Inspirational Quotations

The only obligation to which in advance we may hold a novel, without incurring the accusation of being arbitrary, is that it be interesting.
—Henry James (American-born British Novelist)

Hope is a vigorous principle; it is furnished with light and heat to advise and execute; it sets the head and heart to work, and animates a man to do his utmost. And thus, by perpetually pushing and assurance, it puts a difficulty out of countenance, and makes a seeming impossibility give way.
—Jeremy Collier (English Anglican Theater Critic)

None who have always been free can understand the terrible fascinating power of the hope of freedom to those who are not free.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.
—John Lennon (British Singer)

I’ve been called many things, but never an intellectual.
—Tallulah Bankhead (American Actor)

No man likes to have his intelligence or good faith questioned, especially if he has doubts about it himself.
—Henry Adams (American Journalist)

In soloing—as in other activities—it is far easier to start something than it is to finish it.
—Amelia Earhart (American Aviator)

Cautiousness in judgment is nowadays to be recommended to each and every one: if we gained only one incontestable truth every ten years from each of our philosophical writers the harvest we reaped would be sufficient.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

He who knows he has enough is rich.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

A book is a mirror: If an ass peers into it, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

All fortune belongs to him who has a contented mind.
—Panchatantra

It is best to act with confidence, no matter how little right you have to it.
—Lillian Hellman (American Playwright)

I’m trying to die correctly, but it’s very difficult, you know.
—Lawrence Durrell (British Biographer)

The mystery of existence is the connection between our faults and our misfortunes.
—Anne Louise Germaine de Stael

Manifest plainness, Embrace simplicity, Reduce selfishness, Have few desires.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting.
—Sun Tzu (Chinese Military Leader)

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

Feedback is the breakfast of champions.
—Ken Blanchard (American Author)

All things are possible until they are proved impossible–even the impossible may only be so, as of now.
—Pearl S. Buck (American Novelist)

When unhappy, one doubts everything; when happy, one doubts nothing.
—Philibert Joseph Roux (French Surgeon)

They that have lived a single day have lived an age.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Coming to terms with the rhythms of women’s lives means coming to terms with life itself, accepting the imperatives of the body rather than the imperatives of an artificial, man-made, perhaps transcendentally beautiful civilization. Emphasis on the male work-rhythm is an emphasis on infinite possibilities; emphasis on the female rhythms is an emphasis on a defined pattern, on limitation.
—Margaret Mead (American Anthropologist)

The past is the best prophet of the future.
—Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron) (English Romantic Poet)

A person reveals his character by nothing so clearly as the joke he resents.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

I hate to lose more than I love to win.
—Jimmy Connors (American Sportsperson)

Look back, and smile at perils past.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

If your prayer is selfish, the answer will be something that will rebuke your selfishness. You may not recognize it as having come at all, but it is sure to be there.
—William Temple

Just like those who are incurably ill, the aged know everything about their dying except exactly when.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

A Jew without Jews, without Judaism, without Zionism, without Jewishness, without a temple or an army or even a pistol, a Jew clearly without a home, just the object itself, like a glass or an apple.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

Ten thousand difficulties do not make one doubt.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

For me at least there came moments when faith wavered. But there is the great lesson and the great triumph: keep the fire burning until, by and by, out of the mass of sordid details there comes some result.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

The one sure way to conciliate a tiger is to allow oneself to be devoured.
—Konrad Adenauer (German Head of State)

Adversity is, to me at least, a tonic and a bracer.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.
—Richard Branson (British Entrepreneur)

I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I have read with pleasure.
—Clarence Darrow (American Lawyer)

Adults are obsolete children.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

The time to relax is when you don’t have time for it.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Journalist)

The best things in life are never rationed. Friendship, loyalty, love, do not require coupons.
—Captain George T. Hewitt

With most people, unbelief in one thing is founded upon blind belief in another.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

Never do today what you can put off till tomorrow.—Delay may give clearer light as to what is best to be done.
—Aaron Burr

Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

We shall live to fight again, and to strike another blow.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Consistency requires you to be as ignorant today as you were a year ago.
—Bernard Berenson (Russian-born American Art Historian)

The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.
—George Horace Lorimer (American Editor)

All sympathy not consistent with acknowledged virtue is but disguised selfishness.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Certitude is not the test of certainty. We have been cocksure of many things that were not so.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (American Jurist)

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than ever before.
—Polybius

Too much is unwholesome.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

You can judge your age by the amount of pain you feel when you come in contact with a new idea.
—John Nuveen

Don’t look forward to the day when you stop suffering. Because when it comes, you’ll know you’re dead.
—Tennessee Williams (American Playwright)

A good metaphor is something even the police should keep an eye on.
—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (German Scientist)

That which costs little is less valued.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

Failure is the foundation of success, and the means by which it is achieved.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

I was always willing to take a great deal of the burden of getting along in life on my own shoulders, but I wasn’t willing to give myself a pat on the back. I was always looking to somebody else to give me that … That was all wrong.
—Raquel Welch (American Actor)

There are three kinds of intelligence: one kind understands things for itself, the other appreciates what others can understand, the third understands neither for itself nor through others. This first kind is excellent, the second good, and the third kind useless.
—Niccolo Machiavelli (Florentine Political Philosopher)

