Inspirational Quotations

Not a mother, not a father will do so much, nor any other relative; a well-directed mind will do us greater service.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

As the sun is best seen at his rising and setting, so men’s native dispositions are clearest seen when they are children, and when they are dying.
—Robert Boyle (Irish Scientist, Philosopher)

What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared?
—Mikhail Bulgakov (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

Eagles don’t flock–you have to find them one at a time.
—Ross Perot (American Businessman)

It is sinful to even see the face of a man who does not feel his friend’s pain. Treat your own mountain-like pain as though it were a speck. Treat your friend’s speck-like pain as though it were a mountain.
—Tulsidas (Indian Hindu Poet)

When people ask for time, it’s always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn’t take half as long to say.
—Edith Wharton (American Novelist, Short-story Writer)

At 46 one must be a miser; only have time for essentials.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Hair is another name for sex.
—Vidal Sassoon (Anglo-American Hairstylist)

I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but people. And if we think them not enlightened enough, the remedy is not to take the power from them, but to inform them by education
—Thomas Jefferson (American Head of State)

It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

Fine feathers make fine birds.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Remember that you don’t have to like or admire someone to feel compassion for that person. All you have to do is wish for that person to be happy.
—Thanissaro Bhikkhu (American Buddhist Monk)

Leaders learn by leading, and they learn best by leading in the face of obstacles. As weather shapes mountains, problems shape leaders.
—Warren Bennis (American Management Consultant)

To see victory only when it is within the ken of the common herd is not the acme of excellence.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.
—Bernard M. Baruch (American Financier)

All successful revolutions are the kicking in of a rotten door. The violence of revolutions is the violence of men who charge into a vacuum.
—John Kenneth Galbraith (American Economist)

Sometimes the easiest way to get something done is to be a little naive about it.
—Bill Joy (American Computer Engineer)

A man should be able to hear, and to bear, the worst that could be said of him.
—Saul Bellow (Canadian-born American Novelist)

Homesickness is… absolutely nothing. Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time… You don’t really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don’t have, or haven’t been able to find.
—John Cheever (American Novelist)

My main point today is that usually one gets what one expects, but very rarely in the way one expected it.
—Charles F. Richter (American Physicist, Geologist)

That’s how it is sometimes when we plunge into the depths of our lives. No one can accompany us, not even those who would give up their hearts for our happiness.
—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Indian-born American Novelist)

In order to acquire intellect one must need it. One loses it when it is no longer necessary.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Humanity is not the last rung of the terrestrial creation. Evolution continues and man will be surpassed. It is for each individual to know whether he wants to participate in the advent of this new species.
—Mirra Alfassa (French-Born Indian Spiritual Guru)

All my life I believed I knew something. But then one strange day came when I realized that I knew nothing; yes, I knew nothing. And so words became void of meaning. I have arrived too late at ultimate uncertainty.
—Ezra Pound (American Poet, Critic)

Truth is best (of all that is) good. As desired, what is being desired is truth for him who (represents) the best truth.
—Zoroaster (Persian Religious Leader, Prophet)

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lies comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, around him, and so loses all respect for himself and others.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

If a man does not have an ideal and try to live up to it, then he becomes a mean, base and sordid creature, no matter how successful.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Religion is the possibility of the removal of every ground of confidence except confidence in God alone.
—Karl Barth (Swiss Protestant Theologian)

We all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace.
—Pope Francis (Religious Leader)

Friendships aren’t perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (American Writer)

We like someone because, we love someone in spite of.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Be bold. If you’re going to make an error, make a doozy, and don’t be afraid to hit the ball.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)

Fools are more to be feared than the wicked.
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

Psychoanalysis can unravel some of the forms of madness; it remains a stranger to the sovereign enterprise of unreason. It can neither limit nor transcribe, nor most certainly explain, what is essential in this enterprise.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

Those who eat too much or eat too little, who sleep too much or sleep too little, will not succeed in meditation. But those who are temperate in eating and sleeping, work and recreation, will come to the end of sorrow through meditation.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and instead of bleeding he sings.
—Howard Gardner (American Psychologist)

