Inspirational Quotations

Every man is two men; one is awake in the darkness, the other asleep in the light.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Anything that we have to learn we learn by the actual doing of it… we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate ones, brave by performing brave ones.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

There is much suffering in the world—physical, material, mental. The suffering of some can be blamed on the greed of others. The material and physical suffering is suffering from hunger, from homelessness, from all kinds of diseases. But the greatest suffering is being lonely, feeling unloved, having no one. I have come more and more to realize that it is being unwanted that is the worst disease that any human being can ever experience.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

The sooner you make your first five thousand mistakes the sooner you will be able to correct them.
—Kimon Nicolaides

Make not the sauce till you have caught the fish.
—Common Proverb

A good painter is to paint two main things, men and the working of man’s mind.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

The merit of charitable works is in proportion to the grace with which they are practiced.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Glory follows virtue as if it were its shadow.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
—Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

It is not how much one makes but to what purpose one spends.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

It’s one thing to dream, but when the moment is right, you’ve got to be willing to leave what’s familiar and go out to find your own sound.
—Howard Schultz (American Businessman)

Revenge is the abject pleasure of an abject mind.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

The jests of the rich are ever successful.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

Court not the critic’s smile nor dread his frown.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Wisdom begins in wonder.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

A person should set his goals as early as he can and devote all his energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort, he may achieve it. Or he may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he will know he has been alive.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

What you cannot see in the world is far more powerful than anything you can see.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

He gives little who gives with a frown; he gives much who gives little with a smile.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Three things produce love: culture of mind, modesty, and meekness.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

Today marks the birthday of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881,) the great-yet-controversial Scottish historian, philosopher, and essayist from the Victorian era.

Known for his incisive critique of British society, Carlyle was one of the most significant thinkers of the nineteenth century. However, since the early 1900s, his work has been censured for his belief that powerful, heroic individuals can transform the course of humanity and for his veneration of the Germanic spirit—both of which invigorated Nazi ideologues.

Carlyle studied and translated German literature in his early years. Some of his earliest writings describe a polarity between the “sacrificial seriousness” of the German culture and the “superficial, pleasure-seeking” British culture. In Signs of the Times (1829), he described the chasm between the material advancements of the machine age and the soulless mediocrity of “modern man.”

Carlyle’s first truly successful book was the three-volume The French Revolution (1837.) Legend has it that after months of hard work, Carlyle lent his completed manuscript of the first volume to his friend, the political philosopher John Stuart Mill. A friend of Mill read the manuscript and left the pages in an untidy heap at his home. Mill’s maid mistook it for trash and threw it in the fire. Carlyle refused to let the loss get him down and rewrote it after finishing the second and third volumes. The French Revolution became one of his most respected works and is considered a reliable account of the early course of the Revolution. Charles Dickens referred to it while writing his A Tale of Two Cities (1859.)

At the core of Carlyle’s political philosophy was his attribution of all historical progress solely to mighty heroes who served as role models for how people should live. He wrote, “No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.” He expounded these beliefs in The French Revolution, On Heroes and Hero Worship (1841), and History of Frederick the Great (1858–1865, 6 volumes.) These books profoundly influenced German and Italian fascism and painted Carlyle as a progenitor of the concept of totalitarian regimes.

Inspirational Quotations by Thomas Carlyle

There are depths in man that go to the lowest hell, and heights that reach the highest heaven, for are not both heaven and hell made out of him, everlasting miracle and mystery that he is.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

No nobler feeling than this of admiration for one higher than himself dwells in the breast of man. It is to this hour, and at all hours, the vivifying influence in man’s life.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The man who cannot laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils, but his whole life is already a treason and a stratagem.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The depth of our despair measures what capability and height of claim we have to hope.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Everywhere in life the true question is, not what we have gained, but what we do.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

