Be Inspired

In need for some inspiration? Reading and thinking about quotes from great people does the trick for me. Enjoy!

Inspiring Quotes On Various Topics

“To laugh often and love much… to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others… to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived… this is to have succeeded.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“This is what you shall do: Love the Earth and sun and animals. Despise riches… Stand up for the stupid and crazy… and your very flesh shall be a great poem…” – Whitman

“Uncertainty and mystery are energies of life. Don’t let them scare you unduly, for they keep boredom at bay and spark creativity.” – R.I. Fitzhenry

“I am learning all the time. The tombstone will be my diploma.” – Eartha Kitt

“Travel is fatal to prejudice.” – Mark Twain

“I live on Earth at present, and I don’t know what I am. I know that I am not a category. I am not a thing — a noun. I seem to be a verb, an evolutionary process — an integral function of the universe.” – Buckminster Fuller

“Talent develops in tranquility, character in the full current of human life.” – J. W. von Goethe

“The shortest answer is doing.” – Lord Herbert

“Talk doesn’t cook rice.” – Chinese Proverb

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle

“Everything has been figured out, except how to live.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” – Mark Twain

“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” – Og Mandino

“Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men.” – J.W. Goethe

“Something we were withholding made us weak until we found it was ourselves.” – Robert Frost

“Do something worth remembering.” – Elvis Presley

“I am looking for a lot of men who have infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done” – Henry Ford

“None of us will ever accomplish anything excellent or commanding except when he listens to this whisper which is heard by him alone.” – R.W. Emerson

“Waste not fresh tears over old griefs.” – Euripides

“The nature of rain is the same and yet it produces thorns in the marsh and flowers in the garden.” – Arab saying

“Every excuse is a misalignment between the lesson and the learner.” – Wayne Dyer

“There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.” – Nelson Mandela

“What lies behind us and what lies before of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The most beautiful and most profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the source of all art and science. So to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” – Albert Einstein

“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“One of the sanest, surest, and most generous joys of life comes from being happy over the good fortune of others.” – Robert A. Heinlein

“Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain — and most fools do.” – Ben Franklin

“Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” – Martin Luther King

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Decision with full commitment has power in it. It is our hesitancy, which causes a lot of resistance and friction that slows us down.” – Michael Simmons

In times of bad stuff happening to me I like remembering Khalil Gibran’s words:
“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?” – Khalil Gibrain

“The darkness of the whole world cannot swallow the glowing of a candle.” – Robert Altinger

“A candle is not diminished by giving another candle light.” – Earl Nightingale

“People don’t ask for facts in making up their minds. They would rather have one good, soul-satisfying emotion than a dozen facts.” – Robert Keith Leavitt

“Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swiiimming, swiiimming, swiiimming.” – Dori from “Finding Nemo”

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” – Mark Twain

“Dance like nobody’s watching; love like you’ve never been hurt. Sing like nobody’s listening; live like it’s heaven on earth.” – Mark Twain

“Obstacles are not opposing you, but merely & gently re-routing you.” – Neale Donald Walsch

Integrity

“He who closes his ears to the views of others shows little confidence in the integrity of his own views.” – William Congreve

“One of the truest tests of integrity is its blunt refusal to be compromised.” – Chinua Achebe

Success

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” – Vincent Van Gogh

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

”A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley

“The world stands aside to let anyone pass who knows where he is going.” – David Jordan

“He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.” – Chinese Proverb

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” – Thomas Edison

“Don’t be afraid to give your best to what seemingly are small jobs. Every time you conquer one it makes you that much stronger. If you do the little jobs well, the big ones tend to take care of themselves.” – Dale Carnegie

“Frustration is a sign of the intensity of your commitment—if you didn’t care, you wouldn’t care enough to fuel feelings of frustration.” – Spike Humer

“You achieve mastery by practicing and experimenting while you suck… until you no longer suck.” – Steve Pavlina

“Just keep sucking until you suck-seed.” – Jack Bennett, in response to the one above, a slight adaptation of the following one:

“If at first you don’t succeed, keep on suckin’ til ya do suck seed!” – Curly (MOVIE MANIACS, 1936)

Happiness

“The one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change.” – Confucius

“The best things in life aren’t things.” – Art Buchwald

“Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.” – Theodor Seuss Geisel

“Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.” – Denis Waitley

Love and Connection

“If they’re in your life, love them.” – Mike Dooley

“Grind yourself, strip yourself down to blind loving silence; stay there, until you see you are gazing at the Light with its own ageless eyes.” – Rumi

“A closed heart heals very slowly, but an open heart heals quickly.” – Steve Pavlina

“We should consider every day lost on which we have not, at least once, told someone how much we love them. And we should make everyday an opportunity to give a stranger a compliment.” – Tom Hill

“Love is a lot like dancing… you just surrender to the music.” – unknown (found at @ktotheb)

Freedom

“Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.” – Helen Keller

Courage

“The world makes way for the man (or woman) who knows where he is going.” – R.W. Emerson

Humorous Ones

“There are some days when no matter what I say it feels like I’m far away in another country & whoever is doing the translating has had far too much to drink.” – Brian Andreas

“I hope life isn’t a big joke, because I don’t get it.” – Jack Handey

“Hay is more acceptable to an ass than gold.” – Latin Proverb

“Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.” – Josh Billings, humorist

“Who says that worry doesn’t help? It certainly does help. Every time I worry about something it doesn’t happen!” – Unknown (from “Awareness” by Tony de Mello)

“The neurotic is a person who worries about something that did not happen in the past. He’s not like us normal people who worry about things that will not happen in the future.” – Unknown (from “Awareness” by Tony de Mello)

“When the sage points to the moon, all the idiot sees is the finger.” – Eastern saying

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” – Albert Einstein

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein

“Clearly someone has to do something, and it’s just pathetic that it has to be us.” - Jerry Garcia

Treatment of Animals

“You have dined, and however scupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“As long as there are slaughterhouses… there will be battlefields.” – Leo Tolstoy

… more to come …