Inspirational Quotations

The more we reduce the size of our world, the more we shall be its master.
—Jacinto Benavente (Spanish Dramatists)

We deem those happy who from the experience of life have learned to bear its ills, without being overcome by them.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

Manhood begins when we have in any way made truce with Necessity; begins even when we have surrendered to Necessity, as the most part only do; but begins joyfully and hopefully only when we have reconciled ourselves to Necessity; and thus, in reality, triumphed over it, and felt that in Necessity we are free.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

If you have a great passion it seems that the logical thing is to see the fruit of it, and the fruit are children.
—Roman Polanski (French Film Director)

I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less.
—Thomas Browne (English Christian Author)

Foolish men imagine that because judgment for an evil thing is delayed, there is no justice; but only accident here below. Judgment for an evil thing is many times delayed some day or two, some century or two, but it is sure as life, it is sure as death.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

The strong man is strongest when alone.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

Bad men hate sin through fear of punishment; good men hate sin through their love of virtue.
—Juvenal (Roman Poet)

Machines are beneficial to the degree that they eliminate the need for labor, harmful to the degree that they eliminate the need for skill.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

Whenever we seek to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we do so by attempting to give that responsibility to some other individual or organization or entity. But this means we then give away our power to that entity.
—M. Scott Peck (American Psychiatrist)

Never deny a diagnosis, but do deny the negative verdict that may go with it.
—Norman Cousins (American Journalist)

Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)

Happiness never lays its finger on its pulse.
—George Goodman (American Economist)

If a woman doesn’t chase a man a little, she doesn’t love him.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination. Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

The devil’s most devilish when respectable.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

When a friend is in trouble, don’t annoy him by asking if there is anything you can do. Think up something appropriate and do it.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

Do not read, as children do, to amuse yourself, or like the ambitious, for the purpose of instruction. No, read in order to live.
—Gustave Flaubert (French Novelist)

The real tragedy of the poor is the poverty of their aspirations.
—George Goodman (American Economist)

The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them.
—William Lawrence Bragg

It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts!
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

Though we all have the fear and the seeds of anger within us, we must learn not to water those seeds and instead nourish our positive qualities—those of compassion, understanding, and loving kindness.
—Thich Nhat Hanh (Vietnamese Buddhist Religious Leader)

Every age needs men who will redeem the time by living with a vision of the things that are to be.
—Adlai Stevenson (American Diplomat)

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

To me every hour of the light and dark is a miracle. Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

In our sad condition our only consolation is the expectancy of another life. Here below all is incomprehensible.
—Martin Luther (German Protestant Theologian)

The hardest times for me were not when people challenged what I said, but when I felt my voice was not heard
—Carol Gilligan

What we call progress is the exchange of one nuisance for another.
—Havelock Ellis (British Sexologist)

Devout believers are safeguarded in a high degree against the risk of certain neurotic illnesses; their acceptance of the universal neurosis spares them the task of constructing a personal one.
—Sigmund Freud (Austrian Psychiatrist)

Cling steadfastly to that which is good.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

If you’re not failing, you’re not trying anything.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

We are not trying to entertain the critics. I’ll take my chances with the public.
—Walt Disney (American Entrepreneur)

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Family is just accident…. They don’t mean to get on your nerves. They don’t even mean to be your family, they just are.
—Marsha Norman (American Playwright)

Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.
—Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (Indian Hindu Religious Leader)

When the wise is angry, he is wise no longer.
—The Talmud (Sacred Text of the Jewish Faith)

It is only through labor and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage, that we move on to better things.
—Theodore Roosevelt (American Head of State)

The fact is, the difference between peak performers and everybody else are much smaller than everybody else thinks.
—Charles A. Garfield

Mistakes are a fact of life. It is the response to error that counts.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Children’s Books Writer)

It is better to live with wild beasts wandering in the mountains, than with fools even in the comfortable and heavenly halls of the Lord of Gods.
—Neetishatakam

Action seems to follow feeling, but really action and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Here is everything which can lay hold of the eye, ear and imagination—everything which can charm and bewitch the simple and ignorant. I wonder how Luther ever broke the spell.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

You can take from every experience what it has to offer you. And you cannot be defeated if you just keep taking one breath followed by another.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

Respectable men and women content with good and easy living are missing some of the most important things in life. Unless you give yourself to some great cause you haven’t even begun to live.
—William P. Merrill

Nothing comes merely by thinking about it.
—John Wanamaker (American Merchant, Civil Servant)

Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Life exists for the love of music or beautiful things.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is that things are what they are and will be what they will be.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

There is a growing strength in women, but it’s in the forehead, not in the forearm.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

A mistake is simply another way of doing things.
—Katharine Graham (American Publisher)

You cannot find peace by avoiding life.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.
—William James (American Philosopher)

Sleep is a healing balm for every ill.
—Menander

Listening is more important than talking. Just hit your mark and believe what you say. Just listen to people and react to what they are saying.
—Jimmy Fallon (American Comedian)

I’ve always tried to go a step past wherever people expected me to end up.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made between man and brute.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

What are numbers knit|By force or custom? Man who man would be,|Must rule the empire of himself; in it|Must be supreme, establishing his throne|On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy|Of hopes and fears, being himself alone.
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (English Poet)

My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Once we realize that imperfect understanding is the human condition, there is no shame in being wrong, only in failing to correct our mistakes.
—George Soros (American Investor)

Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

I think the world really boils down to two types of people – those who see shapes in cloud formations, and those who just see clouds.
—Danzae Pace

People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.
—William Butler Yeats (Irish Poet)

Guilt is a rope that wears thin.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Though I can make my extravaganzas appear credible, I cannot make the truth appear so.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

I’m not happy, I’m cheerful. There’s a difference. A happy woman has no cares at all. A cheerful woman has cares but has learned how to deal with them.
—Beverly Sills (American Singer)

Absence lessens half-hearted passions, and increases great ones, as the wind puts out candles and yet stirs up the fire.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

If a test of civilization be sought, none can be so sure as the condition of that half of society over which the other half has power.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

A man who has never gone to school may steal from a freight car; but if he has a university education, he may steal the whole railroad.
—Unknown

Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Let us ask ourselves; “What kind of people do we think we are?”
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

A soul occupied with great ideas best performs small duties.
—Harriet Martineau (English Sociologist)

What you’ve got to do is be honest. Say what you believe. Give it to them straight. Just don’t wuss out.
—Michael Bloomberg (American Businessperson)

The rich, the well-born, and the able, acquire an influence among the people that will soon be too much for simple honesty and plain sense, in a house of representatives. The most illustrious of them must, therefore, be separated from the mass, and placed by themselves in a senate; this is, to all honest and useful intents, an ostracism.
—John Adams (American Head of State)

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.
—Jerry Seinfeld (American Comedian)

It amazes me how people are often more willing to act based on little or no data than to use data that is a challenge to assemble.
—Robert J. Shiller

The lion and the calf will lay down together, but the calf won’t get much sleep..
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Time is the friend of the wonderful business, the enemy of the mediocre.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

Showing up is 80 percent of life.
—Woody Allen (American Actor)

Man has the power to act as his own destroyer—and that is the way he has acted through most of his history.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)