Inspirational Quotations

The words of wicked people are totally different from their thoughts and their actions totally disagree with their words. On the other hand, great people are consistent in their thoughts, words and deeds.
—Hitopadesha

If a man offend a harmless, pure, and innocent person, the evil falls back upon that fool, like light dust thrown up against the wind.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Key to being liked: While retaining integrity, do more agreeing, amplifying, empathizing. do less arguing, one-upping, yes-butting.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Science is the systematic classification of experience.
—George Henry Lewes (English Philosopher)

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.
—Groucho Marx (American Actor)

Pain is a relatively objective, physical phenomenon; suffering is our psychological resistance to what happens. Events may create physical pain, but they do not in themselves create suffering. Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is…The only problem in your life is your mind’s resistance to life as it unfolds.
—Dan Millman (American Children’s Books Writer)

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
—Vince Lombardi (American Sportsperson)

The most important of life’s battles is the one we fight daily in the silent chambers of the soul.
—David O. McKay (American Mormon Religious Leader)

Everyone points to the other man, who, according to him, is happier. But the only one, who has the courage to declare that he is truly happy, is he who has relinquished all his passions and hungers from within.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

True consistency, that of the prudent and the wise, is to act in conformity with circumstances, and not to act always the same way under a change of circumstances.
—John C. Calhoun (American Head of State)

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive. If all of us think for the society and the country, all our problems will be solved.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time. It’s just that the others are behind the time.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.
—Max Beerbohm

Most of us serve our ideals by fits and starts. The person who makes a success of living is the one who sees his goal steadily and aims for it unswervingly. That is dedication.
—Cecil B. DeMille (American Film Producer)

I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.
—John Cage (American Composer)

Nothing is so common as unsuccessful men with talent. They lack only determination.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

Sometimes the majority only means that all the fools are on the same side.
—Anonymous

There is strength in numbers and unity. That is the way you can kill an enemy. Just look at the collection of straws that make the roof of the hut. They protect us from even the heavy rains, alone none of those straws can do the same.
—Subhashita Manjari

Wisdom is the assimilated knowledge in us, gained from an intelligent estimation and close study of our own direct and indirect experience in the world.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

You’re not a human being until you value something more than the life of your body. And the greater the thing you live and die for the greater you are.
—Orson Scott Card (American Author)

Power over others is weakness disguised as strength. True power if within, and it is available to you now.
—Eckhart Tolle (German Spiritual Writer)

A whipping never hurts so much as the thought that you are being whipped.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Excessive anger is a great harm, but greater still is the unmindfulness born of excessive pleasure. Just as perpetual poverty slowly slays one’s knowledge, so does frequent forgetfulness destroy one’s prestige.
—Thirukkural

Great minds think alike.
—Common Proverb

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
—E. E. Cummings (American Children’s Books Writer)

Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

Education commences at the mother’s knee, and every word spoken in the hearing of little children tends toward the formation of character.—Let parents always bear this in mind.
—Hosea Ballou (American Universalist Clergyman)

Courtesy is the oil that greases the wheels of life.
—Unknown

If frequency with which you cite an education credential does not decrease over the course of your life, you’re not accomplishing very much.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

An honor is not diminished for being shared.
—Lois McMaster Bujold (American Novelist)

From tonight onwards, take complete control of your life. Decide, once and for all, to be the master of your fate. Run your own race. Discover your calling and you will start to experience the ecstasy of an inspired life.
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

Don’t confuse tact with cowardice. Sometimes, it’s wise to speak up boldly.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A closed mind is a good thing to lose.
—Muriel Strode (American Author, Businesswoman)

We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us. But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.
—Ted Williams (American Sportsperson)

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally in order to keep them clean. For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their prejudices once in a while.
—Luther Burbank (American Botanist)

Elegance does not consist in putting on a new dress.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

The minute a person whose word means a great deal to others dare to take the open-hearted and courageous way, many others follow.
—Marian Anderson (American Singer)

