Inspirational Quotations

Our hours in love have wings; in absence, crutches.
—Colley Cibber (English Playwright)

Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.
—John Barth (American Novelist)

Having a baby is like falling in love again, both with your husband and your child.
—Tina Brown (British-American Journalist, Editor)

I have been extraordinarily lucky. Anyone who pretends that some kind of luck isn’t involved in his success is deluding himself.
—Arthur Hailey (Canadian Novelist)

If we take care of the inches we will not have to worry about the miles.
—Hartley Coleridge (British Poet)

Don’t tell me how hard you work. Tell me how much you get done.
—James J. Ling (American Businessman)

Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.
—C. William Pollard (American Businessman, Author)

For disorder obstructs: besides, it doth disgust life, distract the appetities, and yield no true relish to the senses.
—Margaret Lucas Cavendish (English Aristocrat, Philosopher, Writer)

We have to recognize accident, i.e., the fact that there is no formula, no ‘principle’, which covers all things; that there is no totality or system of things. And this recognition at once supports a life of ‘responsibility and adventure’ and leads to scientific discovery.
—John Anderson (Scottish Philosopher)

Impartial observers from other planets would consider ours an utterly bizarre enclave if it were populated by birds, defined as flying animals, that nevertheless rarely or never actually flew. They would also be perplexed if they encountered in our seas, lakes, rivers, and ponds, creatures defined as swimmers that never did any swimming. But they would be even more surprised to encounter a species defined as a thinking animal if, in fact, the creature very rarely indulged in actual thinking.
—Steve Allen (American Entertainer)

The best reason for having dreams is that in dreams no reasons are necessary.
—Ashleigh Brilliant (British Cartoonist)

The past, though it cannot be relived, can always be repaired.
—John La Farge (American Artist, Writer)

We live by the Golden Rule. Those who have the gold make the rules.
—Buzzie Bavasi (American Baseball Executive)

Closer than a touch on your skin,
deeper than a breathe you draw in;
stronger than a hurricane wind,
is the dwelling of God within.
—Isaac de Benserade (French Poet, Dramatist)

Heartthrobs are a dime a dozen.
—Brad Pitt (American Actor)

In a culture where the possibility of wealth and the acquisition of things are so defining of success, we end up pursuing things that, even if we are successful, can never deliver what we envisioned they would. The reason riches become such a snare is because we end up evaluating life in mercenary terms and being seen by others in such terms, and life is just not so.
—Ravi Zacharias (Christian Preacher)

The past should be a springboard, not a hammock.
—Ivern Ball (American Writer, Aphorist)

Research serves to make building stones out of stumbling blocks.
—Arthur Dehon Little (American Management Consultant)

As you go along your own road in life, you will, if you aim high enough, also meet resistance … . But no matter how tough the opposition may seem, have courage still—and persevere.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

A structure becomes architectural, and not sculptural, when its elements no longer have their justification in nature.
—Guillaume Apollinaire (Italian-born French Poet)

What we play is life.
—Louis Armstrong (American Jazz Musician)

Your mind is what makes everything else work.
—Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (American Basketball Player)

The gods made our bodies as well as our souls, is it not so? They give us voices, so we might worship them with song. They give us hands, so we might build them temples. And they give us desire, so we might mate and worship them in that way.
—George R. R. Martin (American Writer)

I’ve met these people, the ones from the glossy magazines. I’ve walked among them. I have seen, firsthand, their callow, empty lives. I have watched them from the shadows when they thought themselves alone. And I can tell you this: I’m afraid there is not one of them who would swap lives with you at gunpoint.
—Neil Gaiman (British Writer)

Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes.
—The Panchatantra (Indian Collection of Fables)

Durability is part of what makes a great athlete.
—Bill Russell (American Basketball Champion)

All technology should be assumed guilty until proven innocent.
—David Brower (American Environmentalist)

