Inspirational Quotations

The right to do something does not mean that doing it is right.
—William Safire (American Columnist)

What can be added to the happiness of a man who is in health, out of debt, and has a clear conscience?
—Adam Smith (Scottish Philosopher)

It is not love that is blind, but jealousy.
—Lawrence Durrell (British Biographer)

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.
—Claude Monet (French Painter)

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

We have two lives – the one we learn with and the life we live after that.
—Bernard Malamud (American Novelist)

Geniuses are the luckiest of mortals because what they must do is the same as what they most want to do.
—W. H. Auden (British-born American Poet)

When I repress my emotion my stomach keeps score.
—Enoch Powell (British Politician)

Never ruin an apology with an excuse.
—Kimberly Johnson (American Poet)

A generation which ignores history has no past and no future.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise.
—Homer (Ancient Greek Poet)

The fountain of content must spring up in the mind; and he who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition, will waste his life in fruitless efforts, and multiply the griefs which he proposes to remove.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

If you are not happy here and now, you never will be.
—Taisen Deshimaru (Japanese Buddhist Teacher)

They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
—Khalil Gibran (Lebanese-born American Philosopher)

Do not waste a minute—not a second—in trying to demonstrate to others the merits of your performance. If your work does not vindicate itself, you cannot vindicate it.
—Thomas Wentworth Higginson (American Unitarian Minister)

Four be the things I am wiser to know:|Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.|Four be the things I’d been better without:|Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.|Three be the things I shall never attain:|Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.|Three be the things I shall have till I die:|Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
—Dorothy Parker (American Poet)

Instinct teaches us to look for happiness outside ourselves.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

No matter how much you feed a wolf, he will always return to the forest.
—Russian Proverb

When I was young I was sure of everything; in a few years, having been mistaken a thousand times, I was not half so sure of most things as I was before; at present, I am hardly sure of anything but what God has revealed.
—John Wesley (British Methodist Religious Leader)

You will either step forward into growth or you will step back into safety.
—Abraham Maslow (American Psychologist)

It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Things done well and with care, exempt themselves from fear.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
—Hermann Hesse (German-born Swiss Poet)

To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.
—Isaac Watts (English Hymn writer)

Capability means imagination…
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

I would rather be a beggar and single than a queen and married.
—Elizabeth I of England (British Monarch)

My father said whoever tells the longest story is always the liar. The truth isn’t that complicated.
—Bill Joy (American Computer Scientist)

For every failure, there’s an alternative course of action. You just have to find it. When you come to a roadblock, take a detour.
—Mary Kay Ash (American Entrepreneur)

No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.
—Simone de Beauvoir (French Philosopher)

I figure life’s a gift and I don’t intend on wasting it. You don’t know what hand you’re gonna get dealt next. You learn to take life as it comes at you… to make each day count.
—Leonardo DiCaprio (American Actor)

He that respects himself is safe from others; he wears a coat of mail that none can pierce.
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (American Poet)

You only have to do a very few things right in your life so long as you don’t do too many things wrong.
—Warren Buffett (American Investor)

The quality of your life doesn’t emerge from what happens, but from how fully you show up for what happens.
—Marianne Williamson (American Activist)

A life of ease is a difficult pursuit.
—William Cowper (English Anglican Poet)

No matter how bad things are, they can always be worse. So what if my stroke left me with a speech impediment? Morse had one, and he did all right.
—Kirk Douglas (American Actor)

All good things come to those who wait.
—English Proverb

Without heroes, we are all plain people and don’t know how far we can go.
—Bernard Malamud (American Novelist)

There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.
—Richard Feynman (American Physicist)

There are few things more disturbing than to find, in somebody we detest, a moral quality which seems to us demonstrably superior to anything we ourselves possess. It augurs not merely an unfairness on the part of creation, but a lack of artistic judgment. Sainthood is acceptable only in saints.
—Pamela Hansford Johnson (English Novelist)

The last, if not the greatest, of the human freedoms: to choose their own attitude in any given circumstance.
—Bruno Bettelheim (Austrian-born American Psychologist)

A single sunbeam is enough to drive away many shadows.
—Saint Francis of Assisi (Italian Monk)

To us, family means putting your arms around each other and being there.
—Barbara Bush (American First Lady)

We can do anything we want to do if we stick to it long enough.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

