Inspirational Quotations

The habit of common and continuous speech is a symptom of mental deficiency. It proceeds from not knowing what is going on in other people’s minds.
—Walter Bagehot (English Economist, Journalist)

As if reasoning were any kind of writing or talking which tends to convince people that some doctrine or measure is true and right.
—Catharine Beecher (American Educationalist, Reformer)

Great people aren’t those who are happy at times of convenience and content, but of how they are in times of catastrophe and controversy.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Oppression involves a failure of the imagination: the failure to imagine the full humanity of other human beings.
—Margaret Atwood (Canadian Author)

Solvency is entirely a matter of temperament, not of income.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (American-British Essayist)

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
—Alan Watts (British-American Philosopher)

I find I’m luckier when I work harder.
—Denton Cooley (American Surgeon)

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.
—Paul McCartney (British Pop Musician)

Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.
—J. G. Ballard (English Novelist)

He that has a penny in his purse, is worth a penny: Have and you shall be esteemed.
—Petronius (Roman Courtier)

Ignorance and obscurantism have never produced anything other than flocks of slaves for tyranny.
—Emiliano Zapata (Mexican Revolutionary)

It is not the weight of the future or the past that is pressing upon you, but ever that of the present alone. Even this burden, too, can be lessened if you confine it strictly to its own limits.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

Remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power. Never forget that you can still do your share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and frustrations and disappointments.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

If not excellence, what? If not excellence now, when?
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

Our great men have written words of wisdom to be used when hardship must be faced. Life obliges us with hardship so the words of wisdom shouldn’t go to waste.
—Jerry Bock (American Composer)

In philosophy if you aren’t moving at a snail’s pace you aren’t moving at all.
—Iris Murdoch (British Novelist, Philosopher)

Let him who neglects to raise the fallen, fear lest, when he falls, no one will stretch out his hand to lift him up.
—Sa’Di (Musharrif Od-Din Muslih Od-Din) (Persian Poet)

If country life be healthful to the body, it is no less so to the mind.
—Giovanni Ruffini (Italian Writer)

The original writer is not he who does not imitate others, but he who can be imitated by none.
—Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand (French Writer, Statesman)

The substance of the mind is revealed through its tranquility and its function through its activity.
—Wang Yangming (Chinese Philosopher)

The very first right of every animal is the right to live. As you cannot give life to a dead creature, you do not have the right to take life away from a living one.
—Dada J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

People entering marriage [must] enter it with a proper understanding of marriage as a God-given gift to help people grow in the virtues of love, faith and charity and to grow in unselfishness.
—A. J. Reb Materi (Canadian Clergyman)

Highly educated bores are by far the worst; they know so much, in such fiendish detail, to be boring about.
—Louis Kronenberger (American Literary Critic)

Riches are a good hand maiden, but a poor mistress.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Dream is not a revelation. If a dream affords the dreamer some light on himself, it is not the person with closed eyes who makes the discovery but the person with open eyes lucid enough to fit thoughts together. Dream—a scintillating mirage surrounded by shadows—is essentially poetry.
—Michel Leiris (French Surrealist Writer, Ethnographer)

The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.
—Carl Bernstein (American Journalist)

All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern.
—Frederic Bastiat (French Political Economist)

We rarely like the virtues we have not.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The punishment of desire is the agony of unfulfillment.
—Hermes Trismegistus (Greek-Egyptian Author)

Families are nothing other than the idolatry of duty.
—Ann Oakley (English Sociologist, Feminist)

Only the mediocre are always at their best.
—Jean Giraudoux (French Novelist, Playwright)

The wisdom of the ignorant somewhat resembles the instinct of animals; it is diffused only in a very narrow sphere, but within the circle it acts with vigor, uniformity, and success.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Anglo-Irish Novelist, Poet)

Each of us is responsible for everything and to every human being.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

The poetic act consists of suddenly seeing that an idea splits up into a number of equal motifs and of grouping them; they rhyme.
—Stephane Mallarme (French Poet)

The word exaggeration does not exist in the vocabulary of love.
—Luciano De Crescenzo (Italian Film Actor, Director, Engineer)

Marriages are made in heaven and consummated on earth.
—John Lyly (English Dramatist, Author)

That food has always been, and will continue to be, the basis for one of our greater snobbism does not explain the fact that the attitude toward the food choice of others is becoming more and more heatedly exclusive until it may well turn into one of those forms of bigotry against which gallant little committees are constantly planning campaigns in the cause of justice and decency.
—Cornelia Otis Skinner (American Actress, Playwright)

I would rather have a million friends than a million dollars.
—Eddie Rickenbacker (American Aviator)

After a certain point money is meaningless. It’s the game that counts.
—Aristotle Onassis (Greek Shipping Magnate)

