Inspirational Quotations

In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss.
—Salman Rushdie (Indian-born British Novelist)

Every error of the mind is the more conspicuous, and culpable, in proportion to the rank of the person who commits it.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.
—Thomas Mann (German Novelist)

A wise lover values not so much the gift of the lover as the love of the giver.
—Thomas a Kempis (German Religious Writer)

A joke, even if it be a lame one, is nowhere so keenly relished or quickly applauded as in a murder trial.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

If you can’t stand the heat, you’d better get out of the kitchen.
—Harry S. Truman (American Head of State)

That’s the secret to life … replace one worry with another.
—Charles M. Schulz (American Cartoonist)

The most important thing about getting somewhere is starting right where we are.
—Bruce Fairchild Barton (American Advertising Executive)

Wisdom is like electricity. There is no permanently wise man, but men capable of wisdom, who, being put into certain company, or other favorable conditions, become wise for a short time, as glasses rubbed acquire electric power for a while.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Happiness does not lie in happiness, but in the achievement of it.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form, and who calls nothing his own.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

High thoughts must have high language.
—Aristophanes (Greek Comic Playwright)

Humans should not worship other humans at all, but if they must do so it is better that the worshipped ones do not occupy any positions of political power.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

I would sooner read a timetable or a catalog than nothing at all. They are much more entertaining than half the novels that are written.
—W. Somerset Maugham (British Novelist)

Real life is, to most men … a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

He who asks of life nothing but the improvement of his own nature is less liable than anyone else to miss and waste life.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher, Writer)

Not what you say about yourself, but what others say.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

No matter how big a house you have or how slick a car you drive, the only thing you can take with you at the end of your life is your conscience.
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

A man that speaks too much, and museth but little, wasteth his mind in words, and is counted a fool among men.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (English Poet)

Let thy words be few.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

The first duty of a man is the seeking after and the investigation of truth.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

I believe, if we take habitual drunkards as a class, their heads and their hearts will bear an advantageous comparison with those of any other class. There seems ever to have been a proneness in the brilliant and warm-blooded to fall into this vice.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Being brilliant is no great feat if you respect nothing.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

There is no worse sorrow than remembering happiness in the day of sorrow.
—Alfred de Musset (French Poet, Playwright)

If you want to gather honey, don’t kick over the beehive.
—Dale Carnegie (American Self-Help Author)

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

Rumor grows as it goes.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

There is only one journey: going inside yourself.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
—Richard Dawkins (British Ethologist, Atheist)

Some age, others mature.
—Sean Connery (Scottish Actor)

I know I’m no glamour girl, and it’s not easy for me to get up in front of a crowd of people. It used to bother me a lot, but now I’ve got it figured out that God gave me this talent to use, so I just stand there and sing.
—Ella Fitzgerald (American Singer, Composer)

There are three principles in a man’s being and life, the principle of thought, the principle of speech, and the principle of action. The origin of all conflict between me and my fellow-men is that I do not say what I mean and I don’t do what I say.
—Martin Buber (Austrian Jewish Philosopher)

What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence.
—Christopher Hitchens (Anglo-American Social Critic)

He who approves evil is guilty of it.
—Indian Proverb

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

We must ensure that the global market is embedded in broadly shared values and practices that reflect global social needs, and that all the world’s people share the benefits of globalization.
—Kofi Annan (Ghanaian International Diplomat)

Happy is he who can give himself up.
—Naguib Mahfouz (Egyptian Novelist)

In our time, when such threatening forces of deavage are at work, splitting peoples, individuals and atoms, it is doubly necessary that those which unite and hold together should become effective; for life is founded on the harmonious interplay of masculine and feminine forces, within the individual human being as well as without. Bringing these opposites into union is one of the most important tasks of present-day psychotherapy.
—Emma Jung (Swiss Psychoanalyst, Author)

Enthusiastic partisans of the idea of progress are in danger of failing to recognize… the immense riches accumulated by the human race. By underrating the achievements of the past, they devalue all those which still remain to be accomplished.
—Claude Levi-Strauss (French Anthropologist)

I think self-awareness is probably the most important thing towards being a champion.
—Billie Jean King (American Tennis Player)

I love art, and I love history, but it is living art and living history that I love. It is in the interest of living art and living history that I oppose so-called restoration. What history can there be in a building bedaubed with ornament, which cannot at the best be anything but a hopeless and lifeless imitation of the hope and vigor of the earlier world?
—William Morris (British Artist, Author)

Love does not care to define and is never in a hurry to do so.
—Charles Du Bos (French Literary Critic)

When about to commit a base deed, respect thyself, though there is no witness.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet, Rhetorician)

