Inspirational Quotations

Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

The sense of humor is the oil of life’s engine. Without it, the machinery creaks and groans. No lot is so hard, no aspect of things is so grim, but it relaxes before a hearty laugh.
—George Spring Merriam

Think big, think fast, think ahead. Ideas are noone’s monopoly.
—Dhirubhai Ambani (Indian Businessperson)

A ship ought not to be held by one anchor, nor life by a single hope.
—Epictetus (Ancient Greek Philosopher)

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
—Edgar Allan Poe (American Poet)

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.
—John F. Kennedy (American Head of State)

The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions.
—William F. Scolavino

It is not what he has, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

He who knows that as both in one, the knowledge and the ignorance, by the ignorance crosses beyond death and by the knowledge enjoys immortality.
—Isha Upanishad

The most unfair practice is the equal treatment of unequals.
—Russ Walden

Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (English Poet)

To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.
—Tryon Edwards (American Theologian)

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Among the things you can give and still keep are your word, a smile, and a grateful heart.
—Zig Ziglar (American Author)

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (American Philosopher)

They can take, by force as the case too often proves to be, the products of your energy. they can plunder what you have sown, by force as the case too often proves to be. but that you have produced, that you have sown anything at all, these are circumstances over which you, and no other, are the master.
—Unknown

It is not what he has, or even what he does which expresses the worth of a man, but what he is.
—Henri Frederic Amiel (Swiss Philosopher)

Between the wish and the thing, life lies waiting.
—Common Proverb

The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.
—Emile Zola (French Novelist)

In all things it is better to hope than to despair.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German Poet)

The virtue of obedience makes the will supple… it inspires the courage with which to fulfill the most difficult tasks.
—John Vianney (French Catholic Priest)

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you’ll abort it if you do. Be patient and you’ll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait.
—Robert A. Heinlein (American Novelist)

He that chooses his own path needs no map.
—Christina, Queen of Sweden (Swedish Monarch)

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.
—Ask Ann Landers

Thoughts are but dreams till their effects be tried.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Hail thy brother’s boat across, and lo! thine own has reached the shore.
—Indian Proverb

Refuse to fall down. If you cannot refuse to fall down, refuse to stay down. If you cannot refuse to stay down, lift your heart toward heaven, and like a hungry beggar, ask that it be filled, and it will be filled. You may be pushed down. You may be kept from rising. But no one can keep you from lifting your heart toward heaven.
—Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Abandon the crowd of distractions and confusions, and rest in the boundless state without grasping or disturbance; firm in two practices: visualization and complete, at this time of meditation, one-pointed, free from activity. Fall not into the power of confused emotions.
—Tibetan Proverb

When you judge others,
you do not define them, you define yourself.
—Earl Nightingale (American Motivational Speaker)

Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others.
—Jack Welch (American Businessperson)

Words are just words and without heart they have no meaning.
—Chinese Proverb

A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist.
—Louis Nizer

We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude.
—Cynthia Ozick

The process of living is the process of reacting to stress.
—Stanley J. Sarnoff (American Surgeon)

I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things… I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

One can have no smaller or greater mastery than mastery of oneself.
—Leonardo da Vinci (Italian Polymath)

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the food taste better, and the humour richer, because they are there.
—Judith Viorst (American Psychoanalyst)

Don’t let life discourage you; everyone who got where he is had to begin where he was.
—Richard L. Evans (American Mormon Religions Leader)

Genuinely feeling successful is possible when you detach yourself from the things you desire and allow them to flow to you—and through you.
—Wayne Dyer (American Motivational Writer)

Never forget that life can only be nobly inspired and rightly lived if you take it bravely and gallantly, as a splendid adventure in which you are setting out into an unknown country, to face many a danger, to meet many a joy, to find many a comrade, to win and lose many a battle.
—Annie Besant (British-born Indian Theosophist)

Hard work performed in a disciplined manner will in most cases keep the worker fit and also prolong his life.
—Mokshagundam Visvesvaraya (Indian Engineer)

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.
—Elbert Hubbard (American Writer)

Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
—Leo Buscaglia (American Motivational Speaker)

‘If something’s free, I’ll take two,’ a mentor of mine once said. His point was that people don’t value things they don’t pay for.
—Edwin Feulner (American Economist)

A great mentor is one who aims for others’ abilities to surpass his own.
—Unknown

We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. None else has the blame, none has the praise.
—Swami Vivekananda (Indian Hindu Mystic)

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.
—Laozi (Chinese Philosopher)

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (American Head of State)

Throughout his life, a wise man engages in practice of all his useful, rarely used skills, many of them outside his discipline, as a sort of duty to his better self. If he reduces the number of skills he practices and, therefore, the number of skills he retains, he will naturally drift into error from man with a hammer tendency. … Skills of a very high order can be maintained only with daily practice.
—Charlie Munger

A cheerful thought in you produces cheerful thoughts in others. You are filled with joy and intense delight when you see a batch of hilarious children playing mirthfully and dancing in joy.
—Sivananda Saraswati

Be prepared to take some shit in life; just do not take more than a mouthful at a time.
—Movie: Forrest Gump

The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones but in the echoes of our hearts.
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (American Physician)

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, And things unknown propos’d as things forgot.
—Alexander Pope (English Poet)

Meditation consists in conducting consciousness beyond the point where it is the consciousness of a finite body or a finite mind, transferring the focus from level to level without losing its continuity or form.
—Vilayat Inayat Khan (British Sufi Mystic)

