Inspirational Quotations

Never contend with a man who has nothing to lose.
—Baltasar Gracian

Whenever you are to do a thing, though it can never be known but to yourself, ask yourself how you would act were all the world looking at you, and act accordingly.
—Thomas Jefferson (American Head of State)

The walls we build around us to keep sadness out also keep out the joy.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.
—Daniel J. Boorstin (American Historian)

Riches get their value from the mind of the possessor; they are blessings to those who know how to use them, and curses to those who do not.
—Terence (Ancient Roman Playwright)

If we subject everything to reason, our religion will have nothing mysterious or supernatural; if we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

A single lie destroys a whole reputation of integrity.
—Baltasar Gracian

It is not the language but the speaker that we want to understand.
—The Upanishads

A bibliophile of little means is likely to suffer often. Books don’t slip from his hands but fly past him through the air, high as birds, high as prices.
—Pablo Neruda (Chilean Poet)

It requires greater courage to preserve inner freedom, to move on in one’s inward journey into new realms, than to stand defiantly for outer freedom. It is often easier to play the martyr, as it is to be rash in battle.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Life is made up of constant calls to action, and we seldom have time for more than hastily contrived answers.
—Learned Hand

The reading of all good books is indeed like a conversation with the noblest men of past centuries who were the authors of them, nay a carefully studied conversation, in which they reveal to us none but the best of their thoughts.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

That which does not kill us makes us stronger.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

The oppression of any people for opinion’s sake has rarely had any other effect than to fix those opinions deeper, and render them more important.
—Hosea Ballou (American Universalist Clergyman)

Never write on a subject until you have read yourself full of it.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest “swell,” but he simply cannot buy the right things.
—William James (American Philosopher)

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
—Anais Nin (French-American Essayist)

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

Age is not all decay; it is the ripening, the swelling, of the fresh life within, that withers and bursts the husk.
—George MacDonald (Scottish Christian Author)

Each misfortune you encounter will carry in it the seed of tomorrow’s good luck.
—Og Mandino

On the mountains of truth you can never climb in vain: either you will reach a point higher up today, or you will be training your powers so that you will be able to climb higher tomorrow.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power… Shared vision is vital for the learning organization because it provides the focus and energy for learning.
—Peter Senge (American Management Consultant)

If you break your neck, if you have nothing to eat, if your house is on fire, then you got a problem. Everything else is inconvenience.
—Robert Fulghum (American Unitarian Universalist Author)

Friendship with the evil is like the shadow in the morning, decreasing every hour; but friendship with the good is like the evening shadows, increasing till the sun of life sets.
—Johann Gottfried Herder (German Lutheran Philosopher)

Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

An ideal wife is any woman who has an ideal husband.
—Booth Tarkington (American Novelist)

No person has the right to rain on your dreams.
—Marian Wright Edelman (American Civil Regrets Advocate)

If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

The terrible immoralities are the cunning ones hiding behind masks of morality, such as exploiting people while pretending to help them.
—Vernon Howard

Jealousy is an inner consciousness of one’s own inferiority. it is a mental cancer.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.
—Malcolm X (American Muslim Religious Leader)

A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.
—George Jean Nathan (American Drama Critic)

The excesses of our youth are drafts upon our old age, payable with interest, about thirty years after date.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

It is simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular audiences.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface. He, however, who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

Most truths are so naked that people feel sorry for them and cover them up, at least a little bit.
—Edward R. Murrow (American Journalist)

The gambler is a moral suicide.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

We create our fate every day … most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
—Henry Miller (American Novelist)

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality the cost becomes prohibitive.
—William F. Buckley, Jr. (American TV Personality)

Science is what you know, philosophy what you don’t know.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

Love of fame, fear of disgrace, schemes for advancement; desire to make life comfortable and pleasant, and the urge to humiliate others are often at the root of the valor that men hold in such high esteem.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Don’t pray when it rains if you don’t pray when the sun shines.
—Satchel Paige

Charity is injurious unless it helps the recipient to become independent of it.
—John D. Rockefeller (American Businessperson)

If you want a place in the sun, you’ve got to put up with a few blisters.
—Pauline Phillips (Abigail van Buren) (American Columnist)

Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel (American Jewish Rabbi)

Great men are true men, the men in whom nature has succeeded. They are not extraordinary—they are in the true order. It is the other species of men who are not what they ought to be.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

What skill of yours has given you the must success? Use it more.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

You will not find a soulmate in the quiet of your room. You must go to a noisy place and look in the quiet corners.
—Robert Brault

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Imitation is the sincerest of flattery.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Don’t fight a battle if you don’t gain anything by winning.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
—Berthold Auerbach (German Jewish Poet)

We’re all stumbling towards the light with varying degrees of grace at any given moment.
—Bo Lozoff (American Interfaith Writer)

A child is a person who is going to carry on what you have started … the fate of humanity is in his hands.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

