Inspirational Quotations

I believe in liberty for all men: the space to stretch their arms and their souls; the right to breathe and the right to vote, the freedom to choose their friends, enjoy the sunshine, and ride on the railroads, uncursed by color; thinking, dreaming, working as they will in a kingdom of beauty and love.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Civil Rights Activist)

The more you express gratitude for what you have the more you will have to express gratitude for.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Happiness will never be any greater than the idea we have of it.
—Maurice Maeterlinck (Belgian Playwright)

He who lives in the future lives in a featureless blank; he lives in impersonality; he lives in Nirvana. The past is democratic, because it is a people. The future is despotic, because it is a caprice. Every man is alone in his prediction, just as each man is alone in a dream.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Some dying men are the most tyrannical; and certainly, since they will shortly trouble us so little for evermore, the poor fellows ought to be indulged.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

The deepest definition of youth is life as yet untouched by tragedy.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

Every man of genius sees the world at a different angle from his fellows, and there is his tragedy.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

He who moves not forward goes backward.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

I am sure that since I have had the full use of my reason, nobody has heard me laugh.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Listen to what you know instead of what you fear.
—Richard Bach (American Novelist)

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

My faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, “God is, was and ever shall be.”
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

The greatest gains and values are farthest from being appreciated. We easily come to doubt if they exist. We soon forget them. They are the highest reality.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

All I say is, nobody has any business to go around looking like a horse and behaving as if it were all right. You don’t catch horses going around looking like people, do you?
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)

Men may rise on stepping-stones of their dead selves to higher things.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

It is not well to make great changes in old age.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

It is always the secure who are humble.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Whatever is graceful is virtuous, and whatever is virtuous is graceful.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

He who is wise in the ancient law of Righteousness and is well-behaved will never go to the lower state of existence.
—Buddhist Teaching

That virtue which requires to be ever guarded is scarce worth the sentinel.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

If the course of human affairs be considered, it will be seen that many things arise against which heaven does not allow us to guard.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

To imagine the unimaginable is the highest use of the imagination.
—Cynthia Ozick

The sage never tries to store things up. The more he does for others, the more he has. The more he gives to others, the greater his abundance.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

By education I mean that training in excellence from youth upward which makes a man passionately desire to be a perfect citizen, and teaches him to rule, and to obey, with justice. This is the only education which deserves the name.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Life is eating us up. We shall be fables presently. Keep cool: It will all be one a hundred years hence.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

We cannot remember too often that when we observe nature, and especially the ordering of nature, it is always ourselves alone we are observing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The best intelligence test is what we do with our leisure.
—Laurence J. Peter (Canadian-born American Educator)

What we need most, is not so much to realize the ideal as to idealize the real.
—Frederic Henry Hedge

Virtuous and vicious everyone must be; few in extremes, but all in degree.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

An honest private man often grows cruel and abandoned when converted into an absolute prince. Give a man power of doing what he pleases with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and consequently overturn in him one of the great pillars of morality.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Reviewing what you have learned and learning anew, you are fit to be a teacher.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

We would like to live as we once lived, but history will not permit it.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Think you can, think you can’t; either way, you’ll be right.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Work as though you would live forever, and live as though you would die today. Go another mile!
—Og Mandino

Blessed be the hand that prepares a pleasure for a child, for there is no saying when and where it may bloom forth.
—Douglas William Jerrold (English Dramatist)

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.
—Herbert Hoover (American Head of State)

In every object there is inexhaustible meaning; the eye sees in it what the eye brings means of seeing.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Conscience and cowardice are really the same things.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

If you have health, you probably will be happy, and if you have health and happiness, you have all the wealth you need, even if it is not all you want.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

One learns little more about a man from his feats of literary memory than from the feats of his alimentary canal.
—Frank Moore Colby (American Educator)

Leaders need to provide strategy and direction and to give employees tools that enable them to gather information and insight from around the world. Leaders shouldn’t try to make every decision.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

Anger blows out the lamp of the mind. In the examination of a great and important question, everyone should be serene, slow-pulsed and calm.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

