Inspirational Quotations

The road to positivity is strewn with the abandoned vehicles of the faint-hearted.
—Peter McWilliams (American Author)

What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

A fault is sooner found than mended.
—Ulpian Fulwell (English Playwright, Satirist)

A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded
—Tyne Daly (American Actress, Singer)

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

The future is always a fairy land to the young.
—George Augustus Henry Sala (British Journalist)

If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all. If you have never seen joy in a beautiful face, you have never seen joy at all.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

When he that speaks, and he to whom he speaks, neither of them understand what is meant, that is metaphysics.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations.
—Thomas Gray (English Poet)

The narrow mind rejects; wisdom accepts.
—Lama Thubten Yeshe (Tibetan Buddhist Teacher)

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.
—George William Curtis (American Essayist)

The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith.
—Vaclav Hlavaty (Czech Mathematician, Physicist)

Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor.
—John Churton Collins (English Literary Critic)

Discontent with the actual is the necessary precondition of every moral change and spiritual rebirth.
—Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosopher, Political Leader)

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death.
—Kenneth Patchen (American Poet, Novelist)

He, therefore, who desires peace should prepare for war. He who aspires to victory should spare no pains to form his soldiers. And he who hopes for success should fight on principle, not chance.
—Vegetius (Roman Military Author)

God’s extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

A good reputation is more valuable than money.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

God always has an angel of help for those who are willing to do their duty.
—Theodore L. Cuyler (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn’t imagine ourselves through a day without it.
—Robert K. Cooper (American Neuroscientist)

Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.
—Rebecca West (English Author)

The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind’s eye.
—Shana Alexander (American Journalist)

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate a taste.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Poet, Writer)

He gives us the very quintessence of perception.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet, Critic)

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.
—Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.
—A. W. Tozer (American Christian Pastor)

The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
—Robert W. Service (Scottish Poet)

You must have a high concept not of what you are doing, but of what you may do someday. Without that there’s no point to working.
—Edgar Degas (French Painter)

Illusion is always based on reality, for its strength depends upon its fit with the desires, fears and experiences of countless humans.
—Dero A. Saunders (American Journalist)

Love… Force it and it disappears. You cannot will love, nor even control it. You can only guide its expression. It comes or it goes according to those qualities in life that invite it or deny its presence.
—David Seabury (American Psychologist)

Scientists are treated like gods handing down new commandments. People tend to assume that religion has been disproved by science. But the scientist may tell us how the world works, not why it works, not how we should live our lives, not how we face death or make moral decisions.
—Susan Howatch (British Historical Novelist)

If the spirit of business adventure is dulled, this country will cease to hold the foremost position in the world.
—Andrew W. Mellon (American Financier)

Forgiving those who hurt us is the key to personal peace.
—Ulysses G. Weatherly (American Sociologist, Educator)

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (Roman Statesman, Poet)

The humanities of business in this age have become more important than the techniques of business. Each business and industry has to sweep the public misunderstandings and the false notions off its own front walk. Thus will a pathway be cleared for popular appreciation of the important rule of business in our freedom and in our way of life.
—Harry Amos Bullis (American Business Leader)

There’s cost and benefit each time you criticize or suggest. Sometimes, it’s worth the price. Make the choice consciously.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach)

Those who cling to life die, and those who defy death live.
—Uesugi Kenshin (Japanese Warlord, Daimyo)

The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one.
—Joan Baez (American Singer)

Worry is like a rocking chair: it keeps you moving but doesn’t get you anywhere.
—Corrie Ten Boom (Dutch Jewish Humanist)

You can fake your age or mask it, but the passion that moves the characters has to be real.
—Victoria Abril (Spanish Actress, Singer)

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

We need the courage to start and continue what we should do, and courage to stop what we shouldn’t do.
—Richard L. Evans (American Mormon Religions Leader)

The person who builds a character makes foes.
—Owen D. Young (American Businessperson)

Thy modesty’s a candle to thy merit.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Nature will not forgive those who fail to fulfill the law of their being. The law of human beings is wisdom and goodness, not unlimited acquisition.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (American Educator)

Patience has its limits, take it too far and it’s cowardice.
—Holbrook Jackson (British Journalist)

All crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

The best and sweetest flowers in paradise, God gives to his people when they are on their knees in the closet.—Prayer, if not the very gate of heaven, is the key to let us into its holiness and joys.
—Thomas Brooks (English Puritan Preacher, Author)

He who leaves nothing to chance will do few things poorly, but he will do few things.
—E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (British Politician)

Ideas attract money, time, talents, skills, energy and other complementary ideas that will bring them into reality.
—Mark Victor Hansen (American Public Speaker)

Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious thing.
—Randolph Bourne (American Writer)

Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.
—Joseph Wood Krutch (American Writer)

As long as the day lasts, let’s give it all we got.
—David O. McKay (American Religious Leader)

The sad truth is that opportunity doesn’t knock twice. You can put things off until tomorrow but tomorrow may never come. Where will you be a few years down the line. Will it be everything you dreamed of. We seal our fate with the choices we take, but don’t give a second thought to the chances we take.
—Gloria Estefan (Cuban-American Singer, Actress)

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.
—George Sand (French Novelist, Dramatist)

First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits, or they’ll eventually conquer you.
—Rob Gilbert (American Animator, Cartoonist)

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
—James A. Michener (American Novelist)

More can be learned from what works than from what fails.
—Rene Dubos (French-American Microbiologist)

Any success you have is despite your lack of giving, not because of it.
—Richard Carlson (American Actor)

Each of us wrestles with the dark giant in our own way.
—Connie Zweig (American Minister)

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge in.
—Thomas De Witt Talmage (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
—Theodore Dreiser (American Novelist, Journalist)