By all means use sometimes to be alone. Salute thyself: see what thy soul doth wear. Dare to look in thy chest; for ‘Tis thine own: And tumble up and down what thou findst there. Who cannot rest till he good fellows find, he breaks up house, turns out of doors his mind.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

One murder makes a villain. Millions a hero.
—Beilby Porteus (English Anglican Reformer)

Every man’s memory is his private literature.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

It is vain to say human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it.
—Charlotte Bronte (English Novelist, Poet)

We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Being educated means to prefer the best not only to the worst but to the second best.
—William Lyon Phelps (American Author)

Idleness is many gathered miseries in one name.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

No object is mysterious. The mystery is your eye.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

Perception is strong and sight weak. In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things.
—Miyamoto Musashi (Japanese Buddhist)

One of these days is none of these days.
—Common Proverb

A very small degree of hope is sufficient to cause the birth of love.
—Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (French Writer)

I’d rather die while I’m living than live while I’m dead.
—Jimmy Buffett (American Children’s Books Writer)

The height of ability consists in a thorough knowledge of the real value of things, and of the genius of the age in which we live.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

Keep your feet on the ground, but let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average or to surrender to the chill of your spiritual environment.
—A. W. Tozer (American Christian Pastor)

Know that a word suddenly shot from the tongue is like an arrow shot from the bow. Son, that arrow won’t turn back on its way; you must damn the torrent at its source.
—Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi (Persian Muslim Mystic)

Without poets, without artists, men would soon weary of nature’s monotony. The sublime idea men have of the universe would collapse with dizzying speed. The order which we find in nature, and which is only an effect of art, would at once vanish. Everything would break up in chaos. There would be no seasons, no civilization, no thought, no humanity; even life would give way, and the impotent void would reign everywhere.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

Imagination arises in between our eyebrows, not from the intellect.
—Hans Taeger

The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.
—David Starr Jordan (American Zoologist)

Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.
—Arthur Ashe (American Sportsperson)

There is only one real failure possible; and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.
—Frederic William Farrar (British Theological Writer)

Nobody is stronger, nobody is weaker than someone who came back. There is nothing you can do to such a person because whatever you could do is less than what has already been done to him. We have already paid the price.
—Elie Wiesel (Romanian-born American Writer)

This above all—to thine own self be true; And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The tragedy of old age is not that one is old, but that one is young.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Man’s real life is happy, chiefly because he is ever expecting that it soon will be so.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)

If a man is alive, there is always danger that he may die, though the danger must be allowed to be less in proportion as he is dead-and-alive to begin with. A man sits as many risks as he runs.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

The superior man does not set his mind either for anything, or against anything; what is right he will follow.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Essayist)

Stop acting as if life is a rehearsal. Live this day as if it were your last. The past is over and gone. The future is not guaranteed.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)

Too much money is as demoralizing as too little, and there’s no such thing as exactly enough.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

All art is but imitation of nature.
—Seneca the Elder (Marcus Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Rhetorician)

Example has more followers than reason.—We unconsciously imitate what pleases us, and approximate to the characters we most admire.—A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter … a soothing, calming influence on the mind, rather like a good armchair which provides relaxation from physical fatigue.
—Henri Matisse

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
—Herbert Spencer (English Polymath)

The charm, one might say the genius, of memory is that it is choosy, chancy and temperamental; it rejects the edifying cathedral and indelibly photographs the small boy outside, chewing a hunk of melon in the dust.
—Elizabeth Bowen (Irish Novelist)

Live in my heart and pay no rent.
—Samuel Lover (Irish Songwriter)

Sometimes something worth doing is worth overdoing.
—David Letterman (American TV Personality)

Touched by beauty we enter the forefields of enlightenment. Flying higher and higher one may discover that there is nothing else but beauty. Isn’t it a pity that we’re not yet ready to keep it in permanent view?
—Hans Taeger

A fool, misled by his own folly, is often burnt by his own anger because of his showing off with malicious intention.
—Buddhist Teaching

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn’t be anything for us to do.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Do your best every day and your life will gradually expand into satisfying fullness.
—Horatio Dresser (American New Thought Religious Leader)

Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man’s upper chamber, if it has common sense on the ground floor.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Since he has evil desire, does not listen to his own conscience nor pay attention to the doctrine, he will have to face sin and thereby enter the lower plane of existence.
—Buddhist Teaching

Real compassion does not arise from an over-emotional gut blocking the brain, but from a clean clear mind melting into the heart.
—Hans Taeger

To die will be an awfully big adventure.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)

Science and art are only too often a superior kind of dope, possessing this advantage over booze and morphia: that they can be indulged in with a good conscience and with the conviction that, in the process of indulging, one is leading the “higher life.”
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

The true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

A new and valid idea is worth more than a regiment and fewer men can furnish the former than command the latter.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

The secret of success in society is a certain heartiness and sympathy. A man who is not happy in company, cannot find any word in his memory that will fit the occasion; all his information is a little impertinent. A man who is happy there, finds in every turn of the conversation occasions for the introduction of what he has to say. The favorites of society are able men, and of more spirit than wit, who have no uncomfortable egotism, but who exactly fill the hour and the company, contented and contenting.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Literature is without proofs. By which it must be understood that it cannot prove, not only what it says, but even that it is worth the trouble of saying it.
—Roland Barthes (French Literary Theorist)