When a book raises your spirit, and inspires you with noble and manly thoughts, seek for no other test of its excellence. It is good, and made by a good workman.
—Jean de La Bruyere

Adversity is the trial of principle. Without it, a man hardly knows whether he is honest or not.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Persist and persevere, and you will find most things that are attainable, possible.
—Earl of Chesterfield

Talent, taste, wit, good sense are very different things but by no means incompatible. Between good sense and good taste there exists the same difference as between cause and effect, and between wit and talent there is the same proportion as between a whole and its parts.
—Jean de La Bruyere

A bitter and perplexed, “What shall I do?” is worse to man than worst necessity.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

Great leadership does not mean running away from reality. Sometimes the hard truths might just demoralize the company, but at other times sharing difficulties can inspire people to take action that will make the situation better.
—John Kotter (American Academic)

What’s a man’s age? He must hurry more, that’s all; Cram in a day, what his youth took a year to hold.
—Robert Browning (English Poet)

Is death the last step? No, it is the final awakening.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Simulated disorder postulates perfect discipline; simulated fear postulates courage; simulated weakness postulates strength.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Hold your head high, stick your chest out. You can make it. It gets dark sometimes, but morning comes. Keep hope alive.
—Jesse Jackson (American Baptist Civil Rights Activist)

Who ever converses among old books will be hard to please among the new.
—William Temple

Nothing great will ever be achieved without great men, and men are great only if they are determined to be so.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)

Never look for the birds of this year in the nests of the last.
—Miguel de Cervantes (Spanish Novelist)

It is clear that all verbal structures with meaning are verbal imitations of that elusive psychological and physiological process known as thought, a process stumbling through emotional entanglements, sudden irrational convictions, involuntary gleams of insight, rationalized prejudices, and blocks of panic and inertia, finally to reach a completely incommunicable intuition.
—Northrop Frye

As you think, so shall you become.
—Bruce Lee (Hong-Kong-born American Sportsperson)

Adversity is like the period of the former and of the latter rain,—cold, comfortless, unfriendly to man and to animal; yet from that season have their birth the flower and the fruit, the date, the rose, and the pomegranate.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

I can remember walking as a child. It was not customary to say you were fatigued. It was customary to complete the goal of the expedition.
—Katharine Hepburn (American Actor)

Worry compounds the futility of being trapped on a dead-end street. Thinking opens new avenues.
—Cullen Hightower (American Humorist)

If we insist on being as sure as is conceivable … we must be content to creep along the ground, and can never soar.
—John Henry Newman (British Catholic Clergyman)

To listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.
—John Marshall (American Judge)

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Search and you will find that at the base and birth of every great business organization was an enthusiast, a man consumed with earnestness of purpose, with confidence in his powers, with faith in the worthwhileness of his endeavors.
—B. C. Forbes (Scottish-born American Journalist)

A mother who is really a mother is never free.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

To be really great in little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare as to be worthy of canonization.
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (American Abolitionist)

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.
—Walter Scott (Scottish Novelist)

Light tomorrow with today.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

He must be very ignorant for he answers every question he is asked.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that sometimes he has to eat them.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.
—Henry David Thoreau (American Philosopher)

Everyone goes to the forest; some go for a walk to be inspired, and others go to cut down the trees.
—Vladimir Horowitz (Russian-born American Musician)

Praise is sometimes a good thing for the diffident and despondent. It teaches them properly to rely on the kindness of others.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet)

Compassionate action involves working with ourselves as much as working with others.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

He knew no fear except the fear of doing wrong.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

You have to believe in yourself when no one else does. That’s what makes you a winner.
—Venus Williams

The best effect of any book, is that it excites the reader to self-activity.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Our mind is a treasure. But it’s very absorbent, so we must also be very discriminating in what we hear, read, and see. And in the spiritual life, our fence is our ethics. If we know we are living ethically to the best of our ability, the mind will become peaceful.
—Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo (British Buddhist Teacher, Nun)

Somewhere in your make-up there lies sleeping, the seed of achievement which, if aroused and put into action, would carry you to heights, such as you may never have hoped to attain.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

You can tell the size of a man by the size of the thing that makes him mad.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow. The strength and force of the blow come through concentration.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The closer a man approaches tragedy the more intense is his concentration of emotion upon the fixed point of his commitment, which is to say the closer he approaches what in life we call fanaticism.
—Arthur Miller (American Playwright)

Every condition of life has its perils and its advantages; and the office of religion is, not to change that in which Providence has placed us, but to strengthen and sanctify our hearts that we may resist the temptations, and improve the opportunities of blessings presented to us.
—George Washington Bethune

What a heavy burden is a name that has too soon become famous.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Have you learned lessons only of those who admired you, and were tender with you, and stood aside for you? Have you not learned great lessons from those who rejected you, and braced themselves against you, or disputed the passage with you?
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

Things of the spirit differ from things material in that the more you give the more you have.
—Christopher Morley (American Journalist)

Some men can live up to their loftiest ideals without ever going higher than a basement.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Work and play are words used to describe the same thing under differing conditions.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)