Inspirational Quotations

One must not hold one’s self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one’s creations.
—Ludwig van Beethoven (German Composer)

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.
—Ernest Hemingway (American Author)

Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension.
—Joshua L. Liebman (American Jewish Rabbi)

The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation through all changes of opinion and detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
—John Weiss (American Author)

At work, you think of the children you have left at home. At home, you think of the work you’ve left unfinished. Such a struggle is unleashed within yourself. Your heart is rent.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

Just because a man lacks the use of his eyes doesn’t mean he lacks vision.
—Stevie Wonder (American Singer)

Fate gave to man the courage of endurance.
—Ludwig van Beethoven (German Composer)

It’s the friends you can call up at 4 a.m. that matter.
—Marlene Dietrich (German-born American Actor)

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
—Charles Sanders Peirce (American Philosopher)

Clarity moves much more efficiently than violence or stress.
—Byron Katie (American Speaker)

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
—Bob Dylan (American Singer)

A gossip is one who talks to you about others; a bore is one who talks to you about himself; and a brilliant conversationalist is one who talks to you about yourself.
—Lisa Kirk (American Actor)

Be grateful for yourself… be thankful.
—William Saroyan (American Novelist)

No thoroughly occupied man was ever yet very miserable.
—Letitia Elizabeth Landon (English Poet)

I was taught to strive not because there were any guarantees of success but because the act of striving is in itself the only way to keep faith with life.
—Madeleine Albright (Czech-born American Diplomat)

To love means loving the unlovable. To forgive means pardoning the unpardonable. Faith means believing the unbelievable. Hope means hoping when everything seems hopeless.
—G. K. Chesterton (English Journalist)

It’s surprising how much memory is built around things unnoticed at the time.
—Barbara Kingsolver (American Novelist)

The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I’d make the same mistakes, only sooner.
—Tallulah Bankhead (American Actor)

If a window of opportunity appears, don’t pull down the shade.
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

Contemplate the wonders of creation, the Divine dimension of their being, not as a dim configuration that is presented to you from a distance, but as the reality in which you live.
—Abraham Isaac Kook (Latvian-born Jewish Rabbi)

Old persons are sometimes as unwilling to die as tired-out children are to say good night and go to bed.
—Sheridan Le Fanu (Irish Novelist)

Mutability of temper and inconsistency with ourselves is the greatest weakness of human nature.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

If things are not going well with you, begin your effort at correcting the situation by carefully examining the service you are rendering, and especially the spirit in which you are rendering it.
—Roger Babson (American Entre)

As long as the world is turning and spinning, we’re gonna be dizzy and we’re gonna make mistakes.
—Mel Brooks (American Film Actor)

To know that which lies before us in daily life is the prime wisdom.
—John Milton (English Poet)

Only friends will tell you the truths you need to hear to make … your life bearable.
—Francine du Plessix Gray (Polish-born American Author)

Bad behavior and irrational decisions are almost always caused by fear. If you want to change the behavior, address the fear.
—Seth Godin (American Entrepreneur)

When work is a pleasure, life is joy. When work is a duty, life is slavery.
—Maxim Gorky (Russian Writer)

Love looks forward, hate looks back, anxiety has eyes all over its head.
—Mignon McLaughlin (American Journalist)

Let us be grateful to people who make us happy; they are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

We will discover the nature of our particular genius when we stop trying to conform to our own or to other people’s models, learn to be ourselves, and allow our natural channel to open.
—Shakti Gawain (American Author)

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Love what you do. Believe in your instincts. And you’d better be able to pick yourself up and brush yourself off every day.
—Mario Andretti (Italian-born American Sportsperson)

Stripped of all their masquerades, the fears of men are quite identical: the fear of loneliness, rejection, inferiority, unmanageable anger, illness and death.
—Joshua L. Liebman (American Jewish Rabbi)

No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Life is a battle in which we fall from wounds we receive in running away.
—William Laurence Sullivan (American Unitarian Clergyman)

Lack of discipline leads to frustration and self-loathing.
—Marie Chapian (American Children’s Books Writer)

A man is a slave to whatever has mastered him.
—Saint Peter (Roman Catholic Saint)

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius—and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.
—E. F. Schumacher (German Mathematician)

The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

Nobody can tell what I suffer! But it is always so. Those who do not complain are never pitied.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.
—Scott Adams (American Cartoonist)

Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions.
—Roger Babson (American Entre)

Great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed.
—Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

People who are always taking care of their health are like misers, who are hoarding up a treasure which they have never spirit enough to enjoy.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

Man is not on the earth solely for his own happiness. He is there to realize great things for humanity.
—Vincent van Gogh (Dutch Painter)

