Inspirational Quotations

A woman’s clothes are the price her husband pays for peace.
—African Proverb

Experience is a great advantage. The problem is that when you get the experience, you’re too damned old to do anything about it.
—Jimmy Connors (American Sportsperson)

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation. When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

Begin challenging your own assumptions. Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in awhile, or the light won’t come in.
—Alan Alda (American Actor)

Opportunity is lost by deliberation.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

It is strange to be known so universally and yet to be so lonely.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.
—Common Proverb

School can give a false sense of confidence or of loserhood. Too often, school success does not predict life success.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

A word to the wise is enough, and many words won’t fill a bushel.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

In for a penny, in for a pound.
—Common Proverb

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

Charity is a virtue of the heart, and not of the hands.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

Today marks the birthday of Robert Frost (1874–1963,) one of America’s most famous poets. This four-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize is celebrated for such popular poems as “The Road Not Taken” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Frost’s early years were difficult. After quitting Harvard University due to illness at age 25, Frost lived on a farm in Derry, New Hampshire, for 12 years. He woke up early to write poetry and then worked on the farm all day. He was not a successful farmer and his family grew destitute. Frost sold the farm and moved to Britain in 1911. There, he befriended the poet and essayist Edward Thomas; they regularly took long walks in the English countryside. Thomas’s habitual hesitancy on what path they should stroll amused Frost and inspired his best-known poem, “The Road Not Taken” from Mountain Interval (1920.)

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

In England, Frost published A Boy’s Will (1913) and North of Boston (1914.) The latter sold 20,000 copies and made him famous. After three years in Britain, Frost returned to America and supported himself through his readings and his writing. Frost’s other books include Mountain Interval (1916), New Hampshire (1923), A Further Range (1937), and A Witness Tree (1943).

John F. Kennedy invited Frost to recite a poem for the 1961 presidential inauguration. Frost wrote a poem called “Dedication” especially for the occasion but typed its final version on a typewriter using a dim ribbon. At JFK’s inauguration ceremony, Frost couldn’t recognize the dimly-typed lines and instead recited his well-known poem “The Gift Outright” by heart.

Inspirational Quotations by Robert Frost

Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Friends make pretence of following to the grave but before one is in it, their minds are turned and making the best of their way back to life and living people and things they understand.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

A diplomat is a man who always remembers a woman’s birthday but never remembers her age.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

A champion of the working man has never yet been known to die of overwork.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

A jury consists of twelve persons chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

The only way around is through.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Have courage and a little willingness to venture and be defeated.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

By working faithfully eight hours a day, you may eventually get to be a boss and work twelve hours a day.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Most of the change we think we see in life is due to truths being in and out of favor.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

“Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”—A Poem by Robert Frost

Here is Frost’s popular 1922 poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.” First published in 1923 in the New Republic magazine, this was Frost’s favorite of his own poems—he identified it as, “My best bid for remembrance.”

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

According to an essay by N. Arthur Bleau, Frost explained the poem’s back-story during a reading at Bowdoin College in 1947. One winter solstice, Frost felt poor enough to purchase Christmas presents for his children. He gathered some produce from his farm and rode his horse-drawn wagon into town to sell them. Unfortunately, he did not sell anything and therefore could not buy any presents for his children.

That evening, as Frost was returning home, it began to snow. His horse stopped in the middle of the woods as if it sensed his melancholy. Beset with the disgrace of not providing for his family, Frost “bawled like a baby” even as the snowflakes continued to drop into the stillness of the woods. Abruptly, the horse shook and tinkled its bells. Frost took the horse’s reaction as a reminder of the Christmas spirit and as a motivation to persist and get home to family.

Frost’s daughter Lesley later corroborated the story and quoted her father recollecting his crying, “A man has as much right as a woman to a good cry now and again. The snow gave me shelter; the horse understood and gave me the time.”

Tim Dee, writing in The Guardian, observed that “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” was the most requested poems on BBC Radio 4’s Poetry Please, the world’s longest-running radio show on poetry. Explaining the popularity of the poem, Dee commented, “Here are 16 short-rhymed lines recalling a moment’s pause on a horseback journey through a winter woodland. The scene is captured with economical precision. The silence of the snow is broken only once—by the jingling bells of the restive animal. We sense the fairytale terror-allure of the muted woods. And in the last three lines we are ushered towards something wider and deeper still, where the suggestion of unfinished business makes a parable and becomes incantatory.”

