Inspirational Quotations

Difficult times have helped me to understand better than before, how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way, and that so many things that one goes worrying about are of no importance whatsoever…
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer)

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

Objective evidence and certitude are doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet are they found?
—William James (American Philosopher)

Perhaps the most distinguishing trait of visionary leaders is that they believe in a goal that benefits not only themselves, but others as well. It is such vision that attracts the psychic energy of other people, and makes them willing to work beyond the call of duty for the organization.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Hungarian-American Psychologist)

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.
—Harper Lee (American Novelist)

Big words seldom accompany good deeds.
—Danish Proverb

To live each day as though one’s last, never flustered, never apathetic, never attitudinizing—here is perfection of character.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

The highest form of vanity is love of fame.
—George Santayana (Spanish-American Poet, Philosopher)

We do not deal much in facts when we are contemplating ourselves.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

A docile disposition will, with application, surmount every difficulty.
—Marcus Manilius (Roman Poet)

Flattery is like cologne water, to be smelt of, not swallowed.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
—Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (American First Lady)

Believe, when you are most unhappy, that there is something for you to do in the world. So long as you can sweeten another’s pain, life is not in vain.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Reproof on her lips, but a smile in her eyes.
—Samuel Lover (Irish Writer, Artist, Songwriter)

Comfort is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable”.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

If I like chocolate it won’t surprise you that I have a few chocolates in my fridge, but if you find out I’ve got 16 warehouses full of chocolate, you’d think I was insane. All these rich guys are insane, obsessive compulsive twits obsessed with money—money is all they think about—they’re all nuts.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness for God the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (French Jesuit Scientist)

Freedom is the right to question and change the established way of doing things.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

Love is the last relay and ultimate outposts of eternity.
—Dante Gabriel Rossetti (British Poet, Artist)

But I like not these great successes of yours; for I know how jealous are the gods.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

The sure conviction that we could if we wanted to is the reason so many good minds are idle.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Philosopher, Physicist)

When you overpay small people you frighten them. They know that their merits or activities entitle them to no such sums as they are receiving. As a result their boss soars out of economic into magic significance. He becomes a source of blessings rather than wages. Criticism is sacrilege, doubt is heresy.
—Ben Hecht (American Screenwriter)

I shall devote only a few lines to the expression of my belief in the importance of science … it is by this daily striving after knowledge that man has raised himself to the unique position he occupies on earth, and that his power and well-being have continually increased.
—Marie Curie (Polish-born French Physicist)

Good writing excites me, and makes life worth living.
—Harold Pinter (British Playwright)

Children show scars like medals. Lovers use them as secrets to reveal. A scar is what happens when the word is made flesh.
—Leonard Cohen (Canadian Musician, Author)

Nobody can be kinder than the narcissist while you react to life in his own terms.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analyzing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a program would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.
—Neville Chamberlain (British Head of State)

There are so many girls, and so few princes.
—Liza Minnelli (American Singer, Actress)

Be humble, if thou would’st attain to Wisdom. Be humbler still, when Wisdom thou hast mastered.
—Helena Blavatsky (Ukrainian-born American Theosophist)

To question a wise man is the beginning of wisdom.
—German Proverb

Out of all virtues simplicity is my most favorite virtue. So much so that I tend to believe that simplicity can solve most of the problems, personal as well as the world problems. If the life approach is simple one need not lie so frequently, nor quarrel nor steal, nor envy, anger, abuse, kill. Everyone will have enough and plenty so need not hoard, speculate, gamble, hate. When character is beautiful, you are beautiful. That is the beauty of simplicity.
—Ela Bhatt (Indian Labor Activist)

Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Founding Father, Inventor)

Anybody who believes in something without reservation, believes that this thing is right and should be, has the stamina to meet obstacles and overcome them.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Borrowing is not much better than begging; just as lending with interest is not much better than stealing.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German Writer)

Events will take their course, it is no good of being angry at them; he is happiest who wisely turns them to the best account.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.
—Elon Musk (American Entrepreneur)

Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.
—John Kotter (American Management Consultant)

The happiest heart that ever beat
Was in some quiet breast
That found the common daylight sweet,
And left to Heaven the rest.
—John Vance Cheney (American Poet)

Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.
—A. P. J. Abdul Kalam (Indian Head of State, Scientist)

You do not reform a world by ignoring it.
—George H. W. Bush (American Head of State)

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.
—Gaston Bachelard (French Philosopher)

Old age is like climbing a mountain. The higher you get, the more tired and breathless you become, but your view becomes much more extensive.
—Ingmar Bergman (Swedish Film and Stage Director)

What men value in this world is not rights but privileges.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist, Literary Critic)

People who are not in love fail to understand how an intelligent man can suffer because of a very ordinary woman. This is like being surprised that anyone should be stricken with cholera because of a creature so insignificant as the comma bacillus.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

Both the good and the pleasant present themselves to a man. The calm soul examines them well and discriminates. Yeah, he prefers the good to the pleasant; but the fool chooses the pleasant out of greed and avarice.
—The Upanishads (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

If the crisis lasts moments, rapid action is critical. But if it’s simply the beginning of a broader issue, especially one where the root cause isn’t known yet, the worst thing a leader can do is act immediately.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Speakers who talk about what life has taught them never fail to keep the attention of their listeners.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

The artist’s role is to raise the consciousness of the people. To make them understand life, the world and themselves more completely. That’s how I see it. Otherwise, I don’t know why you do it.
—Amiri Baraka (American Poet, Playwright)

Writing ought either to be the manufacture of stories for which there is a market demand—a business as safe and commendable as making soap or breakfast foods—or it should be an art, which is always a search for something for which there is no market demand, something new and untried, where the values are intrinsic and have nothing to do with standardized values.
—Willa Cather (American Novelist)

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
—Thucydides (Greek Historian)

I don’t mind their having a lot of money, and I don’t care how they employ it, but I do think that they damn well ought to admit they enjoy it.
—Ogden Nash (American Comic Poet)

Distrust all those who love you extremely upon a very slight acquaintance and without any visible reason.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

The important thing is not what they think of me, but what I think of them.
—Queen Victoria (British Royal)

Amazing moments—when you seem to know something beyond what you know and to understand things you don’t understand—can’t be understood in this life.
—Jane Goodall (British Ethologist)

Example is the greatest of all seducers.
—French Proverb

To keep your secret is wisdom; but to expect others to keep it is folly.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician, Essayist)

There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.
—F. H. Bradley (British Idealist Philosopher)

If we would just support each other—that’s ninety percent of the problem.
—Howard Gardner (American Psychologist)

The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy a liquid.
—J. D. Salinger (American Novelist, Short-story Writer)

When everything has to be right, something isn’t.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

In life, as in restaurants, we swallow a lot of indigestible stuff just because it comes with the dinner.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

When we see ourselves in a situation which must be endured and gone through, it is best to make up our minds to meet it with firmness, and accommodate everything to it in the best way practical. This lessons the evil, while fretting and fuming only serve to increase your own torments.
—Thomas Jefferson (American Head of State)

And for a long time yet, led by some wondrous power, I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.
—Nikolai Gogol (Russian Novelist, Dramatist)

We will miss everything beautiful in our own lives, because we were too busy hunting something else, losing touch.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Those who act as if they know more than their boss seldom do.
—Malcolm S. Forbes (American Publisher)

This is one of the miracles of love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born Author, Scholar)

Laziness erodes a person of his enthusiasm and energy. As a result the person loses all opportunities and finally becomes dejected and frustrated. The worst thing is that he stops believing in himself.
—The Vedas (Sacred Books of Hinduism)

I urge you to work together in promoting a true, worldwide ethical mobilization which, beyond all differences of religious or political convictions, will spread and put into practice a shared ideal of fraternity and solidarity, especially with regard to the poorest and those most excluded.
—Pope Francis (Religious Leader)

