“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
George Eliot (1819–1880) English novelist, journalist and translator
Positive quotes
A collection of quotes on the topic of hope, life, faith, cute.
Best positive quotes
“I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.”
C.G. Jung (1875–1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology
Variant: I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.
“Believe you can and you're halfway there.”
Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919) American politician, 26th president of the United States
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom.”
Emile Zola book Au Bonheur des Dames
Source: The Ladies' Paradise
“If I got rid of my demons, I’d lose my angels.”
Tennessee Williams (1911–1983) American playwright
Source: Conversations with Tennessee Williams
“There is no way to happiness. Happiness is the way.”
Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist
“You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.”
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
Positive quotes
“Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Georges Duhamel in THE HEART'S DOMAIN (1919). As it was composed in French, the wording in English may vary in translation. Theodore Geisel / Dr. Seuss was born in 1904, and would have been about 15 years old at the time that it was published. The full text can be found at the link below: We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that trans-figuration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.
Misattributed
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Variant: When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
“It’s better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.”
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
Variant: Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring.
“Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end.”
John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter
Also found with the alternative spelling: Everything is okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end<br>Found anonymously on Usenet in 2000 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=alt.support.divorce/gKiyfcAYreo/jjuc6KTu_NAJ. First known attribution to Lennon is from 2011 https://groups.google.com/forum/message/raw?msg=stow-ma-apple-barn/45MNk9KiGsY/vaq6pr8hgI0J. <br class="br">Disputed <br class="br">Variant: Everything is OK in the end. If it's not OK, it's not the end.
“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”
Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece
Book III, ch. 23.
Discourses
“Always turn a negative situation into a positive situation.”
Michael Jordan (1963) American retired professional basketball player and businessman
“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”
Max Planck (1858–1947) German theoretical physicist
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
“Try to be a rainbow in someone's cloud.”
Maya Angelou book Letter to My Daughter
Variant: Be a rainbow in somebody else's cloud.
Source: Letter to My Daughter
“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet
“Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else.”
Judy Garland (1922–1969) actress, singer and vaudevillian from the United States
As quoted in Business Etiquette for the Nineties : Your Ticket to Career Success (1992) by Lou Kennedy, p. 8
Variant: Always be a first rate version of yourself and not a second rate version of someone else.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Oscar Wilde Lady Windermere's Fan
Lord Darlington, Act III
Source: Lady Windermere's Fan (1892)
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity
Letter to his son Eduard (5 February 1930), as quoted in Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (2007), p. 367
1930s
“The good life is a process, not a state of being. It is a direction not a destination.”
Carl R. Rogers (1902–1987) American psychologist
Person to person: The problem of being human: A new trend in psychology (1967)
Source: page 187.
“The best way to cheer yourself is to try to cheer someone else up.”
Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist
Variant of this quote "The best way to cheer yourself is to cheer somebody else up." is misattributed to Albert Einstein.
Source: According Quote Investigator Mark Twain did write a version of this saying in a personal notebook in 1896, and it was published by 1935 in “Mark Twain’s Notebook”. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/12/21/cheer-somebody/
“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer
Variant: You must give up the life you planned in order to have the life that is waiting for you.
“Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting!”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
Variant: Today is your day, your mountain is waiting. So get on your way.
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.”
Herman Melville (1818–1891) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet
Hawthorne and His Mosses (1850)
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness.
Context: It is better to fail in originality, than to succeed in imitation. He who has never failed somewhere, that man can not be great. Failure is the true test of greatness. And if it be said, that continual success is a proof that a man wisely knows his powers, — it is only to be added, that, in that case, he knows them to be small. Let us believe it, then, once for all, that there is no hope for us in these smooth pleasing writers that know their powers.
“All you need is the plan, the road map, and the courage to press on to your destination.”
Earl Nightingale (1921–1989) American motivational speaker
“Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.”
Nora Ephron (1941–2012) Film director, author screenwriter
Variant: Above all, be the heroine of your own life, not the victim.
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.”
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
“Every day may not be good…
but there's something good in every day”
Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) American historian
“Why fit in when you were born to stand out?”
Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books
“Whoever is happy will make others happy.”
Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary
Source: The Diary of a Young Girl
“There is another world, but it is in this one.”
Paul Éluard (1895–1952) French poet
Il y a assurément un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci...
Œuvres complètes, vol. 1, Gallimard, 1968.