The realization of our soul has its moral and its spiritual side. The moral side represents training of unselfishness, control of desire; the spiritual side represents sympathy and love. They should be taken together and never separated. The cultivation of the merely moral side of our nature leads us to the dark region of narrowness and hardness of heart, to the intolerant arrogance of goodness; and the cultivation of the merely spiritual side of our nature leads us to a still darker region of revelry in intemperance of imagination.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Bengali Poet, Polymath)

If the career you have chosen has some unexpected inconvenience, console yourself by reflecting that no career is without them.
—Jane Fonda (American Actress)

Be content with what thou hast received, and smooth thy frowning forehead.
—Hafez (Persian Poet)

There are some people whom you have in life who have the capacity for real, passionate commitment to something, and sometimes you may be passionately committed to the same thing.
—Warren Beatty (American Actor)

One’s life has value so long as one attributes value to the life of others, by means of love, friendship, indignation, compassion.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

The will to act is a renewable resource.
—Al Gore (American Politician, Environmentalist )

Hope is nature’s veil for hiding truth’s nakedness.
—Alfred Nobel (Swedish Inventor, Humanitarian)

What orators lack in depth, they make up to you in length.
—Montesquieu (French Political Philosopher)

You can have a certain arrogance, and I think that’s fine, but what you should never lose is the respect for the others.
—Steffi Graf (German Tennis Player)

It’s [beauty] a kind of radiance. People who possess a true inner beauty, their eyes are a little brighter, their skin a little more dewy. They vibrate at a different frequency.
—Cameron Diaz (American Actress)

The biggest critics of my books are people who never read them.
—Jackie Collins (English Romance Novelist)

To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.
—Epicurus (Greek Philosopher)

Since you alone are responsible for your thoughts, only you can change them. You will want to change them when you realize that each thought creates according to its own nature. Remember that the law works at all times and that you are always demonstrating according to the kind of thoughts you habitually entertain. Therefore, start now to think only those thoughts that will bring you health and happiness.
—Paramahansa Yogananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

It’s often said that the digital revolution that puts a TV camera in everyone’s hands makes everyone a filmmaker. It’s [nonsense]. What makes someone a filmmaker is somebody who knows how to tell a story and telling a story.
—Ken Burns (American Documentary Filmmaker)

Better that we should die fighting than be outraged and dishonored. Better to die than to live in slavery.
—Emmeline Pankhurst (British Suffragist)

Whenever possible, it is always good to act in kindness. It is always possible.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

As for food, half of my friends have dug their graves with their teeth.
—Chauncey Depew (American Lawyer, Politician)

Prayer should be the means by which I, at all times, receive all that I need, and, for this reason, be my daily refuge, my daily consolation, my daily joy, my source of rich and inexhaustible joy in life.
—John Chrysostom (Archbishop of Constantinople)

Those who yield their souls captive to the brief intoxication of love, if no higher and holier feeling mingle with and consecrate their dream of bliss, will shrink trembling from the pangs that attend their waking.
—August Wilhelm Schlegel (German Poet, Critic, Scholar)

To see what is right, and not do it, is want of courage, or of principle.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden.
—Abraham Cowley (English Poet)

Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. We are neither entitled to be unselfish at someone else’s expense nor is there any merit in being unselfish if we have no choice. The members of a society who in all respects are made to do the good thing have no title to praise.
—Friedrich Hayek (British Economist, Social Philosopher)

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

As long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost and science can never regress.
—J. Robert Oppenheimer (American Physicist)

Nothing is easier than to judge what has substance and quality; to comprehend it is harder; and what is hardest is to combine both functions and produce an account of it.
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German Philosopher )

It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods.
—Margaret Fuller (American Journalist, Feminist)

Stupidity is better kept a secret than displayed.
—Heraclitus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Time drinketh up the essence of every great and noble action which ought to be performed but is delayed in the execution.
—The Panchatantra (Indian Collection of Fables)

In order to improve the mind, we ought less to learn, than to contemplate.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

The real secret to success is enthusiasm.
—Walter Chrysler (American Engineer, Industrialist)

All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.
—T. E. Lawrence (British Soldier, Writer)

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.
—William C. Durant (American Industrialist)

I’d rather be a great bad poet than a good bad poet.
—Ogden Nash (American Comic Poet)

Don’t give up. Defend your ideas, but be flexible. Success seldom comes in exactly the form you imagine.
—Martha Stewart (American Businesswoman)

History is a gallery of pictures in which there are few originals and many copies.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Political Scientist)

Man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out of the impossible.
—Max Weber (German Sociologist)

When you talk with famous scholars, the best thing is to pretend that occasionally you do not quite understand them. If you understand too little, you will be despised; if you understand too much, you will be disliked; if you just fail occasionally to understand them you will suit each other very well.
—Lu Xun (Chinese Writer)