Where at all ethically possible, we must give others hope. Without it, a person figuratively or even literally dies.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
—Will Durant (American Historian)

He that lives long suffers much.
—Common Proverb

The hardest type of criticism to take is about self-perceived strengths. Yet this is the most important to hear.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

We are rich only through what we give; and poor only through what we refuse and keep.
—Sophie Swetchine (Russian Christian Mystic)

In this age of specialization men who thoroughly know one field are often incompetent to discuss another.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

True kindness presupposes the faculty of imagining as one’s own the suffering and joys of others.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Yes, it’s better to suspend judgment rather than embrace error. But agnostic, neutral thinkers have little to say and less to teach.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

Misery is a communicable disease.
—Martha Graham (American Choreographer)

Do not stand in a place of danger trusting in miracles.
—Arabic Proverb

The milk fed to a snake only increases its venom. Similarly, the advice given to a fool leads to aggravation and not peace.
—Hitopadesha

Gratitude and treachery are merely the two extremities of the same procession. You have seen all of it that is worth staying for when the band and the gaudy officials have gone by.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

The world does not need tourists who ride by in a bus clucking their tongues. The world as it is needs those who will love it enough to change it, with what they have, where they are.
—Robert Fulghum (American Unitarian Universalist Author)

A great deal more is known than has been proved.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

It is a mistake to think that moving fast is the same as actually going somewhere.
—Steve Goodier

The tragedy of life is what dies within a man while he still lives.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

Enjoying the joys of others and suffering with them–these are the best guides for man.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Happiness includes chiefly the idea of satisfaction after full honest effort. No one can possibly be satisfied and no one can be happy who feels that in some paramount affairs he failed to take up the challenge of life.
—Arnold Bennett (British Novelist)

A stream of tasteful water, having flown into the sea, becomes saline and thus undrinkable. For this simple reason, a wise man should never associate with one of wicked and impure soul.
—Subhashita Manjari

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.
—George Jean Nathan (American Drama Critic)

The secret of success behind all men of achievement, lies in the faculty of applying their intellect in all their activities, without being mislead by any surging emotions or feelings. The secret of success in life lies in keeping the head above the storms of the heart.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

It is great wealth to a soul to live frugally with a contented mind.
—Lucretius (Roman Poet)

The actions of a great man are an inspiration for others. Whatever he does becomes a standard for others to follow.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

Today marks the birthday of Alexander Pope (1688–1744,) one of the most vivid poets and extraordinary satirists to have ever written in the English language.

Pope was born Catholic in Protestant England, so he was denied access to the best schools and a university. His aunt taught him to read and a priest taught him Greek and Latin. At age eight, Pope was captivated by the works of Homer. Later, in his thirties, he published English translations of Homer’s Illiad (1720) and Odyssey (1726,) now considered Pope’s greatest literary accomplishments.

Pope’s first literary success came just before his 23rd birthday when he published a 744-line poem called An Essay on Criticism (1711) about the history of literature. Not only did this poem make Pope famous for his attack of contemporaneous literary critics, but it also became one of the most quoted poems in the English language. This poem comprises such prominent adages as, “A little learning is a dangerous thing,” “To err is human, to forgive, divine,” and “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”

After contracting spinal tuberculosis at the age of 12, Pope became hunchbacked and crippled. He never grew beyond 4’6″ in height and remained in frail health throughout his life. His adversaries derided his physical appearance as much as they did his works of satire. Pope’s other major works include The Rape of the Lock (1714), The Dunciad (1728), and An Essay on Man (1734.)

Pope was the first English poet who financially supported himself through only his writing. He was also the first English writer to have translations of his poems into other languages and become famous all over Europe—all during his lifetime. He is the second-most frequently quoted writer in the English language after Shakespeare.