I guess the definition of a lunatic is a man surrounded by them.
—Ezra Pound (American Poet, Critic)

If thou art rich, thou art poor; for, like an ass, whose back with ingots bows, thou bearest thy heavy riches but a journey, and death unloads thee.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The idea of caring that someone is making money faster [than you] is one of the deadly sins. Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at. There’s a lot of pain and no fun. Why would you want to get on that trolley?
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

Look for the good, not the evil, in the conduct of members of the family.
—Yiddish Proverb

We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

Fooled once shame on you, fooled twice shame on me.
—U.S. Proverb

Love, like fire, goes out without fuel.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)

Religion is fundamentally opposed to everything I hold in veneration—courage, clear thinking, honesty, fairness, and, above all, love of the truth.
—H. L. Mencken (American Journalist, Literary Critic)

A wonderful thing about true laughter is that it just destroys any kind of system of dividing people.
—John Cleese (British Comic Actor, Writer)

It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.
—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (German Philosopher, Mathematician)

I’ve seen a look in dogs’ eyes, a quickly vanishing look of amazed contempt, and I am convinced that basically dogs think humans are nuts.
—John Steinbeck (American Novelist)

There are three things which the superior man guards against. In youth … lust. When he is strong … quarrelsomeness. When he is old … covetousness.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

An original idea. That can’t be too hard. The library must be full of them.
—Stephen Fry (English Actor, Writer)

We have to encourage the future we want rather than trying to prevent the future we fear.
—Bill Joy (American Computer Engineer)

A man’s genius is always, in the beginning of life, as much unknown to himself as to others; and it is only after frequent trials, attended with success, that he dares think himself equal to those undertakings in which those who have succeeded have fixed the admiration of mankind.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

The prospect of success in achieving our most cherished dream is not without its terrors. Who is more deprived and alone than the man who has achieved his dream?
—Brendan Behan (Irish Poet)

There is no original truth, only original error.
—Gaston Bachelard (French Philosopher)

Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart rendered to God for his goodness.
—Nathaniel Parker Willis (American Poet, Playwright)

War is like love, it always finds a way.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

As rivers, when they overflow, drown those grounds and ruin those husbandmen, which, whilst they flowed calmly betwixt their banks they fertilized and enriched, so our passions, when they grow exorbitant and unruly, destroy those virtues to which they might be very serviceable whilst kept within their bounds.
—Robert Boyle (Irish Scientist, Philosopher)

Ideal conversation must be an exchange of thought, and not, as many of those who worry most about their shortcomings believe, an eloquent exhibition of wit or oratory.
—Emily Post (American Writer, Socialite)

There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

I believe love produces a certain flowering of the whole personality which nothing else can achieve.
—Ivan Turgenev (Russian Novelist, Playwright)

Men’s fortunes are on a wheel, which in its turning suffers not the same man to prosper for ever.
—Herodotus (Ancient Greek Historian)

Definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
—Toni Morrison (American Novelist)

When you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.
—Ernest Hemingway (American Author)

Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever.
—John Keats (English Poet)

If you can keep your wits about you while all others are losing theirs, and blaming you… . The world will be yours and everything in it, what’s more, you’ll be a man, my son.
—Rudyard Kipling (British Children’s Books Writer)

The more I see the less I know for sure.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

No one can become rich by the efforts of only their toil, but only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

The worst superstition is to consider our own tolerable.
—Doris Lessing (British Novelist, Poet)

It is a delicious moment, certainly, that of being well nestled in bed and feeling that you shall drop gently to sleep. The good is to come, not past; the limbs are tired enough to render the remaining in one posture delightful; the labor of the day is gone. A gentle failure of the perceptions creeps over you; the spirit of consciousness disengages itself once more, and with slow and hushing degrees, like a mother detaching her hand from that of a sleeping child, the mind seems to have a balmy lid closing over it, like the eye—it is closed—the mysterious spirit has gone to take its airy rounds.
—Leigh Hunt (British Author)

