Inspirational Quotations

It seems that the necessary thing to do is not to fear mistakes, to plunge in, to do the best that one can, hoping to learn enough from blunders to correct them eventually.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

The weak in courage is strong in cunning.
—William Blake (English Poet)

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he has gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pigmy.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

All sentient beings are seekers after happiness. He who does not violate other persons for the sake of his happiness will attain happiness afterwards.
—Buddhist Teaching

If you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.
—Bob Dylan (American Singer)

It’s not the load that breaks you down—it’s the way you carry it.
—Lou Holtz

Do not expect to arrive at certainty in every subject which you pursue. There are a hundred things wherein we mortals… must be content with probability, where our best light and reasoning will reach no farther.
—Isaac Watts (English Hymn writer)

Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.
—Andy Warhol (American Painter)

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

The confidence in another man’s virtue is no light evidence of a man’s own, and God willingly favors such a confidence.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

You gain strength, courage, and confidence by each experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, “I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.” You must do the thing you think you cannot do.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

A chief is a man who assumes responsibility. He says, “I was beaten”. He does not say, “My men were beaten”. Thus speaks a real man.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.
—Isaac Asimov (Russian-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Poverty is a veil that obscures the face of greatness. An appeal is a mask covering the face of tribulation.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

As we grow in wisdom, we pardon more freely.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Our faith comes in moments… yet there is a depth in those brief moments which constrains us to ascribe more reality to them than to all other experiences.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

What is the imagination? Only an arm or weapon of the interior energy; only the precursor of the reason.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Sin writes histories, goodness is silent.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

The height of cultivation runs to simplicity. Halfway cultivation runs to ornamentation.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Only a stomach that rarely feels hungry scorns common things.
—Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) (Roman Poet)

He that lives upon hope will die fasting.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

There seems to be a kind of order in the universe, in the movement of the stars and the turning of the earth and the changing of the seasons, and even in the cycle of human life. But human life itself is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own rights and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.
—Katherine Anne Porter (American Journalist)

Let death be daily before your eyes, and you will never entertain any abject thought, nor too eagerly covet anything.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

No man has ever risen to the real stature of spiritual manhood until he has found that it is finer to serve somebody else than it is to serve himself.
—Woodrow Wilson (American Head of State)

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

If you lose the power to laugh, you lose the power to think.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

Try to do to others as you would have them do to you, and do not be discouraged if they fail sometimes. It is much better that they should fail than that you should.
—Charles Dickens (English Novelist)

Do not be afraid of mistakes, providing you do not make the same one twice.
—Eleanor Roosevelt (American First Lady)

The beginning and almost the end of all good law is that everyone shall work for their bread and receive good bread for their work.
—John Ruskin (English Art Critic)

The world is full of people looking for spectacular happiness while they snub contentment.
—Doug Larson

Share weight and woe, for misfortune falls with double force on him that stands alone.
—Baltasar Gracian

Our worries always come from our weaknesses.
—Joseph Joubert (French Essayist)

There are in life as many aspects as attitudes towards it; and aspects change with attitudes… Could we change our attitude, we should not only see life differently, but life itself would come to be different. Life would undergo a change of appearance because we ourselves had undergone a change in attitude.
—Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand-born British Author)

Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
—Jawaharlal Nehru (Indian Head of State)

Acceptance is the truest kinship with humanity.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

We sometimes think we hate flattery, when we only hate the manner in which we have been flattered.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

We are sure to be losers when we quarrel with ourselves; it is civil war.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

Gray skies are just clouds passing over.
—Duke Ellington

My job is about the most fun thing I do, but I have a broad set of interests, going places, reading things, doing things.
—Bill Gates (American Businessperson)

The violence we do to ourselves in order to remain faithful to the one we love is hardly better than an act of infidelity.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

A reward cannot be valued if it is not understood
—Phillip C. Grant

The end of man is action.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Between the optimist and the pessimist, the difference is droll. The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist the hole!
—McLandburgh Wilson

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

It is not a struggle merely of economic theories, or forms of government or of military power. At issue is the true nature of man. Either man is the creature whom the psalmist described as a little lower than the angels … or man is a soulless, animated machine to be enslaved, used and consumed by the state for its own glorification. It is, therefore, a struggle which goes to the roots of the human spirit, and its shadow falls across the long sweep of man’s destiny.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

Books are not made for furniture, but there is nothing else that so beautifully furnishes a house.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