It is love alone that gives worth to all things.
—Teresa of Avila (Spanish Carmelite Nun, Mystic)

The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist, Essayist)

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage.
—Wendell Phillips (American Abolitionist)

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

You never find yourself until you face the truth.
—Pearl Bailey (American Singer, Actress)

Easy way to soften a piece of feedback or criticism: turn periods into question marks.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

For fast-acting relief, try slowing down.
—Lily Tomlin (American Comedy Actress)

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The only thing new in this world is the history that you don’t know
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

You can be pleased with nothing if you are not pleased with yourself.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat, Poet)

The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want. It’s such a simple idea. It’s the golden rule. You want to deliver to the world what you would buy if you were on the other end.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct.
—F. H. Bradley (British Idealist Philosopher)

Adulthood is the ever-shrinking period between childhood and old age. It is the apparent aim of modern industrial societies to reduce this period to a minimum.
—Thomas Szasz (Hungarian Psychiatrist)

Sadness flies away on the wings of time.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

Love without friendship is like a shadow without the sun.
—Japanese Proverb

My definition of success is to live your life in a way that causes you to feel a ton of pleasure and very little pain—and because of your lifestyle, have the people around you feel a lot more pleasure than they do pain.
—Tony Robbins (American Self-Help Author)

Foolish indeed are those who trust to fortune.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

Hold on to your dreams for they are, in a sense, the stuff of which reality is made. It is through our dreams that we maintain the possibility of a better, more meaningful life.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

The mind is the limit. As long as the mind can envision the fact that you can do something, you can do it—as long as you really believe 100 percent.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austrian-American Actor, Politician)

Public opinion is a weak tyrant, compared with our private opinion – what a man thinks of himself, that is which determines, or rather indicates his fate.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Industry is the soul of business and the keystone of prosperity.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Stains are not seen at night.
—Hebrew Proverb

Gifts make slaves as whips make dogs.
—Inuit Proverb

I believe that the testing of the student’s achievements in order to see if he meets some criterion held by the teacher, is directly contrary to the implications of therapy for significant learning.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

Among true and real friends, all is common; and were ignorance and envy and superstition banished from the world, all mankind would be friend.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

Life itself is the proper binge.
—Julia Child (American Cook, Author)

Companies are rarely criticized for the things that they failed to try. But they are, many times, criticized for things they tried and failed at.
—Jeff Bezos (American Businessman)

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the capacity for service.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.
—Mary Oliver (American Poet)

When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

How much folly there is in human affairs.
—Persius (Roman Poet)

All great victories, be they in politics, business, art, or seduction, involved resolving vexing problems with a potent cocktail of creativity, focus, and daring. When you have a goal, obstacles are actually teaching you how to get where you want to go—carving you a path. “The Things which hurt,” Benjamin Franklin wrote, “instruct.”
—Ryan Holiday (American Author)

It takes time for a fruit to mature and acquire sweetness and become eatable; time is a prime factor for most good fortunes.
—The Vedas (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

Genius is an intellect that has become unfaithful to its destiny.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Grown don’t mean nothing to a mother. A child is a child. They get bigger, older, but grown? What’s that suppose to mean? In my heart it don’t mean a thing.
—Toni Morrison (American Novelist)

Silence is the first door to spiritual eminence.
—Adi Shankaracharya (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

What we call education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete fictitious for the contemporary real.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Schools currently excel in encouraging children to express opinions, but are deficient in encouraging children to say, for example, “Oh, that’s different from my perspective … tell me more.”
—Warren Farrell (American Educator, Activist)

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.
—Baruch Spinoza (Dutch Philosopher)

As time goes on, you’ll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn’t, doesn’t. Time solves most things. And what time can’t solve, you have to solve yourself.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible.
—David Ogilvy (British Advertising Executive)

That’s what happens when you’re angry at people. You make them part of your life.
—Garrison Keillor (American Broadcaster, Writer)

A thing is mighty big when time and distance cannot shrink it.
—Zora Neale Hurston (American Novelist)