A person’s worth is contingent upon who he is, not upon what he does, or how much he has. The worth of a person, or a thing, or an idea, is in being, not in doing, not in having.
—Alice Mary Hilton (British-American Academic)

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don’t talk about it.
—Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (German Baritone)

A king who trusts no man is weak.
—Patricia Briggs (American Writer)

Money alone cannot build character or transform evil into good. It cries for full partnership with leaders of character and good will who value good tools in the creation and enlargement of life for Man.
—Sebastian S. Kresge (American Businessman)

Unfortunately in this kind of work, where you are trying to determine relationships based upon past behavior, the almost invariable experience is that by the time you have had a long enough period to give you sufficient confidence in your form of measurement, just then new conditions supersede and the measurement is no longer dependable for the future.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

Doing one’s duty, however small, in an unattached manner gives rise to the awakening of self-awareness.
—Sathya Sai Baba (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

I believe in prayer. It’s the best way we have to draw strength from heaven.
—Josephine Baker (American Dancer, Campaigner)

He is great who can do what he wishes; he is wise who wishes to do what he can.
—August Wilhelm Iffland (German Actor, Playwright)

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.
—Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

The closer the bird is to the surface of the water, the firmer and more inelastic is the uplift of the rising air. The bird appears to almost feel the surface with the tip of its weather wing.
—Lawrence Hargrave (Australian Aviation Pioneer)

Being a gentleman is the number one priority, the chief question integral to our national life.
—Edward A. Fox ((b.1936) American Businessman)

We can ask ourselves daily what we have done to make the world a better place, to make someone smile, to help someone to feel more secure, etc. It’s the simple things which have the greatest effect. We must never underestimate the strength of a smile or act of kindness.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

It is ridiculous ever to forget that you and your business are each implanted in the society of the moment…. We cannot ignore the world of our time. We had better understand it.
—J. Irwin Miller (American Industrialist)

In a profound sense every man has two halves to his being; he is not one person so much as two persons trying to act in unison. I believe that in the heart of each human being there is something which I can only describe as a “child of darkness” who is equal and complementary to the more obvious “child of light”.
—Laurens van der Post (South African Explorer, Writer)

Youth is something very new: twenty years ago no one mentioned it.
—Coco Chanel (French Fashion Designer)

Keep on beginning and failing. Each time you fail, start all over gain, and you will grow stronger until have accomplished a purpose – not the one you began with perhaps, but one you’ll be glad to remember.
—Anne Sullivan Macy (American Educator)

The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!
—Alice Walker (American Novelist, Activist)

Inaction is bad leadership, but it can feel safer than action because to act is to open yourself up to criticism.
—Jeffrey Immelt (American Businessperson)

All natural objects … all forms, colours, and scents … are types of some spiritual truth or existence.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Remember that pain has this most excellent quality: if prolonged it cannot be severe, and if severe it cannot be prolonged.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Stoic Philosopher)

The religious man is he who does not belong to any religion, to any nation, to any race, who is inwardly completely alone, in a state of not-knowing, and for him the blessing of the sacred comes into being.
—Jiddu Krishnamurti (Indian Philosopher)

Individuals who cannot master their emotions are ill-suited to profit from the investment process.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I’m meaningless.
—Lee Kuan Yew (Singaporean Statesman)

Calculation never made a hero.
—John Henry Newman (British Theologian, Poet)

Life is not an easy matter. You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.
—Leon Trotsky (Russian Revolutionary)

The strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people.
—Lydia H. Sigourney (American Poetaster, Author)

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher, Mathematician)

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.
—Christopher Hampton (British Playwright, Screenwriter)

I learned the real meaning of love. Love is absolute loyalty. People fade, looks fade, but loyalty never fades. You can depend so much on certain people, you can set your watch by them. And that’s love, even if it doesn’t seem very exciting.
—Sylvester Stallone (American Actor)