Inspirational Quotations by Alexander Pope

Pride is still aiming at the best houses: Men would be angels, angels would be gods. Aspiring to be gods, if angels fell; aspiring to be angels men rebel.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Be thou the first true merit to befriend, his praise is lost who stays till all commend.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

To err is human, to forgive divine.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Talk what you will of taste, you will find two of a face as soon as two of a mind.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

To be angry, is to revenge the fault of others upon ourselves.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

He serves me most, who serves his country best.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

There is a majesty in simplicity which is far above the quaintness of wit.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Two purposes in human nature rule. Self-love to urge, and reason to restrain.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Remembrance and reflection how allied. What thin partitions divides sense from thought.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Ten censure wrong, for one that writes amiss.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

An honest man is the noblest work of God.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Get place and wealth, if possible with grace; if not, by any means get wealth and place.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

When we are young, we are slavishly employed in procuring something whereby we may live comfortably when we grow old; and when we are old, we I perceive it is too late to live as we proposed.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

False happiness is like false money; it passes for a time as well as the true, and serves some ordinary occasions; but when it is brought to the touch, we find the lightness and alloy, and feel the loss.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

‘Tis education forms the common mind: just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

I believe no one qualification is so likely to make a good writer, as the power of rejecting his own thoughts.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Be silent always when you doubt your sense.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

True politeness consists in being easy one’s self, and in making every one about one as easy as one can.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt will think us so.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

I would tear out my own heart if it had no better disposition than to love only myself, and laugh at all my neighbors.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

There is nothing meritorious but virtue and friendship.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Absent or dead, still let a friend be dear.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Fondly we think we honor merit then, When we but praise ourselves in other men.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

They dream in courtship, but in wedlock wake.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Some old men, by continually praising the time of their youth, would almost persuade us that there were no fools in those days; but unluckily they are left themselves for examples.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Some people will never learn anything, for this reason, because they understand everything too soon.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

In faith and hope the world will disagree, but all mankind’s concern is charity.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Never elated when someone’s oppressed, never dejected when another one’s blessed.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

It is very natural for a young friend and a young lover to think the persons they love have nothing to do but to please them.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

It is with our judgments as with our watches: no two go just alike, yet each believes his own.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Today marks the birthday of Bertie Charles Forbes (1880–1954,) American financial journalist and editor. Forbes was the founder of the Forbes business magazine and publishing empire.

Born a poor country boy in Scotland, Forbes started work as a printer’s apprentice at age 14. He soon became a financial journalist in England, and progressively graduated into the roles of reporter, editor, and publisher first in South Africa and then in New York. In 1916, he successfully started the Forbes magazine at age 36 and became famous for writing profiles of business leaders. By 1946, Forbes reached a circulation of 100,000 and was popular not only for its analyses of business and economic trends, but also for Forbes’personal style of business journalism.

Forbes wrote several books including Finance, Business and the Business of Life (1915,) Men Who Are Making America (1917,) Forbes Epigrams (1922,) and 101 Unusual Experiences (1952.)

Inspirational Quotations by B C Forbes

The incontestable truth is that America has been built up by optimists, not by pessimists, but by men possessing courage, confidence in the nation’s destiny, by men willing to adventure, to shoulder risks terrifying to the timid.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The human being who lives only for himself finally reaps nothing but unhappiness. Selfishness corrodes. Unselfishness ennobles, satisfies. Don’t put off the joy derivable from doing helpful, kindly things for others.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Whimpering never kept a leaking vessel from foundering. Vigorously manning the pumps has. Get busy with your head and hands, not your chin.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

What you have outside you counts less than what you have inside you.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The man of fixed ingrained principles who has mapped out a straight course, and has the courage and self-control to adhere to it, does not find life complex. Complexities are all of our own making.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Money, or even power, can never yield happiness unless it be accompanied by the goodwill of others.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Opportunity rarely knocks on your door. Knock rather on opportunity’s door if you ardently wish to enter.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Thomas Edison reads not for entertainment but to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from flowers. The whole world, so to speak, pours its wisdom into his mind. He regards it as a criminal waste of time to go through the slow and painful ordeal of ascertaining things for one’s self if these same things have already been ascertained and made available by others. In Edison’s mind knowledge is power.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