In every phenomenon the beginning remains always the most notable moment.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A man willing to work, and unable to find work, is perhaps the saddest sight that fortune’s inequality exhibits under this sun.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A man’s honest, earnest opinion is the most precious of all he possesses: let him communicate this, if he is to communicate anything.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Obstructions are never wanting: the very things that were once indispensable furtherances become obstructions; and need to be shaken off, and left behind us,—a business often of enormous difficulty.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The great law of culture is: Let each become all that he was created capable of being.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Misery which, through long ages, had no spokesman, no helper, will now be its own helper and speak for itself.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The man of Humor sees common life, even mean life, under the new light of sportfulness and love; whatever has existence has a charm for him. Humor has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all that they can.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offense.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Enjoying things which are pleasant; that is not the evil: it is the reducing of our moral self to slavery by them that is.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

No great man lives in vain. The history of the world is but the biography of great men.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

All human things do require to have an ideal in them; to have some soul in them.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Adversity is sometimes hard upon a man; but for one man who can stand prosperity, there are a hundred that will stand adversity.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

We are firm believers in the maxim that for all right judgment of any man or thing it is useful, nay, essential, to see his good qualities before pronouncing on his bad.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

All greatness is unconscious, or it is little and naught.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Today is not yesterday.—We ourselves change.—How then, can our works and thoughts, if they are always to be the fittest, continue always the same.—Change, indeed, is painful, yet ever needful; and if memory have its force and worth, so also has hope.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

There is endless merit in a man’s knowing when to have done.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

All work is as seed sown; it grows and spreads, and sows itself anew.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The wealth of man is the number of things which he loves and blesses, which he is loved and blessed by.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Tell a person they are brave and you help them become so.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

All work, even cotton spinning, is noble; work is alone noble … A life of ease is not for any man, nor for any god.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Experience is the best of schoolmasters, only the school fees are heavy.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Only the person of worth can recognize the worth in others.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The weakest living creature, by concentrating his powers on a single object, can accomplish something. The strongest, by dispensing his over many, may fail to accomplish anything.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Our grand business undoubtedly is, not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

With stupidity and sound digestion man may front much.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

In every man’s writings, the character of the writer must lie recorded.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

What you see, yet can not see over, is as good as infinite.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Today marks the birthday of Bruce Lee (1940–73,) the influential martial artist and pop culture icon. This American-born film actor helped popularize martial arts movies in the 1970s and influenced numerous Hollywood action heroes.

Lee was born Lee Jun-fan in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but grew up in Hong Kong. When he returned to America in his early twenties, Lee developed a new martial arts technique called “jeet kune do” by blending traditional kung fu, fencing, boxing, and Eastern philosophy. He taught martial arts and performed minor roles in TV and film.

In 1971, Lee moved back to Hong Kong and immediately starred in two films that broke box-office records: Tang shan da xiong (1971, The Big Boss in Hong Kong/ Fists of Fury in USA) and Jing wu men (1972, Fist of Fury/ The Chinese Connection.)

Lee produced, directed, wrote, and starred in his next film, Meng long guo jiang (1972, The Way of the Dragon/ Return of the Dragon.) Lee’s subsequent film Enter the Dragon (1973) became a worldwide hit and thrust him into international super-stardom. Unfortunately, Lee died a sudden and mysterious death six days before the film’s Hong Kong release. An unfinished film called Game of Death (1978) was compiled with stand-ins and paper cutouts of Lee’s face.

Over the decades, Lee’s action performances, onscreen humor, and dramatic sensibility in his five films cultivated a huge following. Lee became a prominent pop culture icon of the 20th century.