That’s the terrible thing: the more one works on a picture, the more impossible it becomes to finish it.
—Alberto Giacometti (Swiss Sculptor, Painter)

I don’t want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about, not what they say.
—Sherwood Anderson (American Fiction Writer)

The foundation of lasting self-confidence and self-esteem is excellence, mastery of our work.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Those who are devoid of learning,
restraint, charity, knowledge, moral conduct,
virtue and righteousness are virtually animals
living in the human form and burdening the earth.
—Bhartrihari (Hindu Philosopher, Grammarian)

Stiff in opinion; always in the wrong.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

All lasting business is built on friendship.
—Alfred A. Montapert (American Engineer, Philosopher)

There should be one theatre where we might take our young daughters without tainting their fresh souls by images of wickedness, or worse, putting it in such pleasant and pathetic shape that they mistake it for virtue.
—Dinah Craik (English Novelist, Poet)

The tongue of experience utters the most truth.
—Arabic Proverb

Sugar is sweet at all times, even in the dark. So remains devotion for the devout, in times of comfort or discomfort, praises or insults, darkness or enlightenment.
—Pramukh Swami Maharaj (Hindu Religious Leader)

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

In the case of good books, the point is not to see how many of them you can get through, but rather how many can get through to you.
—Mortimer J. Adler (American Philosopher, Educator)

If you want to be a complete human being, if you want to be genuine and hold the fullness of life in your heart, then failure is an opportunity to get curious about what is going on and listen to the storylines. Don’t buy the ones that blame it on everybody else, and don’t buy the storylines that blame it on yourself either.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

The true laboratory is the mind, where behind illusions we uncover the laws of truth.
—Jagadish Chandra Bose (Indian Physicist, Botanist)

Our government sprang from and was made for the people—not the people for the government. To them it owes an allegiance; from them it must derive its courage, strength, and wisdom.
—Andrew Johnson (American Head of State)

Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering.
—Yoda (Fictional Character)

Words can never adequately convey the incredible impact of our attitudes toward life. The longer I live the more convinced I become that life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

The God who created these fair heavens with the same facility as yon green sapling; he who hath bestowed on man a life of toil, of transient joys and fleeting pains, that he might not forget the higher worth of his enduring soul, and might feel that immortality waited for him beyond the grave;—He, he is one only God!
—Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (German Poet)

It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery.
—Demosthenes (Greek Statesman, Orator)

Never ascribe to an opponent motives meaner than your own.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)

Rewards and punishment is the lowest form of education.
—Zhuang Zhou (Chinese Taoist Philosopher)

And what is an authentic madman? It is a man who preferred to become mad, in the socially accepted sense of the word, rather than forfeit a certain superior idea of human honor. So society has strangled in its asylums all those it wanted to get rid of or protect itself from, because they refused to become its accomplices in certain great nastinesses. For a madman is also a man whom society did not want to hear and whom it wanted to prevent from uttering certain intolerable truths.
—Antonin Artaud (French Drama Theorist)

A man’s opinion of danger varies at different times according to his animal spirits, and he is actuated by considerations which he dares not avow.
—Tobias Smollett (Scottish Poet)

There is the same difference between the tongues of some, as between the hour and the minute hand; one goes ten times as fast, and the other signifies ten times as much.
—Sydney Smith (English Preacher)

More than whether you live or die, it’s how you are living or dying that is important.
—Robert Thurman (American Buddhist Scholar)

Are you really listening… or are you just waiting for your turn to talk?
—Robert Montgomery (American Actor)

To be in time is to be asleep: to be awake is to be in eternity.
—Sri Rajneesh (Osho) (Indian Spiritual Teacher)

A human being is happiest and most successful when dedicated to a cause outside his own individual, selfish satisfaction.
—Benjamin Spock (American Pediatrician)

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.
—Colin Wilson (British Philosopher)

A woman cannot do the thing she ought, which means whatever perfect thing she can, in life, in art, in science, but she fears to let the perfect action take her part and rest there: she must prove what she can do before she does it,—prate of woman’s rights, of woman’s mission, woman’s function, till the men (who are prating, too, on their side) cry, “A woman’s function plainly is… to talk.” Poor souls, they are very reasonably vexed!
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

You can do more than pray after you have prayed but you cannot do more than pray until you have prayed.
—Samuel Dickey Gordon (American Evangelical Author)

Perhaps the rare and simple pleasure of being seen for what one is compensates for the misery of being it.
—Margaret Drabble (English Novelist)

If you aren’t cute, you may as well be clever.
—David Sedaris (American Humorist, Essayist)

Growth has its season. There are spring and summer, but there are also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all be well.
—Jerzy Kosinski (American Novelist, Essayist)

It is, indeed an incredible fact that what the human mind, at its deepest and most profound, perceives as beautiful finds its realization in external nature…. What is intelligible is also beautiful.
—Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (Indian-American Astrophysicist)

