prigogine (Belgian Chemist)

You can spend a lifetime, and, if you’re honest with yourself, never once was your work perfect.
—Charlton Heston (American Actor)

How many hopes and fears, how many ardent wishes and anxious apprehensions are twisted together in the threads that connect the parent with the child!
—Samuel Griswold Goodrich (American Publisher)

Never turn your back on fear. It should always be in front of you, like a thing that might have to be killed.
—Hunter S. Thompson (American Journalist)

Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world.
—E. O. Wilson (American Sociobiologist)

Holding on to anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.
—Emmet Fox (American New Thought Leader)

Age is no barrier. It’s a limitation you put on your mind.
—Jackie Joyner-Kersee (American Athlete)

To succeed in life in today’s world, you must have the will and tenacity to finish the job.
—Chin-Ning Chu (Chinese-American Business Consultant)

A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory.
—Leonard Nimoy (American Actor)

The behavior of an individual is determined not by his racial affiliation, but by the character of his ancestry and his cultural environment.
—Franz Boas (American Anthropologist)

To be free is not to be independent of any form, it is to be master of many forms.
—Sidney Lanier (American Poet)

The best thing that can come with success is the knowledge that it is nothing to long for.
—Liv Ullmann (Norwegian Actress)