Inspirational Quotations

The dog in the kennel barks at his fleas; the dog that hunts does not feel them.
—Chinese Proverb

Success is transient, evanescent. The real passion lies in the poignant acquisition of knowledge about all the shading and subtleties of the creative secrets.
—Konstantin Stanislavski (Russian Actor)

For hope is but the dream of those that wake.
—Matthew Prior (English Poet, Diplomat)

When one is happy there is no time to be fatigued; being happy engrosses the whole attention.
—E. F. Benson (English Novelist, Biographer)

You come to understand that most people are neither for you nor against you, they are thinking about themselves. You learn that no matter how hard you try to please, some people in this world are not going to love you, a lesson that is at first troubling and then really quite relaxing.
—John W. Gardner (American Activist)

We all suffer from the preoccupation that there exists … in the loved one, perfection.
—Sidney Poitier (American Actor, Film Director)

Grace is something you can never get but only be given.
—Frederick Buechner (American Writer, Theologian)

He that forgets his friend is ungrateful to him; but he that forgets his Saviour is unmerciful to himself.
—John Bunyan (English Writer, Preacher)

Thousands of people who say they ‘love’ animals sit down once or twice a day to enjoy the flesh of creatures who have been treated so with little respect and kindness just to make more meat.
—Jane Goodall (British Ethologist)

Youth loves honor and victory more than money.
—Aristotle (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

I began to have an idea of my life, not as the slow shaping of achievement to fit my preconceived purposes, but as the gradual discovery and growth of a purpose which I did not know.
—Marion Milner (‘Joanna Field’) (British Psychoanalyst)

One should have the greatest simplicity of physical habits combined with the largest flexibility. How hard the combination is to attain, and yet how important to a life at once sane and full! It is the same problem present everywhere in living—the problem of unstable equilibrium—of an adjustment that is ever in process and never crystallized.
—Edward Howard Griggs (American Lecturer, Educator)

Let none be rich, and Poverty
Would not be thought so great a Misery.
Our discontent is from comparison;
Were better states unseen, each man would like his own.
—John Norris (British Priest, Philosopher)

An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.
—Constance Rourke (American Historian)

Only as long as a company can produce a desired, worthwhile, and needed product or service, and can command the public, will it receive the public dollar and succeed.
—Curtis L. Carlson (American Businessman)

Men ask for a rainbow in the cloud; but I would ask more from Thee. I would be, in my cloud, myself a rainbow—a minister to others’ joy. My patience will be perfect when it can work in the vineyard.
—George Matheson (Scottish Theologian)

The real meaning of enlightenment is to gaze with undimmed eyes on all darkness.
—Nikos Kazantzakis (Greek Novelist, Statesman)

You can never lose anything that really belongs to you, and you can’t keep that which belongs to someone else.
—Edgar Cayce (American Faith Healer)

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
—Steven Weinberg (American Physicist)

It’s silly to try to escape other people’s faults. They are inescapable. Just try to escape your own.
—Marcus Aurelius (Emperor of Rome, Stoic Philosopher)

There is no human nature that is not good. Therefore there is no innate knowledge that is not good. Innate knowledge is the equilibrium before the feelings are aroused. It is the state of broadness and extreme impartiality. It is the original substance that is absolutely quiet and inactive. And it is possessed by all men.
—Wang Yangming (Chinese Philosopher)

For the most part wisdom comes in chips rather than blocks. You have to be willing to gather them constantly, and from sources you never imagined to be probable. No one chip gives you the answer for everything. No one chip stays in the same place throughout your entire life. The secret is to keep adding voices, adding ideas, and moving things around as you put together your life. If you’re lucky, putting together your life is a process that will last through every single day you’re alive.
—Ann Patchett (American Novelist)

The absent are always to blame.
—Hebrew Proverb

People seldom refuse help, if one offers it in the right way.
—A. C. Benson (English Essayist)

The more I am willing to be myself in all this complexity of life and the more I am willing to understand and accept the realities in myself and in the other person, the more change seems to have been stirred up. It is a very paradoxical thing—that to the degree that each one of us is willing to be himself, then he finds not only himself changing; but he finds that other people to whom he relates are also changing.
—Carl Rogers (American Psychologist)

A short absence is safest.
—Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso) (Roman Poet)

Listen for silence in noisy places; feel at peace in the midst of disturbance; awaken joy when there is no reason.
—Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (American Hindu Teacher)

Feelings are constantly changing. None is dependable for long. You can love someone intensely today, and tomorrow or next month not feel a thing. Except perhaps for the feeling of doubt or depression that what was so beautiful could change so quickly.
—Barry Long (Australian Spiritual Teacher)

A contemporary poet has characterized this sense of the personality of art and of the impersonality of science in these words—‘Art is myself; science is ourselves.’
—Claude Bernard (French Physiologist)