Criticism is often not a science; it is a craft, requiring more good health than wit, more hard work than talent, more habit than native genius. In the hands of a man who has read widely but lacks judgment, applied to certain subjects it can corrupt both its readers and the writer himself.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Men strive for peace, but it is their enemies that give them strength, and I think if man no longer had enemies, he would have to invent them, for his strength only grows from struggle.
—Louis L’Amour

There is a noble manner of being poor, and who does not know it will never be rich.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.
—Thomas Jefferson (American Head of State)

Truth is neither alive nor dead; it just aggravates itself all the time.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

To the psychotherapist an old man who cannot bid farewell to life appears as feeble and sickly as a young man who is unable to embrace it.
—Carl Jung (Swiss Psychologist)

Reputation is in itself only a farthing-candle, of wavering and uncertain flame, and easily blown out, but it is the light by which the world looks for and finds merit.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet)

To be thoroughly conversant with a man’s heart, is to take our final lesson in the iron-clasped volume of despair.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

Life doesn’t do anything to you. It only reveals your spirit.
—John C. Maxwell (American Christian Professional Speaker)

It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

We must lay before him what is in us, not what ought to be in us.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

The rich man is always sold to the institution which makes him rich. Absolutely speaking, the more money, the less virtue.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

The best mind-altering drug is truth.
—Lily Tomlin

We see the brightness of a new page where everything yet can happen.
—Rainer Maria Rilke (Austrian Poet)

There is none who cannot teach somebody something, and there is none so excellent but he is excelled.
—Baltasar Gracian

The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.
—Dale Carnegie (American Author)

Without work, all life goes rotten. But when work is soulless, life stifles and dies.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

The fact is, you have fallen lately, Cecily, into a bad habit of thinking for yourself. You should give it up. It is not quite womanly… men don’t like it.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Every period of life is obliged to borrow its happiness from time to come.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Much learning does not teach understanding.
—Heraclitus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

Let a man’s talents or virtues be what they may, he will only feel satisfaction in his society as he is satisfied in himself.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Act so that the maxim of your act could be made the principle of a universal law.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

I hate it in friends when they come too late to help.
—Euripides (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Hope is a prodigal young heir, and experience is his banker, but his drafts are seldom honored since there is often a heavy balance against him, because he draws largely on a small capital and is not yet in possession.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

We degrade life by our follies and vices, and then complain that the unhappiness which is only their accompaniment is inherent in the constitution of things.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

I am accustomed to sleep, and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.
—Rene Descartes (French Philosopher, Mathematician)

No one’s a leader if there are no followers.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

Positive anything is better than negative nothing.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Time is a fluid condition which has no existence except in the momentary avatars of individual people.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with an expectation of good.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Surmounting difficulty is the crucible that forms character.
—Tony Robbins (American Actor Author)

Your expectations opens or closes the doors of your supply, If you expect grand things, and work honestly for them, they will come to you, your supply will correspond with your expectation.
—Orison Swett Marden (American New Thought Writer)

We know now that the soul is the body, and the body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

In putting off what one has to do, one runs the risk of never being able to do it.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

There is nobody so irritating as somebody with less intelligence and more sense than we have.
—Don Herold (American Humorist)

Freedom is man’s capacity to take a hand in his own development. It is our capacity to mold ourselves.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it.
—Carlos Castaneda (Peruvian-born American Anthropologist)

No radiant pearl, which crested fortune wears, no gem, that twinkling hangs from beauty’s ears; not the bright stars, which night’s blue arch adorn; nor rising sun, that gilds the vernal morn; shine with such lustre as the tear that flows down virtue’s manly cheek for others’ woes.
—Charles Darwin (British Naturalist)

There is no witness so terrible and no accuser so powerful as conscience which dwells within us.
—Sophocles (Ancient Greek Dramatist)

Literature could be said to be a sort of disciplined technique for arousing certain emotions.
—Iris Murdoch (English Novelist)

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Joy can only be real only if people look upon their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American Author, Aviator)

Of all the evil spirits abroad in the world, insincerity is the most dangerous.
—James Anthony Froude (British Historian)

The future is hidden even from those who make it.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

It is difficult, if not impossible, for most people to think otherwise than in the fashion of their own period.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue.
—Buddhist Teaching

Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard.
—Warren Bennis (American Scholar)

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

We cannot always oblige, but we can always speak obligingly.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

I’ve learned that you can’t have everything and do everything at the same time.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

There are certainly are not so many men of large fortune in the world as there are of pretty woman to deserve them.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)