Inspirational Quotations

The object of most prayers is to wangle an advance on good intentions.
—Robert Brault

Never stop questioning.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Necessity reconciles and brings men together; and this accidental connection afterwards forms itself into laws.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Isn’t it fortunate how selective our recollections usually are.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

It is not always by plugging away at a difficulty and sticking at it that one overcomes it; but, rather, often by working on the one next to it. Certain people and certain things require to be approached at an angle.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Life begins on the other side of despair.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American Author, Aviator)

No one reaches a high position without daring.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. She hums the old well-known air through innumerable variations.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Nature, who for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her general equilibrium, has sometimes need of vices and sometimes of virtues, inspires now this impulse, now that one, in accordance with what she requires.
—Marquis de Sade (French Political leader)

Praise from the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

The imagination is literally the workshop wherein are fashioned all plans created by man.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

There is no defense against criticism except obscurity.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.
—Maya Angelou (American Poet)

Many an honest man practices on himself an amount of deceit, sufficient, if practiced on another, and in a little different way, to send him to the State prison.
—Christian Nestell Bovee

In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.
—Rutherford B. Hayes

No man will work for your interests unless they are his.
—David Seabury

We should keep silent about those in power; to speak well of them almost implies flattery; to speak ill of them while they are alive is dangerous, and when they are dead is cowardly.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Non-violence is the article of faith.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Knowledge is in the end based on acknowledgement.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher)

It’s frightening to think that you might not know something, but more frightening to think that, by and large, the world is run by people who have faith that they know exactly what’s going on.
—Amos Tversky

The soul who meditates on the Self is content to serve the Self and rests satisfied within the Self; there remains nothing more for him to accomplish.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

Men always do leave off really thinking, when the last bit of wild animal dies in them.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

The honest work of yesterday has lost its social status, its social esteem.
—Peter Drucker (Austrian-born Management Consultant)

Education comes from within; you get it by struggle and effort and thought.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

Ignorance is the peace of life.
—Indian Proverb

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

The fault-finder—it is his nature’s plague to spy into abuses; and oft his jealousy shapes faults that are not.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

It is a great pity when the one who should be the head figure is a mere figure head.
—Charles Spurgeon (British Baptist Preacher)

What I like about experience is that it is such an honest thing. You may take any number of wrong turnings; but keep your eyes open and you will not be allowed to go very far before the warning signs appear. You may have deceived yourself, but experience is not trying to deceive you. The universe rings true wherever you fairly test it.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

The person who sends out positive thoughts activates the world around him positively and draws back to himself positive results.
—Norman Vincent Peale (American Clergyman, Self-Help Author)

Ability is of little account without opportunity.
—Napoleon I (French Monarch)

Love is the joy of the good, the wonder of the wise, the amazement of the Gods.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

I don’t think that a leader can control to any great extent his destiny. Very seldom can he step in and change the situation if the forces of history are running in another direction.
—Richard Nixon (American Head of State)

It is good to realize that if love and peace can prevail on earth, and if we can teach our children to honor nature’s gifts, the joys and beauties of the outdoors will be here forever.
—Jimmy Carter (American Head of State)

No one can get inner peace by pouncing on it.
—Harry Emerson Fosdick (American Baptist Clergyman)

Your future takes precedence over your past. Focus on your future, rather than on the past.
—Gary Ryan Blair

Whatever deceives men seems to produce a magical enchantment.
—Plato (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

What a man wants to do he generally can do, if he wants to badly enough.
—Louis L’Amour

Age does not make us childish, as some say; it finds us true children.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Stop judging so that you will not be judged. Otherwise, you will be judged by the same standard you use to judge others. The standards you use for others will be applied to you.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

Faith is the pierless bridge supporting what we see unto the scene that we do not.
—Emily Dickinson (American Poet)

Our real blessings often appear to us in the shape of pains, losses, and disappointments; but let us have patience, and we soon shall see them in their proper figures.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

It is the business of the future to be dangerous…. The major advances in civilization are processes that all but wreck the societies in which they occur.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

Fair and softly goes far.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

Indulge in procrastination, and in time you will come to this, that because a thing ought to be done, therefore you can’t do it.
—Charles Buxton

There is change in all things. You yourself are subject to continual change and some decay, and this is common to the entire universe.
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Our modern society is engaged in polishing and decorating the cage in which man is kept imprisoned.
—Swami Nirmalananda

The mother as a social servant instead of a home servant will not lack in true mother duty. From her work, loved and honored though it is, she will return to her home life, the child life, with an eager, ceaseless pleasure, cleansed of all the fret and fraction and weariness that so mar it now.
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (American Sociologist)

Everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Time deals gently only with those who take it gently.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a fall.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

Those who can command themselves command others.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
—Bertrand A. Russell (British Philosopher)

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

My crown is in my heart, not on my head, Nor decked with diamonds and Indian stones, Nor to be seen: My crown is called content: A crown it is, that seldom kings enjoy.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Change, like sunshine, can be a friend or a foe, a blessing or a curse, a dawn or a dusk.
—William Arthur Ward (American Author)

Sometimes I worry about being a success in a mediocre world.
—Lily Tomlin

Honesty is better than any policy.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Poverty is the only load which is the heavier the more loved ones there are to assist in bearing it.
—Jean Paul (German Novelist)