When you’re in love you never really know whether your elation comes from the qualities of the one you love, or if it attributes them to her; whether the light which surrounds her like a halo comes from you, from her, or from the meeting of your sparks.
—Natalie Clifford Barney (American Literary Figure)

The only virtue a character needs to possess between hardcovers, even if he bears a real person’s name, is vitality: if he comes to life in our imaginations, he passes the test.
—Stephen Vizinczey (Hungarian-Canadian Writer)

Serious dancing is a contradiction in terms.
—William Hogarth (English Painter, Engraver)

It is only as we develop others that we permanently succeed.
—Harvey Samuel Firestone (American Industrialist)

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty; assist the reduced fellow man, either by a considerable gift or a sum of money or by teaching him a trade or by putting him in the way of business so that he may earn an honest livelihood and not be forced to the dreadful alternative of holding out his hand for charity. This is the highest step and summit of charity’s golden ladder.
—Moses Maimonides (Jewish Philosopher, Rabbinic Scholar)

Hostage is a crucifying aloneness. It is a silent, screaming slide into the bowels of ultimate despair. Hostage is a man hanging by his fingernails over the edge of chaos, feeling his fingers slowly straightening. Hostage is the humiliating stripping away of every sense and fiber of body and mind and spirit that make us what we are. Hostage is a mutant creation filled with fear, self-loathing, guilt and death-wishing. But he is a man, a rare, unique and beautiful creation of which these things are no part.
—Brian Keenan (Irish-British Writer)

People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have.
—Anne Tyler (American Novelist)

There is no method of reasoning more common, and yet none more blamable, than, in philosophical disputes, to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis, by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality.
—David Hume (Scottish Philosopher, Historian)

You don’t retire in this business. You just notice the phone has not rung for 10 years.
—Warren Mitchell (English Actor)

Scandal is merely the compassionate allowance which the gay make to the humdrum. Think how many blameless lives are brightened by the blazing indiscretions of other people.
—Saki (Hector Hugh Munro) (British Short Story Writer)

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.
—Jane Jacobs (Canadian Urbanologist)

Flight is the only truly new sensation than men have achieved in modern history.
—James Dickey (American Poet, Novelist)

A countenance habitually under the influence of amiable feelings acquires a beauty of the highest order from the frequency with which such feelings stamp their character upon it.
—Sarah Josepha Hale (American Poet)

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors, the men it remembers.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves—or desires.
—Jacquetta Hawkes (English Archaeologist, Writer)

The perfect man employs his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing; it refuses nothing. It receives, but does not keep.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
—Alan Watts (British-American Philosopher)

The good we do to others is spoilt unless we efface ourselves so completely that those we help have no sense of inferiority.
—Honore de Balzac (French Novelist)

If my mind could gain a firm footing, I would not make essays, I would make decisions; but it is always in apprenticeship and on trial.
—Michel de Montaigne (French Essayist)

He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles of his own.
—Aesop (Greek Fabulist)

Frequently, trite ideas or unimaginative translation of those ideas is the result not of poor subject matter but of poor interpretation of a problem.
—Paul Rand (American Graphic Designer)

In God we trust; all others must bring data.
—W. Edwards Deming (American Statistician)

We pick our friends not only because they are kind and enjoyable company, but also, perhaps more importantly, because they understand us for who we think we are.
—Alain de Botton (Swiss-born British Philosopher)

The intelligent investor is a realist who sells to optimists and buys from pessimists.
—Jason Zweig (American Personal Finance Columnist)

Like a tortoise withdrawing five limbs into its shell, those who restrain the five senses in one life will find safe shelter for seven.
—The Thirukkural (Indian Tamil Literary Classic)

Do not desire what is impossible.
—Chilon of Sparta (Spartan Magistrate)

A man is never completely alone in this world. At the worst, he has the company of a boy, a youth, and by and by a grown man—the one he used to be.
—Cesare Pavese (Italian Novelist, Poet)

Just as a man will use a staff to climb a mountain, so should virtue be used in life.
—Yogaswami of Jaffna (Sri Lankan Hindu Religious Leader)

The mind longs for what it has missed.
—Petronius (Roman Courtier)

When we resist change, it’s called suffering. But when we can completely let go and not struggle against it, when we can embrace the groundlessness of our situation and relax into its dynamic quality, that’s called enlightenment.
—Pema Chodron (American Buddhist Nun)

You should know, O man, that the greatest enemy you have in the world is your inclination.
—Bahya ibn Paquda (Jewish Philosopher)

Knowledge born of the finest discrimination takes us to the farthest shore. It is intuitive, omniscient, and beyond all divisions of time and space.
—Patanjali (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

When we grow old, there can only be one regret—not to have given enough of ourselves.
—Eleonora Duse (Italian Actress)

