Inspirational Quotations

Today marks the birthday of Seth Godin (b. 1960,) American entrepreneur and management consultant. He is a popular author and public speaker on branding and the psychology of marketing.

Godin is famous for his storytelling and his brilliant sound bites in his numerous books, articles, and speeches. His bestsellers include Purple Cow (2003,) Free Prize Inside (2004,) The Dip (2007,) Tribes (2008,) and Linchpin (2010.)

Inspirational Quotations by Seth Godin

Change almost never fails because it’s too early. It almost always fails because it’s too late.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

If you’re not uncomfortable in your work as a leader, it’s almost certain you’re not reaching your potential as a leader.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Little changes cost you. Big changes benefit you by changing the game, but only if you go first.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

If your organization requires success before commitment, it will never have either.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

You can’t have good ideas unless you’re willing to generate a lot of bad ones.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Change is not a threat, it’s an opportunity. Survival is not the goal, transformative success is.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Give up control and give it away … The more you give your idea away, the more your company is going to be worth.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

When you see the world as it is, but insist on making it more like it could be, you matter.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

The easiest thing is to react. The second easiest thing is to respond. But the hardest thing is to initiate.—When people ask you to tell them what to do, resist.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Scarcity creates value.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Playing safe is very risky.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

When kids grow up wanting to be you, you matter.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

It’s better to make a decision, even the wrong one, than to be in limbo.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Leadership is scarce because few people are willing to go through the discomfort required to lead.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Don’t try to be the ‘next’. Instead, try to be the other, the changer, the new.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Sometimes we spend more time than we should defending the old thing, instead of working to take advantage of the new thing.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Make a decision. It doesn’t have to be a wise decision or a perfect one. Just make one.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

One way to think about running a successful business is to figure out what the least you can do is, and do that.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Today marks the birthday of Franz Kafka (1883–1924,) the German-language writer from Prague who is considered a major figure of 20th-century literature.

Kafka described himself as a “peevish, miserable, silent, discontented, and sickly” man. His life was tragic. He grew up terrified of his tyrannical father. He graduated from law school; his job at an insurance company exhausted him. He suffered many mental illnesses and felt tormented by guilt and anxiety. He did not publish much of his written work during his lifetime, had a few love affairs but never got married, and died of tuberculosis at age 40.

Kafka wrote surreal, dark, pessimistic, and disturbing short stories and novels. His fictional world’s repressive nature inspired the adjective “Kafkaesque,” used to describe absurd, gloomy, bizarre, eerie, or nightmarish objects.

Kafka’s works feature strange and dreadful incidents in innocent people’s lives. In his most famous work Metamorphosis (1915, German: Die Verwandlung,) a young man dies out of guilt-ridden despair after being transformed into a monstrous and repulsive insect. The Judgment (1916, Das Urteil) is about a son who unquestioningly throws himself off a bridge after his father orders him to commit suicide. In the Penal Colony (1919, In der Strafkolonie) is about a machine that kills criminals by inscribing the nature of their offense on their skin.

Kafka was barely known during his lifetime, but attained great posthumous fame thanks to his close friend Max Brod. Just before death, Kafka asked Brod to destroy all unpublished manuscripts. Brod ignored Kafka’s wishes, made significant changes to three manuscripts, gave them better endings, and published The Trial (1925, Der Prozess) Amerika (1927,) and The Castle (1926, Das Schloss.) Only in the 1970s were the originals of these three novels published.

