Inspirational Quotations

There is no kind of peace which may be purchased on the bargain counter.
—Unknown

A crust eaten in peace is better than a banquet partaken in anxiety.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Man never knows what he wants; he aspires to penetrate mysteries and as soon as he has, he wants to reestablish them. Ignorance irritates him and knowledge cloys.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

Virtue has never been as respectable as money.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

He who will not reason is a bigot; he who cannot is a fool; and he who dares not is a slave.
—William Eugene Drummond (American Architect)

Those who are unwilling to invest in the future haven’t earned one.
—Harold Warren Lewis

Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on people brings happiness.
—Harold Kushner (American Jewish Religious Leader)

Arise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

Adversity has the same effect on a man that severe training has on the pugilist: it reduces him to his fighting weight.
—Josh Billings (Henry Wheeler Shaw) (American Humorist)

Above all things, never be afraid. The enemy who forces you to retreat is himself afraid of you at that very moment.
—Andre Maurois

In any war there are always more of the enemy than you think, and there are always allies you never knew you had.
—John M. Ford (American Novelist)

Never dull your shine for somebody else.
—Tyra Banks (American Model)

You and I are not what we eat; we are what we think.
—Walter Anderson

Prayer crowns God with the honor and glory due to His name, and God crowns prayer with assurance and comfort. The most praying souls are the most assured souls.
—Thomas Brooks

It is often hard to bear the tears that we ourselves have caused.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.
—Margaret Barber (English Christian Author)

The greatest dreams are always unrealistic.
—Will Smith (American Actor)

Deliberation is a function of the many; action is the function of one.
—Charles de Gaulle (French Head of State)

Rule of thumb: Be skeptical of things you learned before you could read. E.g., religion.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.
—Lou Holtz

The world is full of fools and faint hearts; and yet everyone has courage enough to bear the misfortunes, and wisdom enough to manage the affairs of his neighbor.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

Each person is born to one possession which outvalues all his others—his last breath.
—Mark Twain (American Humorist)

Satisfaction with an experience depends significantly on our expectations going into it.
—Ben Casnocha (American Entrepreneur, Investor)

Most of us don’t recognize opportunity until we see it working for a competitor.
—Jay Huenfeld

To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.
—Robert Muller

The deed is everything, the glory naught.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

For a righteous man falls seven times, and rises again, But the wicked stumble in time of calamity.
—The Holy Bible (Scripture in the Christian Faith)

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

He who does not shield himself from vilification receives it.
—Arabic Proverb

One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.
—Golda Meir (Israeli Head of State)

Isn’t it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?
—Matthieu Ricard (French Buddhist Monk)

The hardest time to tell: when to stop.
—Malcolm Forbes (American Publisher)

We don’t believe in rheumatism and true love until after the first attack.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Austrian Novelist)

It is better to drink of deep griefs than to taste shallow pleasures.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Anything simple always interests me.
—David Hockney

There is but one way to be born but a hundred ways to die.
—Chinese Proverb

I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.
—Margaret Thatcher (British Head of State)

The one charm of the past is that it is the past.
—Oscar Wilde (Irish Poet)

Virtue is praised, but hated. People run from it, for it is ice-cold and in this world you have to keep your feet warm.
—Denis Diderot (French Philosopher)

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Integrity has no need of rules.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

A hug is the perfect gift–one size fits all, and nobody minds if you exchange it.
—Ivern Ball (American Writer, Aphorist)

As the rays come from the sun, and yet are not the sun, even so our love and pity, though they are not God, but merely a poor, weak image and reflection of Him, yet from him alone they come.
—Charles Kingsley (English Clergyman)

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein; it rejects it.
—Peter Medawar

Happiness makes up in height what it lacks in length.
—Robert Frost (American Poet)

Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, then, especially, being free from flatterers.
—Samuel Johnson (British Essayist)

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
—Thomas Edison (American Inventor)

Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have.
—Hyman Judah Schachtel (American Jewish Religious Leader)

It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.
—Unknown

You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
—Anne Lamott

Nature creates ability; luck provides it with opportunity.
—Francois de La Rochefoucauld

When a man dwells on the objects of sense, he creates an attraction for them; attraction develops into desire, and desire breeds anger.
—The Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Scripture)

A coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

Happiness walks on busy feet.
—Anonymous

Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision.
—Ayn Rand (Russian-born American Novelist)

Everything comes to us that belongs to us if we create the capacity to receive it.
—Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Hindu Polymath)

Wisdom doesn’t come with age. Wisdom comes with wisdom.
—Neil Simon

To confess your fallibility and then do nothing about it is not humble; it is boasting of your modesty.
—Eliezer Yudkowsky (American Scientist)

Live according to Nature, runs the maxim of the West; but according to what nature, the nature of the body or the nature which exceeds the body ? This first we ought to determine.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