Thoughts, like fleas, jump from man to man, but they don’t bite everybody.
—Stanislaw Jerzy Lec (Polish Aphorist, Poet)

You can’t sit on the lid of progress. If you do, you will be blown to pieces.
—Henry J. Kaiser (American Industrialist)

Do not encumber your mind with useless thoughts. What good is it to brood over the past and fret about the future? Dwell in the simplicity of the present moment. Live in harmony with the dharma. Make it the heart of your life and experience. Be the master of your own destiny.
—Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (Tibetan Buddhist Teacher)

The man who has received a benefit ought always to remember it, but he who has granted it ought to forget the fact at once.
—Demosthenes (Greek Statesman, Orator)

Affectation proceeds from one of these two causes,—vanity or hypocrisy; for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavor to avoid censure, by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues.
—Henry Fielding (English Novelist)

I have a new philosophy. I’m only going to dread one day at a time.
—Charles M. Schulz (American Cartoonist)

The future is a convenient place for dreams.
—Anatole France (French Novelist)

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.
—Ulysses S. Grant (American Head of State)

Stupidity has a knack of getting its way.
—Albert Camus (Algerian-born French Philosopher)

The way to repay a teacher’s compassion and sympathy in teaching you is to apply yourself to learning your lessons well. Only then can you spread the good influence of those lessons to others.
—Thanissaro Bhikkhu (American Buddhist Monk)

To be able to say how much you love is to love but little.
—Petrarch (Italian Scholar)

We write out of revenge against reality, to dream and enter the lives of others.
—Francine du Plessix Gray (American Writer, Literary Critic)

There’s no great loss without some small gain.
—Laura Ingalls Wilder (American Author of Children’s Novels)

Money is human happiness in the abstract; and so the man who is no longer capable of enjoying such happiness in the concrete, sets his whole heart on money.
—Arthur Schopenhauer (German Philosopher)

No ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green which it awakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith.
—Albert Schweitzer (French Theologian)

Even if a snake is not poisonous, it should pretend to be venomous.
—Chanakya Neeti (Anthology of Indian Aphorisms)

I feel about airplanes the way I feel about diets. It seems to me that they are wonderful things for other people to go on.
—Jean Kerr (Irish-American Writer)

A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

Taught from infancy that beauty is woman’s scepter, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.
—Mary Wollstonecraft (English Writer, Feminist)

Heav’n is but the vision of fulfill’d desire. And hell the shadow from a soul on fire.
—Omar Khayyam (Persian Mathematician)

Life is too short for a long story.
—Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (English Aristocrat, Poet)

My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you’re not strictly bound to a linear narrative.
—Tommy Lee Jones (American Actor)

Each of us tries to live in the best way we know how. I want to contribute to the problems of the world as little as possible. I really believe we must find simpler ways to live or society will collapse.
—William Coperthwaite (American Builder, Designer)

We grow with years more fragile in body, but morally stouter, and can throw off the chill of a bad conscience almost at once.
—Logan Pearsall Smith (American-British Essayist)

To live differently, to love differently, to think differently, or to try to. Is the danger of beauty so great that it is better to live without it (the standard model)? Or to fall into her arms fire to fire? There is no discovery without risk and what you risk reveals what you value.
—Jeanette Winterson (English Novelist)

You learn from a conglomeration of the incredible past—whatever experience gotten in any way whatsoever.
—Bob Dylan (American Musician)

It is from the midst of this putrid sewer that the greatest river of human industry springs up and carries fertility to the whole world. From this foul drain pure gold flows forth.
—Alexis de Tocqueville (French Historian, Political Scientist)

Fear is a cloak which old men huddle about their love, as if to keep it warm.
—William Wordsworth (English Poet)

We’ve educated children to think that spontaneity is inappropriate. Children are willing to expose themselves to experiences. We aren’t. Grownups always say they protect their children, but they’re really protecting themselves. Besides, you can’t protect children. They know everything.
—Maurice Sendak (American Writer, Illustrator)

You will see your life for what it really is: a small blip on the canvas of eternity. And you will come to see clearly who you are and the ultimate purpose of your life. “Which is?” “To serve, of course.”
—Robin Sharma (Canadian Writer, Motivational Speaker)

I love the challenge of starting at zero every day and seeing how much I can accomplish.
—Martha Stewart (American Businesswoman)

Several studies have shown that people prefer a pundit who is confident to one who is accurate. Pundits are happy to oblige.
—Morgan Housel (American Financial Journalist, Investor)

A dream is a daring adventure, a journey to carry you far—for when you can hold a dream in your heart, you surely can reach any star! A dream is a beautiful vision that looks beyond what you can see, then lifts you and guides you and grows strong inside you to help you be all you can be. A dream is your door to tomorrow, a secret reflection of you, a threshold that leads to a wonderful future where nothing’s too good to be true.
—Amanda Bradley (American Poet)