Inspirational Quotations by Franz Kafka

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Life’s splendor forever lies in wait about each one of us in all its fullness, but veiled from view, deep down, invisible, far off. It is there, though, not hostile, not reluctant, not deaf. If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

A belief is like a guillotine, just as heavy, just as light.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

A book must be the ax for the frozen sea within us.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

For words are magical formulae. They leave finger marks behind on the brain, which in the twinkling of an eye become the footprints of history. One ought to watch one’ s every word.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

All human errors are impatience, a premature breaking off of methodical procedure, an apparent fencing-in of what is apparently at issue.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

I can prove at any time that my education tried to make another person out of me than the one I became. It is for the harm, therefore, that my educators could have done me in accordance with their intentions that I reproach them; I demand from their hands the person I now am, and since they cannot give him to me, I make of my reproach and laughter a drumbeat sounding in the world beyond.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

In theory there is a possibility of perfect happiness: To believe in the indestructible element within one, and not to strive towards it.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Today marks the birthday of Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915,) a popular American salesman, author, and philosopher from the turn of the twentieth century.

This self-described “business man with a literary attachment” had an unusual career. Hubbard was a brilliant marketer and salesperson for a soap company. At age 37, he sold his shares in the company to establish an arts and crafts community called Roycroft in East Aurora, New York. Roycroft attracted publishers, bookbinders, and artisans who, although not paid well, had a great deal of freedom to experiment with and refine their trade-skills.

Hubbard wrote six novels and hundreds of inspirational biographical essays called Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great. His A Message to Garcia (1899) was a bestselling inspirational essay on sales and marketing. His satirical newspaper The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest had a monthly circulation of over 100,000.

In 1915, Hubbard died on a voyage from New York to Liverpool aboard the RMS Lusitania when a German submarine torpedoed it off the coast of Ireland. He is the author of “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” a popular proverb that urges optimism in the face of difficulty.

Inspirational Quotations by Elbert Hubbard

The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The happiness of this life depends less on what befalls you than the way in which you take it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Be pleasant until ten o’clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

It does not take much strength to do things, but it requires a great deal of strength to decide what to do.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Live truth instead of professing it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Never explain—your friends do not need it and your enemies will not believe you anyhow.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Do not take life too seriously—you will never get out of it alive.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Folks who never do any more than they get paid for, never get paid for anymore than they do.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Where parents do too much for their children, the children will not do much for themselves.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Simply be filled with the thought of good, and it will radiate—you do not have to bother about it, any more than you need trouble about your digestion.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

If you err it is not for me to punish you. We are punished by our sins not for them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

We find what we expect to find, and we receive what we ask for.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Money never made a fool of anybody; it only shows them up.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Habit is a form of exercise.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The cheerful loser is the winner.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Genius is often only the power of making continuous efforts. The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it—so fine that we are often on the line and do not know it. How many a man has thrown up his hands at a time when a little more effort, a little more patience, would have achieved success. As the tide goes clear out, so it comes clear in. In business sometimes prospects may seem darkest when really they are on the turn. A little more persistence, a little more effort, and what seemed hopeless failure may turn to glorious success. There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat except from within, no really insurmountable barrier save our own inherent weakness of purpose.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Anyone who idolizes you is going to hate you when he discovers that you are fallible. He never forgives. He has deceived himself, and he blames you for it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

What others say of me matters little, what I myself say and do matters much.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

People who are able to do their own thinking should not allow others to do it for them.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

A retentive memory may be a good thing, but the ability to forget is the true token of greatness.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The reason men oppose progress is not that they hate progress, but that they love inertia.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

If you want work well done, select a busy man; the other kind has no time.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Character is the result of two things: mental attitude and the way we spend our time.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

I believe in my own divinity—and yours.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Constant effort and frequent mistakes are the stepping stones of genius.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Some men succeed by what they know; some by what they do; and a few by what they are.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Knowledge is the distilled essence of our intuitions, corroborated by experience.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Luck is tenacity of purpose.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Life is a compromise between fate and free will.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Your friend is who man who knows all about you, and still likes you.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Today marks the birthday of Charles Kingsley (1819–1875,) English writer and Anglican priest. Kingsley wrote numerous historical novels, including Hypatia (1853), Hereward the Wake (1865) and Westward Ho (1855).

