Inspirational Quotations

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)

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