We have all a better guide in ourselves, if we would attend to it, than any other person can be.
—Jane Austen (English Novelist)

Thought means life, since those who do not think do not live in any high or real sense. Thinking makes the man.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (American Teacher)

The covetous man never has money; the prodigal will have none shortly.
—Ben Jonson (English Dramatist)

We must try not to sink beneath our anguish… but battle on.
—J. K. Rowling (British Children’s Books Writer)

The end of all wisdom is love, love, love.
—Ramana Maharshi (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Love that cares, listens.
—Paul Tillich (American Lutheran Theologian)

Heaven and hell is right now … You make it heaven or you make it hell by your actions.
—George Harrison (English Singer)

We stumble and fall constantly even when we are most enlightened. But when we are in true spiritual darkness, we do not even know that we have fallen.
—Thomas Merton (French-born American Clergyman)

We have to remember that what we observe is not nature in itself but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
—Werner Heisenberg (German Theoretical Physicist)

The prudence of the best heads is often defeated by the tenderness of the best of hearts.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

You know you’re in love when you don’t want to fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.
—Theodor Seuss Geisel (‘Dr. Seuss’) (American Children’s Books Writer)

What is there in man so worthy of honor and reverence as this, that he is capable of contemplating something higher than his own reason, more sublime than the whole universe—that Spirit which alone is self-subsistent, from which all truth proceeds, without which is no truth?
—Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (German Philosopher)

Courageous people do not fear forgiving for the sake of peace.
—Nelson Mandela (South African Political leader)

If we cannot live so as to be happy, let us at least live so as to deserve it.
—Immanuel Hermann Fichte (German Philosopher)

One cannot spend forever sitting and solving the mysteries of one’s history.
—Lemony Snicket

Wherever a man turns he can find someone who needs him.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward, you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward, this trampling is on a much bigger scale; and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

The more you speak of yourself, the more likely you are to lie.
—Johann Jacob Zimmermann (German Nonconformist Theologian)

It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
—John Loengard

The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

He turns not back who is bound to a star.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
—Voltaire (French Philosopher)

Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
—H. Norman Schwarzkopf (American Military Leader)

A dream is a microscope through which we look at the hidden occurrences in our soul.
—Erich Fromm (German Psychologist)

Everybody needs his memories. They keep the wolf of insignificance from the door.
—Saul Bellow (Canadian-born American Novelist)

What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
—E. M. Forster (English Novelist)

One may as well be asleep as to read for anything but to improve his mind and morals, and regulate his conduct.
—Laurence Sterne (Irish Anglican Novelist)

One-half of life is luck; the other half is discipline – and that’s the important half, for without discipline you wouldn’t know what to do with luck.
—Carl Zuckmayer (German Playwright)

Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.
—Eddie Rickenbacker (American Military Leader)

We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

Unquestionably, it is possible to do without happiness; it is done involuntarily by nineteen-twentieths of mankind.
—John Stuart Mill (English Philosopher, Economist)

Make it a practice to judge persons and things in the most favorable light at all times and under all circumstances.
—Vincent de Paul (French Catholic Saint)

I hope to work, support my children and die quietly without pain.
—Sean Connery (Scottish Actor)

We protract the career of time by employment, we lengthen the duration of our lives by wise thoughts and useful actions. Life to him who wishes not to have lived in vain is thought and action.
—Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Self-understanding rather than self-condemnation is the way to inner peace and mature conscience.
—Joshua L. Liebman (American Jewish Rabbi)

The only way to earn what you’re really worth is to get paid based on your results.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

The family is the school of duties… founded on love.
—Felix Adler

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
—Omar Bradley (American Military Leader)

Come, let us give a little time to folly … and even in a melancholy day let us find time for an hour of pleasure.
—Bonaventure (Italian Christian Scholar)

The value of history. ..is that it teaches us what man has done and thus what man is.
—R. G. Collingwood (British Philosopher)

Only mothers can think of the future, because they give birth to it in their children.
—Maxim Gorky (Russian Writer)

If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother and hope your guardian genius.
—Joseph Addison (English Essayist)

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
—Virginia Woolf (English Novelist)

Growing up is, after all, only the understanding that one’s unique and incredible experience is what every one shares.
—Doris Lessing (British Novelist, Poet)

Tact is after all a kind of mind reading.
—Sarah Orne Jewett (American Children’s Books Writer)

Do what you love and love what you do and everything else is detail.
—Martina Navratilova (Czech-born American Sportsperson)

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.
—Danny Kaye (American Actor)

We must learn to regard people less in light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

It doesn’t matter what you do…so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.
—Ray Bradbury (American Novelist)