Inspirational Quotations

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
—Sylvia Plath (American Poet, Novelist)

If we do not lay out ourselves in the service of mankind, whom should we serve?
—Abigail Adams (American First Lady)

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
—Sergei Rachmaninoff (Russian Musician)

We have to constantly confront our deepest anxieties, our emptiness, our despair, our doubts; and there is nowhere for us to escape and hide from them. It is impossible to ever turn back, and at times it seems impossible to ever make any further progress.
—Stephen Batchelor (British Buddhist Author, Teacher)

Be thou incapable of change in that which is right, and men will rely upon thee. Establish unto thyself principles of action; and see that thou ever act according to them. First know that thy principles are just, and then be thou.
—Akhenaten (Egyptian Monarch)

Science fiction is no more written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.
—Brian Aldiss (English Novelist)

Keeping hatred inside makes you get mean and evil inside. And when you forgive you feel sorry for the one that hurt you; you return love for hate, and good for evil. And that stretches your heart and makes you bigger inside. Now when you hate you shrink up inside and get littler, and you squeeze your heart tight, and you stays so mad with peoples you feel sick all the time like you need the doctor. Folks with a loving heart don’t never need no doctor.
—Margaret Walker (American Author, Poet)

A newspaper is of necessity something of a monopoly, and its first duty is to shun the temptations of monopoly. Its primary office is the gathering of news. At the peril of its soul it must see that the supply is not tainted. Neither in what it gives, nor in what it does not give, nor in the mode of presentation must the unclouded face of truth suffer wrong. Comment is free, but facts are sacred.
—C. P. Scott (British Journalist, Editor)

It’s not what you are; it’s what you don’t become that hurts.
—Oscar Levant (American Musician)

Time ain’t for savin’, no there’s no time for that.
—Jimmy Buffett (American Singer-Songwriter)

To God, thy country, and thy friend be true, then thou’lt ne’er be false to any one.
—Henry Vaughan (Anglo-Welsh Poet)

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.
—Wilhelm Dilthey (German Philosopher)

If ease of use was the only requirement, everybody would still be riding tricycles.
—Douglas Engelbart (American Inventor)

Sympathy is two hearts tugging at one load.
—Charles Henry Parkhurst (American Clergyman)

‘Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

What is conceived well is expressed clearly.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux (French Literary Critic)

An ordinary man can surround himself with two thousand books and thenceforward have at least one place in the world in which it is possible to be happy.
—Augustine Birrell (English Politician, Essayist)

Waiting with hope is very difficult, but true patience is expressed when we must even wait for hope. I will have reached the point of greatest strength once I have learned to wait for hope.
—George Matheson (Scottish Theologian)

Flattery is like chewing gum. Enjoy it but don’t swallow it.
—Hank Ketcham (American Cartoonist)

The most worthwhile form of education is the kind that puts the educator inside you, as it were, so that the appetite for learning persists long after the external pressure for grades and degrees has vanished. Otherwise you are not educated; you are merely trained.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

Say not that this or that thing came to thwart you; it only came to test you.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

A specialist is someone who does everything else worse.
—Ruggiero Ricci (American Violinist)

Three outstanding qualities make for success: judgement, industry, health. And the greatest of these is judgement.
—Max Aitken, 1st Baron Beaverbrook (British Politician, Journalist)

The life of the creative man is lead, directed and controlled by boredom. Avoiding boredom is one of our most important purposes.
—Saul Steinberg (American Cartoonist)

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

The superior man is aware of Righteousness, the inferior man is aware of advantage.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

To insist on purity is to baptize instinct, to humanize art, and to deify personality.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority.
—E. B. White (American Essayist, Humorist)

It’s the willing horse they saddle the most.
—Jamaican Proverb

As insanity in a higher sense, is the beginning of all wisdom, so is schizophrenia the beginning of all art, all fantasy.
—Hermann Hesse (Swiss Novelist, Poet)

I would like to see a state of society in which every man and woman preferred the old Scottish Sunday to the modern French one. We should then find solid and eternal foundations of character and self-command.
—Ramsay MacDonald (British Head of State)

The advantage of taking an instant dislike to somebody is that it saves time.
—Spike Milligan (Irish Humorist)

Creative minds have always been known to survive any kind of bad training.
—Anna Freud (Austrian-British Psychoanalyst)