Flowers in a city are like lipstick on a woman—it just makes you look better to have a little color.
—Lady Bird Johnson (First Lady of the United States)

Failure at a task may be the result of having tackled it at the wrong time.
—Brendan Behan (Irish Poet)

I’m not going to die,
I’m going home
Like a shooting star.
—Sojourner Truth (African-American Abolitionist)

No soul can preserve the bloom and delicacy of its existence without lonely musings and silent prayer, and the greatness of this necessity is in proportion to the greatness of evil.
—Frederic William Farrar (British Theological Writer)

It is the nature, and the advantage, of strong people that they can bring out the crucial questions and form a clear opinion about them. The weak always have to decide between alternatives that are not their own.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart than on the tongue.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

The truth is that most people are simply too distracted by their thoughts to have the selflessness of consciousness pointed out directly. And even if they are ready to glimpse it, they are unlikely to understand its significance.
—Sam Harris (American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author)

The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.
—John Steinbeck (American Novelist)

Success in the majority of circumstances depends on knowing how long it takes to succeed.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

Failure is delay, but not defeat. It is a temporary detour, not a dead-end street.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

Tact is the great ability to see other people as they think you see them.
—Carl Zuckmayer (German Playwright)

All of our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.
—Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

All that attention to the perfect lighting, the perfect this, the perfect that, I find terribly annoying.
—Meryl Streep (American Actor)

Perhaps even these things, one day, will be pleasing to remember.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

To be 70 years young is sometimes far more cheerful and hopeful than to be 40 years old.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

An act of meditation is actually an act of faith–of faith in your spirit, in your own potential. Faith is the basis of meditation. Not of faith in something outside you–a metaphysical Buddha, an unattainable ideal, or someone else’s words. The faith is in yourself, in your own “Buddha-nature”. You too can be a Buddha, an awakened being that lives and responds in a wise, creative, and compassionate way.
—Martine Batchelor (French Buddhist Teacher)

When moral courage feels that it is in the right, there is no personal daring of which it is incapable.
—Leigh Hunt (British Author)

Years ago, the business schools used to pose it as a conundrum. They would say, `Well, who comes first? Your employees, your shareholders, or your customers?’ But it’s not a conundrum. Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.
—Herb Kelleher (American Entrepreneur)

We have five senses in which we glory and which we recognize and celebrate, senses that constitute the sensible world for us. But there are other senses – secret senses, sixth senses, if you will – equally vital, but unrecognized, and unlauded.
—Oliver Sacks (British Neurologist, Writer)

As to the evil which results from a censorship, it is impossible to measure it, for it is impossible to tell where it ends.
—Jeremy Bentham (British Philosopher, Economist)

You haven’t seen a tree until you’ve seen its shadow from the sky.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Every day of our lives we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

For there is no friend like a sister
In calm or stormy weather;
To cheer one on the tedious way,
To fetch one if one goes astray,
To lift one if one totters down,
To strengthen whilst one stands.
—Christina Rossetti (English Poet)

When you have nothing to say, say nothing.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Clergyman, Aphorist)

He who has not the weakness of friendship has not the strength.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

Cleverness is serviceable for everything, sufficient for nothing.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one’s enemies.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

Hatred and fear blind us. We no longer see each other. We see only the faces of monsters, and that gives us the courage to destroy each other.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

I hate when I read “Try that Jennifer Aniston Diet.” There was no diet!
—Jennifer Aniston (American Actress)

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced—by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)

Teach thy tongue to say “I do not know” and thou shalt progress.
—Moses Maimonides (Jewish Philosopher, Rabbinic Scholar)

Labor is the only prayer that Nature answers.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Lawyer, Orator, Agnostic)

Being born in a duck yard does not matter, if only you are hatched from a swan’s egg.
—Hans Christian Andersen (Danish Author)

In times of great stress or adversity, it’s always best to keep busy, to plow your anger and your energy into something positive.
—Lee Iacocca (American Businessperson)

There is no vice or folly that requires so much nicety and skill to manage as vanity; nor any which by ill management makes so contemptible a figure.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

An extreme rigor is sure to arm everything against it.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)