Pleasure is a reciprocal; no one feels it who does not at the same time give it. To be pleased, one must please.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Once our minds are ‘tattooed’ with negative thinking, our chances for long-term success diminish.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Our minds are lazier than our bodies.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The more refined one is, the more unhappy.
—Anton Chekhov (Russian Short Story Writer)

To do more for the world than the world does for you—that is success.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

The ideal man bears the accidents of life with dignity and grace, making the best of the circumstances.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Wisdom is knowing what to do next; virtue is doing it.
—David Starr Jordan (American Zoologist)

Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, must be prayed for.
—Thomas Arnold

The very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

I realized that if what we call human nature can be changed, then absolutely anything is possible. And from that moment, my life changed.
—Shirley MacLaine (American Actor)

Our own heart, and not other men’s opinion, forms our true honor.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Adversity is the true school of the mind.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Thought is the sculptor who can create the person you want to be.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Look, what envious streaks do lace the severing clouds in yonder east! Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

It should be noted that children’s games are not merely games. One should regard them as their most serious activities.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Few people know how to be old.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellow men, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives, and not in what he is able to receive.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Those who give the first shock to a state are naturally the first to be overwhelmed in its ruin. The fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by the man who was the first to set it a-going; he only troubles the water for another’s net.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

Faith is God felt by heart, not by reason.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

The choicest pleasures of life lie within the ring of moderation.
—Martin Farquhar Tupper (English Poet)

Prosperity is not just scale; adversity is the only balance to weigh friends.
—Plutarch (Ancient Greek Historian)

And desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

The depth of your mythology is the extent of your effectiveness.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

The great events of life often leave one unmoved; they pass out of consciousness, and, when one thinks of them, become unreal. Even the scarlet flowers of passion seem to grow in the same meadow as the poppies of oblivion.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

To lead the people, walk behind them.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

The way to get ahead is to start now. If you start now, you will know a lot next year that you don’t know now and that you would not have known next year if you had waited.
—William Feather (American Publisher)

Marriage is like a cage; one sees the birds outside desperate to get in, and those inside equally desperate to get out.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

The most gifted natures are perhaps also the most trembling.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Be a good animal, true to your animal instincts.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

As regards obstacles, the shortest distance between two points can be a curve.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

He was one of those men who possess almost every gift, except the gift of the power to use them.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

Although human subtlety makes a variety of inventions by different means to the same end, it will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

The best preparation for the future is the present well seen to, the last duty well done.
—George MacDonald (Scottish Christian Author)

The only guide to man is his conscience; the only shield to his memory is the rectitude and sincerity of his actions. It is very imprudent to walk through life without this shield, because we are so often mocked by the failure of our hopes and the upsetting of our calculations; but with this shield, however the fates may play, we march always in the ranks of honor.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Whatever you dwell on in the conscious grows in your experience.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

The religious superstition is encouraged by means of the institution of churches, processions, monuments, festivities….The so-called clergy stupefy the masses….They befog the people and keep them in an eternal condition of stupefaction
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Art is the proper task of life.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Courage is rightly considered the foremost of the virtues, for upon it, all others depend.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The path is smooth that leadeth on to danger.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

A friend that you have to buy won’t be worth what you pay for him, no matter what that may be.
—George D. Prentice (American Journalist)

Failure is the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
—Moshe Arens

Friendship lasts but for a day, business connections forever.
—Babylonian Proverb

Some men see things as they are and say, “Why?” I dream things that never were, and say, “Why not?”
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, wise people falter not amidst blame and praise.
—The Dhammapada (Buddhist Anthology of Verses)

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that …
—George Carlin

Literature is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent o people who have none.
—Jules Renard (French Novelist)

One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity more intelligently to begin again.
—Henry Ford (American Businessperson)

If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life, sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

Contrary to what most of us believe, happiness does not simply happen to us. It’s something that we make happen, and it results from doing our best. Feeling fulfilled when we live up to our potentialities is what motivates differentiation and leads to evolution.
—Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Play the game for more than you can afford to lose… only then will you learn the game.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

All progress has resulted from people who took unpopular positions.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Any effort that has self-glorification as its final endpoint is bound to end in disaster.
—Robert M. Pirsig (American Writer)

If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)