Inspirational Quotations

As a manager the important thing is not what happens when you are there, but what happens when you are not there.
—Ken Blanchard (American Author)

A saint is to put forth his faith in prayer, and afterwards follow his prayer with faith.
—Vavasor Powell (Welsh Puritan Preacher)

From pride, from pride, our very reas’ning springs.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.
—Georges Clemenceau (French Head of State)

There is no greater enemy to those who would please than expectation.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

Whatever you do they will love you; even if they don’t love you they are connected to you till you die. You can be boring and tedious with sisters, whereas you have to put on a good face with friends.
—Deborah Moggach (British Author, Screenwriter)

If when we judged others, our real motive was to destroy evil, we should look for evil where it is certain to be found, and that is in our own hearts. But if we are on the look-out for evil in others, our real motive is obviously to justify ourselves.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

Grief is the price we pay for love
—Queen Elizabeth II (Queen of United Kingdom)

If you want to kill time, try working it to death.
—Sam Levenson (American Humorist)

Money can’t buy happiness, but it can make you awfully comfortable while you’re being miserable.
—Clare Boothe Luce (American Playwright)

The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
—Ring Lardner (American Humorist, Author)

Knowing how things work is the basis for appreciation, and is thus a source of civilized delight.
—William Safire (American Columnist)

If one cannot invent a really convincing lie, it is often better to stick to the truth.
—Angela Thirkell (English Novelist)

One hundred religious persons knit into a unity by careful organizations do not constitute a church any more than eleven dead men make a football team. The first requisite is life, always.
—A. W. Tozer (American Christian Pastor)

The ecologization of politics requires us to acknowledge the priority of human values and makes ecology part of education at an early age, molding a new, modern approach to nature and, at the same time, giving back to man a sense of being part of nature. No moral improvement of society is possible without that.
—Mikhail Gorbachev (Soviet Head of State)

The common question that gets asked in business is, why? That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, why not?
—Jeff Bezos (American Businessman)

If you stop to be kind, you must swerve often from your path.
—Mary Webb (English Novelist)

Too much truth is uncouth.
—Franklin P. Adams (American Columnist)

One of the vices of the virtue of decentralization is that people don’t share ideas.
—Tony O’Reilly (Irish Athlete, Businessman)

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. I think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn’t write anything without hope in it.
—Oscar Hammerstein II (American Songwriter)

For what is done or learned by one class of women becomes, by virtue of their common womanhood, the property of all women.
—Elizabeth Blackwell (American Physician)

There are many men whose tongues might govern multitudes if they could govern their tongues.
—George D. Prentice (American Journalist)

Is it to be thought unreasonable that the people, in atonement for wrongs of a century, demand the vengeance of a single day?
—Maximilien Robespierre (French Revolutionary)

If you have tried to do something and failed, you are vastly better off than if you had tried to do nothing and succeeded. You must never regret what might have been. The past that did not happen is as hidden from us as the future we cannot see.
—Richard Martin Stern (American Mystery Author)

Experience comprises illusions lost, rather than wisdom gained.
—Philibert Joseph Roux (French Surgeon)

Money is plentiful for those who understand the simple laws which govern its acquisition.
—George Samuel Clason (American Businessperson)

Never work just for money or for power. They won’t save your soul or help you sleep at night.
—Marian Wright Edelman (American Civil Regrets Advocate)

Love should be a vehicle allowed to travel without limitations.
—Marvin J. Ashton (American Mormon Religious Leader)

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular.
—Edward R. Murrow (American Journalist)

In the end it is about what you want to be, not what you want to have.
—Derek Sivers (American Entrepreneur)

Who are wise in love, love most, say least.
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson (British Poet)

Diseases can be our spiritual flat tires – disruptions in our lives that seem to be disasters at the time but end by redirecting our lives in a meaningful way.
—Bernie S. Siegel (American Physician, Writer)

The only force that can overcome an idea and a faith is another and better idea and faith, positively and fearlessly upheld.
—Dorothy Thompson (American Journalist)

I don’t need anyone to rectify my existence. The most profound relationship we will ever have is the one with ourselves.
—Shirley MacLaine (American Actor)

If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on.
—Stopford Brooke (Irish Clergyman, Writer)

One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome.
—Murasaki Shikibu (Japanese Diarist, Novelist)

I tell myself that God gave my children many gifts—spirit, beauty, intelligence, the capacity to make friends and to inspire respect. There was only one gift he held back—length of life.
—Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy (American Philanthropist)

Genius is not essential to good preaching, but a live man is.
—Austin Phelps (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

Nothing grows well in the shade of a big tree.
—Constantin Brancusi (Romanian-French Sculptor)

There is nothing in human life so important and urgent as raising the next generation, and yet it also feels as if we have very little control over the outcome.
—Adam Gopnik (American Essayist, Critic)

This is a youth-oriented society, and the joke is on them because youth is a disease from which we all recover.
—Dorothy Fuldheim (American TV Journalist)

