Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes

Inspirational Quotes (alphabetically by surname)

A

"Wisdom is child of pain, and born with many a tear."
- Aeschylus
"I'm not afraid of storms, for I'm learning how to sail my ship."
- Louisa May Alcott
"All that a man achieves and all that he fails to achieve is the direct result of his own thoughts."
- James Allen
"There is no shame in having fallen. Nor any shame in being born into a lowly estate. There is only shame in not struggling to rise. And also shame for not wishing to attain the better. Or not dreaming about it and praying for it."
- Samuel Amalu
"Life is just a mirror, and what you see out there, you must first see inside of you."
- Wally Amos
"Hope is a waking dream."
- Aristotle

B

"One's best success comes after his greatest disappointments."
- Henry Ward Beecher
"We must travel in the direction of our fear."
- John Berryman
"What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: Our life is the creation of our mind."
- Buddha
"Optimism is essential to achievement and it is also the foundation of courage and true progress."
- Nicholas Murray Butler
"We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure."
- Leo F. Buscaglia

C

"One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth doing is what we do for others."
- Lewis Carroll
"If you always give you will always have."
- Chinese Proverb
"If you're not following your heart you’re living someone else’s dream."
- Lyn Christian
"Kites rise highest against the wind, not with it."
- Winston Churchill
"I was complaining that I had no shoes till I met a man who had no feet."
- Confucius
"It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop."
- Confucius
"Regret for wasted time is more wasted time."
- Mason Cooley

D

"Of one thing we can be sure. The quality of our life in the future will be determined by the quality of our thinking."
- Edward de Bono
"How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives."
- Annie Dillard
"All our dreams can come true - if we have the courage to pursue them."
- Walt Disney

E

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."
- Albert Einstein
"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."
- Albert Einstein
"Life wastes itself while we are preparing to live."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Make the most of yourself, for that is all there is to you."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"To laugh often and love much... to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to give one's self... this is to have succeeded."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We judge of man’s wisdom by his hope."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

F

"While we may not be able to control all that happens to us, we can control what happens inside us."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Your past is not your potential. In any hour you can choose to liberate the future."
- Marilyn Ferguson
"You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one."
- James A. Froude

G

"Be a first rate version of yourself, not a second rate version of someone else."
- Judy Garland
"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
- Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss)
"Our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become."
- Barbara Geraci
"Everyone is a house with four rooms: physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.  Unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."
- Rumer Godden
"If you want to have what you have not, you must do what you do not."
- Taro Gold
"I am where I am because I believe in all possibilities."
- Whoopi Goldberg

H

"In adversity, remember to keep an even mind."
- Horace
"The mintage of wisdom is to know that rest is rust, and that real life is in love, laughter, and work."
- Elbert Hubbard
"Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him."
- Aldous Huxley

I
J

"The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind."
- William James
"Obstacles don't have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don't turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it."
- Michael Jordan

K

"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage coaches ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory."
- Herbert Kaufman
"Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step."
- Martin Luther King Jr
"The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy."
- Martin Luther King Jr
"Good humor is a tonic for mind and body."
- Grenville Kleiser

L

"It's not whether you get knocked down, it's whether you get up."
- Vince Lombardi

M

"Encouragement is oxygen to the soul."
- Harvey Mackay
“Desire, ask, believe, receive.”
- Stella Terrill Mann
N

"A strong positive mental attitude will create more miracles than any wonder drug."
- Patricia Neal

O

P

"Purpose is what gives life a meaning."
- Charles Henry Parkhurst
"Have great hopes and dare to go all out for them. Have great dreams and dare to live them. Have tremendous expectations and believe in them."
- Norman Vincent Peale
"Never talk defeat. Use words like hope, belief, faith, victory."
- Norman Vincent Peale
"You may have a fresh start any moment you choose, for this thing that we call 'failure' is not the falling down, but the staying down."
- Mary Pickford
"If, at first, you don't succeed, try again."
- Proverb

Q

R

"Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be."
- Karen Ravn
"It is not easy to find happiness in ourselves, and it is not possible to find it elsewhere."
- Agnes Repplier
"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared."
- Eddie Rickenbacker
"It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives."
- Anthony Robbins
"Everything changes when you change."
- Jim Rohn
"I used to say, 'I sure hope things will change.' Then I learned that the only way things are going to change for me is when I change."
- Jim Rohn

S

"Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy."
- SA'DI
"What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?"
- Dr. Robert Schuller
"True happiness is ... to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future."
- Seneca
"This above all: to thine own self be true."
- William Shakespeare
"To do anything in this world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in, and scramble through as well as we can."
- Sydney Smith
"Think not those faithful who praise all thy words, but those who kindly reprove thy faults."
- Socrates
“Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.”
- Pamela Vaull Starr "Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
"Everyone who got to where he is had to begin where he was."
- Robert Louis Stevenson
T

"I love it when people tell me I can't do something. There's nothing that makes me feel better, because all my life people have said I wasn't going to make it."
- Ted Turner
"Keep away from small people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
- Mark Twain
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore.  Dream.  Discover."
- Mark Twain

U

V

W

"A well-developed sense of humor is the pole that adds balance to your steps as you walk the tightrope of life."
- William Arthur Ward
"I think I began learning long ago that those who are happiest are those who do the most for others."
- Booker T. Washington
"Some people have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."
- Willis Whitney
"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."
- Oscar Wilde
"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
- Oscar Wilde
"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand."
- Woodrow Wilson
"I do not believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process."
- Oprah Winfrey
"Turn your wounds into wisdom."
- Oprah Winfrey
"Nothing carries more potential for change than individual acts of human kindness."
- Jamie Winship
"If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it!"
- Jonathan Winters

X

Y

"Sometimes you just have to take the leap, and build your wings on the way down."
- Kobi Yamada

Z