We ought to fear a man who hates himself, for we are at risk of becoming victims of his anger and revenge. Let us then try to lure him into self-love.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

When I first went into the movies Lionel Barrymore played my grandfather. Later he played my father and finally my husband. If he had lived, I’m sure I would have played his mother. That’s the way it is in Hollywood. The men get younger and the women get older.
—Lillian Gish (American Actress)

Human beings are perhaps never more frightening than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right.
—Laurens van der Post (South African Explorer, Writer)

Winning in life is failing. My idea of a winner is someone who fails first and then moves. Failing gives you a library of information that you’ve got to have so in the next situation you can use this body of knowledge. Failure is a teacher. It’s exciting learning how to live on this planet with yourself and the others around you. It’s a wonderful, lifelong path.
—Irene Kassorla (American Psychologist)

Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared.
—Henri Nouwen (Dutch Catholic Priest)

An unlettered king is a crowned ass.
—Latin Proverb

Faith is one foot on the ground, one foot in the air, and a queasy feeling in the stomach.
—Mother Angelica (American Roman Catholic Nun)

Believe me my young friend; there is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
—Kenneth Grahame (Scottish Children’s Writer)

Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own.
—Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (Swiss Educator)

You cannot chase a dollar and an ideal at the same time.
—Austin O’Malley (American Aphorist, Ophthalmologist)

I learn by going where I have to go.
—Theodore Roethke (American Poet)

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of his life in the hill villages of Afghanistan, among the winter snows, is as inviolable in the eye of Almighty God as can be your own.
—William Ewart Gladstone (English Liberal Statesman)

Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

If they don’t depend on true evidence, scientists are no better than gossips.
—Penelope Fitzgerald (British Novelist, Biographer)

The rhythm of life is intricate but orderly, tenacious but fragile. To keep that in mind is to build the key to survival.
—Shirley Hufstedler (American Lawyer, Jurist)

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.
—Leonard Bernstein (American Composer, Conductor)

The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty.
—Mother Teresa (Roman Catholic Nun)

Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door.
—Meister Eckhart (German Christian Mystic)

If you trust before you try, you may repent before you die.
—Common Proverb

Read not books alone, but men, and amongst them chiefly thyself.—If thou find anything questionable there, use the commentary of a severe friend, rather than the gloss of a sweet-lipped flatterer; there is more profit in a distasteful truth than in deceitful sweetness.
—Francis Quarles (English Religious Poet)

I am conservative by temperament. I disapprove of criminal activity. I am very solidly and markedly on the side of authority. The truth is I would rather err on the side of too much authority than too little.
—James Ellroy (American Crime Fiction Writer)

None sigh deeper than those who have no troubles.
—Norwegian Proverb

To be a champ, you have to believe in yourself when nobody else will.
—Sugar Ray Robinson (American Boxer)

The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (British Sufi Mystic)

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.
—Napoleon I (Emperor of France)

The chains of marriage are so heavy that it takes two to bear them, and sometimes three.
—Alexandre Dumas fils (French Dramatist, Novelist)

At court, far from regarding ambition as a sin, people regard it as a virtue, or if it passes for a vice, then it is regarded as the vice of great souls, and the vices of great souls are preferred to the virtues of the simple and the small.
—Louis Bourdaloue (French Jesuit Preacher)

People will try to tell you that all the great opportunities have been snapped up. In reality, the world changes every second, blowing new opportunities in all directions, including yours.
—Ken Hakuta (American Inventor)

For my own part, I had rather suffer any inconvenience from having to work occasionally in chambers and kitchen … than witness the subservience in which the menial class is held in Europe.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

To me it’s not the big things in life that thrill me as much as the small moments of beauty—rare and wondrous, a simple breeze after a hard workout—a kiss from God.
—Marie Chapian (American Christian Writer)

You cannot be fuelled by bitterness. It can eat you up but it cannot drive you.
—Benazir Bhutto (Pakistani Politician)

We are only activated by one desire—what we can do for the community and how we can help the nation strengthen itself.
—Stella Isaacs, Marchioness of Reading (English Humanitarian)

Omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
—William Strunk, Jr. (American Writer)

Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It’s your combination sinners—your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards—who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute.
—Thornton Wilder (American Novelist, Dramatist)

Not being boring is quite a challenge.
—Ian McEwan (British Novelist, Short-Story Writer)

For the nearer any one approaches to God, the more he is illuminated, and therefore the more clearly does he see the majesty and mercy of God.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

There are a thousand thousand reasons to live this life, every one of them sufficient.
—Marilynne Robinson (Novelist, Essayist)

Like most other things not apparently useful to man, it has few friends, and the blind question “Why was it made?” goes on and on, with never a guess that first of all it might have been made for itself.
—John Muir (American Naturalist)