There are twallied powers in man; knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

The better part of courage is the courage of having done the thing before.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

I’ve always believed in writing without a collaborator, because when two people are writing the same book, each believes he gets all the worries and only half the royalties.
—Agatha Christie (British Novelist)

You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled then something has been lost.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

The human heart is like a ship on a stormy sea driven about by winds blowing from all four corners of heaven.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

A leader who doesn’t hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

If the abstract rights of man will bear discussion and explanation, those of women, by a parity of reasoning, will not shrink from the same test: though a different opinion prevails in this country.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (British Children’s Books Writer)

The human story does not always unfold like a mathematical calculation on the principle that two and two make four. Sometimes in life they make five or minus three; and sometimes the blackboard topples down in the middle of the sum and leaves the class in disorder and the pedagogue with a black eye.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

I attribute the little I know to my not having been ashamed to ask for information, and to my rule of conversing with all descriptions of men on those topics that form their own peculiar professions and pursuits.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

Leaders keep their eyes on the horizon, not just on the bottom line.
—Warren Bennis (American Scholar)

Of all follies there is none greater than wanting to make the world a better place.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

The greatest things are accomplished by individual people, not by committees or companies.
—Alfred A. Montapert

There are two ways of exerting one’s strength; one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.
—Booker T. Washington (American Educator)

Men lose their tempers in defending their taste.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The one prudence of life is concentration.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty; not knowing what comes next.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (Science-fiction writer)

Our ideals are our better selves.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (American Teacher)

Now it is a funny thing about life; if you refuse to accept anything but the best you very often get it.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

Action and faith enslave thought, both of them in order not be troubled or inconvenienced by reflection, criticism, and doubt.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

In the beginning you must subject yourself to the influence of nature. You must be able to walk firmly on the ground before you start walking of a tightrope.
—Henri Matisse

The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.
—John Mason Brown (American Columnist)

Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
—Buddhist Teaching

Remember, you can earn more money, but when time is spent is gone forever.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Our religion is itself profoundly sad—a religion of universal anguish, and one which, because of its very catholicity, grants full liberty to the individual and asks no better than to be celebrated in each man’s own language—so long as he knows anguish and is a painter.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

The mortality of all inanimate things is terrible to me, but that of books most of all.
—William Dean Howells (American Novelist)

Life marks us all down, so it’s just as well that we start out by overpricing ourselves.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Art is the beautiful way of doing things. Science is the effective way of doing things. Business is the economic way of doing things.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Stars may be seen from the bottom of a deep well, when they cannot be discerned from the top of a mountain? So are many things learned in adversity which the prosperous man dreams not of?
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

If an idiot were to tell you the same story every day for a year, you would end by believing him.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

It is a fine thing to have ability, but the ability to discover ability in others is the true test.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Honor is like an island, rugged and without a landing-place; we can nevermore re-enter when we are once outside of it.
—Nicolas Boileau-Despreaux

Common experience shows how much rarer is moral courage than physical bravery. A thousand men will march to the mouth of the cannon where one man will dare espouse an unpopular cause.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

In a balanced organization, working towards a common objective, there is success.
—Arthur Helps (English Dramatist)

Why slap them on the wrist with feather when you can belt them over the head with a sledgehammer.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

The most manifest sign of wisdom is continued cheerfulness; her estate is like that of the things in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.
—Henry Kissinger (American Diplomat)

Having once decided to achieve a certain task, achieve it at all costs of tedium and distaste. The gain in self-confidence of having accomplished a tiresome labor is immense.
—Arnold Bennett (British Novelist)

The vices we scoff at in others, laugh at us within ourselves.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

Better little prayer with devotion than much without devotion.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

The extent of your consciousness is limited only by your ability to love and to embrace with your love the space around you, and all it contains.
—Napoleon I (French Monarch)

If you must make a mistake, make a new one each time.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm but because of those who look at it without doing anything.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Nothing is difficult, it is only we who are indolent.
—Benjamin Haydon (English Painter)

Great designs are not accomplished without enthusiasm of some sort.—It is the inspiration of everything great.—Without it no man is to be feared, and with it none despised.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

While I do not suggest that humanity will ever be able to dispense with its martyrs, I cannot avoid the suspicion that with a little more thought and a little less belief their number may be substantially reduced.
—J. B. S. Haldane (British Biologist)

There’s no need to hang about waiting for the last judgment. It takes place every day.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Success requires first expending ten units of effort to produce one unit of results. Your momentum will then produce ten units of results with each unit of effort.
—Charles J. Givens (American Self-Help Writer)

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

When a man has done all he can do, still there is a mighty, mysterious agency over which he needs influence to secure success. The only way he can reach it is by prayer.
—Russell Conwell (American Baptist Minister)