The bookful blockhead ignorantly read,|With loads of learned lumber in his head,|With his own tongue still edifies his ears,|And always list’ning to himself appears.|All books he reads, and all he reads assails.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Nothing makes it easier to resist temptation than a proper bringing-up, a sound set of values—and witnesses.
—Franklin P. Jones

I hate intellectuals. They are from the top down. I am from the bottom up.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.
—James Joyce (Irish Novelist)

We accept the verdict of the past until the need for change cries out loudly enough to force upon us a choice between the comforts of further inertia and the irksomeness of action.
—Learned Hand

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

I went for years not finishing anything. Because, of course, when you finish something you can be judged … I had poems which were rewritten so many times I suspect it was just a way of avoiding sending them out.
—Erica Jong (American Novelist)

For those who may not find happiness to exercise religious faith, it’s okay to remain a radical atheist, it’s absolutely an individual right, but the important thing is with a compassionate heart—then no problem.
—The 14th Dalai Lama (Tibetan Buddhist Religious Leader)

There is no past that we can bring back by longing for it. There is only an eternally new now that builds and creates itself out of the Best as the past withdraws.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

The past is for us, but the sole terms on which it can become ours are its subordination to the present.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)

Let flattery, the handmaid of the vices, be far removed.
—Cicero (Roman Philosopher)

I have always been driven to buck the system, to innovate, to take things beyond where they’ve been.
—Sam Walton (American Entrepreneur)

Constant exposure to dangers will breed contempt for them.
—Seneca the Younger (Lucius Annaeus Seneca) (Roman Philosopher)

It is better to do the most trifling thing in the world than to regard half an hour as trifle.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

The value of an idea has nothing whatever to do with the sincerity of the man who expresses it.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Anger will never disappear so long as thoughts of resentment are cherished in the mind. Anger will disappear just as soon as thoughts of resentment are forgotten.
—Buddhist Teaching

Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

I have full cause of weeping, but this heart shall break into a hundred thousand flaws or ere I’ll weep.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

The soul contains the event that shall befall it, for the event is only the actualization of its thoughts; and what we pray to ourselves for is always granted.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

A man who sees another man on the street corner with only a stump for an arm will be so shocked the first time he’ll give him sixpence. But the second time it’ll only be a three penny bit. And if he sees him a third time, he’ll have him cold-bloodedly handed over to the police.
—Bertolt Brecht (German Poet)

If in the last few years you haven’t discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.
—Gelett Burgess

We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.
—Unknown

The greater the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it; the difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue.
—Moliere (French Playwright)

I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
—Igor Stravinsky (Russian-born American Composer)

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be; and if we observe, we shall find, that all human virtues increase and strengthen themselves by the practice and experience of them.
—Socrates (Anceient Greek Philosopher)

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.
—Samuel Butler

You do not succeed because you do not know what you want, or you don’t want it intensely enough.
—Frank Hall Crane

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.
—Samuel Butler

We pay a heavy price for our fear of failure. It is a powerful obstacle to growth. It assures the progressive narrowing of the personality and prevents exploration and experimentation. There is no learning without some difficulty and fumbling. If you want to keep on learning, you must keep on risking failure—all your life.
—John W. Gardner (American Government Official)

Whatever is expressed is impressed. Whatever you say to yourself, with emotion, generates thoughts, ideas and behaviors consistent with those words.
—Brian Tracy (American Author)

The general order of things that takes care of fleas and moles also takes care of men, if they will have the same patience that fleas and moles have, to leave it to itself.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Philosopher)

Keep in mind that our community is not composed of those who are already saints, but of those who are trying to become saints. Therefore let us be extremely patient with each other’s faults and failures.
—Mother Teresa (Albanian Catholic Humanitarian)

Be content to act, and leave the talking to others.
—Baltasar Gracian

Truth will sooner come out from error than from confusion.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Without courage, all other virtues lose their meaning.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

Human nature loses its most precious quality when it is robbed of its sense of things beyond, unexplored and yet insistent.
—Alfred North Whitehead (English Mathematician)

Shared joys make a friend, not shared sufferings.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

A merry heart does good like medicine.
—Common Proverb

Faith is much better than belief. Belief is when someone else does the thinking.
—Buckminster Fuller (American Inventor, Philosopher)

It’s the height of folly to want to be the only wise one.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

Praise in the beginning is agreeable enough, and we receive it as a favor; but when it comes in great quantities, we regard it only as a debt, which nothing but our merit could extort.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Courage is the thing. All goes if courage goes.
—J. M. Barrie (Scottish Novelist)

Justice advances with such languid steps that crime often escapes from its slowness. Its tardy and doubtful course causes many tears to be shed.
—Pierre Corneille (French Dramatist)

Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

Wealth is not a matter of intelligence it’s a matter of inspiration.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

The noblest search is the search for excellence.
—Lyndon B. Johnson (American Head of State)

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.
—Louis L’Amour

Man is an intelligence, not served by, but in servitude to his organs.
—Aldous Huxley (English Humanist)

The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.
—H. G. Wells (British Novelist)

See that your character is right, and in the long run your reputation will be right.
—Charles Caleb Colton (English Angelic Priest)

There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

The greatest evils and the worst of crimes is poverty; our first duty, a duty to which every other consideration should be sacrificed, is not to be poor.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)