Inspirational Quotations

Those who know how to think need no teachers.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Every stage of life has its troubles, and no man is content with his own age.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet)

There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

If fame is only to come after death, I am in no hurry for it.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

A first rate soup is better than a second rate painting.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

We reproach people for talking about themselves, but it is the subject they treat best.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.
—Isaac Asimov (Russian-born American Children’s Books Writer)

How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
—Washington Irving (American Author)

Whoever makes great presents expects great presents in return.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

Universal peace will be realized, not because man will become better, but because a new order of things, a new science, new economic necessities, will impose peace.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
—Washington Irving (American Author)

If, after all, men cannot always make history have a meaning, they can always act so that their own lives have one.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Only those things are beautiful which are inspired by madness and written by reason.
—Andre Gide (French Novelist)

The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

When you are alone you are all your own.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

One comes to believe whatever one repeats to oneself sufficiently often, whether the statement be true of false. It comes to be dominating thought in one’s mind.
—Robert Collier (American Self-Help Author)

Truth never damages a cause that is just.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

We have all taken risks in the making of war. Isn’t it time that we should take risks to secure peace?
—Ramsay MacDonald (British Head of State)

Don’t put the key to your happiness in someone else’s pocket.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

In the depth of winter I finally learned there was inside me an invincible summer.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

In character, in manners, in style, in all things, the supreme excellence is simplicity.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

Life is the sum of all your choices.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.
—Robertson Davies (Canada Journalist)

A great man leaves clean work behind him, and requires no sweeper up of the chips.
—Elizabeth Barrett Browning (English Poet)

A man generally has two reasons for doing a thing. One that sounds good, and a real one.
—J. P. Morgan (American Businessperson)

The world of the happy is quite different from that of the unhappy.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher)

A good man doubles the length of his existence; to have lived so as to look back with pleasure on our past life is to live twice.
—Martial (Ancient Roman Latin Poet)

Can you understand how cruelly I feel the lack of friends who will believe in me a bit?
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man, and character is the test of that manifestation.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Don’t believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Man is not the creature of circumstances, circumstances are the creatures of man. We are free agents, and man is more powerful than matter.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

Of all the ways of defining man, the worst is the one which makes him out to be a rational animal.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

So long as I am acting from duty and conviction, I am indifferent to taunts and jeers. I think they will probably do me more good than harm.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The tragedy of human history is decreasing happiness in the midst of increasing comforts.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Never let anybody guess that you have a mind of your own. Above all be pure.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

The common idea that success spoils people by making them vain, egotistic and self-complacent is erroneous; on the contrary, it makes them for the most part, humble, tolerant and kind? Failure makes people cruel and bitter.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Serenity of spirit and turbulence of action should make up the sum of a man’s life.
—Vita Sackville-West (English Gardener)

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn’t brood. I’d type a little faster.
—Isaac Asimov (Russian-born American Children’s Books Writer)

The word mantra comes from two Sanskrit words man, (“to think”) and tra (“tool”). So the literal translation is “a tool of thought”. And that’s how mantras are used in Buddhist and Hindu practices, as tools that clear your mind of distractions. Because when you focus on repeating that mantra over and over again, soon the noise will die down and all you will hear is your inner voice.
—Russell Simmons (American Entrepreneur)

The important thing was to love rather than to be loved.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Things do change. The only question is that since things are deteriorating so quickly, will society and man’s habits change quickly enough?
—Isaac Asimov (Russian-born American Children’s Books Writer)

The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post-mortems. And remember, no one can get the jump on the future.
—Carl Sandburg (American Children’s Books Writer)

And think not you can guide the course of love. For love, if it finds you worthy, shall guide your course.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.
—Walt Whitman (American Poet)

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d druther not.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Half of being smart is knowing what you are dumb about.
—Solomon Short

To be trusted is a greater compliment than to be loved.
—George MacDonald (Scottish Christian Author)

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

The smaller the mind the greater the conceit.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

The possession of power inevitably spoils the free use of reason.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

The health of the people is really the foundation upon which all their happiness and all their powers as a state depend.
—Benjamin Disraeli (British Head of State)

Service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Logic pervades the world; the limits of the world are also the limits of logic.
—Ludwig Wittgenstein (Austrian Philosopher)

The unfortunate thing about this world is that good habits are so much easier to give up than bad ones.
—W. Somerset Maugham (French Playwright)

Men of lofty genius when they are doing the least work are most active.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

From a little spark may burst a mighty flame.
—Dante Alighieri (Italian Political leader)

Status quo, you know, that is Latin for the mess we’re in.
—Ronald Reagan (American Head of State)

I have learned silence from the talkative; tolerance from the intolerant and kindness from the unkind. I should not be ungrateful to those teachers.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Let a joy keep you. Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by.
—Carl Sandburg (American Children’s Books Writer)

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.
—Unknown

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

The great epochs of our life come when we gain the courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.
—Friedrich Nietzsche (German Philosopher, Scholar)

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain’t so.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

Begin—to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this and thou wilt have finished.
—Ausonius (Latin Poet)

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

He knows the universe and does not know himself.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.
—Carl Sandburg (American Children’s Books Writer)

One life – a little gleam of Time between two Eternities.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Integrity simply means a willingness not to violate one’s identity.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

Generosity is not giving me that which I need more than you do, but it is giving me that which you need more than I do.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The more wary you are of danger, the more likely you are to meet it.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

The beauty of the world, which is so soon to perish, has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Often the surest way to convey misinformation is to tell the strict truth.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Whatever you do, if you do it hard enough you’ll enjoy it. The important thing is to work and work hard.
—David Rockefeller (American Philanthropist)

When you give of your possessions, you give but little; it is when you give of yourself that you truly give.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Riches ennoble a man’s circumstances, but not himself.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

We do not know what to do with this short life, but we want another that will be eternal.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

Without devotion, knowledge is tasteless. Without knowledge, devotion is mere empty idol worship.
—Swami Chinmayananda (Indian Hindu Teacher)

Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former flow and pageant.
—Washington Irving (American Author)

How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
—Washington Irving (American Author)

Death never takes the wise man by surprise; he is always ready to go.
—Jean de La Fontaine (French Poet)

How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
—Washington Irving (American Author)