50 Quotes That Always Inspired Me
and helped in keeping alive (and realize!) my dreams
“Always dream and shoot higher than you know you can do. Do not bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself.” — William Faulkner
“Help others without any reason and give without the expectation of receiving anything in return.” — Roy T. Bennett
“Be thankful for everything that happens in your life; it’s all an experience.” — Roy T. Bennett
“We all have two lives. The second one starts when we realize that we only have one.” — Tom Hiddleston
“Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.” — Abraham Joshua Heschel
“When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.” — Benjamin Disraeli
“Sometimes to self-discover you must self-destruct.” — Robert M. Drake
“Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.” — Neil Gaiman
“Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.” — Alphonse de Lamartine
“A tamed woman will never leave her mark in the world.” — Robert M. Drake
“How would your life be different if…You stopped allowing other people to dilute or poison your day with their words or opinions? Let today be the day…You stand strong in the truth of your beauty and journey through your day without attachment to the validation of others” — Steve Maraboli
“Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.” — Mark Twain
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.” — Marcus Aurelius
“It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.” — Edgar Allan Poe
“We have been called to heal wounds, to unite what has fallen apart, and to bring home those who have lost their way.” — Francis of Assisi
“I am Me. In all the world, there is no one else exactly like me. Everything that comes out of me is authentically mine, because I alone chose it — I own everything about me: my body, my feelings, my mouth, my voice, all my actions, whether they be to others or myself. I own my fantasies, my dreams, my hopes, my fears. I own my triumphs and successes, all my failures and mistakes. Because I own all of me, I can become intimately acquainted with me. By so doing, I can love me and be friendly with all my parts. I know there are aspects about myself that puzzle me, and other aspects that I do not know — but as long as I am friendly and loving to myself, I can courageously and hopefully look for solutions to the puzzles and ways to find out more about me. However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought, and felt turn out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded. I can see, hear, feel, think, say, and do. I have the tools to survive, to be close to others, to be productive, and to make sense and order out of the world of people and things outside of me. I own me, and therefore, I can engineer me. I am me, and I am Okay.” — Virginia Satir
“I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, I am not what I hope to be in another world; but still I am not what I once used to be, and I am what I am” — John Newton
“How can you trust me, after what your own brother did to you?””Because he was false”, said Damen, “and you are true. I have never known a truer man.” — C.S. Pacat
“Just because you fall once, doesn’t mean you’re fall at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always trust yourself, because if you don’t then who will??” — Marilyn Monroe
“Strong people have a strong sense of self-worth and self-awareness; they don’t need the approval of others.” — Roy T. Bennett
“Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can, there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.” — Sarah Caldwell
“The strongest people find the courage and caring to help others, even if they are going through their own storm.” — Roy T. Bennett
“I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.” — Vincent Van Gogh
“Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.” — Albert Einstein
“Life,” said Marvin dolefully, “loathe it or ignore it, you can’t like it.” — Douglas Adams
“Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes unnoticed. It is all part of the fairy tale.” — Peter S. Beagle
“Nobody is exempt from the trials of life, but everyone can always find something positive in everything even in the worst of times.” — Roy T. Bennett
“Get up, stand up, Stand up for your rights. Get up, stand up, Don’t give up the fight.” — Bob Marley
“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” — Andre Gide
“She is delightfully chaotic; a beautiful mess. Loving her is a splendid adventure.” — Steve Maraboli
“A great human revolution in just a single individual will help achieve a change in the destiny of a nation and, further, can even enable a change in the destiny of all humankind.” — Daisaku Ikeda
“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.” — Lao Tzu
“Maybe your country is only a place you make up in your own mind. Something you dream about and sing about. Maybe it’s not a place on the map at all, but just a story full of people you meet and places you visit, full of books and films you’ve been to. I’m not afraid of being homesick and having no language to live in. I don’t have to be like anyone else. I’m walking on the wall and nobody can stop me.” — Hugo Hamilton
“Remember, if you ever need a helping hand, it’s at the end of your arm, as you get older, remember you have another hand: The first is to help yourself, the second is to help others.” — Sam Levenson
“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” — Horace
“We cannot change what we are not aware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.” — Sheryl Sandberg
“The question is not what you look at, but what you see.” — Henry David Thoreau
“If you live in a past dream, you don’t enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is. There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive. Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self pity, suffering and tears.” — Don Miguel Ruiz
“The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.” — T.S. Eliot
“Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ” — John R Wooden
“We join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move. We shape clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that holds whatever we want. We hammer wood for a house, but it is the inner space that makes it livable. We work with being, but non-being is what we use.” — Lao Tzu
“If you can’t run, you crawl. If you can’t crawl — you find someone to carry you.” — Joss Whedon
“I’ll think of it tomorrow, at Tara. I can stand it then. Tomorrow, I’ll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day.” — Margaret Mitchell
“The further you go, the more you have to be proud of. At the same time, in order to come a long way, you have to be behind to begin with. IN the end, though maybe it’s not how you reach a place that matters. Just that you get there at all.” — Sarah Dessen
“A person must knock on the door. She will find someone opening. On desire, awe, or distress, but the door must be opened. And behind it is a second and third door” — Anis Mansour
“In the external scheme of things, shining moments are as brief as the twinkling of an eye, yet such twinklings are what eternity is made of — moments when we human beings can say “I love you,” “I’m proud of you,” “I forgive you,” “I’m grateful for you.” That’s what eternity is made of: invisible imperishable good stuff.” — Fred Rogers
“When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us.” — Alexander Graham Bell
“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.” — Ovid
“Til shade is gone, til water is gone Into the shadow with teeth bared Screaming defiance with the last breath to spit in Sight blinder's eye on the Last Day.” — Robert Jordan
“Dream as if you will live forever; Live as if you will die today.” — James Dean