Inspirational Quotations by Bruce Lee

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless—like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

One does not accumulate but eliminate. It is not daily increase but daily decrease. The height of cultivation always run to simplicity.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

As long as we separate this ‘oneness’ into two, we won’t achieve realization.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Flow in the living moment.—We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Ideas are the beginning of all achievement.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty,|Often hot and fierce, But still only light and flickering. As love grows older, Our hearts mature And our love becomes as coals, Deep-burning and unquenchable.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Let the spirit out—Discard all thoughts of reward, all hopes of praise and fears of blame, all awareness of one’s bodily self. And, finally closing the avenues of sense perception, let the spirit out, as it will.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

One who gains strength by overcoming obstacles possesses the only strength which can overcome adversity.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

The excesses of love soon pass, but its insufficiencies torment us forever.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Get mad, then get over it.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

The simplest things are often the truest.
—Richard Bach (American Novelist)

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie—deliberate, contrived, and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

A pat on the back is only a few vertebrae removed from a kick in the pants, but is miles ahead in results.
—Ella Wheeler Wilcox (American Poet)

Do the truth ye know, and you shall learn the truth you need to know.
—George MacDonald (Scottish Christian Author)

Unless you are willing to drench yourself in your work beyond the capacity of the average man, you are just not cut out for positions at the top.
—James Cash Penney (American Entrepreneur)

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.
—Harold Kushner (American Jewish Religious Leader)

You must have the devil in you to succeed in the arts.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

Hope is a light diet, but very stimulating.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.
—Anais Nin (French-American Essayist)

Today marks the birthday of Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94,) the Scottish adventurer and author of novels, short stories, essays, and travel literature.

Stevenson is best known for his novels Treasure Island (1883,) Kidnapped (1886) and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886.) and his collection of poetry A Child’s Garden of Verses (1885.)

Stevenson suffered from a lung disease from a very early age. When he couldn’t sleep at night, his nurse stayed up with him and told him stories of ghosts, monsters, and pirates. He studied law but never practiced it. Instead, he traveled and wrote books about his experiences.

One rainy summer afternoon, Stevenson painted a map of an imaginary island to amuse his stepson. This and the pirate stories he frequently told his stepson inspired the idea for his first great adventure novel, Treasure Island (1883.) Subsequently, he wrote Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1885) in just three days. Those two novels made Stevenson rich and famous.

For the rest of his life, Stevenson traveled continuously in search of a suitable climate to improve his health. He suffered from ill health all through adulthood and did much of his writing from his sickbed. Stevenson and his wife tried living in Switzerland, Scotland, France, England, and America. They eventually settled in Apia, the capital of Samoa, where the locals christened him “Tusitala” (teller of tales.)

When Stevenson died from cerebral hemorrhage at age 44, he was buried at a spot on Mount Vaea overlooking the Pacific Ocean. His gravestone was inscribed with his poem “Requiem”:

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Inspirational Quotations by Robert Louis Stevenson

You cannot run away from a weakness. You must sometimes fight it out or perish; and if that be so, why not now, and where you stand?
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The best things in life are nearest: Breath in your nostrils, light in your eyes, flowers at your feet, duties at your hand, the path of right just before you. Then do not grasp at the stars, but do life’s plain, common work as it comes, certain that daily duties and daily bread are the sweetest things in life.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A man finds he has been wrong at every stage of his career, only to deduce the astonishing conclusion that he is at last entirely right.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

We are all travelers in the wilderness of the world, and the best that we can find in our travels is an honest friend.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The cruelest lies are often told in silence. A man may have sat in a room for hours and not opened his mouth, and yet come out of that room a disloyal friend or a vile calumniator.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

There is only one difference between a long life and a good dinner: that, in the dinner, the sweets come last.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Marriage is one long conversation, checkered by disputes.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding; and it is not to be found in foreign lands, but in the heart itself.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

It is the mark of a good action that it appears inevitable, in retrospect.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The existence of a man is so small a thing to take, so mighty a thing to employ.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A generous prayer is never presented in vain; the petition may be refused, but the petitioner is always, I believe, rewarded by some gracious visitation.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to keep your soul alive.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Our business in this world is not to succeed, but to continue to fail in good spirits.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A friend is a present you give to yourself.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

All sorts of allowances are made for the illusions of youth; and none, or almost none, for the disenchantments of age.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Youth is wholly experimental.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Don’t write merely to be understood. Write so that you cannot possibly be misunderstood.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to be the gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

