Inspirational Quotations

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)

The gent who wakes up and finds himself a success hasn’t been asleep.
—Wilson Mizner (American Playwright)

History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)

Think twice before you speak to a friend in need.
—Ambrose Bierce (American Editor)

When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.
—George MacDonald (Scottish Christian Author)

There is nothing that fear and hope does not permit men to do.
—Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues (French Moralist)

Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.
—Miguel de Unamuno (Spanish Essayist)

Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

Rhetoric is a poor substitute for action, and we have trusted only to rhetoric. If we are really to be a great nation, we must not merely talk; we must act big.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

It is ridiculous for any man to criticize the works of another who has not distinguished himself by his own performance.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

People do not deserve to have good writings; they are so pleased with the bad.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

When you pray for anyone you tend to modify your personal attitude toward him.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Men are happy to be laughed at for their humor, but not for their folly.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Success consists of getting up just one more time than you fall.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

Habits are soon assumed; but when we endeavor to strip them off, it is being flayed alive.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

Lost, yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

Riches do not delight us so much with their possession, as torment us with their loss.
—Dick Gregory

I saw that we’re all doing the best we can. This is how a lifetime of humility begins.
—Byron Katie (American Speaker)

The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

Do you know what a man is? Are not birth, beauty, good shape, discourse, manhood, learning, gentleness, virtue, youth, liberality, and such like, the spice and salt that season a man?
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

I have used these weeks to revalue values. Do you understand this expression?. When you come right down to it, the alchemist is the most praiseworthy of men: I mean the one who changes something negligible or contemptible into something of value, even gold. He alone enriches, the others merely exchange. My task is quite singular this time: I have asked myself what mankind has always hated, feared, and despised the most.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

To know that which before us lies in daily life, is the prime wisdom; what is more is fume, or emptiness, or fond impertinence, and renders us, in things that most concern, unpracticed and unprepared.
—John Milton (English Poet)

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion; he whose real wants are supplied, must admit those of fancy.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

At the center of our agency is our freedom to form a healthy attitude toward whatever circumstances we are placed in.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

If I were given the opportunity to present a gift to the next generation, it would be the ability for each individual to learn to laugh at himself.
—Charles M. Schulz (American Cartoonist)

Not being able to govern events, I govern myself, and apply myself to them, if they will not apply themselves to me.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Answered prayers cover the field of providential history as flowers cover western prairies.
—Theodore L. Cuyler (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

I put all my genius into my life; I put only my talent into my works.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

We are all exceptional cases. Each man insists on being innocent, even if it means accusing the whole human race, and heaven.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Timely service, like timely gifts, is doubled in value.
—George MacDonald (Scottish Christian Author)

Just as much as we see in others we have in ourselves.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

The world does not have to change … The only thing that has to change is our attitude.
—Gerald Jampolsky

Mankind differs from the animals only by a little and most people throw that away.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Lying, a telling of beautiful untrue things, this is the proper aim of art.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

We do not see nature with our eyes, but with our understanding and our hearts.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Fear clogs; Faith liberates.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Distinction is the consequence, never the object, of a great mind.
—Washington Allston (American Poet)

Many concerns now make part or the whole of their dividends from by-products that formerly went to waste. How do we, as individuals, utilize our principal by-product? Our principal by-product is, of course, our leisure time. Many years of observation forces the conclusion that a man’s success or failure in life is determined as much by how he acts during his leisure as by how he acts during his work hours. Tell me how a young man spends his evenings and I will tell you how he is likely to spend the latter part of his life.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The best hearts are ever the bravest.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

The secret to success is constancy to purpose.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

We know but a few men, a great many coats and breeches.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

He surely is most in need of another’s patience, who has none of his own.
—Johann Kaspar Lavater (Swiss Christian Poet)

It is a good thing to laugh, at any rate; and if a straw can tickle a man, it is an instrument of happiness. Beasts can weep when they suffer, but they cannot laugh.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.
—Eric Hoffer (American Philosopher)

We never desire strongly, what we desire rationally.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Besides the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

We cannot overstate our debt to the past, but the moment has the supreme claim.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

He who has no faith in others shall find no faith in them.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

The essence of justice is mercy.
—Edwin Hubbell Chapin (American Universalist Preacher)

A homely face and no figure have aided many women heavenward.
—Minna Antrim

Our conscience is not the vessel of eternal verities. It grows with our social life, and a new social condition means a radical change in conscience.
—Walter Lippmann (American Journalist)

Knowledge is the most democratic source of power.
—Alvin Toffler

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Next to love, sympathy is the divinest passion of the human heart.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

Necessity does everything well.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Never tell a man how to do something. Tell him what to do and let him surprise you with his ingenuity.
—George S. Patton (American Military Leader)

The happiness of life may be greatly increased by small courtesies in which there is no parade, whose voice is too still to tease, and which manifest themselves by tender and affectionate looks, and little kind acts of attention.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

A man loves the meat in his youth that he cannot endure in his age.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
—Max Beerbohm

To be happy means to be free, not from pain or fear, but from care or anxiety.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Your hopes, dreams and aspirations are legitimate. They are trying to take you airborne, above the clouds, above the storms, if you only let them.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Nothing valuable can be lost by taking time.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The world is too must: with us; late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

None but the brave deserve the fair.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

He who has never failed somewhere, that man cannot be great.
—Herman Melville (American Novelist)

Leaders must live by higher standards than their followers.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

Nothing is more fatal to health than an over care of it.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

If our life is unhappy it is painful to bear; if it is happy it is horrible to lose. So the one is pretty equal to the other.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Some troubles, like a protested note of a solvent debtor, bear interest.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

Nobody makes a greater mistake than he who does nothing because he could only do a little.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Kindness, I’ve discovered, is everything in life.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Time will discover everything to posterity; it is a babbler, and speaks even when no question is put.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Those who are held wise among men, and who search for the reason of things, are those who bring the most sorrow upon themselves.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Read an hour every day in your chosen field. This works out to about one book per week, 50 books per year, and will guarantee your success.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

Desire is the presentiment of our inner abilities, and the forerunner of our ultimate accomplishments.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Wisdom comes by disillusionment.
—George Santayana (Spanish Philosopher)

The main facts in human life are five: birth, food, sleep, love and death.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)