Kingsley is best remembered for his extremely popular children’s book The Water-Babies (1863,) written to teach unconditional love, redemption, and other Christian values. The Water-Babies is an allegorical fairytale of a 10-year-old, chimney-sweeping orphan named Tom. While clearing soot one day, Tom falls through a chimney into the room of a rich young girl named Ellie. Mistaken for a thief, Tom is chased out of town. Overwhelmed by exhaustion, he submits to thirst, tumbles into a stream, falls fast asleep, and drowns. Fairies turn him into a peculiar creature called a “water-baby.” In his new life, Tom meets various fairies, aquatic creatures, and other water-babies. He also encounters the vicious Mrs. Bedonbyasyoudid (a reference to Revelation 16:6 in the New Testament) and the motherly Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby (a reference to the Golden Rule.) When he reaches the Other-End-of-Nowhere, he helps his vicious former master Mr. Grimes find repentance.

The Water-Babies was extremely popular when it was published, and it helped rally support for the 1840 Chimney Sweepers’ Regulation Act, which prohibited the use of child labor to climb into and clean chimneys.

However, The Water-Babies lost its popularity over time because of its insults against the Irish, Catholics, Jews, Americans, and the poor, even if Kingsley’s writing merely reflected many of the common prejudices of his time.

Inspirational Quotations by Charles Kingsley

What’s the use of doing a kindness, if you do it a day too late.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Thank God every morning when you get up that you have something to do which must be done, whether you like it or not.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will, cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle will never know.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

What I want is, not to possess religion, but to have a religion that shall possess me.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Stick to the old truths and the old paths, and learn their divineness by sick beds, and in everyday work, and do not darken your mind with intellectual puzzles, which may breed disbelief, but can never breed vital religion or practical usefulness.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us really happy is something to be enthusiastic about.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Do noble things, do not dream them all day long.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Feelings are like chemicals; the more you analyze them the worse they smell.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

If I am ever obscure in my expressions, do not fancy that therefore I am deep. If I were really deep, all the world would understand, though they might not appreciate. The perfectly popular style is the perfectly scientific one. To me an obscurity is a reason for suspecting a fallacy.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Do today’s duty, fight today’s temptation; do not weaken and distract yourself by looking forward to things you cannot see, and could not understand if you saw them.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

The men whom I have seen succeed best in life always have been cheerful and hopeful men; who went about their business with a smile on their faces; and took the changes and chances of this mortal life like men; facing rough and smooth alike as it came.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

“Young and Old”—A Poem by Charles Kingsley

Here’s a poem from Chapter II of Kingsley’s The Water-Babies. This poignant poem contrasts youth and old age. The first stanza promotes a productive youth. The second stanza hints at aging natural imagery and wishes that you be alongside the one that you cherished in your youth.

When all the world is young, lad,
And all the trees are green;
And every goose a swan, lad,
And every lass a queen;
Then hey for boot and horse, lad,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,
And every dog his day.

When all the world is old, lad,
And all the trees are brown;
And all the sport is stale, lad,
And all the wheels run down;
Creep home, and take your place there,
The spent and maimed among:
God grant you find one face there,
You loved when all was young.

Flattery is from the teeth out. Sincere appreciation is from the heart out.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

My reason is not framed to bend or stoop: my knees are.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Opportunity is often difficult to recognize; we usually expect it to beckon us with beepers and billboards.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

The first attribute that characterizes the greater man from the moron is his thicker layer of inhibition.
—Martin H. Fischer

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
—Igor Stravinsky (Russian-born American Composer)

Fear is the proof of a degenerate mind.
—Virgil (Roman Poet)

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result, but the cause, of fear. Perhaps the action you take will be successful; perhaps different action or adjustments will have to follow. But any action is better than no action at all.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Part of the happiness of life consists not in fighting battles, but in avoiding them. A masterly retreat is in itself a victory.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Ignore what a man desires, and you ignore the very source of his power.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

The act of acting morally is behaving as if everything we do matters.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