Hard is it to be in the world, free, yet living the life of ordinary men; but because it is hard, therefore it must be attempted and accomplished.
—Sri Aurobindo (Indian Yogi, Nationalist)

Celebrate the happiness that friends are always giving; make every day a holiday and celebrate just living.
—Amanda Bradley

It is better to live with wild beasts wandering in the mountains, than with fools even in the comfortable and heavenly halls of the Lord of Gods.
—Neetishatakam

Climb mountains to see lowlands.
—Chinese Proverb

It isn’t what you do, but how you do it.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

We are at our very best, and we are happiest, when we are fully engaged in work we enjoy on the journey toward the goal we’ve established for ourselves. It gives meaning to our time off and comfort to our sleep. It makes everything else in life so wonderful, so worthwhile.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.
—Annie Dillard

It’s not so important who starts the game but who finishes it.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck.
—Tony Robbins (American Actor Author)

It is impossible to live pleasurably without living prudently, and honorably, and justly; or to live prudently, and honorably, and justly, without living pleasurably.
—Epicurus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

The very best way to learn self-control is by practicing self-control.
—Sterling W. Sill (American Mormon Religious Leader)

What’s the use of happiness? It can’t buy you money.
—Henny Youngman

Happiness is like peeing your pants: Everyone can see it, but only you can feel it’s warmth.
—Unknown

Only a life lived for others is a life worth while.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

I see God walking in every human form. When I meet different people, I say to myself, “God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous.”
—Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.
—Scott Adams (American Cartoonist)

Success is peace of mind, a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming, and not just in a physical way: seek ye first the kingdom and His righteousness and all these things will be yours as well.
—John Wooden (American Sportsperson)

An elephant can be tethered by a thread–if he believes he is captive. If we believe we are chained by habit or anxiety, we are in bondage.
—John H. Crowe

To aim at the best and to remain essentially ourselves is one and the same thing.
—Janet Erskine Stuart (English Catholic Nun)

A vulgar mind is proud in prosperity and humble in adversity. A noble mind is humble in prosperity and proud in adversity.
—Friedrich Ruckert

To be content with little is hard; to be content with much is impossible.
—Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach (Austrian Novelist)

Sometimes the best gain is to lose.
—George Herbert (Welsh Anglican Poet)

The habit of being happy enables one to be freed, or largely freed, from the domination of outward conditions.
—Robert Louis Stevenson (Scottish Novelist)

The powerful exact what they can; the weak grant what they must.
—Thucydides

A few observations and much reasoning lead to error; many observations and a little reasoning to truth.
—Alexis Carrel (American Surgeon)

Relationships are like Rome. Difficult to start out, incredible during the prosperity of the ‘Golden Age’, and unbearable during the fall. Then, a new kingdom will come along and the whole process will repeat itself until you come across a kingdom like Egypt…that thrives, and continues to flourish. This kingdom will become your best friend, your soulmate, and your love.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

What is now proven was once only imagined.
—William Blake (English Poet)

Small opportunities are often the beginning of great enterprises.
—Demosthenes

There are things of deadly earnest that can only be mentioned under the cover of a joke.
—John James Procter

True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new.
—Antoine de Saint-Exupery (French Novelist, Aviator)

And when mistakes occur, let them become instructive, not destructive.
—Neal A. Maxwell (American Mormon Religious Leader)

Money is not the point. It is an indication that I have succeeded in the grand adventure of understanding reality.
—George Soros (American Investor)

There is a courageous wisdom; there is also a false, reptile prudence, the result not of caution but of fear.
—Edmund Burke (Irish Political leader)

My creed is this: Happiness is the only good. The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now. The way to be happy is to make others so.
—Robert G. Ingersoll (American Atheist Politician)

To know what we know what we know, and that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge.
—Confucius (Chinese Philosopher)

Happiness is a thing to be practiced, like the violin.
—John Lubbock

Take yourself as you are, whole, and do not try to live by one part alone and starve the other.
—Janet Erskine Stuart (English Catholic Nun)

The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
—George Washington Burnap

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
—Mohandas K. Gandhi (Indian Hindu Political leader)

Coaches who can outline plays on a black board are a dime a dozen. The ones who win get inside their player and motivate.
—Vince Lombardi, Jr.

The ideal of beauty is simplicity and tranquility.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

You cannot govern the creative impulse; all you can do is to eliminate obstacles and smooth the way for it.
—Kimon Nicolaides

The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.
—Archilochus

Zeal will do more than knowledge.
—William Hazlitt (English Essayist)

Everything you need for your better future and success has already been written. And guess what? It’s all available. All you have to do is go to the library.
—Jim Rohn (American Entrepreneur)

The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That’s real glory. That’s the essence of it.
—Vince Lombardi (American Sportsperson)

A disciplined conscience is a man’s best friend.—It may not be his most amiable, but it is his most faithful monitor.
—Austin Phelps (American Presbyterian Clergyman)