J.P. Morgan, then past 70, was asked by the son of an eminent father why he (Morgan) didn’t retire. “When did your father retire?” asked Mr. Morgan, without looking up from his desk. “In 1902.” “When did he die? Oh, at the end of 1904.” “Huh!” snapped Mr. Morgan, “If he had kept on working he would have been alive still. Work is God’s best medicine. It is God’s medicine for man.”
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

We must learn that to enjoy happiness we must conscientiously and continuously seek to spread happiness. Selfishness is suicidal to happiness.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

You have no idea how big the other fellow’s troubles are.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Better to be occasionally cheated than perpetually suspicious.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Opportunity can benefit no man who has not fitted himself to seize it and use it. Opportunity woos the worthy, shuns the unworthy. Prepare yourself to grasp opportunity and opportunity is likely to come your way. It is not so fickle, capricious and unreasoning as some complain.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

There is more genuine joy in climbing the hill of success, even though sweat may be spent and toes may be stubbed, than in aimlessly sliding down the path to failure. If a straight, honorable path has been chosen, the gaining of the summit yields lasting satisfaction. The morass of failure, if reached through laziness, indifference or other avoidable fault, yields nothing but ignominy and sorrow for self and family and friends.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The real friend is he or she who can share all our sorrow and double our joys.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Life is just an endless chain of judgements…. The more imperfect our judgement, the less perfect our success.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how far he is likely to go in the world. The popular notion is that a youth’s progress depends upon how he acts during his working hours. It doesn’t. It depends far more upon how he utilizes his leisure…. If he spends it in harmless idleness, he is likely to be kept on the payroll, but that will be about all. If he diligently utilizes his own time … to fit himself for more responsible duties, then the greater responsibilities-and greater rewards-are almost certain to come to him.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Lady Luck generally woos those who earnestly, enthusiastically, unremittingly woo her.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The man without religion is as a ship without a rudder.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Our future and our fate lie in our wills more than in our hands, for our hands are but the instruments of our wills.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The man who is intent on making the most of his opportunities is too busy to bother about luck.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The victors of the battles of tomorrow will be those who can best harness thought to action. From office boy to statesman, the prizes will be for those who most effectively exert their brains, who take deep, earnest and studious counsel of their minds, who stamp themselves as thinkers.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Jealousy… is a mental cancer.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Many a man thinks he is patient when, in reality, he is indifferent.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The man who has done his level best, and who is conscious that he has done his best, is a success, even though the world may write him down a failure.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Diamonds are only lumps of coal that stuck to their jobs.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

A price has to be paid for success. Almost invariably those who have reached the summits worked harder and longer, studied and planned more assiduously, practiced more self-denial, overcame more difficulties than those of us who have not risen so far.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Mediocre men wait for opportunity to come to them. Strong, able, alert men go after opportunity.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Ambition means longing and striving to attain some purpose. Therefore, there are as many brands of ambition as there are human aspirations.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

It is when things go hardest, when life becomes most trying, that there is greatest need for having a fixed goal. When few comforts come from without, it is all the more necessary to have a fount to draw from within.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Madame Curie didn’t stumble upon radium by accident. She searched and experimented and sweated and suffered years before she found it. Success rarely is an accident.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Honesty is the cornerstone of character. The honest man or woman seeks not merely to avoid criminal or illegal acts, but to be scrupulously fair, upright, fearless in both action and expression. Honesty pays dividends both in dollars and in peace of mind.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Today marks the birthday of Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941,) the pre-eminent literary genius not only of his native Bengal, but also of South Asia—possibly the whole of Asia.