A happy man or woman is a better thing to find than a five-pound note. He or she is a radiating focus of goodwill; and their entrance into a room is as though another candle had been lighted.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Wealth I ask not, hope nor love, nor a friend to know me; all I ask, the heavens above, and the road below me.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Money alone is only a mean; it presupposes a man to use it. The rich man can go where he pleases, but perhaps please himself nowhere. He can buy a library or visit the whole world, but perhaps has neither patience to read nor intelligence to see…. The purse may be full and the heart empty. He may have gained the world and lost himself; and with all his wealth around him … he may live as blank a life as any tattered ditcher.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Talk is by far the most accessible of pleasures. It costs nothing in money, it is all profit, it completes our education, founds and fosters our friendships, and can be enjoyed at any age and in almost any state of health.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

It is a golden maxim to cultivate the garden for the nose, and the eyes will take care of themselves.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

To hold the same views at forty as we held at twenty is to have been stupefied for a score of years, and take rank, not as a prophet, but as an unteachable brat, well birched and none the wiser.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Our affections and beliefs are wiser than we; the best that is in us is better than we can understand; for it is grounded beyond experience, and guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to another.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The price we have to pay for money is sometimes liberty.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all that life really means.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Today marks the birthday of Zig Ziglar (1926–2012,) American motivational consultant. This prolific author and public speaker was renowned for his energy, optimism, and plain-spoken style. His recipe “The Ziglar Way” blended homespun wit, sound-bite positivity, and Christian faith to urge people to appreciate the bright side of life.

Born Hilary Hinton Ziglar in rural Mississippi, Ziglar considered his devout mother the foremost influence on his life. Her mental repository of adages (e.g., “The person who won’t stand for something will fall for anything”) influenced many of Ziglar’s faith-filled metaphors and proverbs.

Ziglar initially worked as a salesman and later as a sales-trainer. He switched careers after becoming enthralled with the ability of self-help lecturers to influence others. His first book, Biscuits, Fleas, and Pump Handles (1974, later titled See You at the Top) advised readers to reexamine their lives with a “checkup from the neck up” and to abandon their “stinkin’ thinkin’.”

Seminars such as “Success Rallies” and “Born to Win” and over thirty books attracted millions of devoted followers to Ziglar’s advice on personal growth, faith, moral strength, character, leadership, and sales. His bestselling books include See You at the Top (1975,) Secrets of Closing the Sale (1982,) Top Performance (1986,) Success for Dummies (1998,) Selling 101 (2003,) and an autobiography (2004.)

Inspirational Quotations by Zig Ziglar

Winning is not everything, but the effort to win is.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

There’s often no way you can look into the game of life and determine whether or not you’ll get that big break tomorrow or whether it will take another week, month, year or even longer. But it will come!
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The foundation stones for a balanced success are honesty, character, integrity, faith, love and loyalty.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

If you learn from defeat, you haven’t really lost.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

When we do more than we are paid to do, eventually we will be paid more for what we do.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You can’t hit a target you cannot see, and you cannot see a target you do not have.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

If you don’t see yourself as a winner, then you cannot perform as a winner.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

There are no traffic jams on the extra mile.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You cannot tailor-make the situations in life but you can tailor-make the attitudes to fit those situations.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Of all the “attitudes” we can acquire, surely the attitude of gratitude is the most important and by far the most life-changing.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Outstanding people have one thing in common: an absolute sense of mission.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Obstacles are the things we see when we take our eyes off our goals.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Man was designed for accomplishment, engineered for success, and endowed with the seeds of greatness.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The only way to coast is downhill.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Success is like a ladder, and no one has ever climbed a ladder with their hands in their pockets.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

People who build hope into their own lives and who share hope with others become powerful people.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The price of success is much lower than the price of failure.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You build a successful career, regardless of your field of endeavor, by the dozens of little things you do on and off the job.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The most practical, beautiful, workable philosophy in the world won’t work—if you won’t.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Positive thinking won’t let you do anything but it will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Success is the maximum utilization of the ability that you have.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Be firm on principle but flexible on method.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

