Inspirational quotes

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Source: The Alchemist

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

Variant: Look Toward the stars but keep your feet firmly on the ground.
Source: The Greatest American President: The Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt

Source: Buddha's Little Instruction Book

Source: Anne Frank's Tales from the Secret Annex

Variant: Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living out fears.

Source: I Can Read With My Eyes Shut! (1978)

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

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

As quoted in Blackthink: My Life as Black Man and White Man https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0688011632 (1970) <br class="br">1970s

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)

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.

March 11, 1856
Journals (1838-1859)

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

Variant: Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Source: The All-Girl Filling Station's Last Reunion

Attributed to Cicero in J. M. Braude&#x27;s Speaker&#x27;s Desk Book of Quips, Quotes, &amp; Anecdotes (Jaico Pub. House, 1966), p. 52. <br class="br">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 &quot;On the Pleasure of Reading&quot; http://books.google.com/books?id=0YfQAAAAMAAJ&amp;dq=cicero%20%22room%20without%20books%22%20%2B%22contemporary%20review%22&amp;pg=PA240#v=onepage&amp;q&amp;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 &quot;Cicero described a room without books as a body without a soul&quot; (p. 241). The same sentence may also be found on p. 61 https://archive.org/stream/thepleasuresofli01lubbuoft#page/60/mode/2up of Lubbock&#x27;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 &quot;A Song of Books&quot;. McHenry suggested that Lubbock may have had in mind the words &quot;postea vero quam Tyrannio mihi libros disposuit mens addita videtur meis aedibus&quot; 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&#x27;s Sons 1912) https://archive.org/details/letterstoatticus01ciceuoft &quot;Since Tyrannio has arranged my books, the house seems to have acquired a soul&quot;, 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 &quot;Moreover, since Tyrannio has arranged my books for me, my house seems to have had a soul added to it&quot; (although the Latin word &quot; mens http://athirdway.com/glossa/?s=mens&quot;, rendered &quot;soul&quot; by both Winstedt and Shuckburgh, is more usually translated by the English &quot;mind&quot;). D. R. Shackleton Bailey in Cicero&#x27;s Letters to Atticus (Harmondsworth : Penguin Books 1978), p. 162, translated &quot;And now that Tyrannio has put my books straight, my house seems to have woken to life&quot;. <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: Ut conclave sine libris ita corpus sine anima&quot; A room without books is like a body without a soul

Disputed <br class="br">Variant: No one can make you feel inferior without your permission. <br class="br">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 &quot;Bartlett&#x27;s and other sources say her famous quotation can be found in This is My Story, Roosevelt&#x27;s 1937 autobiography. It can&#x27;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/.

As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410

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.

Variant: Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

Lady of Andros, fragment 50.

As quoted in Coco Chanel : Her Life, Her Secrets (1971) by Marcel Haedrich

Harvard address (2008)

I Never Had It Made (1972) by Robinson, as told to Alfred Duckett; excerpted in &quot;Why &#x27;I Never Had It Made&#x27;: Jackie Robinson&#x27;s Own Story,&quot; http://www.mediafire.com/view/bkybh5wfo9zf32o Newsday (November 5, 1972)

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.

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>

Anonymous advertising copywriter for Menards chain of hardware stores (2000), according to Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/01/20/be-yourself <br class="br">Misattributed

Source: The Merry Wives of Windsor

Variant: Without a struggle, there can be no progress.

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

Source: The Star Wars Trilogy

Variant: great people are those who make others feel that they, too, can become great.

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.

In his letter to Theo, from The Hague, 22 October 1882, http://www.webexhibits.org/vangogh/letter/11/237.htm <br class="br">1880s, 1882

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.

"Andrea del Sarto", line 98.
Men and Women (1855)
Source: Men and Women and Other Poems

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.

Source: The Anti-Christ

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.

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&#x27;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. <br class="br">Variant: If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants. <br class="br">Source: The Correspondence Of Isaac Newton

Source: Meditations

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