Americans will listen, but they do not care to read. War and Peace must wait for the leisure of retirement, which never really comes: meanwhile it helps to furnish the living room. Blockbusting fiction is bought as furniture. Unread, it maintains its value. Read, it looks like money wasted. Cunningly, Americans know that books contain a person, and they want the person, not the book.
—Anthony Burgess (English Novelist, Critic)

If you have formed the habit of checking on every new diet that comes along, you will find that, mercifully, they all blur together, leaving you with only one definite piece of information: french-fried potatoes are out.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

What was the duty of the teacher if not to inspire?
—Bharati Mukherjee (Indian-American Novelist)

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.
—Evelyn Waugh (British Novelist, Satirist)

The bird that would soar above the plain of tradition and prejudice must have strong wings.
—Kate Chopin (American Novelist, Short-Story Writer)

My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.
—Dashiell Hammett (American Crime Writer)

Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
—Joseph Schumpeter (Austrian-American Economist)

All beings desire happiness; therefore to all extend your benevolence.
—Mahavamsa (Sri Lankan Narrative History)

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
—Max Beerbohm (British Humorist)

Good lies need a leavening of truth to make them palatable.
—William McIlvanney (Scottish Novelist, Poet)

The very essence of leadership is [that] you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.
—Theodore Hesburgh (American Catholic Educator)

Anyone who moved through those years [of the Second World War] without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head.
—William Golding (English Novelist)

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.
—Zelda Fitzgerald (American Writer, Artist)

Love that stammers, that stutters, is apt to be the love that loves best.
—Gabriela Mistral (Chilean Poet)

In case of doubt, do a little more than you have to.
—Warren Mitchell (English Actor)

When you react to a situation, do not re-enact it. Wait until the emotional nature has completely composed itself, then study your reaction.
—Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (American Hindu Teacher)

If thou suffer injustice, console thyself; the true unhappiness is in doing it.
—Democritus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Without ethics, everything happens as if we were all five billion passengers on a big machinery and nobody is driving the machinery. And it’s going faster and faster, but we don’t know where.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Underwater Explorer)

There is a silence, the child of love, which expresses everything, and proclaims more loudly than the tongue is able to do.
—Vittorio Alfieri (Italian Poet, Dramatist)

The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.
—Johannes Kepler (German Astronomer)

Writing is not only a reflection of what one thinks and feels but a rope one weaves with words that can lower you below or hoist you above the surface of your life, enabling you to go deeper or higher than you would otherwise go. What excites me about his metaphor is that is makes writing much more than a lifesaving venture.
—Phyllis Theroux (American Journalist, Author)

Death is a very dull, dreary affair, and my advice to you is to have nothing whatever to do with it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

The land is a mother that never dies.
—Maori Proverb

I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality.
—Frida Kahlo (Mexican Painter)

How selfhood begins with a walking away, and love is proved in the letting go.
—Cecil Day-Lewis (British Poet, Critic)

When an idea that’s constitutionally right for you, an idea that’s an expression of your own heart, comes to mind, it’s very hard to deny it. It comes with a risk. You will always remember it like a lost love, a love that didn’t pan out, if you choose to deny it.
—Charles A. Garfield (American Psychologist)

There is nothing respecting which a man may be so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices.
—Francis Jeffrey, Lord Jeffrey (Scottish Judge, Critic)

It is God who is the ultimate reason of things, and the knowledge of God is no less the beginning of science than his essence and will are the beginning of beings.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

The angel of the Family is Woman. Mother, wife, or sister, Woman is the caress of life, the soothing sweetness of affection shed over its toils, a reflection for the individual of the loving providence which watches over Humanity. In her there is treasure enough of consoling tenderness to allay every pain. Moreover for every one of us she is the initiator of the future. The mother’s first kiss teaches the child love; the first holy kiss of the woman he loves teaches man hope and faith in life; and love and faith create a desire for perfection and the power of reaching towards it step by step; create the future, in short, of which the living symbol is the child, link between us and the generations to come. Through her the Family, with its divine mystery of reproduction, points to Eternity.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Revolutionary)

A style is not a matter of camera angles or fancy footwork, it’s an expression, an accurate expression of your particular opinion.
—Karel Reisz (Czech-British Film Director)

There are two kinds of writers—the great ones who can give you truths, and the lesser ones, who can only give you themselves.
—Clifton Fadiman (American Intellectual)