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
—William Ellery Channing

It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interested in who you were and what you had to say.
—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot (American Sociologist)

To be yourself is an achievement in itself.
—Anonymous

Concern over criticism clogs creativity.
—Duane Alan Hahn

The tragedy of life is not that man loses,
but that he almost wins.
—Heywood Hale Broun (American Journalist)

Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.
—John Kotter (American Academic)

Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe.
—Winston Churchill (British Head of State)

The fraction of life can be increased in value not so much by increasing your numerator as by lessening your denominator. Nay, unless my algebra deceives me, unity itself divided by zero will give infinity.
—Thomas Carlyle (Scottish Writer)

Men are like pillow-cases. The colour of one may be red, that of another blue, and that of the third black; but all contain the same cotton within. So it is with man; one is beautiful, another is ugly, a third holy , and a fourth wicked; but the Divine Being dwells in them all.
—Ramakrishna Paramahamsa (Indian Hindu Philosopher)

Wisely and slow;—they stumble that run fast.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

Life is not holding a good hand; life is playing a poor hand well.
—Danish Proverb

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.
—Niels Bohr (Danish Physicist)

Life is the only real counselor; wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissue.
—Edith Wharton

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.
—Niels Bohr (Danish Physicist)

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Charity sees the need, not the cause.
—German Proverb

It is the nature of man to rise to greatness if greatness is expected of him.
—John Steinbeck (American Novelist)

Teach children to use SPICE – and use it yourself.|S-Skill building.|P-Problem solving.|I-Imagination.|C-Communication.|E-Ego building.
—Unknown

The distance is nothing; it is only the first step that is difficult.
—Marie Anne de Vichy-Chamrond, marquise du Deffand (French Socialite)

Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody else expects of you. Never excuse yourself. Never pity yourself. Be a hard master to yourself—and be lenient to everybody else.
—Henry Ward Beecher (American Protestant Clergyman)

On a long journey of human life, faith is the best of companions; it is the best refreshment on the journey; and it is the greatest property.
—Buddhist Teaching

It would be a blessing if each person could be blind and deaf for a few days during his adult life. It makes him appreciate sight and the joy of sound.
—Helen Keller (American Author)

The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start. The fellow who sits still and does just what he is told will never be told to do big things.
—Charles M. Schwab (American Businessperson)

I don’t like to lose, and that isn’t so much because it is just a football game, but because defeat means the failure to reach your objective. I don’t want a football player who doesn’t take defeat to heart, who laughs it off with the thought, Oh, well, there’s another Saturday.” The trouble in American life today, in business as well as in sports, is that too many people are afraid of competition. The result is that in some circles people have come to sneer at success if it costs hard work and training and sacrifice.”
—Knute Rockne

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
—Margaret Mead (American Anthropologist)

The time which we have at our disposal every day is elastic; the passions that we feel expand it, those that we inspire contract it; and habit fills up what remains.
—Marcel Proust (French Novelist)

The truth is more important than the facts.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (American Architect)

No life can be barren which hears the whisper of the wind in the branches, or the voice of the sea as it breaks upon the shore; and no soul can lack happiness looking up to the midnight stars.
—William Winter

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.
—Albert Einstein (German-born Theoretical Physicist)

Professional success requires more than talent. Among other things, it requires drive, initiative, commitment, involvement, and–above all–enthusiasm.
—Tom Peters (American Management Consultant)

Groups become great only when everyone in them, leaders and members alike, is free to do his or her absolute best.
—Warren Bennis (American Scholar)

A good rule for going through life is to keep the heart a little softer than the head.
—Anonymous

You are neither right nor wrong because the crowd disagrees with you. You are right because your data and reasoning are right.
—Benjamin Graham (American Investor)

Personal leadership is the process of keeping your vision and values before you and aligning your life to be congruent with them.
—Stephen Covey (American Management Consultant)

Everybody pities the weak; jealousy you have to earn.
—Arnold Schwarzenegger (Austrian-born American Actor)

His labour is a chant,|His idleness a tune;|Oh, for a bee’s experience|Of clovers and of noon.
—Emily Dickinson (American Poet)

The country needs and, unless I mistake its temper, the country demands bold, persistent experimentation. It is common sense to take a method and try it; if it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something. The millions who are in want will not stand by silently forever while the things to satisfy their needs are within easy reach.
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (American Head of State)

Hold a true friend with both hands.
—African Proverb

Whate’er’s begun in anger ends in shame.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

If a man be gracious to strangers, it shows that he is a citizen of the world, and his heart is no island, cut off from other islands, but a continent that joins them.
—Francis Bacon (English Philosopher)

Whate’er’s begun in anger ends in shame.
—Benjamin Franklin (American Political leader)

Rarely do we find men who willingly to engage in hard, solid thinking. There is an almost universal quest for easy answers and half-baked solutions. Nothing pains some people more than having to think.
—Martin Luther King, Jr. (American Civil Rights Leader)

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.
—Unknown

Cautious, careful people always casting about to preserve their reputation or social standards never can bring about reform. Those who are really in earnest are willing to be anything or nothing in the world’s estimation, and publicly and privately, in season and out, avow their sympathies with despised ideas and their advocates, and bear the consequences.
—Susan B. Anthony (American Civil Rights Leader)

There is not one wise man in twenty that will praise himself.
—William Shakespeare (British Playwright)

When I tell the truth, it is not for the sake of convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those that do.
—William Blake (English Poet)

If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
—Eddie Rickenbacker (American Military Leader)