“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
This quote is often misattributed to Lincoln. The earliest instance that Quote Investigator could locate was "in an advertisement in 1947 for a book about aging by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D". The advertisement for “The Second Forty Years” which ran in the Chicago Tribune newspaper read like this: The important thing to you is not how many years in your life, but how much life in your years! (Compare 1947 March 16, Chicago Tribune, “How Long Do You Plan to Live?”, [Advertisement for the book "The Second Forty Years" by Edward J. Stieglitz, M.D.], p. C7, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest)). Source of misattribution: It’s Not the Years in Your Life That Count. It’s the Life in Your Years - Abraham Lincoln? Adlai Stevenson? Edward J. Stieglitz? Anonymous? by Quote Investigator on July 14, 2012 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/07/14/life-years-count/ <br class="br">To my way of thinking it is not the years in your life but the life in your years that count in the long run. <br class="br">Adlai Stevenson II, Address at Princeton University, "The Educated Citizen" (22 March 1954) http://infoshare1.princeton.edu/libraries/firestone/rbsc/mudd/online_ex/stevenson/adlai1954.html. This has also been paraphrased "What matters most is not the years in your life, but the life in your years" and misattributed to Abraham Lincoln and Mae West. <br class="br">Adlai Stevenson II, "If I Were Twenty-One" in Coronet (December 1955). <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: It is not the years in your life but the life in your years that counts.
“No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.”
Aesop book The Lion and the Mouse
The Lion and the Mouse.
Variant: No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
“Do what you have to do, to do what you want to do.”
Denzel Washington (1954) actor, screenwriter, director, producer
Variant: Do what you gotta do so you can do what you wanna do.
“You are what you believe yourself to be.”
Paulo Coelho book The Witch of Portobello
Source: The Witch of Portobello (2007), p. 152.
Context: You are what you believe yourself to be.
Don't be like those people who believe in "positive thinking" and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything, it's merely a question of believing.
Believe.
“Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.”
Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist
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
“We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey”
Kenji Miyazawa (1896–1933) Japanese poet and author of children's literature
“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn’t hurt.”
Charles M. Schulz (1922–2000) American cartoonist
“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.”
Zora Neale Hurston book Their Eyes Were Watching God
Source: Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), Ch. 3, p. 21.
“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“The power of imagination makes us infinite.”
John Muir (1838–1914) Scottish-born American naturalist and author
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.
“Success is getting what you want..
Happiness is wanting what you get.”
Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
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.”
Wayne W. Dyer (1940–2015) American writer
“I attribute my success to this — I never gave or took any excuse.”
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) English social reformer and statistician, and the founder of modern nursing
As quoted in The Gigantic Book of Teachers' Wisdom (2007) by Frank McCourt and Erin Gruwell, p. 410
“You cannot change what you are, only what you do.”
Philip Pullman book Northern Lights
Source: His Dark Materials, The Golden Compass (1995), Ch. 18 : Fog and Ice
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
Often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt without an original source in her writings, for example in the introduction to It Seems to Me : Selected Letters of Eleanor Roosevelt (2001) by Leonard C. Schlup and Donald W. Whisenhunt, p. 2 http://books.google.com/books?id=UeFWjTMcLZYC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false. But archivists have not been able to find the quote in any of her writings, see the comment from Ralph Keyes in The Quote Verifier above. <br class="br">Disputed
“We all have an unsuspected reserve of strength inside that emerges when life puts us to the test.”
Isabel Allende (1942) Chilean writer
Source: Island Beneath the Sea
“I avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.”
Charlotte Brontë (1816–1855) English novelist and poet
15 January, 1849. As quoted in Elizabeth Gaskell The life of Charlotte Brontë (1870), p. 285
“I would rather die of passion than of boredom”
Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)
Not by van Gogh, but from Emile Zola's novel The Ladies' Paradise (1883)
Misattributed
“Be Yourself. Everyone Else Is Already Taken.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) Irish writer and poet
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
“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
Bruce Lee (1940–1973) Hong Kong-American actor, martial artist, philosopher and filmmaker
As translated by Katharine Lyttelton, in Joubert : A Selection from His Thoughts (1899)
Source: Striking Thoughts (2000), p. 121; this likely derives from the observation of Joseph Joubert: The goal is not always meant to be reached, but to serve as a mark for our aim.
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
Letter to Isham Reavis (5 November 1855)
1850s
Context: If you are resolutely determined to make a lawyer of yourself, the thing is more than half done already. It is but a small matter whether you read with anyone or not. I did not read with anyone. Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading. I read at New Salem, which never had three hundred people living in it. The books, and your capacity for understanding them, are just the same in all places.... Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed, is more important than any other one thing.
“Life is to be lived, not controlled.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist
“You can have it all. Just not all at once.”
Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist
“Success is getting what you want; happiness is wanting what you get.”
Ingrid Bergman (1915–1982) Film actress from Sweden
“No! Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”
George Lucas (1944) American film producer
Source: The Star Wars Trilogy
“Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.”
Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) American mythologist, writer and lecturer
Variant: Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.
“Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.”
Bertrand Russell book The Conquest of Happiness
Source: 1930s, The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
“Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.”
Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States
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.
“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.”
Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) Bengali polymath
45 <br class="br"> The Gardener http://www.spiritualbee.com/love-poems-by-tagore/ (1915)
“Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be.”
Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love
This derives from a folk proverb sometimes attributed to Clementine Paddleford, but in use as an "old proverb" as early as 1908, when Paddeford was only 10 years old.