It’s your aptitude, not just your attitude that determines your ultimate altitude.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

The door to a balanced success opens widest on the hinges of hope and encouragement.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

When your image improves, your performance improves.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You are free to choose, but the choices you make today will determine what you will have, be and do in the tomorrow of your life.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

If God would have wanted us to live in a permissive society He would have given us Ten Suggestions and not Ten Commandments.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

When you forgive somebody else you accept the responsibility for your own future.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

You can have everything in life you want if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

For every sale you miss because you’re too enthusiastic, you will miss a hundred because you’re not enthusiastic enough.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

People who have good relationships at home are more effective in the marketplace.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Many people spend more time in planning the wedding than they do in planning the marriage.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Money isn’t the most important thing in life, but it’s reasonably close to oxygen on the “gotta have it” scale.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Motivation is the fuel necessary to keep the human engine running.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

We all need a daily check up from the neck up to avoid stinkin’ thinkin’ which ultimately leads to hardening of the attitudes.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Our children are our only hope for the future, but we are their only hope for their present and their future.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

What comes out of your mouth is determined by what goes into your mind.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Failure is a detour, not a dead-end street.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

It was character that got us out of bed, commitment that moved us into action, and discipline that enabled us to follow through.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

If you want to reach a goal, you must ‘see the reaching’ in your own mind before you actually arrive at your goal.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

Today marks the birthday of John Adams (1735–1826,) American lawyer, author, and statesman. This Founding Father was the first Vice President (1789–97) and the second President (1797–1801) of the United States.

After studying law at Harvard, Adams became famous for questioning Britain’s right to tax its American colonies. At the First Continental Congress in 1774, he argued that the British Parliament had no legal authority over its colonies. He quickly became the foremost advocate for breaking from Britain.

At the Second Continental Congress on 1-July-1776, Adams proposed autonomy and persuaded the delegates from the colonies to embrace a declaration of independence. That resolution was approved and signed on 2-July, but was only formally adopted on 4-July. Adams believed that the 2-July was America’s real birthday and refused to celebrate 4-July for the rest of his life in protest.

After independence, Adams served as America’s diplomat to France, Holland, and Great Britain. He then returned to America and became vice president for George Washington. In 1796, he was elected the second president of the United States. His Federalist Party soon split and Adams lost his presidency to Thomas Jefferson in 1800. In due course, the two Founding Fathers began a famous 14-year correspondence of 158 letters (109 written by from Adams and 49 by Jefferson). Adams and Jefferson died on the same day.

Inspirational Quotations by John Adams

Abuse of words has been the great instrument of sophistry and chicanery, of party, faction, and division of society.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

A desire to be observed, considered, esteemed, praised, beloved, and admired by his fellows is one of the earliest as well as the keenest dispositions discovered in the heart of man.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

Be not intimidated, therefore, by any terrors, from publishing with the utmost freedom whatever can be warranted by the laws of your country; nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberty by any pretenses of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery, and cowardice.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

Ambition is the subtlest beast of the intellectual and moral field. It is wonderfully adroit in concealing itself from its owner.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

Liberty, according to my metaphysics…is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

The happiness of society is the end of government.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

Let us dare to read, think, speak and write.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

The question before the human race is, whether the God of nature shall govern the world by his own laws, or whether priests and kings shall rule it by fictitious miracles.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

The preservation of the means of knowledge among the lowest ranks is of more importance to the public than all the property of all the rich men in the country.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

History is the recital of facts represented as true. Fable, on the other hand, is the recital of facts represented as fiction. The history of man’s ideas is nothing more than the chronicle of human error.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

The surest way to fail is not to determine to succeed.
—Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Irish-born British Playwright)

There is this difference between the two temporal blessings—health and money; money is the most envied, but the least enjoyed; health is the most enjoyed, but the least envied; and this superiority of the latter is still more obvious when we reflect that the poorest man would not part with health for money, but that the richest would gladly part with all his money for health.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Fear of becoming a ‘has-been’ keeps some people from becoming anything.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Never regard study as a duty but as an enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later works belong.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is.
—Iris Murdoch (English Novelist)

Today marks the birthday of Oscar Wilde (1854-1900,) the Anglo-Irish playwright considered one of the greatest writers of the Victorian Era.