Prefer punishment to disgraceful gain; for the one is painful but once, but the other for one’s whole life.
—Chilon of Sparta (Spartan Magistrate)

What passes for good luck is really an infinite number of little good decisions.
—Richard Steinheimer (American Railroad Photographer)

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (French Philosopher)

It is almost a definition of a gentleman to say that he is one who never inflicts pain.
—John Henry Newman (British Theologian, Poet)

To have courage, one must first be afraid. The deeper the fear, the more difficult the climb toward courage.
—Jim Bishop (American Journalist)

When you want to win a game, you have to teach. When you lose a game, you have to learn.
—Tom Landry (American Football Coach)

The road to positivity is strewn with the abandoned vehicles of the faint-hearted.
—Peter McWilliams (American Author)

What people say behind your back is your standing in the community.
—E. W. Howe (American Novelist)

A fault is sooner found than mended.
—Ulpian Fulwell (English Playwright, Satirist)

A critic is someone who never actually goes to the battle, yet who afterwards comes out shooting the wounded
—Tyne Daly (American Actress, Singer)

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (American Novelist)

The future is always a fairy land to the young.
—George Augustus Henry Sala (British Journalist)

If you have never seen beauty in a moment of suffering, you have never seen beauty at all. If you have never seen joy in a beautiful face, you have never seen joy at all.
—Friedrich Schiller (German Poet)

When he that speaks, and he to whom he speaks, neither of them understand what is meant, that is metaphysics.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher, Author)

Commerce changes the fate and genius of nations.
—Thomas Gray (English Poet)

The narrow mind rejects; wisdom accepts.
—Lama Thubten Yeshe (Tibetan Buddhist Teacher)

Romance like a ghost escapes touching; it is always where you are not, not where you are. The interview or conversation was prose at the time, but it is poetry in the memory.
—George William Curtis (American Essayist)

The farther we go, the more the ultimate explanation recedes from us, and all we have left is faith.
—Vaclav Hlavaty (Czech Mathematician, Physicist)

Never claim as a right what you can ask as a favor.
—John Churton Collins (English Literary Critic)

Discontent with the actual is the necessary precondition of every moral change and spiritual rebirth.
—Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian Philosopher, Political Leader)

The torment that so many young women know, bound hand and foot by love and motherhood, without having forgotten their former dreams.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death.
—Kenneth Patchen (American Poet, Novelist)

He, therefore, who desires peace should prepare for war. He who aspires to victory should spare no pains to form his soldiers. And he who hopes for success should fight on principle, not chance.
—Vegetius (Roman Military Author)

God’s extraordinary work is most often done by ordinary people in the seeming obscurity of a home and family.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

A good reputation is more valuable than money.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

God always has an angel of help for those who are willing to do their duty.
—Theodore L. Cuyler (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

The narrative impulse is always with us; we couldn’t imagine ourselves through a day without it.
—Robert K. Cooper (American Neuroscientist)

Now different races and nationalities cherish different ideals of society that stink in each other’s nostrils with an offensiveness beyond the power of any but the most monstrous private deed.
—Rebecca West (English Author)

The paradox of reality is that no image is as compelling as the one which exists only in the mind’s eye.
—Shana Alexander (American Journalist)

Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate a taste.
—Nikki Giovanni (American Poet, Writer)

He gives us the very quintessence of perception.
—James Russell Lowell (American Poet, Critic)

Accept yourself as you are. Otherwise you will never see opportunity. You will not feel free to move toward it; you will feel you are not deserving.
—Maxwell Maltz (American Surgeon)

To be right with God has often meant to be in trouble with men.
—A. W. Tozer (American Christian Pastor)

The happy man is he who knows his limitations, yet bows to no false gods.
—Robert W. Service (Scottish Poet)

You must have a high concept not of what you are doing, but of what you may do someday. Without that there’s no point to working.
—Edgar Degas (French Painter)

Illusion is always based on reality, for its strength depends upon its fit with the desires, fears and experiences of countless humans.
—Dero A. Saunders (American Journalist)

Love… Force it and it disappears. You cannot will love, nor even control it. You can only guide its expression. It comes or it goes according to those qualities in life that invite it or deny its presence.
—David Seabury (American Psychologist)

Scientists are treated like gods handing down new commandments. People tend to assume that religion has been disproved by science. But the scientist may tell us how the world works, not why it works, not how we should live our lives, not how we face death or make moral decisions.
—Susan Howatch (British Historical Novelist)

If the spirit of business adventure is dulled, this country will cease to hold the foremost position in the world.
—Andrew W. Mellon (American Financier)

Forgiving those who hurt us is the key to personal peace.
—Ulysses G. Weatherly (American Sociologist, Educator)

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.
—Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) (Roman Statesman, Poet)

The humanities of business in this age have become more important than the techniques of business. Each business and industry has to sweep the public misunderstandings and the false notions off its own front walk. Thus will a pathway be cleared for popular appreciation of the important rule of business in our freedom and in our way of life.
—Harry Amos Bullis (American Business Leader)