When someone does something good, applaud! You will make two people happy.
—Samuel Goldwyn (Polish-born American Film Producer)

If you deny yourself commitment, what can you do with your life?
—Harvey Fierstein (American Actor)

A wise person should pursue knowledge and wealth as if he was to live young forever. He should practice moral principles as if death has grabbed him by his hair.
—Hitopadesha

Pray to God, but row for the shore.
—Russian Proverb

If you have a clearly good idea, to avoid getting talked out of it, get input only on how to better execute it.
—Marty Nemko (American Career Coach, Author)

Fear tends to manifest itself much more quickly than greed, so volatile markets tend to be on the downside. In up markets, volatility tends to gradually decline.
—Philip Roth (American Novelist)

To receive everything, one must open one’s hands and give.
—Taisen Deshimaru (Japanese Buddhist Teacher)

Give a lot, expect a lot, and if you don’t get it, prune.
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

A thought that does not result in action is nothing much, and an action that does not proceed from a thought is nothing at all.
—Georges Bernanos (French Author)

Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work.
—Stephen King (American Novelist)

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
—Philip K. Dick (American Novelist)

What kills a skunk is the publicity it gives itself.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery—courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards.
—James Harvey Robinson (American Historian)

People generally quarrel because they cannot argue.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of a dearer stuff than the one who stays away.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist)

To take something from a person and keep it for oneself: that is robbery. To take something from one person and then turn it over to another in exchange for as much money as you can get: that is business. Robbery is so much more stupid, since it is satisfied with a single, frequently dangerous profit; whereas in business it can be doubled without danger.
—Octave Mirbeau (French Journalist)

There’s a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out.
—Lou Reed (American Musician)

It’s the ride that counts.
—Brad Feld (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Always write angry letters to your enemies. Never mail them.
—James Fallows (American Journalist)

I remain just one thing, and one thing only—and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.
—Charlie Chaplin (British Actor)

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
—George Bernard Shaw (Irish Playwright)

The lion is ashamed, it’s true, when he hunts with the fox.
—Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (German Writer)

What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.
—C. S. Lewis (Irish-born British Children’s Books Writer)

Work to connect yourself to the “allness” of life—instead of identifying with the smallness of it—and you’ll awaken to a greatness already living within you that is no more bothered by the little things in life than a mountain is made miserable by the rain that falls upon it.
—Guy Finley

Argument, as usually managed, is the worst sort of conversation, as in books it is generally the worst sort of reading.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these.
—George Washington Carver (American Scientist)

People seldom improve, when they have no other model but themselves to copy after.
—Oliver Goldsmith (Irish Author)

The longing for certainty … is in every human mind. But certainty is generally illusion.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

Prosperity, alas! is often but another name for pride.
—Lydia H. Sigourney

I never know what I think about something until I read what I’ve written on it.
—William Faulkner (American Novelist)

This, too, shall pass.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Genius must have talent as its complement and implement, just as in like manner imagination must have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers can only act through a corresponding energy of the lower.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

We have the Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities.
—Bill Maher (American Comedian TV Personality)

If you look for the bad in people expecting to find it, you surely will.
—Abraham Lincoln (American Head of State)

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

Ninety percent of all human wisdom is the ability to mind your own business.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)

There is one weakness in people for which there is no remedy. It is the universal weakness of lack of ambition.
—Napoleon Hill (American Author)

I think every person should be able to enjoy life. Try to decide what you most enjoy doing, and then look around to see if there is a job for which you could prepare yourself that would enable you to continue having this sort of joy.
—Linus Pauling (American Chemist)

He who has no opinion of his own, but depends upon the opinion and taste of others, is a slave.
—Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (German Poet)

In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.
—Blaise Pascal (French Catholic Mathematician)

It’s sometimes hard to make choices about where you invest; it’s equally hard to make choices about where you don’t invest and what you eliminate.
—Anne M. Mulcahy (American Businessperson)

Compassion for others begins with kindness to ourselves.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

Cheers to a new year and another chance for us to get it right.
—Oprah Winfrey (American TV Personality)

The great virtue in life is real courage that knows how to face facts and live beyond them.
—D. H. Lawrence (English Novelist)

Painting is easy when you don’t know how, but very difficult when you do.
—Edgar Degas (French Painter)