Inspirational quotes
page 2
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better, too.”
Source: The Alchemist
“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.”
Variant: Look Toward the stars but keep your feet firmly on the ground.
Source: The Greatest American President: The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt
“All your life, you will be faced with a choice. You can choose love or hate…I choose love.”
“The trouble is, you think you have time.”
Source: Buddha's Little Instruction Book
“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”
Source: Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex
“The best way to predict your future is to create it.”
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
This has become attributed to both Walt Whitman and Helen Keller, but has not been found in either of their published works, and variations of the quote are listed as a proverb commonly used in both the US and Canada in A Dictionary of American Proverbs (1992), edited by Wolfgang Mieder, Kelsie B. Harder and Stewart A. Kingsbury.
Misattributed
“Life is what you make it. Always has been, always will be.”
“The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine.”
“You were born to win, but to be a winner you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win.”
“Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.”
Earliest record is in a circular letter from Hessian Church minister Karl Lotz on 5 October 1944 and modified from a quote by Johanan ben Zakai according to [Landes, Richard Allen, Heaven on Earth: The varieties of the millennial experience, USA, Oxford University Press, 2011, 978-0-19-975359-8, https://books.google.com/books?id=seS-0JTykgoC&pg=PA48, 48]
Ref: en.wikiquote.org - Martin Luther / Disputed
Misattributed
“Have more than you show,
Speak less than you know.”
“Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.”
“Never complain, never explain. Resist the temptation to defend yourself or make excuses.”
“Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late. ”
As quoted in Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0688011632 (1970)
1970s
“Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.”
“Most people are real nice, when you finally see them.”
Pt. 2, ch. 31
Jean Louise (Scout) Finch & Atticus Finch
Source: To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)
Context: "An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..."
"Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."
Source: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657 note: 1940s, Male and Female (1949)
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Actually said by Napoleon Hill, Stone later added the line "...with P.M.A." (Positive Mental Attitude) to the end of this quote.
Misattributed
Variant: Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
“Dream beautiful dreams and then work to make those dreams come true.”
“It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.”
“That man is richest whose pleasures are the cheapest.”
March 11, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)
“Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.”
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
1 September 1875, page 226
John of the Mountains, 1938
Context: How infinitely superior to our physical senses are those of the mind! The spiritual eye sees not only rivers of water but of air. It sees the crystals of the rock in rapid sympathetic motion, giving enthusiastic obedience to the sun's rays, then sinking back to rest in the night. The whole world is in motion to the center. So also sounds. We hear only woodpeckers and squirrels and the rush of turbulent streams. But imagination gives us the sweet music of tiniest insect wings, enables us to hear, all round the world, the vibration of every needle, the waving of every bole and branch, the sound of stars in circulation like particles in the blood. The Sierra canyons are full of avalanche debris — we hear them boom again, for we read past sounds from present conditions. Again we hear the earthquake rock-falls. Imagination is usually regarded as a synonym for the unreal. Yet is true imagination healthful and real, no more likely to mislead than the coarser senses. Indeed, the power of imagination makes us infinite.
Source: House Harkonnen
“Success is getting what you want..
Happiness is wanting what you get.”
Variant: Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.
“Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.”
“Good friends, good books, and a sleepy conscience: this is the ideal life.”
Source: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion
“Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful.”
“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
Attributed to Cicero in J. M. Braude's Speaker's Desk Book of Quips, Quotes, & Anecdotes (Jaico Pub. House, 1966), p. 52.
Dennis McHenry in a 2011 post at theCAMPVS.com http://thecampvs.com/2011/08/03/cicero-on-books-and-the-soul/ identified a source for the exact form of words in the essay "On the Pleasure of Reading" http://books.google.com/books?id=0YfQAAAAMAAJ&dq=cicero%20%22room%20without%20books%22%20%2B%22contemporary%20review%22&pg=PA240#v=onepage&q&f=false by Sir John Lubbock, published in The Contemporary Review, vol. 49 (1886) https://archive.org/details/contemporaryrev55unkngoog, pp. 240–51 https://archive.org/stream/contemporaryrev55unkngoog#page/n250/mode/2up, in which Lubbock wrote that "Cicero described a room without books as a body without a soul" (p. 241). The same sentence may also be found on p. 61 https://archive.org/stream/thepleasuresofli01lubbuoft#page/60/mode/2up of Lubbock's collection The Pleasures of Life. Part I. 18th edition (London and New York : Macmillan and Co. 1890) https://archive.org/details/thepleasuresofli01lubbuoft, in a lecture titled "A Song of Books". McHenry suggested that Lubbock may have had in mind the words "postea vero quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit mens addita videtur meis aedibus" at Cicero, Ad Atticum 4.8, which are translated by E. O. Winstedt on p. 293 https://archive.org/stream/letterstoatticus01ciceuoft#page/292/mode/2up of Cicero: Letters to Atticus I (London : William Heinemann, and New York : G. P. Putnam's Sons 1912) https://archive.org/details/letterstoatticus01ciceuoft "Since Tyrannio has arranged my books, the house seems to have acquired a soul", and by Evelyn Shuckburgh on p. 234 https://archive.org/stream/cu31924012541433#page/n283/mode/2up of The Letters of Cicero. Vol. I. B. C. 68–52 (London : George Bell and Sons 1908) https://archive.org/details/cu31924012541433 "Moreover, since Tyrannio has arranged my books for me, my house seems to have had a soul added to it" (although the Latin word " mens http://athirdway.com/glossa/?s=mens", rendered "soul" by both Winstedt and Shuckburgh, is more usually translated by the English "mind"). D. R. Shackleton Bailey in Cicero's Letters to Atticus (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1978), p. 162, translated "And now that Tyrannio has put my books straight, my house seems to have woken to life".