Don’t drown the man who taught you to swim.
—Common Proverb

If silence be good for the wise, how much better for fools.
—Common Proverb

Criticism of others is futile and if you indulge in it often you should be warned that it can be fatal to your career.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

It’s too late to shut the barn door after the horse has been stolen.
—Common Proverb

Let there be no doubt: as long as you continue to blame others instead of assuming your responsibilities, you will make no meaningful and enduring change for the better. What kind of people are we, if we don’t have the character to own up to our own shortcomings and responsibilities? To have and enjoy certain liberties requires us to hold each other and ourselves accountable for our actions.
—Gary Ryan Blair

He who would really benefit mankind must reach them through their work.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experiences.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

When you see a worthy person, endeavor to emulate him. When you see an unworthy person, then examine your inner self.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

To achieve greatness one should live as if they will never die.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

You can set yourself up to be sick, or you can choose to stay well.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)

Anxiety about the future never profits; we feel no evil until it comes, and when we feel it, no counsel helps; wisdom is either too early or too late.
—Friedrich Ruckert

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Who dares do all that may become a man, and dares no more, he is a man indeed.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Failure can be bought on easy terms; success must be paid for in advance.
—Cullen Hightower (American Humorist)

Forgive, forget. Bear with the faults of others as you would have them bear with yours. Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious.
—Phillips Brooks (American Episcopal Clergyman)

When you ascend the hill of prosperity, may you not meet a friend.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

A ship at harbor is safe, but that’s not what the ship was built for.
—Unknown

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.
—Thomas Jefferson (American Head of State)

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

Quarrels are the dowry which married folk bring one another.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

We believe that if men have the talent to invent new machines that put men out of work, they have the talent to put those men back to work.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.
—Lou Holtz

Since we had nothing to do with our arrival and usually are not consulted about our departure, what makes so many of us think we’re entitled to so much while we’re here?
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

He who waits upon fortune is never sure of dinner.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

The soul that is within me no man can degrade.
—Frederick Douglass (American Abolitionist)

Honesty is for the most part less profitable than dishonesty.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Liberty is not merely a privilege to be conferred; it is a habit to be acquired.
—David Lloyd George (British Head of State)

I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.
—H. Norman Schwarzkopf (American Military Leader)

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

People throughout the world may look different or have a different religion, education, or position, but they are all the same. They are the people to be loved. They are all hungry for love.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

Never mind searching for who you are. Search for the person you aspire to be.
—Robert Brault

If you share your friend’s crime, you make it your own.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Mediocrity obtains more with application than superiority without it.
—Baltasar Gracian

No evil is intolerable but a guilty conscience.
—William Ellery Channing

Slavery is a system of the most complete injustice.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The most heated defenders of a science, who cannot endure the slightest sneer at it, are commonly those who have not made very much progress in it and are secretly aware of this defect.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Prayer draws us near to our own souls.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

Education is hanging around until you’ve caught on.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

In private conversation between intimate friends the wisest men very often talk like the weakest; for, indeed, the talking with a friend is nothing else but thinking aloud.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

Situated in some nebulous distance I do what I do so that the universal balance of which I am a part may remain a balance.
—Antonio Porchia (Italian Poet)

Love is a fruit in season at all times, and in reach of every hand.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

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

Once you have permission to talk to someone, finding new products or services for them is a smart way to grow.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

Fear is the absence of faith.
—Paul Tillich (American Lutheran Theologian)

To deny, to believe, and to doubt absolutely—this is for man what running is for a horse.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

The how” thinker gets problems solved effectively because he wastes no time with futile “ifs” but goes right to work on the creative “how”.”
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Let the wife make the husband glad to come home, and let him make her sorry to see him leave.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

There is no education like adversity.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action.
—M. Scott Peck (American Psychiatrist)

Character is a perfectly educated will.
—Novalis

Happy people plan actions, they don’t plan results.
—Dennis Wholey