In his 30s, although married with two children, Oscar Wilde had a love affair with a young aristocrat. The affair became public; the revelation of Wilde’s homosexual double life ruined his reputation in the Victorian society. Still, this was the most creative period of his life. He wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), Salome (1891), and Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892.) He then erupted on the British theater scene with three successive comedy hits featuring people leading double lives: A Woman of No Importance (1893), An Ideal Husband (1895), and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895.)

His masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest opened in London on Valentine’s Day 1895. It featured two protagonists who keep up fictitious personas to dodge burdensome social obligations until their sham identities and stories grow so intricate that everything gets revealed.

A few months later, Wilde was sentenced to two years of hard labor for homosexuality. When he got out of prison, he wrote The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898,) a poem concerning inhumane prison conditions. With his reputation ruined, he wandered around France and Italy. Wilde’s health declined rapidly and he died penniless in a seedy hotel in Paris at the age of 46.

Oscar Wilde is considered the world’s greatest wit ever. He was a brilliant conversationalist; anecdotes abound about his well-known retorts. Once, when US Customs asked him if he had anything to declare upon arrival in New York, Wilde replied, “Nothing but my genius.”

Entire books have been devoted to Oscar Wilde’s one-liners. He said, “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” And, “I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.” And, “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.”

Inspirational Quotations by Oscar Wilde

What a pity that in life we only get our lessons when they are of no use to us.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Experience, the name men give to their mistakes.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

I have the simplest tastes. I am always satisfied with the best.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Prayer must never be answered: if it is, it ceases to be prayer and becomes correspondence.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell that would tell anything.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of imagination.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

One should never listen. To listen is a sign of indifference to one’s hearers.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Ridicule is the tribute paid to the genius by the mediocrities.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Hard work is simply the refuge of people who have nothing whatever to do.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Life is not complex. We are complex. Life is simple, and the simple thing is the right thing.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Only good questions deserve good answers.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

I have said to you to speak the truth is a painful thing. To be forced to tell lies is much worse.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

When I was young I used to think that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old, I know it is.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

An acquaintance that begins with a compliment is sure to develop into a real friendship.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Education is an admirable thing. But it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Men marry because they are tired; women because they are curious. Both are disappointed.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Wherever there is a man who exercises authority, there is a man who resists authority.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

One should always be a little improbable.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Life is much too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

If you pretend to be good, the world takes you very seriously. If you pretend to be bad, it doesn’t. Such is the astounding stupidity of optimism.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

We can have in life but one great experience at best, and the secret of life is to reproduce that experience as often as possible.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Self-denial is simply a method by which man arrests his progress.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Charity creates a multitude of sins.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Most modern calendars mar the sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

When a man has no enemy left there must be something mean about him.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

In examinations the foolish ask questions that the wise cannot answer.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

It is the confession, not the priest, that gives us absolution.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The supreme vice is shallowness.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

‘Know thyself’ was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, ‘Be thyself’ shall be written.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Indifference is the revenge the world takes on mediocrities.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

When the gods choose to punish us, they merely answer our prayers.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

A man who is master of himself can end a sorrow as easily as he can invent a pleasure. I don’t want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Man reaches his perfection, not through what he has, not even through what he does, but entirely through what he is.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Skepticism is the beginning of Faith.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

I can resist everything except temptation.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Women are never disarmed by compliments. Men always are.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

There is only one class in the community that thinks more about money than the rich, and that is the poor.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Looking good and dressing well is a necessity. Having a purpose in life is not.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

People who count their chickens before they are hatched act very wisely because chickens run about so absurdly that it’s impossible to count them accurately.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

One should absorb the color of life, but one should never remember its details.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Ambition is the last refuge of the failure.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)