Inspirational Quotations

Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

When I wanted to understand what is happening today, I try to decide what will happen tomorrow; I look back, a page of history is worth a volume of logic.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

We must laugh before we are happy, for fear of dying without having laughed at all.
—Jean de La Bruyere

There are only two ways of getting on in the world; by one’s own industry, or by the stupidity of others.
—Jean de La Bruyere

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery, of his passions.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

A human being is only interesting if he’s in contact with himself. I learned you have to trust yourself, be what you are, and do what you ought to do the way you should do it. You have got to discover you, what you do, and trust it.
—Barbra Streisand (American Musician)

It is the highest form of self-respect to admit our errors and mistakes and make amends for them. To make a mistake is only an error in judgment, but to adhere to it when it is discovered shows infirmity of character.
—Rev. Dale Turner

Are you doing the kind of work you were built for, so that you can expect to be able to do very large amounts of that kind and thrive under it? Or are you doing a kind of which you can do comparatively little?
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

When a noble life has prepared old age, it is not decline that it reveals, but the first days of immortality.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Therefore the skilful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.
—Don Marquis (American Humorist)

As favor and riches forsake a man, we discover in him the foolishness they concealed, and which no one perceived before.
—Jean de La Bruyere

When a child can be brought to tears, and not from fear of punishment, but from repentance he needs no chastisement. When the tears begin to flow from the grief of their conduct you can be sure there is an angel nestling in their heart.
—Horace Mann (American Educator)

We conquer by continuing.
—George Matheson (Scottish Theologian)

The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, “I was wrong.”
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Death teaches us to live; it gives us a boundary to map our living within. Death’s hammer breaks through the mirror separating us from light.
—David Seltzer (American Screenwriter)

People who never have any time on their hands are those who do the least.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

The future looks extremely bright indeed, with lots of possibilities ahead—big possibilities. Like the song says, “We’ve just begun.”
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

I am blackly bored when they are at large and at work; but somehow I am still more blackly bored when they are shut up in Holloway and we are deprived of them.
—Henry James (American-born British Novelist)

The worst sorrows in life are not in its losses and misfortunes, but its fears.
—A. C. Benson (English Essayist)

When I’m not thank’d at all, I’m thank’d enough. I’ve done my duty, and I’ve done no more.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things.
—Robert Brault

The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

From your parents you learn love and laughter and how to put one foot before the other. But when books are opened you discover you have wings.
—Helen Hayes (American Actor)

Suffering is the sole origin of consciousness.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited; genius, being the action of reason and imagination, rarely or never.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Often do the spirits of great events stride on before the events, and in today already walks tomorrow.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Age is not important unless you’re a cheese.
—Helen Hayes (American Actor)

Do a little more each day than you think you possibly can.
—Lowell Thomas (American Writer)

Imagine all the people living life in peace. You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us, and the world will be as one.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

Affectation is an awkward and forced imitation of what should be genuine and easy, wanting the beauty that accompanies what is natural.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

A vacuum of ideas affects people differently than a vacuum of air, otherwise readers of books would be constantly collapsing.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Sleep hath its own world, and a wide realm of wild reality. And dreams in their development have breath, and tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

Difficulties should act as a tonic. They should spur us to greater exertion.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

No rock so hard but that a little wave may beat admission in a thousand years.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

When neither their property nor their honor is touched, the majority of men live content.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

A liberated woman is one who has sex before marriage and a job after.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

Out of difficulties grow miracles.
—Jean de La Bruyere

No padlock, bolts, or bars can secure a maiden so well as her own reserve.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

There are very many people who read simply to prevent themselves from thinking.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Guard your roving thoughts with a jealous care, for speech is but the dialer of thoughts, and every fool can plainly read in your words what is the hour of your thoughts.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Cast your cares on God; that anchor holds.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

At twenty a man is full of fight and hope. He wants to reform the world. When he is seventy he still wants to reform the world, but he know he can’t.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

One of the most considerable advantages the great have over their inferiors is to have servants as good as themselves.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Whatever you do, do it with all your might. Work at it, early and late, in season and out of season, not leaving a stone unturned, and never deferring for a single hour that which can be done just as well now.
—P. T. Barnum (American Businessperson)

We pay a price when we deprive children of the exposure to the values, principles, and education they need to make them good citizens.
—Sandra Day O’Connor

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

There are people who laugh to show their fine teeth; and there are those who cry to show their good hearts.
—Philibert Joseph Roux (French Surgeon)

A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.
—Gloria Steinem (American Feminist)