Wisdom increases with years; and so does folly.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

Remind yourself regularly that you are better than you think you are. Successful people are not supermen. Success does not require a superintellect. Nor is there anything mystical about success. And success isn’t based on luck. Successful people are just ordinary folks who have developed belief in themselves and what they do. Never—yes, never—sell yourself short.
—David J. Schwartz (American Writer)

The busy have no time for tears.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest.
—Common Proverb

There are admirable potentialities in every human being. Believe in your strength and your youth. Learn to repeat endlessly to yourself, ‘It all depends on me’.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Today marks the birthday of Earl Nightingale (1921–89,) American radio personality and motivational speaker and author. This “Dean of Personal Development” authored The Strangest Secret, widely admired as a great motivational work.

Nightingale was the writer and commentator of the popular syndicated radio show Our Changing World. He penned and recorded over 7,000 radio programs and 250 audio programs on motivation, personality development, and leading a meaningful life.

In 1950, Nightingale read Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich (1937) and was inspired by the adage “we become what we think about.” This was the foundation of his tape-record and his book The Strangest Secret (1956,) which sold millions of copies. Nightingale defined success as “the progressive realization of a worthy ideal. If a man is working toward a predetermined goal and knows where he’s going, that man is a success. If he’s not doing that, he’s a failure. And there you have the trouble today; it’s conformity—people acting like everyone without knowing why, without knowing where they’re going.”

Inspirational Quotations by Earl Nightingale

For a person to build a rich and rewarding life for himself, there are certain qualities and bits of knowledge that he needs to acquire. There are also things, harmful attitudes, superstitions, and emotions that he needs to chip away. A person needs to chip away everything that doesn’t look like the person he or she most wants to become.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Don’t let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Success is simply a matter of luck. Ask any failure.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

All you have to do is know where you’re going. The answers will come to you of their own accord.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

We can let circumstances rule us, or we can take charge and rule our lives from within.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

The biggest mistake that you can make is to believe that you are working for somebody else. Job security is gone. The driving force of a career must come from the individual. Remember: Jobs are owned by the company, you own your career!
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Whatever we plant in our subconscious mind and nourish with repetition and emotion will one day become a reality.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Whenever we’re afraid, it’s because we don’t know enough. If we understood enough, we would never be afraid.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Wherever there is danger, there lurks opportunity; whenever there is opportunity, there lurks danger. The two are inseparable. They go together.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

We will receive not what we idly wish for but what we justly earn. Our rewards will always be in exact proportion to our service.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal or ideal.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

The big thing is that you know what you want.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Your problem is to bridge the gap which exists between where you are now and the goal you intend to reach.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Ideas are elusive, slippery things. Best to keep a pad of paper and a pencil at your bedside, so you can stab them during the night before they get away.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.
—John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (American Philanthropist)

There are two good things in life—freedom of thought and freedom of action.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.
—Alfred Hitchcock (British-born American Film Director)

The first step is to fill your life with a positive faith that will help you through anything. The second is to begin where you are.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

One of the oldest human needs is having someone to wonder where you are when you don’t come home at night.
—Margaret Mead (American Anthropologist)

To accept excuse shows a good disposition.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Without a rich heart, wealth is an ugly beggar.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

Doing is better than saying.
—Common Proverb

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

We have the greatest pre-nuptial agreement in the world. It’s called love.
—Gene Perret

You cannot run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
—Common Proverb

Thoughts are the shadows of our sensations—always darker, emptier, simpler than these.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Every failure, obstacle or hardship is an opportunity in disguise. Success in many cases is failure turned inside out. The greatest pollution problem we face today is negativity. Eliminate the negative attitude and believe you can do anything. Replace ‘if I can, I hope, maybe’ with ‘I can, I will, I must.’
—Mary Kay Ash (American Entrepreneur)

We cannot change anything unless we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.
—Carl Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

It’s waiting that helps you as an investor, and a lot of people just can’t stand to wait. If you didn’t get the deferred-gratification gene, you’ve got to work very hard to overcome that.
—Charlie Munger

Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Lend only that which you can afford to lose.
—Common Proverb

Chance usually favors the prudent man.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

History never looks like history when you are living through it.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

The tragedy is that so many have ambition and so few have ability.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

The man who is prepared has his battle half fought.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

So difficult it is to show the various meanings and imperfections of words when we have nothing else but words to do it with.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

Men must be governed by God or they will be ruled by tyrants.
—William Penn (American Entrepreneur)

The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)