We live in a world of transgressions and selfishness, and no pictures that represent us otherwise can be true, though, happily, for human nature, gloamings of that pure spirit in whose likeness man has been fashioned are to be seen, relieving its deformities, and mitigating if not excusing its crimes.
—James Fenimore Cooper (American Novelist)

Do not speak harshly to anybody; those who are spoken to will answer thee in the same way. Angry speech is painful, blows for blows will touch thee.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong. If the Government or majorities think an individual is right, no one will interfere with him; but when agitators talk against the things considered holy, or when radicals criticise, or satirize the political gods, or question the justice of our laws and institutions, or pacifists talk against war, how the old inquisition awakens, and ostracism, the excommunication of the church, the prison, the wheel, the torture-chamber, the mob, are called to suppress the free expression of thought.
—Harry Weinberger (American Lawyer)

If what you have done yesterday still looks big to you, you haven’t done much today.
—Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Head of State)

A lucky man is rarer than a white crow.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

To me, ‘busy’ implies that the person is out of control of their life.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

Death opens the gate of fame, and shuts the gate of envy after it.—It unloosens the chain of the captive, and puts the bondsman’s task in another’s hands.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

A sense of humor is a major defense against minor troubles.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Live while you live, the epicure would say, and seize the pleasures of the passing day.—Live while you live, the sacred preacher cries, and give to God each moment as it flies.—Lord, in my views, let both united be. I live in pleasure while I live to thee.
—Philip Doddridge (English Nonconformist Religious Leader)

Journalism will kill you, but it will keep you alive while you’re at it.
—Horace Greeley (American Journalist)

If it were not for hope, the heart would break.
—Thomas Fuller (English Cleric, Historian)

We fly, but we have not ‘conquered’ the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and use of such of her forces as we may understand.
—Beryl Markham (English-African Aviator)

All things are inconstant except the faith in the soul, which changes all things and fills their inconstancy with light, but though I seem to be driven out of my country as a misbeliever I have found no man yet with a faith like mine.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

Do you want to do intellectual work? Begin by creating within you a zone of silence, a habit of recollection, a will of renunciation and detachment which puts you entirely at the disposal of work; acquire that state of soul unburdened by desire and self-will which is the state of grace of the intellectual worker. Without that you will do nothing, at least nothing worth while.
—Antonin Sertillanges (French Catholic Philosopher)

Every day, a piece of music, a short story, or a poem dies because its existence is no longer justified in our time. And things that were once considered immortal have become mortal again, no one knows them anymore. Even though they deserve to survive.
—Elfriede Jelinek (Austrian Author)

When you want to test the depths of a stream, don’t use both feet.
—Chinese Proverb

Set the foot down with distrust on the crust of the world—it is thin.
—Edna St. Vincent Millay (American Poet)

The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.
—Reinhold Niebuhr (American Theologian)

All fashions are charming, or rather relatively charming, each one being a new striving, more or less well conceived, after beauty, an approximate statement of an ideal, the desire for which constantly teases the unsatisfied human mind.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

Envy among other ingredients has a mixture of the love of justice in it. We are more angry at undeserved than at deserved good-fortune.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Nought venture nought have.
—John Heywood

A house of which one knew every room wasn’t worth living in.
—Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian Author)

Life is a tragedy when seen in close-up, but a comedy in long-shot.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

He who invokes history is always secure. The dead will not rise to witness against him.
—Czeslaw Milosz (Polish-American Poet, Novelist)

To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it; this is as if a man should put off eating and drinking and sleeping from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.
—John Tillotson

You can do everything right and still fail, not just once, but overall in life. Luck is more important than we acknowledge.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach)

For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death.
—Rachel Carson (American Biologist)

Prejudice, which sees what it pleases, cannot see what is plain.
—Aubrey Thomas de Vere (Irish Poet)

To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

Night is a world lit by itself.
—Antonio Porchia (Italian Poet)

Reduce the layers of management. They put distance between the top of an organization and the customers.
—Donald Rumsfeld (American Government Official)