Tagore displayed an extraordinary combination of talents: he was a poet, novelist, short-story writer, essayist, playwright, educationist, philosopher, painter, lyricist, composer, and singer.

Tagore wrote in his mother tongue Bangla. His colossal body of work spanned all literary genres and lead to a renaissance of vernacular literatures across the subcontinent. Tagore is translated beyond the borders of region and language; Gitanjali (1910, Eng. trans. Song Offerings Gitanjali) remains Tagore’s most translated work.

Tagore’s versatile genius wielded a deep influence on the psyche of the Bengali people. He also culturally and politically inspired India and Bangladesh, where he remains the subject of deep pride and admiration.

As a philosopher, Tagore challenged the binarism of India’s spiritual values and the spirit of the West. He held that one’s native culture could be reconciled by acknowledging and absorbing the good in other cultures. Taking into consideration the great conflicts of his time, Tagore articulated his vision of the “universal man.” He wrote, “The unity of human civilization can be better maintained by linking up in fellowship and cooperation of the different civilizations of the world.” And, “Let the mind be universal. The individual should not be sacrificed.”

Tagore was the first non-Westerner to receive a Nobel Prize. In accepting the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature, Tagore was recognized for “his profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse, by which, with consummate skill, he has made his poetic thought, expressed in his own English words, a part of the literature of the West”.

Tagore has the rare distinction of writing the national anthems of three countries. India’s “Jana Gana Mana” and Bangladesh’s “Amar Sonar Bangla” are his compositions. Tagore also wrote the Bengali song “Nama Nama Sri Lanka Mata” for his student Ananda Samarakoon who translated the lyrics to Sinhalese and recorded it in Tagore’s tune to create Sri Lanka’s national anthem.

Inspirational Quotations by Rabindranath Tagore

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

In the dualism of death and life there is a harmony. We know that the life of a soul, which is finite in its expression and infinite in its principle, must go through the portals of death in its journey to realise the infinite. It is death which is monistic, it has no life in it. But life is dualistic; it has an appearance as well as truth; and death is that appearance, that maya, which is an inseparable companion to life.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures. It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers. It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death, in ebb and in flow. I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life. And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

The greed of gain has no time or limit to its capaciousness. It’s one object is to produce and consume. It has pity neither for beautiful nature nor for living human beings. It is ruthlessly ready without a moment’s hesitation to crush beauty and life out of them, molding them into money.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

Where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

The potentiality of perfection outweighs actual contradictions… Existence in itself is here to prove that it cannot be an evil.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

Love’s overbrimming mystery joins death and life. It has filled my cup of pain with joy.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

If you shut your door to all errors, truth will be shut out.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

The fundamental desire of life is the desire to exist.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

In the world’s audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. Don’t let yourself indulge in vain wishes.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

“A Hundred Years from Now”—A Poem by Rabindranath Tagore

Here is a snippet of Tagore’s 1896 poem “A Hundred Years from Now” (“Aaji Hote Shata Barsha Pare” in Bengali) from his one-act play Chitra (1913.) English translation by Fakrul Alam in The Essential Tagore.

A hundred years from now
Who could you be
Reading my poem curiously
A hundred years from now!
How can I transmit to you who are so far away
A bit of the joy I feel this day,
At this new spring dawn,
The beauty of flowers this day
Songbirds that keep chirping away
Of the crimson glow of the setting sun.
How can I love them all with my love,
And hope you will make them your own
A hundred years from now? …

?

An impulse from me that could make your soul sway.
At a time a hundred years away! …

?

A hundred years from now
Who will that new poet be
Singing in your festival merrily?
I send him my spring greetings —
Hoping he will make them his own
Let my spring song resound in your spring day
For a while let my tune stay —
In the fluttering of your soul, the humming bees,
And murmuring in leaves,
A hundred years from now!