The sleep of kings is on an anthill.
—Pashto Proverb

If the misery of the poor be caused not by the laws of nature, but by our institutions, great is our sin.
—Charles Darwin (British Naturalist)

Even overweight cats instinctively know the rule: when fat, arrange yourself in slim poses.
—John Weitz (American Fashion Designer)

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity.
—Christopher Morley (American Novelist, Essayist)

From quiet homes and first beginning,
Out to the undiscovered ends,
There’s nothing worth the winning,
But laughter and the love of friends.
—Hilaire Belloc (British Writer, Poet)

Human curiosity, the urge to know, is a powerful force and is perhaps the best secret weapon of all in the struggle to unravel the workings of the natural world.
—Aaron Klug (English Biophysicist)

Reflecting the values of the larger capitalistic society, there is no prestige whatsoever attached to actually working. Workers are invisible.
—Marge Piercy (American Poet)

Luxury is a matter not of all the things you have, but all the things you can afford to do without.
—Pico Iyer (British-born Essayist, Novelist of Indian Origin)

People think that stories are shaped by people. In fact, it’s the other way around.
—Terry Pratchett (English Fantasy Writer)

The purpose of psychology is to give us a completely different idea of the things we know best.
—Paul Valery (French Critic, Poet)

A speech should not just be a sharing of information, but a sharing of yourself.
—Ralph Archbold (American Actor)

Mythology is an integral part of religion. It is as necessary for religion and national culture as the skin and the skeleton that preserve a fruit with its juice and its taste. Form is no less essential than substance. Mythology and holy figures are necessary for any great culture to rest on its stable spiritual foundation and function as a life-giving inspiration and guide.
—Chakravarthi Rajagopalachari (Indian Statesman, Author)

One of the greatest joys known to man is to take a flight into ignorance in search of knowledge.
—Robert Wilson Lynd (Irish Essayist, Critic)

We who officially value freedom of speech above life itself seem to have nothing to talk about but the weather.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (American Social Critic)

We all have a little weakness, which is very natural but rather misleading, for supposing that this epoch must be the end of the world because it will be the end of us. How future generations will get on without us is indeed, when we come to think of it, quite a puzzle. But I suppose they will get on somehow, and may possibly venture to revise our judgments as we have revised earlier judgments
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Strong political beliefs in either direction limit your ability to make rational decisions more than almost anything else.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

It is the critic’s duty to enter an artist’s individuality, to discover his intentions—intentions of which the artist himself is perhaps unconscious—so as to judge how far he has realized them, and then to determine what place he occupies in contemporary art.
—Sadakichi Hartmann (American Art Critic)

Consistently wise decisions can only be made by those whose wisdom is constantly challenged.
—Ted Sorensen (American Lawyer, Speechwriter)

Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not.
—Protagoras (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed.
—Tom Clancy (American Spy Novelist)

Our visions begin with our desires.
—Audre Lorde (American Poet, Feminist)

There is no fatigue so wearisome as that which comes from lack of work.
—Charles Spurgeon (English Baptist Preacher)

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Outside every fat man there was an even fatter man trying to close in.
—Kingsley Amis (English Novelist, Poet)

How disturbing it is that our illusions are often our most important beliefs.
—Hanif Kureishi (British Novelist, Screenwriter)

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

A man never reaches that dizzy height of wisdom that he can no longer be lead by the nose.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it.
—Eric Hobsbawm (British Historian)

Think for yourself, question authority.
—Timothy Leary (American Psychologist)

True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.
—William Motter Inge (American Playwright)

Children are tough, though we tend to think of them as fragile. They have to be tough. Childhood is not easy. We sentimentalize children, but they know what’s real and what’s not. They understand metaphor and symbol. If children are different from us, they are more spontaneous. Grown-up lives have become overlaid with dross.
—Maurice Sendak (American Writer, Illustrator)

If you’ve got it, flaunt it. If you do not, pretend.
—Wally Phillips (American Radio Personality)

Power is the recognition of necessity.
—Abraham Rotstein (Canadian Economist)

If you want creative workers, give them enough time to play.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)

Call for the grandest of all earthly spectacles, what is that? It is the sun going to his rest.
—Thomas de Quincey (English Essayist, Critic)

I have often repented speaking, but never of holding my tongue.
—Xenocrates (Greek Philosopher, Scientist)

I suppose the basic intuition that I have about it is very simply, this is a world in which there is a possibility of things going extraordinarily well or extraordinarily badly, where both the good things and the bad things are bigger than people think.
—Peter Thiel (American Entrepreneur)

Laughter is the corrective force which prevents us from becoming cranks.
—Henri Bergson (French Philosopher)

When you’re dying of thirst it’s too late to think about digging a well.
—Japanese Proverb

To govern is always to choose among disadvantages.
—Charles de Gaulle (French General, Statesman)