Disputed
Variant: Ut conclave sine libris ita corpus sine anima" A room without books is like a body without a soul
“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
Disputed
Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission.
Source: Sometimes claimed to appear in her book This is My Story, but in The Quote Verifier by Ralph Keyes (2006), Keyes writes on p. 97 that "Bartlett's and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt's 1937 autobiography. It can't. Quotographer Rosalie Maggio scoured that book and many others by and about Roosevelt in search of this line, without success. In their own extensive searching, archivists at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York, have not been able to find the quotation in This Is My Story or any other writing by the First Lady. A discussion of some of the earliest known attributions of this quote to Roosevelt, which may be a paraphrase from an interview, can be found in this entry from Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/03/30/not-inferior/.
“Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
“I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.”
As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410
“It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it.”
“Live your beliefs and you can turn the world around.”
“If you can't do great things, do small things in a great way.”
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it.”
Context: It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.
“You'll never do a whole lot unless you're brave enough to try.”
“Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it.”
“You never really learn much from hearing yourself speak.”
“To do nothing is the way to be nothing.”
“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
Variant: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.”
“We live, not as we wish to, but as we can.”
Lady of Andros, fragment 50.
“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.”
As quoted in Coco Chanel : Her Life, Her Secrets (1971) by Marcel Haedrich
“Formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.”
“A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”
I Never Had It Made (1972) by Robinson, as told to Alfred Duckett; excerpted in "Why 'I Never Had It Made': Jackie Robinson's Own Story," http://www.mediafire.com/view/bkybh5wfo9zf32o Newsday (November 5, 1972)
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom”
Not by van Gogh, but from Emile Zola's novel The Ladies' Paradise (1883)
Misattributed
Source: Poem "The Road Not Taken"
Context: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.”
Misattributed
Source: This is actually from Zora Neale Hurston, <i>Dust Tracks On the Road,</i> though it is widely attributed to Ms. Angelou's book, <i>I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.</i>
“In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity”
“Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Already Taken.”
Anonymous advertising copywriter for Menards chain of hardware stores (2000), according to Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/20/be-yourself
Misattributed
“Enjoy life. There's plenty of time to be dead.”
“Life is to be lived, not controlled.”
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.”
Variant: Without a struggle, there can be no progress.
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”
“You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don't try.”
As quoted in Incredible Quotations : 230 Thought-Provoking Quotes with Prompts to Spark Students' Writing, Thinking, and Discussion (1997) by Jacqueline Sweeney
Source: The Winner Stands Alone
“Change is inevitable. Growth is optional.”
“No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
Source: The Star Wars Trilogy
“Whether you think you can, or you think you can't — you're right.”
“At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can.”
“Really great people make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
Variant: great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.
“Love people, not things; use things, not people.”
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
Often misquoted as: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." or "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
This quote is not found in the various Lincoln sources which can be searched online (e.g. Gutenberg). Niether does Lincoln appear more generally to use the phrase "making up {one's} mind". The saying was first quoted, ascribed to Lincoln but with no source given, in 1914 by Frank Crane and several times subsequently by him in altered versions. It was later quoted in How to Get What You Want (1917) by Orison Swett Marden (Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1917), 74, again without source. Alternative versions quoted are: "I have found that most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be" and "People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be."
Source: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/10/20/happy-minds/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CPeople%20are%20about%20as%20happy,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D&text=Remember%20Lincoln's%20saying%20that%20%E2%80%9Cfolks,up%20their%20minds%20to%20be.%E2%80%9D
Curiously in later books Crane, e.g. Four Minute Essays, 1919, Adventures in Common Sense, 1920, "21", 1930, Crane mentions other routes to happiness and does not again use this quote.
Marden used a great many quotes in his writings, without giving sources. Whilst sources for many of the quotes can be found, this is not true for all. For instance he mentions another story in which Lincoln says "Madam, you have not a peg to hang your case on"; this also does not seem to found in Lincoln sources.
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.”
In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 22 October 1882, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/237.htm
1880s, 1882
“Go as far as you can see and you will see further.”
Variant: Go so far as you can see and when you get there you will always be able to see farther.
Source: See You at the Top (2000), p. 164; Variant: When obstacles arise, you change your direction to reach your goal; you do not change your decision to get there.
Context: Go so far as you can see and when you get there you will always be able to see farther. … as you head toward your goals, be prepared to make some slight adjustments to your course. You don't change your decision to go — you do change your direction to get there.
“Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for?”
"Andrea del Sarto", line 98.
Men and Women (1855)
Source: Men and Women and Other Poems
“Optimism is the one quality more associated with success and happiness than
any other.”
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe it can achieve.”
p.32 -->
Variant: Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
Source: Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice
Variant: The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything.
“Happiness is the feeling that power increases - that resistance is being overcome.”
Source: The Anti-Christ
“A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.”
From Sex book
Variant: A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want.
“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [dated as 5 February 1675 using the Julian calendar with March 25th rather than January 1st as New Years Day, equivalent to 15 February 1676 by Gregorian reckonings.] A facsimile of the original is online at The digital Library https://digitallibrary.hsp.org/index.php/Detail/objects/9792. The quotation is 7-8 lines up from the bottom of the first page. The phrase is most famous as an expression of Newton's but he was using a metaphor which in its earliest known form was attributed to Bernard of Chartres by John of Salisbury: Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants. Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.
Variant: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.
Source: The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton
As quoted in Secrets of Superstar Speakers: Wisdom from the Greatest Motivators of Our Time (2000) by Lilly Walters, p. 96
Variant: What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.
Source: Invisible Man