Misattributed
Source: Eat, Pray, Love
“Go as far as you can see and you will see further.”
Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker
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.
“Think big thoughts but relish small pleasures.”
H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (1940) American writer
Source: Life's Little Instruction Book
“If you believe that life is worth living then your belief will create the fact.”
Arthur Miller (1915–2005) playwright from the United States
“As you were, I was. As I am, you will be.”
Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author
Source: Hell's Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga
“It is better to be feared than loved.”
Lewis Carroll book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Source: Alice in Wonderland
Dale Carnegie (1888–1955) American writer and lecturer
“You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”
Stephen King (1947) American author
Source: On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
“With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“Once you choose hope, anything's possible.”
Christopher Reeve (1952–2004) actor, director, producer, screenwriter
“Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius”
Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.”
Babe Ruth (1895–1948) American baseball player
As quoted in Weird Ideas That Work : 11 1/2 practices for promoting, managing, and sustaining innovation (2001) by Robert I. Sutton, p. 95
“The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
From Marthe Troly-Curtin's Phrynette Married (1912). Misattributed to Bertrand Russell due to an ambiguous entry in Laurence J. Peter's Peter’s Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977) http://quoteinvestigator.com/2010/06/11/time-you-enjoy/ <br class="br">Misattributed
Stephen Grellet (1773–1855) American Quaker missionary
This, and variants of it, have been been widely circulated as a Quaker saying since at least 1869, and attributed to Grellet since at least 1893. W. Gurney Benham in Benham's Book of Quotations, Proverbs, and Household Words (1907) states that though sometimes attributed to others, "there seems to be some authority in favor of Stephen Grellet being the author, but the passage does not appear in any of his printed works." It appears to have been published as an anonymous proverb at least as early as 1859, when it appeared in Household Words : A Weekly Journal.
It has also often become attributed to the more famous Quaker William Penn, as well as others including Mahatma Gandhi and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Variants:
I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I will not pass this way again.
Writing of an unnamed Quaker, as quoted in Scott's Monthly Magazine Vol. VII, No. 6 (June 1869, p. 475, edited by William J. Scott
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any fellow human being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
As quoted anonymously in Hour by Hour; or, The Christian's Daily Life (1885), compiled by E.A.L., p. 37, and as "the old Quaker's words" in The Unitarian Vol. VI (July 1891); this version was given the title "Do It Now" in Heart Throbs: In Prose and Verse (1905) by Joe Mitchell Chapple.
I shall pass through this world but once! Any good thing, therefore, that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now, in his name, and for his sake! Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Anonymous quotation on a card, as quoted in The Friend, Vol. 61 (1888) by The Society of Friends, p. 364
I shall pass through this world but once. Any good, therefore, that I can do or any kindness I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
Anonymous quotation on a card, as quoted in A Memorial of a True Life : A Biography of Hugh McAllister Beaver (1898) by Robert Elliott Speer, p. 169
I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do, to any fellow being let me do it now. Let me not defer nor neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.
As quoted anonymously in The Lamp Vol. XXVI (February-July 1903)
Disputed
“The important thing is to be nothing.”
Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter
1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ”
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady of the United States
“Every day may not be good… but there's something good in every day.”
Alice Morse Earle (1851–1911) American historian
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
Laozi (-604) semi-legendary Chinese figure, attributed to the 6th century, regarded as the author of the Tao Te Ching and fou…
“Positive thinking will let you do everything better than negative thinking will.”
Zig Ziglar (1926–2012) American motivational speaker
“We know what we are, but know not what we may be.”
William Shakespeare (1564–1616) English playwright and poet
“The opportunity of your life, it's you.”
Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer
Original: (it) L'occasione della tua vita, sei tu.
Source: prevale.net
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet
As reported by Quoteinvestigator on January 11, 2011 http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/01/11/what-lies-within/ the quote appeared in “Meditations in Wall Street” (1940) by Wall Street trader Henry Stanley Haskins, "a Wall Street trader with a checkered background. The phrase was misattributed because the true author's name was initially withheld. In addition, the assignment of the maxim to a more prestigious individual, e.g., Emerson or Thoreau, made it more attractive and more believable as a nugget of wisdom." Emerson made a number of similar statements — in "The American Scholar," for example, he says "Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds" — which probably increased the likelihood of misattribution. <br class="br">Misattributed <br class="br">Variant: What lies behind us and what lies ahead of us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us. <br class="br">Variant: What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Variant: I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Source: Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
“Arise, awake and Stop not till the Goal is Reached.”
Swami Vivekananda (1863–1902) Indian Hindu monk and phylosopher
Pearls of Wisdom
Source: Meditation and Its Methods According to Swami Vivekananda
Simone de Beauvoir (1908–1986) French writer, intellectual, existentialist philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist
[C]'est la vraie générosité ; vous donnez tout et rien ne semble jamais vous coûter.
All Men are Mortal (1946)