Many of us are more capable than some of us … but none of us is as capable as all of us!.
—Tom Wilson (American Cartoonist)

He who has been bitten by a snake fears a piece of string.
—Persian Proverb

Why didn’t I learn to treat everything like it was the last time. My greatest regret was how much I believed in the future.
—Jonathan Safran Foer (American Novelist)

To agree to keep a secret is to assume a burden.
—Sam Harris (American Neuroscientist, Atheist, Author)

Our first duty is not to hate ourselves, because to advance we must have faith in ourselves first and then in God. Those who have no faith in themselves can never have faith in God.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Monk, Mystic)

When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea? O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.
—William Blake (English Poet)

There must be fired affections before our prayers will go up.
—William Jenkyn (English Clergyman)

What distinguishes knowledge is not certainty but evidence.
—Walter Kaufmann (German-American Philosopher)

Commerce has made all winds her messengers; all climes her tributaries; all people her servants.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)

If you don’t believe in God, all you have to believe in is decency. Decency is very good. Better decent than indecent. But I don’t think it’s enough.
—Harold Macmillan (British Head of State)

Never does a wise man commit a sin for the sake of his happiness. Never will he discard Morality because of his personal love or hatred, even though he may suffer and meet with a failure.
—Buddhist Teaching

I’m not a genius. I’m just a tremendous bundle of experience.
—Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

The double truth of feeling totally unimportant and at the same time of uppermost importance is of great help in mastering life in it’s various aspects.
—Hans Taeger

To be deceived by our enemies or betrayed by our friends is insupportable; yet by ourselves we are often content to be so treated.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld (French Writer)

Cultivate your own capabilities, your own style. Appreciate the members of your family for who they are, even though their outlook or style may be miles different from yours. Rabbits don’t fly. Eagles don’t swim. Ducks look funny trying to climb. Squirrels don’t have feathers. Stop comparing. There’s plenty of room in the forest.
—Chuck Swindoll (American Christian Pastor)

Good taste is, of course, an utterly dispensable part of any journalist’s equipment.
—Michael Hogg (American Psychologist)

Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
—Robert Fulghum (American Unitarian Universalist Author)

Never rise to speak till you have something to say; and when you have said it, cease.
—John Witherspoon (American Clergyman)

No one will persist long in helping someone who will not help themselves.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

We deceive ourselves when we fancy that only weakness needs support. Strength needs it far more.
—Sophie Swetchine (Russian Mystic, Writer)

Pleasure that isn’t paid for is as insipid as everything else that’s free.
—Anita Loos (American Actor)

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

The best way to keep your friends is not to give them away.
—Wilson Mizner (American Playwright)

If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
—Gerald M. Weinberg (American Computer Scientist)

The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament.
—Brother Lawrence (French Carmelite Monk)

The very essence of romance is uncertainty. If I ever marry, I’ll try to forget the fact.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet, Playwright)

You cannot make it as a wandering generality. You must become a meaningful specific.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world’s problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, even when equipped with the most modern technology, will be essentially primitive – it will stand in awe of nature, and submit to the tutelage of medicine men.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

An extravagance is something that your spirit thinks is a necessity.
—Bert Williams (American Entertainer)

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
—Timothy Leary (American Psychologist)

A human being is not, in any proper sense, a human being till he is educated.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

The best thing about giving of ourselves is that what we get is always better than what we give. The reaction is greater than the action.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

Good deeds ring clear through heaven like a bell.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

Creativity is not limited to people practising one of the traditional forms of art, and even in the case of artists, creativity is not confined to the exercise of their art. Each one of us has a creative potential, which is hidden by competitiveness and success-aggression. To recognize, explore and develop this potential is the task of the School. Creation—whether it be a painting, sculpture, symphony or novel—involves not merely talent, intuition, powers of imagination and application, but also the ability to shape material that could be expanded to other socially relevant spheres.
—Heinrich Boll (German Writer)