The fly that does not want to be swatted is safest if it sits on the fly-swat.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

It hath often been said that it is not death but dying that is terrible.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Sir, money, money, the most charming of all things: money, which will say more in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave, good-humored, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich—that one word contradicts everything you can say against him.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Everybody starts at the top, and then has the problem of staying there. Lasting accomplishment, however, is still achieved through a long, slow climb and self-discipline.
—Helen Hayes (American Actor)

All men are liable to error, and most men are … by passion or interest, under temptation to it.
—John Locke (English Philosopher)

I count life just a stuff to try the soul’s strength on.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

By the streets of “by and by,” one arrives at the house of “never.”
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it. Your life will be impoverished. But if you invest in beauty, it will remain with you all the days of your life.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

You cannot fight against the future. Time is on our side.
—William Ewart Gladstone (British Head of State)

In all ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are his gift to all alike.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

He who has not faith in others shall find no faith in them.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Real riches are the riches possessed inside.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

Only a generation of readers will span a generation of writers.
—Steven Spielberg (American Film Director)

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence—beginning with one’s own.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

Let us not envy some men their accumulated riches; their burden would be too heavy for us; we could not sacrifice, as they do, health, quiet, honor, and conscience, to obtain them: it is to pay so dear for them that the bargain is a loss.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Make no small plans for they have no power to stir the soul.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.
—Gore Vidal (American Novelist)

What you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing; it also depends on what sort of person you are.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

The most essential factor is persistence—the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
—James Whitcomb Riley (American Children’s Books Writer)

Old age is an insult. It’s like being smacked.
—Lawrence Durrell (British Biographer)

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.
—Colin Powell (American Military Leader)

The good old days were never that good, believe me. The good new days are today, and better days are coming tomorrow. Our greatest songs are still unsung.
—Hubert Humphrey (American Head of State)

I have to confess that I had gambled on my soul and lost it with heroic insouciance and lightness of touch. The soul is so impalpable, so often useless, and sometimes such a nuisance, that I felt no more emotion on losing it than if, on a stroll, I had mislaid my visiting card.
—Charles Baudelaire (French Poet)

Ceremony is necessary as the outwork and defense of manners.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Turn resolutely to work, to recreation, or in any case to physical exercise till you are so tired you can’t help going to sleep, and when you wake up you won’t want to worry.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

The ability to make love frivolously is the chief characteristic which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.
—Heywood Hale Broun (American Journalist)

To make the world a friendly place, one must show it a friendly face.
—James Whitcomb Riley (American Children’s Books Writer)

Necessity is often the spur to genius.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.
—J. P. Morgan (American Businessperson)

Revenge is profitable, gratitude is expensive.
—Edward Gibbon (English Historian)

Youth is happy because it has the ability to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
—Franz Kafka (Austrian Novelist)

Man dreams of fame while woman wakes to love.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

A real gentleman, even if he loses everything he owns, must show no emotion. Money must be so far beneath a gentleman that it is hardly worth troubling about.
—Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Russian Novelist)

Life without idealism is empty indeed. We just hope or starve to death.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

Perseverance is the most overrated of traits, if it is unaccompanied by talent; beating your head against a wall is more likely to produce a concussion in the head than a hole in the wall.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

My angel, cries Booth, it delights me to hear you talk thus, and for a reason you little guess; for I am assured that one who can so heroically endure adversity, will bear prosperity with equal greatness of soul; for the mind that cannot be dejected by the former, is not likely to be transported with the latter.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

There cannot live a more unhappy creature than an ill-natured old man, who is neither capable of receiving pleasures, nor sensible of conferring them on others.
—William Temple

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement.
—Jimmy Carter (American Head of State)

As riches and favor forsake a man, we discover him to be a fool but nobody could find it out in his prosperity.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Books and proverbs receive their chief value from the stamp and esteem of ages through which they have passed.
—William Temple

For all things difficult to acquire, the intelligent man works with perseverance.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike.
—John Muir (Scottish-born American Naturalist)

If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a “wandering to find home,” why should we not look forward to the arrival?
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

If we are intended for great ends, we are called to great hazards.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

If you constantly think of illness, you eventually become ill; if you believe yourself to be beautiful, you become so.
—Shakti Gawain (American Author)

Sympathy constitutes friendship; but in love there is a sort of antipathy, or opposing passion. Each strives to be the other, and both together make up one whole.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try. The world is beyond the winning.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

We are always looking to the future; the present does not satisfy us.—Our ideal, whatever it may be, lies further on.
—Ezra Hall Gillett