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.
—Leonard Bernstein (American Composer, Conductor)

The wife when danger or dishonor lurks, safest and seemliest by her husband stays, who guards her, or with her the worst endures.
—John Milton (English Poet)

The two elements the traveler first captures in the big city are extra human architecture and furious rhythm. Geometry and anguish. At first glance, the rhythm may be confused with gaiety, but when you look more closely at the mechanism of social life and the painful slavery of both men and machines, you see that it is nothing but a kind of typical, empty anguish that makes even crime and gangs forgivable means of escape.
—Federico Garcia Lorca (Spanish Poet)

Conflict can and should be handled constructively; when it is, relationships benefit. Conflict avoidance is *not* the hallmark of a good relationship. On the contrary, it is a symptom of serious problems and of poor communication.
—Harriet B. Braiker (American Psychologist)

An idealist believes the short run doesn’t count. A cynic believes the long run doesn’t matter. A realist believes that what is done or left undone in the short run determines the long run.
—Sydney J. Harris (American Essayist, Drama Critic)

For once a thing is known, it can never be unknown. It can only be forgotten.
—Anita Brookner (English Novelist, Art Historian)

Points become games become sets become tournaments, and it’s all so tightly connected that any point can become the turning point. It reminds me of the way seconds become minutes become hours, and any hour can be our finest. Or darkest. It’s our choice.
—Andre Agassi (American Tennis Player)

It is an undoubted truth, that the less one has to do the less time one finds to do it in. One yawns, one procrastinates, one can do it when one will, and, therefore, one seldom does it all; whereas those who have a great deal of business, must (to use a vulgar expression) buckle to it; and then they always find time enough to do it in.
—Earl of Chesterfield (English Statesman, Man of Letters)

The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go.
—J. P. Morgan (American Financier, Philanthropist)

The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself.
—Thales of Miletus (Greek Philosopher, Mathematician)

Housework is work directly opposed to the possibility of human self-actualization.
—Ann Oakley (English Sociologist, Feminist)

Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself; and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose.
—Immanuel Kant (Prussian German Philosopher)

When you smoke the herb, it reveals you to yourself.
—Bob Marley (Jamaican Musician)

Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.
—George Orwell (English Novelist, Essayist, Journalist)

A work of art is not valued because it changes itself for each person who views it, it retains its own integrity and thus means something unique and marvelous to those who see it.
—Charles A. Reich (American Jurist, Author)

To gain knowledge, we must learn to ask the right questions; and to get answers, we must act, not wait for answers to occur to us.
—Anatol Rapoport (American Mathematical Psychologist)

Look up at the stars, and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.
—Stephen Hawking (English Theoretical Physicist)

Dare to be honest and fear no labor.
—Robert Burns (Scottish Poet, Songwriter)

I’m not totally mad at you. I’m just sad. You’re all locked up in that little world of yours, and when I try knocking on the door, you just sort of look up for a second and go right back inside.
—Haruki Murakami (Japanese Novelist)

Travel is the frivolous part of serious lives and the serious part of frivolous lives.
—Sophie Swetchine (Russian Mystic, Writer)

Strong reasons make strong actions.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Necessity knows no law except to conquer.
—Publilius Syrus (Syrian-born Latin Writer)

Have no fear of moving into the unknown. Simply step out fearlessly knowing that I am with you, therefore no harm can befall you; all is very, very well. Do this in complete faith and confidence.
—Pope John Paul II (Polish Catholic Religious Leader)

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect.
—Carl Sandburg (American Poet, Historian)

What shall I do with this ageing me? Neither floating nor sinking, I drift, tossed by the waves of years.
—Takuboku Ishikawa (Japanese Poet)

A judicious silence is always better than truth spoken without charity.
—Francis de Sales (French Catholic Saint)

The real thinking of woman is pre-eminently practical and applied. It is something we describe as sound common sense, and is usually directed to what is close at hand and personal. In general, it can be said that feminine mentality manifests an undeveloped, childlike, or primitive character; instead of the thirst for knowledge, curiosity; instead of judgment, prejudice; instead of thinking, imagination or dreaming; instead of will, wishing. Where a man takes up objective problems, a woman contents herself with solving riddles; where he battles for knowledge and understanding, she contents herself with faith or superstition, or else she makes assumptions.
—Emma Jung (Swiss Psychoanalyst, Author)

People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.
—Eckhart Tolle (German Spiritual Writer)

Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.
—Thomas Jefferson (American Head of State)

You are one of those obsessed demoniacal creatures who ought to be avoided at all costs; they bring misfortune into the lives of others; they ruin the lives of others. The real good people are humble and silent (like your Kitty is.) But beware, God sees all vanity and pride and you cannot fool him.
—Svetlana Alliluyeva (Russian Defector, Memoirist)

Reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition.
—Karl Marx (German Philosopher, Economist)