He who esteems trifles for themselves is a trifler; he who esteems them for the conclusions to be drawn from them, or the advantage to which they can be put, is a philosopher.
—Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton (British Author, Politician)

My soul is awakened, my spirit is soaring.
—Anne Bronte (English Novelist, Poet)

What is it which is bought dearly, offered for nothing, and then most often refused? Experience, old people’s experience.
—Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen) (Danish Novelist, Short-story Writer)

Power is not an institution, and not a structure; neither is it a certain strength we are endowed with; it is the name that one attributes to a complex strategical situation in a particular society.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

When strangers start acting like neighbors… communities are reinvigorated.
—Ralph Nader (American Activist)

No man can pass into eternity, for he is already in it.
—Frederic William Farrar (British Theological Writer)

Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

For him who has no concentration, there is no tranquility.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself… . Burst your own cocoon and come out as the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

In studying the way, realizing it is hard; once you have realized it, preserving it is hard. When you can preserve it, putting it into practice is hard.
—Zen Proverb (Japanese School of Mahayana Buddhism)

People are more inclined to be drawn in if their leader has a compelling vision. Great leaders help people get in touch with their own aspirations and then will help them forge those aspirations into a personal vision.
—John Kotter (American Management Consultant)

How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing. It seems still more impossible that a quarrel which has already been settled in principle should be the subject of war.
—Neville Chamberlain (British Head of State)

The people have a right to the truth as they have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

There is not much sense in suffering, since drugs can be given for pain, itching, and other discomforts. The belief has long died that suffering here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. Suffering has lost its meaning.
—Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (American Psychiatrist)

Don’t be afraid of missing opportunities. Behind every failure is an opportunity somebody wishes they had missed.
—Lily Tomlin (American Comedy Actress)

Make revolution a parent of settlement, and not a nursery of future revolutions.
—Edmund Burke (British Philosopher, Statesman)

All of us have bad luck and good luck. The man who persists through the bad luck—who keeps right on going—is the man who is there when the good luck comes—and is ready to receive it.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

There is nothing that says more about its creator than the work itself.
—Akira Kurosawa (Japanese Film Director)

The war is lost for too much advice.
—Sicilian Proverb

People with honorary awards are looked upon with disfavor. Would you let an honorary mechanic fix your brand-new Mercedes?
—Neil Simon (American Playwright)

Love comes like lightning, and disappears the same way. If you are lucky, it strikes you right. If not, you’ll spend your life yearning for a man you can’t have.
—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (Indian-born American Novelist)

To each individual the world will take on a different connotation of meaning-the important lies in the desire to search for an answer.
—T. S. Eliot (American-born British Poet)

From a distance it is something; and nearby it is nothing.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

My God, give me neither poverty nor riches, but whatsoever it may be thy will to give, give me, with it, a heart that knows humbly to acquiesce in what is thy will.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German Writer)

Fortune may find a pot, but your own industry must make it boil.
—John Gay (English Poet, Dramatist)

War is a curtain of dense black fabric across all the hopes and kindliness of mankind. Yet always it has let through some gleams of light, and not–I am not dreaming–it grows threadbare, and here and there and at a thousand points the light is breaking through.
—H. G. Wells (English Novelist, Historian)

I’m a perfectionist, so I can drive myself mad – and other people, too. At the same time, I think that’s one of the reasons I’m successful. Because I really care about what I do.
—Michelle Pfeiffer (American Film Actress)

The one happiness is to shut one’s door upon a little room, with a table before one, and to create; to create life in that isolation from life.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

One-half of the people of this nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one.
—Susan B. Anthony (American Civil Rights Leader)

True love is a discipline in which each divines the secret self of the other and refuses to believe in the mere daily self.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One of the worst forms of mental suffering is boredom, not knowing what to do with oneself and one’s life. Even if man had no monetary, or any other reward, he would be eager to spend his energy in some meaningful way because he could not stand the boredom which inactivity produces.
—Erich Fromm (German Social Philosopher)