Inspirational Quotations

If you would walk the way of love, never feel hurt nor yield to anger, but accept pain as a part of life.
—J. P. Vaswani (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Faith begins as an experiment and ends as an experience.
—William Ralph Inge (English Anglican Clergyman)

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.
—Amos Bronson Alcott (American Teacher)

The desire for the well-being of one’s own nation can be—and must be—made compatible with the welfare of all humanity.
—Louis Leo Snyder (American-born German Scholar)

Words once printed assume a life of their own.
—Wilma Askinas

Our ordinary mind always tries to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but that is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.
—E. F. Schumacher (German Mathematician)

Better by far you should forget and smile, than that you should remember and be sad.
—Christina Rossetti (English Poet)

Promises are the uniquely human way of ordering the future, making it predictable and reliable to the extent that this is humanly possible.
—Hannah Arendt (German Political Theorist)

I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in edgewise, grew discouraged, and traveled on.
—Louise Erdrich (American Children’s Books Writer)

To believe a business impossible is the way to make it so. How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.
—Jeremy Collier (English Anglican Theater Critic)

No wise man ever wished to be younger.
—Jonathan Swift (Irish Satirist)

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)

Happiness is a matter of one’s most ordinary and everyday mode of consciousness being busy and lively and unconcerned with self.
—Iris Murdoch (English Novelist)

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
—Igor Stravinsky (Russian-born American Composer)

Time is lost when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.
—Dietrich Bonhoeffer (German Lutheran Pastor)

Reading well is one of the great pleasures that solitude can afford you.
—Harold Bloom (American Literary Critic)

What are envied and coveted here seem to me to be qualities of human beings—capacities of spirit—rather than technical abilities or special talents.
—David Foster Wallace (American Novelist)

Life is a solitary cell whose walls are mirrors.
—Eugene O’Neill (American Playwright)

Advanced countries of today have reached their present affluence through domination of other races and countries…Their sheer ruthlessness, undisturbed by feelings of compassion or by abstract theories of freedom, equality or justice, gave them a head start.
—Indira Gandhi (Indian Head of State)

You find a way, somehow to get through the most horrible things, things you think would kill you. You find a way and you move through the days, one by one, in shock, in despair, but you move. The days pass, one after the other, and you go along with them – occasionally stunned, and not entirely relieved, to find that you are still alive.
—Michelle Richmond (American Novelist)

The greatest and noblest pleasure which men can have in this world is to discover new truths; and the next is to shake off old prejudices.
—Frederick II of Prussia (Prussian Monarch)

The more comfort becomes your priority, the more contracted you become with fear.
—T. Harv Eker (American Motivational Speaker)

Time is the product of changing realities, beings, existences.
—Nikolai Berdyaev (Russian Christian Philosopher)

In small proportions we just beauties see,|And in short measures life may perfect be.
—Ben Jonson (English Dramatist)

Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

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)