Great men are rarely isolated mountain-peaks; they are the summits of ranges.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Reformer, Editor)

The best armor of old age is a well-spent life preceding it.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Man can never escape pleasure or pain, because his body, which is a product of his good or bad actions, is by nature transient. After pleasure pain, after pain pleasure: creatures cannot escape these two, as they cannot the succession of day and night….It is, therefore, that the Sages knowing that all is but illusion, remain steadfast and neither are aggrieved nor joyous for events unhappy or happy.
—Adhyatma Ramayana (Hindu Religious Text)

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.
—John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir (Scottish Novelist)

The only criterion for what is a fact is what it is rational to accept.
—Hilary Putnam (American Philosopher)

Steady as a clock, busy as a bee, and cheerful as a cricket.
—Martha Washington (American First Lady)

Everything you want is out there waiting for you to ask. Everything you want also wants you. But you have to take action to get it.
—Jack Canfield (American Self-Help Author)

He who seeks vengeance must dig two graves: one for his enemy and one for himself.
—Chinese Proverb

It’s precisely when people can’t see what it is that could make things turn down that risk is highest, since they tend not to price in risks they can’t see.
—Howard Marks (American Investor)

Time will always follow its rules. It will never transgress those boundaries it imposes on itself. Nobody can harm time. Hence, nobody can change what fate has in store for them.
—The Ramayana (Hindu Religious Text)

Equal opportunity is good, but special privilege is better.
—Anna Chennault (American Journalist)

Expecting good things to last and unwanted things to stay away forever is simply unrealistic, even when we are amid good karma and bounty aplenty.
—Lama Surya Das (American Buddhist Scholar)

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.
—Allen Ginsberg (American Poet)

There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
—Thomas Reid (Scottish Philosopher)

I suppose that everyone of us hopes secretly for immortality; to leave, I mean, a name behind him which will live forever in this world, whatever he may be doing, himself, in the next.
—A. A. Milne (British Humorist, Children’s Writer)

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

The most important, the most fundamental and the deepest investigations are those that affect human life and activities most profoundly. Only those scientists who have laboured, not with the aim of producing this or that, but with the sole desire to advance knowledge ultimately prove to be the greatest benefactors of humanity.
—C. V. Raman (Indian Physicist)

Love, you are eternal like springtime.
—Juan Ramon Jimenez (Spanish Lyric Poet)

Drastic action can be costly, but it can be less expensive than continuing inaction.
—Richard Neustadt (American Historian)

The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.
—William James (American Philosopher)

If Fortune calls, offer him a seat.
—Yiddish Proverb

There is just one rule for politicians all over the world. Don’t say in Power what you say in Opposition: if you do you only have to carry out what the other fellows have found impossible.
—John Galsworthy (English Novelist, Playwright)

Immature poets imitate, mature poets steal.
—Philip Massinger (English Playwright)

Love, friendship and respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

Better one word less than one too many.
—Maltese Proverb

A cherefull look makes a dish a feast.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

Enlightenment must come little by little—otherwise it would overwhelm.
—Idries Shah (Indian-born Sufi Author)

Whatever your grade or position, if you know how and when to speak, and when to remain silent, your chances of real success are proportionately increased.
—Ralph C. Smedley (Founder of Toastmasters)

The kindest and the happiest pair, will find occasion to forbear; find something every day they live, to pity, and perhaps forgive.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

The winning team has a dedication. It will have a core of veteran players who set the standards. They will not accept defeat.
—Merlin Olsen (American Sportsman)

Don’t simply retire from something; have something to retire to.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (American Baptist Minister)

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.
—Michael Faraday (British Physicist, Chemist)

The moral virtues, without religion, are but cold, lifeless, and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas, and warns the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
—Joseph Addison (English Poet, Playwright, Politician)

One swallow does not make a summer, but one skein of geese, cleaving the murk of March thaw, is the Spring.
—Aldo Leopold (American Conservationist)

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: he has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Inspiration is a slender river of brightness leaping from a vast and eternal knowledge, it exceeds reason more perfectly than reason exceeds the knowledge of the senses.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

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)

Hard work is the key to success, so work diligently on any project you undertake. If you truly want to be successful, be prepared to give up your leisure time and work past 5 PM and on weekends. Also, have faith in yourself. If you come up with a new idea that you believe in, don’t allow other people to discourage you from pursuing it.
—Charles Lazarus (American Entrepreneur)