To those who despair of everything reason cannot provide a faith, but only passion, and in this case it must be the same passion that lay at the root of the despair, namely humiliation and hatred.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

I had six honest serving men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were: Where, What, When, Why, How and Who.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

Half the misery in the world comes of want of courage to speak and to hear the truth plainly, and in a spirit of love.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
—James Baldwin (American Novelist, Social Critic)

The mind grows sicker than the body in contemplation of it’s suffering.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

When you jump for joy, beware that no one moves the ground from beneath your feet.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

One of our ironclad rules is ‘Never do business with anybody you don’t like.’ If you don’t like somebody, there’s a reason. Chances are it’s because you don’t trust him, and you’re probably right. I don’t care who it is or what guarantees you get—cash in advance or whatever. If you do business with somebody you don’t like, sooner or later you’ll get screwed.
—Harry V. Quadracci (American Entrepreneur)

If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.
—Grace Hopper (American Mathematician)

There is really no insurmountable barrier save your own inherent weakness of purpose.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

To know what people really think, pay regard to what they do, rather than what they say.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

Happiness comes from spiritual wealth, not material wealth… Happiness comes from giving, not getting. If we try hard to bring happiness to others, we cannot stop it from coming to us also. To get joy, we must give it, and to keep joy, we must scatter it.
—John Templeton (American-British Investor)

The pursuit of happiness is often the pursuit of emptiness. Far wiser is the pursuit of contribution.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A society to be successful must maintain a balance between nurturing excellence and encouraging the average to improve.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Habits of thinking need not be forever. One of the most significant findings in psychology in the last twenty years is that individuals can choose the way they think.
—Martin Seligman (American Psychologist)

Children need guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

The knowledge we have acquired ought not to resemble a great shop without order, and without an inventory; we ought to know what we possess, and be able to make it serve us in our need.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

There is no greatness where simplicity, goodness and truth are absent.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

A man who owes a little can clear it off in a little time, and, if he is prudent, he will: whereas a man, who, by long negligence, owes a great deal, despairs of ever being able to pay, and therefore never looks into his accounts at all.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

The sweetness of life lies in usefulness, like honey deep in the heart of a clover bloom.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

Believe in something larger than yourself… Get involved in the big ideas of your time.
—Barbara Bush (American First Lady)

For what is a poem but a hazardous attempt at self-understanding: it is the deepest part of autobiography.
—Robert Penn Warren (American Novelist, Poet)

One does not insult the river god while crossing the river.
—Chinese Proverb

It is harder to avoid censure than to gain applause, for this may be done by one great or wise action in an age; but to escape censure a man must pass his whole life without saying or doing one ill or foolish thing.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

Getting ahead in a difficult profession—singing, acting, writing, whatever—requires avid faith in yourself. You must be able to sustain yourself against staggering blows and unfair reversals. When I think back to those first couple of years in Rome, those endless rejections, without a glimmer of encouragement from anyone, all those failed screen tests, and yet I never let my desire slide away from me, my belief in myself and what I felt I could achieve
—Sophia Loren (Italian Actor)

Where we have strong emotions, we’re liable to fool ourselves.
—Carl Sagan (American Astronomer)

To cure jealousy is to see it for what it is, a dissatisfaction with self.
—Joan Didion (American Essayist, Novelist, Memoirist)

Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering.
—Aeschylus (Greek Poet)

We can never obtain peace in the world if we neglect the inner world and don’t make peace with ourselves. World peace must develop out of inner peace.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

You know you’re getting old when you stop to tie your shoes and wonder what else you can do while you’re down there.
—George Burns (American Comedian)

The only people who remain misunderstood are those who either do not know what they want or are not worth understanding.
—Ivan Turgenev (Russian Novelist, Playwright)

Live out of your imagination, not your history.
—Stephen Covey (American Self-help Author)

For man there are only three important events: birth, life and death; but he is unaware of being born, he suffers when he dies, and he forgets to live.
—Jean de La Bruyere (French Author)

I doubt if one ever accepts a belief until one urgently needs it.
—Christopher Isherwood (Anglo-American Novelist, Playwright)