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.
—C. P. Snow (British Novelist, Scientist)

The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.
—M. C. Richards (American Poet, Potter, Writer)

Morality sticks faster when presented in brief sayings than when presented in long discourse.
—Karl Leberecht Immermann (German Novelist, Dramatist)

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Unlike grownups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

My belief is that no movie, nothing in life, leaves people neutral. You either leave them up or you leave them down.
—David Puttnam (British Film Producer)

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.
—Franklin P. Adams (American Columnist)

Information is a negotiator’s greatest weapon.
—Victor Kiam (American Entrepreneur)

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of those liberties which make the defense of the nation worthwhile.
—Earl Warren (American Judge)

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)

Before you can win, you have to believe you are worthy.
—Mike Ditka (American Sportsperson)

Back of every noble life there are principles that have fashioned it.
—George Horace Lorimer (American Editor)

I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.
—Jim Carrey (Canadian Actor)

Cunning pays no regard to virtue, and is but the low mimic of wisdom.
—Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke (English Politician)

We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

When I go out into the countryside and see the sun and the green and everything flowering, I say to myself Yes indeed, all that belongs to me.
—Henri Rousseau (French Painter)

For the true student, everything that happens in daily life is a test.
—Karlfried Graf Durckheim (German Zen Teacher)

The only thing that keeps a man going is energy. And what is energy but liking life?
—Louis Auchincloss (American Novelist, Lawyer)

The higher goal of spiritual living is not to amass a wealth of information, but to face sacred moments.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be defeated.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

A good friend is worth pursuing… but why would a good friend be running away?
—Ashleigh Brilliant (British Cartoonist)

Show me your hands. Do they have scars from giving? Show me your feet. Are they wounded in service? Show me your heart. Have you left a place for divine love?
—Fulton J. Sheen (American Catholic Religious Leader)

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” “We’re not raising grass,” my dad would reply, “we’re raising boys.”
—Harmon Killebrew (American Baseball Player)

Love without attachment is light.
—Norman O. Brown (American Philosopher)

A well-aimed spear is worth three.
—Ted Williams (American Sportsperson)

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.
—John Aubrey (English Antiquarian, Writer)

The smaller the function, the greater the management.
—C. Northcote Parkinson (British Historian)

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

Finding that no religion is based on facts and cannot be true, I began to reflect what must be the condition of mankind trained from infancy to believe in error.
—Robert Owen (British Social Reformer)

The madness of depression is the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
—William Styron (American Novelist)

Socialism is a vast machine for churning out piles of goods marked “Take it or leave it. “
—Arthur Seldon (British Economist)

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?
—Marcel Marceau (French Mime Artist)

Someone has written, “Love is a verb”. It requires doing – not just saying and thinking. The test is in what one does, how one acts, for love is conveyed in word and deed.
—David B. Haight (American Mormon Leader)

The test of courage comes when we are in the minority. The test of tolerance comes when we are in the majority.
—Ralph Washington Sockman (American United Methodist Pastor)

This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition.
—John Kerry (American Politician)

Prejudices are the chains forged by ignorance to keep men apart.
—Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington (Irish Novelist)

Diversify everything in your life, including the people you listen to for advice.
—James Altucher (American Author, Entrepreneur)

Reason is the cause of our falsification of the evidence of the senses. In so far as the senses show becoming, passing away, change, they do not lie.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

The truth is that literature, particularly fiction, is not the pure medium we sometimes assume it to be. Response to it is affected by things other than its own intrinsic quality; by a curiosity or lack of it about the people it deals with, their outlook, their way of life.
—Vance Palmer (Australian Writer, Critic)

Somewhere there is a map of how it can be done.
—Ben Stein (American Lawyer)

Success makes men rigid and they tend to exalt stability over all the other virtues; tired of the effort of willing, they become fanatics about conservatism.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

People drain me, even the closest of friends, and I find loneliness to be the best state in the union to live in.
—Margaret Cho (American Stand-Up Comedian)

You may forget the one with whom you have laughed, but never the one with whom you have wept.
—Kahlil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Increased borrowing must be matched by increased ability to repay. Otherwise we aren’t expanding the economy, we’re merely puffing it up.
—Henry C. Alexander (American Banker)

Dwelling on the negative simply contributes to its power.
—Shirley MacLaine (American Actor)

I don’t believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game.
—Tom Landry (American Football Coach)

The years that a woman subtracts from her age are not lost. They are added to other women’s.
—Diane de Poitiers (French Noble)

It is a good idea sometimes to think of the importance and dignity of our everyday duties. It keeps them from being so tiresome.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

There is a deportment which suits the figure and talents of each person; it is always lost when we quit it to assume that of another.
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (French Philosopher)

Do you know what the greatest test is’? Do you still get excited about what you do when you get up in the morning?
—David Halberstam (American Journalist, Historian)

The opportunity for an entrepreneur to start a company from scratch today is abysmal.
—David L. Geffen (American Businessman)

It requires a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune, and when you have got it, it requires ten times as much wit to keep it.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

If you don’t make a total commitment to whatever you’re doing, then you start looking to bail out the first time the boat starts leaking. It’s tough enough getting that boat to shore with everybody rowing, let alone when a guy stands up and starts putting his life jacket on.
—Lou Holtz (American Comedian)

Sometimes the appropriate response to reality is to go insane.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

Intelligent discontent is the mainspring of civilization.
—Eugene V. Debs (American Social, Labor Leader)

It is useless to tell me not to reason but to believe—you might as well tell a man not to wake but sleep.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Holidays are enticing only for the first week or so. After that, it is no longer such a novelty to rise late and have little to do.
—Margaret Laurence (Canadian Novelist)