In the following, I share some quotes I find inspiring. Within each category, the order of quotes represents my interpretation of their implications:
Attitude & Action
“If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires and warm it.” — Lucy Larcom
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being” — Carl Jung
“Always… try to be a little kinder than is necessary.” — J. M. Barrie
“The most worth-while thing is to try to put happiness into the lives of others.” — Robert Baden-Powell
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” — Andy Warhol
“Work out your own salvation. Do not depend on others.” — Buddha
“You have to make it happen.” — Denis Diderot
“There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt
“The undertaking of a new action brings new strength.” — Richard L. Evans
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James
“Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.” — Franz Kafka
“I am prepared for the worst, but hope for the best.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“This is the precept by which I have lived: Prepare for the worst; expect the best; and take what comes.” — Hannah Arendt
“Be great in act, as you have been in thought.” — Jean Paul
“At times I think and at times I am.” — Paul Valery
“Well done is better than well said.” — Benjamin Franklin
“Between saying and doing, many a pair of shoes is worn out.” — Iris Murdoch
“It’s always too early to quit.” — Norman Vincent Peale
“Plodding wins the race.” — Aesop
“One fails forward toward success.” — Charles Kettering
“A will finds a way.” — Orison Swett Marden
Characters
“The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.” — James Joyce
“Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.” — H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.” — Jose Ortega y Gasset
“Without wearing any mask we are conscious of, we have a special face for each friend.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
“There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves.” — Robert Quillen
Perspective & Self-reflection
“It all depends on how we look at things, and not on how they are themselves.” — Carl Jung
“What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens.” — Ellen Glasgow
“Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.” — Washington Irving
“To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.” — J. B. Priestley
“If your only tool is a hammer, all your problems will be nails.” — Mark Twain
“What the human being is best at doing, is interpreting all new information so that their prior conclusions remain intact.” — Warren Buffett
“Men can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as they can from a lack of bread.” — Richard Wright
“A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.” — Joseph Addison
“Neither blame or praise yourself.” — Plutarch
“Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.” — Andre Gide
“Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.” — Henry Miller
“Our entire life – consists ultimately in accepting ourselves as we are.” — Jean Anouilh
“A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.” — Sigmund Freud
“The strength of a person’s spirit would then be measured by how much ‘truth’ he could tolerate, or more precisely, to what extent he needs to have it diluted, disguised, sweetened, muted, falsified.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“The more refined and subtle our minds, the more vulnerable they are.” — Paul Tournier
“I have no methods; all I do is accept people as they are.” — Joan Rivers
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves” — Carl Jung
“It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.” — Eleanor Roosevelt
“If one does not understand a person, one tends to regard him as a fool.” — Carl Jung
“To advise is not to compel.” — Anton Chekhov
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” — Ernest Hemingway
“People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Big words seldom accompany good deeds.” — Charlotte Whitton
“I have noticed that nothing I never said ever did me any harm.” — Calvin Coolidge
“If you have nothing to say, say nothing.” — Mark Twain
“When you doubt, abstain.” — Ambrose Bierce
“When your work speaks for itself, don’t interrupt.” — Henry J. Kaiser
“We have, I fear, confused power with greatness.” — Stewart Udall
“There are too many distractions in this life for quality of thought, and it’s quality of thought, not quantity, that counts.” — Nikola Tesla
Choice & Freewill
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better.” — Albert Camus
“You exist only in what you do.” — Federico Fellini
“The absence of alternatives clears the mind marvelously.” — Henry Kissinger
Life & Experience
“Man – a being in search of meaning.” — Plato
“And that’s the way it is.” — Walter Cronkite
“Life is but thought.” — Sara Teasdale
“To live is to think.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Life consists of what a person is thinking about all day.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson
“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” — Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.” — Oscar Wilde
“Life is a long lesson in humility.” — James M. Barrie
“Man needs difficulties; they are necessary for health” — Carl Jung
“Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble” — Carl Jung
“Change before you have to.” — Jack Welch
“We’re meant to lose people we love. How else would we know how important they are to us?” — Curious Case of Benjamin Button
“To give without any reward, or any notice, has a special quality of its own.” — Anne Morrow Lindbergh
“The return we reap from generous actions is not always evident.” — Francesco Guicciardini
“All of us, at certain moments of our lives, need to take advice and to receive help from other people.” — Alexis Carrel
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.” — Carl Jung
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” — Havelock Ellis
“One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.” — Golda Meir
“With renunciation life begins.” — Amelia Barr
“The more sand that has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.” — Jean Paul
“Time is the best author. It always writes the perfect ending.” — Charlie Chaplin
“Be true to your work, your word, and your friend.” — John Boyle O’Reilly
“We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” — John Dryden
“Solitude vivifies; isolation kills.” — Joseph Roux
“For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.” — Mignon McLaughin
“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of each.” — Henry David Thoreau
“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.” — Horace Walpole
“Wherever you are – be all there.” — Jim Elliot
Education
“I am still learning.” — Michelangelo
“The aim of education is the knowledge not of facts but of values.” — William Ralph Inge
“Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” — Malcolm Forbes
“Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.” — Galileo Galilei
“Nothing beats books for understanding the world.” — Rolf Dobelli
“I am a part of everything that I have read.” — Theodore Roosevelt
“To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.” — Edmund Burke
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” — Aldous Huxley
“A man who gives his children habits of industry provides for them better than by giving them fortune.” — Richard Whately
“Ability has nothing to do with opportunity.” — Napoleon
Words, Writing & Ideas
“Words are but the signs of ideas.” — Samuel Johnson
“Ideas shape the course of history.” — John Maynard Keynes
“People don’t have ideas. Ideas have people.” — Carl Jung
“Words are often seen hunting for an idea, but ideas are never seen hunting for words.” — Josh Billings
“The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.” — Gustave Flaubert
“We try on stories as we try on clothes.” — Max Frisch
“Clear writing is writing that is incapable of being misunderstood.” — Quintilian
“What I’m really concerned about is reaching one person.” — Jorge Luis Borges
Knowledge & Wisdom
“There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.” — Bertrand Russell
“Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.” — Isaac Bashevis Singer
“If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” — Albert Einstein
“All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.” — Juvenal
“Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.” — Alfred Lord Tennyson
“Wisdom outweighs any wealth.” — Sophocles
“No man was ever wise by chance.” — Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“Our happiness depends on wisdom all the way.” — Sophocles
“Metaphors have a way of holding the most truth in the least space.” — Orson Scott Card
Imagination & Vision
“Let your mind alone, and see what happens.” — Virgil Thomson
“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” — Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Reach for the stars.” — Christa McAuliffe
“The possible ranks higher than the actual.” — Martin Heidegger
“True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision.” — Edith Wharton
“Imagination creates reality.” — Richard Wagner
“There is nothing like a dream to create the future.” — Victor Hugo
“Living in dreams of yesterday, we find ourselves still dreaming of impossible future conquests.” — Charles Lindbergh
“The past is really almost as much a work of the imagination as the future.” — Jessamyn West
“Imagination and fiction make up more than three quarters of our real life.” — Simone Weil
“Each day is the scholar of yesterday.” — Publilius Syrus
“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.” — George Will
“Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.” — Leo Rosten
“You can never plan the future by the past.” — Edmund Burke
Dreams
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.” — John Lennon
“Ideologies separates us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.” — Eugene Lonescco
“Dreams are necessary to life.” — Anais Nin
“Dream in a pragmatic way.” — Aldous Huxley