A wise person decides slowly but abides by these decisions.
—Arthur Ashe (American Tennis Player)

Goodness does not consist in greatness, but greatness in goodness.
—Athenaeus (Greek Grammarian, Author)

Regrets and recriminations only hurt your soul.
—Armand Hammer (American Entrepreneur, Businessman)

Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you really haven’t learned anything.
—Muhammad Ali (American Sportsperson)

Influence never dies; every act, emotion, look and word makes influence tell for good or evil, happiness or woe, through the long future of eternity.
—Thomas a Kempis (German Religious Writer)

For those trying to protect the past, it is a way of retaining power, status, money, a way a life, predictability, comfort, control, and a bunch of other things like that. It is a struggle against the inevitability of change.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

A state of expectancy is a great assetl; a state of uncertainty—one moment thinking “perhaps” and the next moment thinking “I don’t know”—will never get desired results.
—Ernest Holmes (American New Thought Writer)

Life will have terrible blows in it, horrible blows, unfair blows. It doesn’t matter. And some people recover and others don’t. And there I think the attitude of Epictetus is the best. He thought that every missed chance in life was an opportunity to behave well, every missed chance in life was an opportunity to learn something, and that your duty was not to be submerged in self-pity, but to utilize the terrible blow in constructive fashion. That is a very good idea.
—Charlie Munger (American Investor, Philanthropist)

The finest eloquence is that which gets things done; the worst is that which delays them.
—David Lloyd George (British Liberal Statesman)

The generality of men are naturally apt to be swayed by fear rather than reverence, and to refrain from evil rather because of the punishment that it brings than because of its own foulness.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Writing is an escape from a world that crowds me. I like being alone in a room. It’s almost a form of meditation—an investigation of my own life. It has nothing to do with “I’ve got to get another play.”
—Neil Simon (American Playwright)

Fools! Do you argue, that things ancient ought, on that account, to be true and noble! Fallacies and Falsehoods there were from time immemorial, and dare you argue that because these are ancient these should prevail?
—Subramanya Bharathi (Indian Tamil Poet )

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
—Thomas Hobbes (English Political Philosopher)

It was no great tragedy being Judy Garland’s daughter. I had tremendously interesting childhood years—except they had little to do with being a child.
—Liza Minnelli (American Singer, Actress)

Few things in the world are more powerful than a positive push. A smile. A word of optimism and hope.
And you can do it when things are tough.
—Richard DeVos (American Businessman, Philanthropist)

Time weighs down on you like an old ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won’t be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there—to the edge of the world. There’s something you can’t do unless you get there.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

You start chasing a ball and your brain immediately commands your body to Run forward! Bend! Scoop up the ball! Peg it to first! Then your body says who me?
—Joe DiMaggio (American Baseball Player)

Written laws are like spiders’ webs; they will catch, it is true, the weak and poor, but would be torn in pieces by the rich and powerful.
—Anacharsis (Scythian Prince)

You can’t fake listening. It shows.
—Raquel Welch (American Actress, Singer)

You just can’t beat the person who won’t give up.
—Babe Ruth (American Baseball Player)

The doctor has been taught to be interested not in health but in disease. What the public is taught is that health is the cure for disease.
—Ashley Montagu (British-American Anthropologist)

That’s the risk you take if you change: that people you’ve been involved with won’t like the new you. But other people who do will come along.
—Lisa Alther (American Novelist)

Never allow a person to tell you ‘no’ who doesn’t have the power to say ‘yes.’
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American Humanitarian)

Happiness should always remain a bit incomplete. After all, dreams are boundless.
—Anatoly Karpov (Russian Chess Player)

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
—Arthur C. Clarke (English Science-fiction Writer)

It is not necessary to live, but to carve our names beyond that point, this is necessary.
—Gabriele D’Annunzio (Italian Writer, Political Leader)

Hateful is the power, and pitiable is the life, of those who wish to be feared rather than to be loved.
—Cornelius Nepos (Roman Historian)

When a person places the proper value on freedom, there is nothing under the sun that he will not do to acquire that freedom. Whenever you hear a man saying he wants freedom, but in the next breath he is going to tell you what he won’t do to get it, or what he doesn’t believe in doing in order to get it, he doesn’t believe in freedom. A man who believes in freedom will do anything under the sun to acquire… or preserve his freedom.
—Malcolm X (American Civil Rights Leader )

It’s easy to have faith in yourself and have discipline when you’re a winner, when you’re number one. What you’ve got to have is faith and discipline when you’re not yet a winner.
—Vince Lombardi (American Football Coach)