There’s cost and benefit each time you criticize or suggest. Sometimes, it’s worth the price. Make the choice consciously.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach)

Those who cling to life die, and those who defy death live.
—Uesugi Kenshin (Japanese Warlord, Daimyo)

The easiest kind of relationship is with ten thousand people, the hardest is with one.
—Joan Baez (American Singer)

Worry is like a rocking chair: it keeps you moving but doesn’t get you anywhere.
—Corrie Ten Boom (Dutch Jewish Humanist)

You can fake your age or mask it, but the passion that moves the characters has to be real.
—Victoria Abril (Spanish Actress, Singer)

Consult not your fears but your hopes and your dreams. Think not about your frustrations, but about your unfulfilled potential. Concern yourself not with what you tried and failed in, but with what it is still possible for you to do.
—Pope John XXIII (Italian Catholic Religious Leader)

Finding the center of strength within ourselves is in the long run the best contribution we can make to our fellow men.
—Rollo May (American Philosopher)

We need the courage to start and continue what we should do, and courage to stop what we shouldn’t do.
—Richard L. Evans (American Mormon Religions Leader)

The person who builds a character makes foes.
—Owen D. Young (American Businessperson)

Thy modesty’s a candle to thy merit.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

Nature will not forgive those who fail to fulfill the law of their being. The law of human beings is wisdom and goodness, not unlimited acquisition.
—Robert Maynard Hutchins (American Educator)

Patience has its limits, take it too far and it’s cowardice.
—Holbrook Jackson (British Journalist)

All crosses are easier to carry when we keep moving.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

Nothing is more fairly distributed than common sense: no one thinks he needs more of it than he already has.
—Rene Descartes (French Mathematician, Philosopher)

The best and sweetest flowers in paradise, God gives to his people when they are on their knees in the closet.—Prayer, if not the very gate of heaven, is the key to let us into its holiness and joys.
—Thomas Brooks (English Puritan Preacher, Author)

He who leaves nothing to chance will do few things poorly, but he will do few things.
—E. F. L. Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax (British Politician)

Ideas attract money, time, talents, skills, energy and other complementary ideas that will bring them into reality.
—Mark Victor Hansen (American Public Speaker)

Good friendships are fragile things and require as much care as any other fragile and precious thing.
—Randolph Bourne (American Writer)

Very usually, altruism is only the sublimest form of selfishness.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Mystic, Philosopher, Poet)

Happiness is itself a kind of gratitude.
—Joseph Wood Krutch (American Writer)

As long as the day lasts, let’s give it all we got.
—David O. McKay (American Religious Leader)

The sad truth is that opportunity doesn’t knock twice. You can put things off until tomorrow but tomorrow may never come. Where will you be a few years down the line. Will it be everything you dreamed of. We seal our fate with the choices we take, but don’t give a second thought to the chances we take.
—Gloria Estefan (Cuban-American Singer, Actress)

Charity degrades those who receive it and hardens those who dispense it.
—George Sand (French Novelist, Dramatist)

First we form habits, then they form us. Conquer your bad habits, or they’ll eventually conquer you.
—Rob Gilbert (American Animator, Cartoonist)

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
—James A. Michener (American Novelist)

More can be learned from what works than from what fails.
—Rene Dubos (French-American Microbiologist)

Any success you have is despite your lack of giving, not because of it.
—Richard Carlson (American Actor)

Each of us wrestles with the dark giant in our own way.
—Connie Zweig (American Minister)

In its function, the power to punish is not essentially different from that of curing or educating.
—Michel Foucault (French Philosopher)

In the lottery of life there are more prizes drawn than blanks, and to one misfortune there are fifty advantages. Despondency is the most unprofitable feeling a man can indulge in.
—Thomas De Witt Talmage (American Presbyterian Clergyman)

Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links, they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes.
—Theodore Dreiser (American Novelist, Journalist)

Science is the refusal to believe on the basis of hope.
—C. P. Snow (British Novelist, Scientist)

The imagination equips us to perceive reality when it is not fully materialized.
—M. C. Richards (American Poet, Potter, Writer)

Morality sticks faster when presented in brief sayings than when presented in long discourse.
—Karl Leberecht Immermann (German Novelist, Dramatist)

The only thing that we know is that we know nothing and that is the highest flight of human wisdom.
—Leo Tolstoy (Russian Novelist)

Unlike grownups, children have little need to deceive themselves.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

My belief is that no movie, nothing in life, leaves people neutral. You either leave them up or you leave them down.
—David Puttnam (British Film Producer)

Health is the thing that makes you feel that now is the best time of the year.
—Franklin P. Adams (American Columnist)

Information is a negotiator’s greatest weapon.
—Victor Kiam (American Entrepreneur)

It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of those liberties which make the defense of the nation worthwhile.
—Earl Warren (American Judge)

An unusual beginning must have an unusual end.
—Mikhail Lermontov (Russian Novelist, Poet)