Anger is a great force. If you control it, it can be transmuted into a power which can move the whole world.
—Sivananda Saraswati

The people who get into trouble in our company are those who carry around the anchor of the past.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

It takes patience to appreciate domestic bliss; volatile spirits prefer unhappiness.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

What’s past is prologue.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

We are all excited by the love of praise, and it is the noblest spirits that feel it most.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

Idleness is an inlet to disorder, and makes way for licentiousness.—People who have nothing to do are quickly tired of their own company.
—Jeremy Collier (English Anglican Theater Critic)

Dealing with people is probably the biggest problem you face, especially if you are in business. Yes, and that is also true if you are a housewife, architect or engineer.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

The opposite of courage in our society is not cowardice, it is conformity.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Sin is sweet in the beginning, but bitter in the end.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

If you want to clear the stream get the hog out of the spring.
—Common Proverb

Today marks the birthday of James Anthony Froude (1818–94,) a prolific Victorian novelist, historian, and biographer. His literary accomplishment is remarkable not only for its variety and its originality, but also for the controversy it generated.

Froude’s autobiographical melodramatic novel The Nemesis of Faith (1849) described the reasons for and outcomes of a young priest’s crisis of faith. The book created a furor and was publicly burned. Froude was disgraced and resigned his Oxford fellowship. (Forty-three years later, he returned to Oxford as a distinguished professor of modern history and held this position until death.)

After resigning from Oxford, Froude took up historical writing and published History of England (1856–1870, twelve volumes.) This book was well liked for its research and spirited narrative but attracted controversy for its Protestant interpretation of historical events. Froude also wrote Biographies of Benjamin Disraeli, Desiderius Erasmus, Martin Luther, Julius Caesar, John Bunyan, Thomas Becket, Robert Burns, Francis Bacon, Henry VIII, and numerous other historical figures.

Froude is best known as the literary executor and biographer of his mentor, the historian Thomas Carlyle, as well as Carlyle’s wife Jane Welsh. Froude’s biography of Thomas Carlyle is considered one of the finest examples of English literary biography. Froude’s publication of Welsh’s letters attracted debate for alluding to the less-pleasant aspects of her marriage to Carlyle. Froude also contended that Jane had given up her own literary talents and ambitions in favor of her husband’s career. Though Froude claimed that a sincere biographer must fully explore a subject’s defects of character, his critics interpreted his frankness as a betrayal of Carlyle’s memory.

Inspirational Quotations by James Anthony Froude

Wild animals never kill for sport. Man is the only one to whom the torture and death of his fellow creatures is amusing in itself.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult, but is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. In historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries the laws of right and wrong. Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity. For every false word or unrighteous deed, for cruelty and oppression, for lust or vanity, the price has to be paid at last.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Experience teaches slowly and at the cost of mistakes.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Human improvement is from within outward.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

The better one is morally the less aware they are of their virtue.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

The essence of true nobility is neglect of self. Let the thought of self pass in, and the beauty of a great action is gone like the bloom from a soiled flower.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

If we think of religion only as a means of escaping what we call the wrath to come, we shall not escape it; we are under the burden of death, if we care only for ourselves.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

The secret of a person’s nature lies in their religion and what they really believes about the world and their place in it.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

What is called virtue in the common sense of the word has nothing to do with this or that man’s prosperity, or even happiness.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Justice without wisdom is impossible.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

We cannot live on probabilities. The faith in which we can live bravely and die in peace must be a certainty, so far as it professes to be a faith at all, or it is nothing.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

The first duty of an historian is to be on guard against his own sympathies.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Where all are selfish, the sage is no better than the fool, and only rather more dangerous.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Science rests on reason and experiment, and can meet an opponent with calmness; but a belief is always sensitive.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Thirst of power and of riches now bear sway, the passion and infirmity of age.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

No person is ever good for much, that hasn’t been swept off their feet by enthusiasm between ages twenty and thirty.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

Courage is, on all hands, considered as an essential of high character.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)