Anger, lust—these enemies of mine—
Are limbless and devoid of faculties.
They have no bravery, no cleverness;
How then have they reduced me to such slavery?
—Shantideva (Indian Buddhist Scholar)

The defects of a preacher are soon spied. Let him be endued with ten virtues, and have but one fault, and that one fault will eclipse and darken all his virtues and gifts, so evil is the world in these times.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

In a state of mindfulness, you see yourself exactly as you are. You see your own selfish behavior. You see your own suffering. And you see how you create that suffering. You see how you hurt others. You pierce right through the layer of lies that you normally tell yourself, and you see what is really there. Mindfulness leads to wisdom.
—Henepola Gunaratana (Sri Lankan Buddhist Monk)

Happiness, I do not know where to turn to discover you on earth, in the air or the sky; yet I know you exist and are no futile dream.
—Rosalia de Castro (Spanish Writer)

I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time.
—Blaise Pascal (French Philosopher, Scientist)

One of the ridiculous aspects of being a poet is the huge gulf between how seriously we take ourselves and how generally we are ignored by everybody else.
—Billy Collins (American Poet)

Only two classes of books are of universal appeal. The very best and the very worst.
—Ford Madox Ford (English Novelist, Poet, Critic)

Clouds and darkness surround us, yet Heaven is just, and the day of triumph will surely come, when justice and truth will be vindicated. Our wrongs will be made right, and we will once more, taste the blessings of freedom.
—Mary Todd Lincoln (American First lady)

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all occasions.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

Remember if people talk behind your back, it only means you’re two steps ahead.
—Fannie Flagg (American Comedian, Novelist)

If you have men who will only come if they know there is a good road, I don’t want them. I want men who will come if there is no road at all.
—David Livingstone (Scottish Missionary, Explorer)

Except for children (who don’t know enough not to ask the important questions), few of us spend time wondering why nature is the way it is.
—Carl Sagan (American Astronomer)

A good traveler is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveler does not know where he came from.
—Lin Yutang (Chinese Author, Philologist)

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.
—Christian Nestell Bovee (American Writer, Aphorist)

I thank you God for this most amazing day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything which is natural which is infinite which is yes.
—e. e. cummings (American Poet, Writer, Painter)

Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of Nature. And it is because in the last analysis we ourselves are part of the mystery we are trying to solve.
—Max Planck (German Theoretical Physicist)

There is no one who can undertake this task for you. The student’s hunger can never be satisfied by his teacher’s eating a meal for him. It is like competing in a marathon. The winner will only be the person who is either the fittest or the most determined. It is solely up to the individual to win the race. Likewise, to achieve the aim of your practice, do not be distracted by things that are not related to this task. For the time being, just let everything else remain as it is and put it out of your mind. Only when you are awakened will you be able to truly benefit others.
—Kusan Sunim (Korean Buddhist Priest)

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.
—Aung San Suu Kyi (Burmese Political Activist)

Do the best you can in every task, no matter how unimportant it may seem at the time. No one learns more about a problem than the person at the bottom.
—Sandra Day O’Connor (American Jurist)

Everyday I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it.
—Claude Monet (French Painter)

The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say ‘no’ to almost everything.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

A donkey that is made to have bath in a sacred river does not become a horse. He, who does not have a pure mind, does not listen to any good advice. Even if a sweet juice is fed to a snake, there won’t be any reduction in its poison.
—Tukaram (Indian Marathi Poet)

The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.
—Ross Perot (American Businessman)

When the soul drifts uncertainly between life and the dream, between the mind’s disorder and the return to cool reflection, it is in religious thought that we should seek consolation.
—Gerard de Nerval (French Romantic Poet)

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another culture, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

A great part of art consists in imitation. For the whole conduct of life is based on this: that what we admire in others we want to do ourselves.
—Quintilian (Roman Rhetorician, Literary Critic)

Every book has an intrinsic impossibility, which its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement dwindles.
—Annie Dillard (American Writer)

A small debt makes a man your debtor, a large one makes him your enemy.
—Seneca the Elder (Marcus Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Rhetorician)

There seems to me a thousand occasions when my soul knows more than it can tell, and a has a spirit of it’s own which is far superior to my everyday one. It seems to me too, that men are far superior to all the books they write.
—Pierre de Marivaux (French Dramatist, Author)

Good luck needs no explanation.
—Shirley Temple (American Actress, Diplomat)

When saluted with a salutation, salute the person with a better salutation, or at least return the same, for God taketh account of all things.
—The Holy Quran (Sacred Scripture of Islam)

Try never to be the smartest person in the room. And if you are, I suggest you invite smarter people … or find a different room.
—Michael Dell (American Businessperson)