Love came down at Christmas;
Love all lovely, love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Stars and angels gave the sign.
—Christina Rossetti (English Poet)

Regularity in the hours of rising and retiring, perseverance in exercise, adaptation of dress to the variations of climate, simple and nutritious aliment, and temperance in all things are necessary branches of the regimen of health.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (American Poetaster, Author)

When a man has turned away from sin, reproach him no more.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Since we live in an age of innovation, a practical education must prepare a man for work that does not yet exist and cannot yet be clearly defined.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.
—Dolly Parton (American Musician, Actress)

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate.
—Sandra Boynton (American Humorist)

At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfect, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path, if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments.
—Aung San Suu Kyi (Burmese Political Activist)

All the mind’s activity is easy if it is not subjected to reality.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

The average American worker has fifty interruptions a day, of which seventy percent have nothing to do with work.
—W. Edwards Deming (American Statistician)

I believe that a worthwhile life is defined by a kind of spiritual journey and a sense of obligation.
—Hillary Rodham Clinton (American Head of State)

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately triumph than to triumph in a cause that will ultimately fail
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

We cast away priceless time in dreams, born of imagination, fed upon illusion, and put to death by reality.
—Judy Garland (American Actress, Singer)

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Yoga is a science, and not a vague dreamy drifting or imagining. It is an applied science, a systematized collection of laws applied to bring about a definite end. It takes up the laws of psychology, applicable to the unfolding of the whole consciousness of man on every plane, in every world, and applies those rationally in a particular case. This rational application of the laws of unfolding consciousness acts exactly on the same principles that you see applied around you every day in other departments of science.
—Annie Besant (British-born Indian Theosophist)

To believe with certainty, we must begin by doubting.
—Polish Proverb

Do not say, “It is morning,” and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

Some plague the people with too long sermons; for the faculty of listening is a tender thing, and soon becomes weary and satiated.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

The only lasting beauty is the beauty of the heart.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

Haste is of the devil.
—The Holy Quran (Sacred Scripture of Islam)

Next to the assumption of power is the responsibility of relinquishing it.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

You can take no credit for beauty at sixteen. But if you are beautiful at sixty, it will be your soul’s own doing.
—Marie Stopes (British Author, Social Activist)

Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

It is difficult to discern a serious threat to religious liberty from a room of silent, thoughtful schoolchildren.
—Sandra Day O’Connor (American Jurist)

Memories of our lives, of our works and our deeds will continue in others.
—Rosa Parks (American Civil Rights Leader)

To have joy one must share it. Happiness was born a twin.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

I am a liberated woman. And I do believe if a woman does equal work she should be paid equal money. But personally I am feminine and I do like male authority to lean on.
—Julie Andrews (British Actress, Singer)

Life is the flower for which love is the honey.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavorable. Favorable conditions never come.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

The noblest motive is the public good.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

An angry man opens his mouth and shuts his eyes.
—Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato) (Roman Statesman)

The double betrayal of a modern liberal arts education: it neither teaches you how to live nor how to work.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

My only objection to the custom of giving books as Christmas presents is perhaps the selfish one that it encourages and keeps in the game a number of writers who would be far better employed if they abandoned the pen and took to work.
—P. G. Wodehouse (English Novelist)

Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each other to live as seems good to themselves than by compelling each to live as seems good to the rest.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

Laughter is one of the very privileges of reason, being confined to the human species.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Historian, Essayist)

Don’t wait for moods. You’ll accomplish nothing.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

I have been very happy, very rich, very beautiful, much adulated, very famous, and very unhappy.
—Brigitte Bardot (French Film Star)

I have a wife, I have sons; all these hostages have I given to fortune.
—F. L. Lucas (English Literary Critic)

I’m going to take the high road because the low road is so crowded.
—Mia Farrow (American Actress, Activist)

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
—George Washington (American Head of State)

The only sin is mediocrity.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

Everybody knows if you are too careful you are so occupied in being careful that you are sure to stumble over something.
—Gertrude Stein (American Writer)

I don’t care what is written about me so long as it isn’t true.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

The essence of the liberal outlook is a belief that men should be free to question anything if they can support their questioning by solid arguments.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)