Inspirational Quotations

For suffering and enduring there is no remedy, but striving and doing.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Changes are not only possible and predictable, but to deny them is to be an accomplice to one’s own unnecessary vegetation.
—Gail Sheehy (American Journalist)

Herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor-all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked-who is good? Not that men are ignorant-what is truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Civil Rights Activist)

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

If there be no enemy there’s no fight. If no fight, no victory and if no victory there is no crown.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Life-complication Theory: Given a choice between an easy solution and a complicated one, the loser will usually opt to travel the complicated path. Don’t ignore a solution just because it’s simple.
—Robert Ringer (American Entrepreneur)

The tragedy of life is not so much what men suffer, but rather what they miss.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Great perils have this beauty, that they bring to light the fraternity of strangers.
—Victor Hugo (French Novelist)

Biography is the most universally pleasant and profitable of all reading.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

To yackety-yak about the past is for me time lost. Every morning I wake up saying, ‘I’m still alive—a miracle.’ And so I keep on pushing.
—Jacques Cousteau (French Military Leader)

Philosophy is a purely personal matter. A genuine philosopher’s credo is the outcome of a single complex personality; it cannot be transferred. No two persons, if sincere, can have the same philosophy.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

The wise man in the storm prays God, not for safety from danger, but for deliverance from fear.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

People praise virtue, but they hate it, they run away from it. It freezes you to death, and in this world you’ve got to keep your feet warm.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

It is a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

You don’t hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news.
—Thomas J. Watson (American Businessperson)

The greatest test of courage on earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

There is great treasure there behind our skull and this is true about all of us. This little treasure has great, great powers, and I would say we only have learnt a very, very small part of what it can do.
—Isaac Bashevis Singer (Polish-born American Children’s Books Writer)

Probably the greatest harm done by vast wealth is the harm that we of moderate means do to ourselves when we let the vices of envy and hatred enter deep into our own natures.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

There is no wisdom like frankness.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change.
—Barbara De Angelis (American Lecturer)

You can dream, create, design and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it requires people to make the dream a reality.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.
—John Foster Dulles (American Lawyer)

Optimism is the madness of insisting that all is well when we are miserable.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

As much as we need a prosperous economy, we also need a prosperity of kindness and decency.
—Caroline Kennedy (American Author)

Hope is the only universal liar who never loses his reputation for veracity.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

To talk about the need for perfection in man is to talk about the need for another species.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The punishment of criminals should be of use; when a man is hanged he is good for nothing.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

I have found that the greatest help in meeting any problem with decency and self-respect and whatever courage is demanded, is to know where you yourself stand. That is, to have in words what you believe and are acting from.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Happiness is a by-product. You cannot pursue it by itself.
—Sam Levenson (American Humorist)

Men of great genius and large heart sow the seeds of a new degree of progress in the world, but they bear fruit only after many years.
—Giuseppe Mazzini (Italian Philosopher)

It is nonsense to say there is not enough time to be fully informed … Time given to thought is the greatest timesaver of all.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

It’s hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

If there’s anything worse than self-questioning coming too early in life, it’s self-questioning coming too late.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

True affection is a body of enigmas, mysteries and riddles, wherein two so become one that they both become two.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Days are scrolls: write on them only what you want remembered.
—Bahya ibn Paquda (Spanish Jewish Philosopher)

Courage from hearts and not from numbers grows.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

Optimism doesn’t wait on facts. It deals with prospects. Pessimism is a waste of time.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

Who can confess his poverty and look it in the face, destroys its sting: but a proud poor man, he is poor, indeed.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet)

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

When my horse is running good, I don’t stop to give him sugar.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
—Marianne Williamson (American Activist)

Those that embrace the entire universe with love, for the most part love nothing, but their narrow selves.
—Johann Gottfried Herder (German Lutheran Philosopher)

The practice of peace and reconciliation is one of the most vital and artistic of human actions.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

Show me the man you honor, and I will know what kind of a man you are, for it shows me what your ideal of manhood is, and what kind of a man you long to be.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

All of us failed to match our dreams of perfection. So I rate us on the basis of our splendid failure to do the impossible.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

There are many things that seem impossible only so long as one does not attempt them.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

Don’t be afraid to take a big step if one is indicated; you can’t cross a chasm in two small jumps.
—David Lloyd George (British Head of State)

Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.
—Pierre-Marc-Gaston, duc de Levis

Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.
—Sam Levenson (American Humorist)

Love’s greatest gift is its ability to make everything it touches sacred.
—Barbara De Angelis (American Lecturer)

Patience is a necessary ingredient of genius.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
—W. E. B. Du Bois (American Civil Rights Activist)

The sooner you treat your son as a man, the sooner he will be one.
—John Dryden (English Poet)

Opportunities are often things you haven’t noticed the first time around.
—Catherine Deneuve (French Actor)

Few rich men own their own property. Their property owns them.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk… it’s all a miracle. I have adapted the technique of living life from miracle to miracle.
—Arthur Rubinstein (Polish-born American Composer)

The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.
—John Foster Dulles (American Lawyer)

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Time is the greatest of all tyrants. As we go on toward age, he taxes our health, limbs, faculties, strength, and features.
—John Foster Dulles (American Lawyer)

Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to popular belief, is more powerful in the mature than the young.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.
—Robert Kiyosaki (American Businessperson)

I would rather be a beggar and spend my money like a king, than be a king and spend money like a beggar.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

The intellectual is constantly betrayed by his vanity. Godlike he blandly assumes that he can express everything in words; whereas the things one loves, lives, and dies for are not, in the last analysis completely expressible in words.
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh (American Author, Aviator)

A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

To feel much for others, and little for ourselves; to restrain our selfish, and exercise our benevolent affections, constitutes the perfection of human nature.
—George Goodman (American Economist)

In this world the one thing supremely worth having is the opportunity to do well and worthily a piece of work of vital consequence to the welfare of mankind.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

See dying vegetables life sustain,|See life dissolving vegetate again;|All forms that perish other forms supply;|By turns we catch the vital breath and die.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)