Inspirational Quotes For A Better Living

The Vault Of Inspirational Quotes

Words of Wisdom from Greatest And Most Inspiring Leaders On The Planet

Throughout the years, the people have been modeling and looking to Inspirational Leaders as a source of inspiration for achieving goals for themselves. Inspirational quotes from great leaders have since become daily brain food for people wanting to create better lives for themselves.

This section of Inspiration Words deals with motivational quotes from around the world From anonymous people to the great leaders and thinkers of our society.

Motivational quotes are a great source of inspiration of people searching for personal development and self improvement. By tapping into this market with our huge vault of quotes, you can brand yourself as a leader in this industry.

Best Inspirational Quotes And Motivational Quotes:

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
General Douglas MacArthur

The real leader has no need to lead–
he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don’t take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.
John Quincy Adams

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.
Horace

In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow

I light my candle from their torches.
Robert Burton

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.
Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.
Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle.
Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose’s egg.
James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.
Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there.
H. H. Vreeland

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent.
Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce, do not command.
Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place.
Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche

It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.)
Latin Proverb

Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.
Thomas Carlyle

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.
Polybius

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte

I am only one, But still I am one.
I cannot do everything, But still I can do something;
And because I cannot do everything. I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Edward Everett Hale

Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
Benjamin Disraeli

Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.
Edmund Burke

You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
Shira Tehrani

Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin

If the world seems cold to you, kindle fires to warm it.
Lucy Larcom

“Quotations help us remember the simple yet profound truths that give life perspective and meaning. When it comes to life’s most important lessons, we can all use gentle reminders.”
Chriswell Freeman

“Quotation is the highest compliment you can pay to an author.”
Samuel Johnson

“I quote others only to better express myself.”
Michel Montaigne

“A book of quotations, can never be complete.”
Robert M. Hamilton

“I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation. ”
George Bernard Shaw

“By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.”
Douglas Jerrold

“I pick my favourite quotations and store them in my mind as ready armour, offensive or defensive, amid the struggle of this turbulent existence.”
Robert Burns

“Life itself is a quotation.”
Jorge Luis Borges

“One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.”
Amos Bronson Alcott

“A fine quotation is a diamond on the finger of a man of wit, and a pebble in the hand of a fool.”
Joseph Roux

“It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations. Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations is an admirable work, and I studied it intently. The quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts. They also make you anxious to read the authors and look for more.”
Sir Winston Churchill

“I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.”
Marlene Dietrich

“The next thing to saying a good thing yourself, is to quote one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“A quote can change the way you think about challenges you face.”
Catherine Pulsifer

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it.
Danny Kaye

Bite off more than you can chew, then chew it.
Ella Williams

Thou shalt not be a victim. Thou shalt not be a perpetrator. Above all, thou shalt not be a bystander.
Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.
Hugh Prather

Whether you think you can or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.
Henry Ford

You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’
George Bernard Shaw

Within each of us lies the power of our consent to health and sickness, to riches and poverty, to freedom and to slavery. It is we who control these, and not another.
Richard Bach (Illusions)

Never look down on anybody unless you’re helping him up.
Jesse Jackson

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song.
Maya Angelou

There is no use trying, said Alice; one can’t believe impossible things. I dare say you haven’t had much practice, said the Queen. When I was your age, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
Lewis Carroll

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.
George Bernard Shaw

The journey is the reward.
Chinese Proverb

People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.
Elizabeth Kubler Ross

If you can’t make a mistake, you can’t make anything.
Marva Collins

What the world really needs is more love and less paper work.
Pearl Bailey

I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should appear like a fool but be wise.
Charles de Montesquieu

When I was young, I used to admire intelligent people; as I grow older, I admire kind people.
Abraham Joshua Heschel

The easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.
Pete Seeger

It is surmounting difficulties that makes heroes.
Lajos Kossuth

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.
Tyron Edwards

Minds are like parachutes – they only function when open.
Thomas Dewar

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
Leo Rosten

Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten.
Gucci Slogan

You will never find time for anything. If you want the time, you must make it.
Charles Buxton

If we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin.
Ivan Turgenev

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
Ursula Le Guin

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.
Brian Tracy

One of the best uses of your time is to increase your competence in your key result areas.
Brian Tracy

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.
Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell

Three rules of work: Out of clutter find simplicity;
From discord find harmony;
In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.
Albert Einstein

There are no elevators in the house of success.
H. H. Vreeland

In the confrontation between the stream and the rock, the stream always wins – not through strength, but through persistence.
Buddha

Have your heart in your life’s work, and be stout-hearted. Do something, act always, and do it now. Don’t be afraid. Many a man has been defeated by his doubts—lack of confidence. Take your risks—you cannot eliminate them, you cannot escape them. You can diminish them by dominating them.
Batten’s Wedge

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did.
So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

There is no security in this life. There is only opportunity.
Douglas MacAurthur

Keep away from those who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you believe that you too can become great.
Mark Twain

When one door of happiness closes, another opens:
but often we look so long at the closed door that
we do not see the one which has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

Success seems to be largely a matter of hanging
on after others have let go.
William Feather

Shoot for the moon.
Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
Les Brown

Failure is only the opportunity to begin again more intelligently.
Henry Ford
From Inspiring Adages, Maxims

Opportunities multiply as they are seized.
Sun Tzu

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it. bearing with him the image of a cathedral.
Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitude.
William James

There is nothing impossible to him who will try.
Alexander the Great

There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
Albert Einstein

What we think, we become.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts, we make the world.
The Buddha

If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars.
Rabindranath Tagore

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be.
Now put foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau

Inspiration and genius–one and the same.
Victor Hugo

To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says:
“Leave no stone unturned.”
Edward Bulwer Lytton

If you would create something, you must be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself.
W. C. Doane

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
Benjamin Disraeli

Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
George Eliot

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men do less than they ought,
unless they do all they can.
Thomas Carlyle

Let thy words be few.
Ecclesiastes 5:2 from Words of Wisdom

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
Leon J. Suenes

The power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Anonymous

When I quote others I do so in order to express my own ideas more clearly.
Michel de Montaigne

One must be a wise reader to quote wisely and well.
Amos Bronson Alcott

The maxims of men disclose their hearts.
French Proverb

To select well among old things, is almost equal to inventing new ones.
Nicholas Charles Trublet

I have gathered a posie of other men’s flowers, and nothing but the thread that binds them is my own.
Michel de Montaigne

Proverbs are mental gems gathered in the diamond districts of the mind.
William R. Alger

What gems of painting or statuary are in the world of art, or what flowers are in the world of nature, are gems of thought to the cultivated and the thinking.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Stealing someone else’s words frequently spares the embarrassment of eating your own.
Peter Anderson

A short saying oft contains much wisdom.
Sophocles

It often happens that the quotations constitute the most valuable part of a book.
Vicesimus Knox

A collection of rare thoughts is nothing less than a cabinet of intellectual gems.
William B. Sprague

It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Good sayings are like pearls strung together. – Chinese Proverb

A proverb is to speech what salt is to food. – Arabic Proverb

Proverbs are the cream of a nation’s thought. – Unknown

There is not less wit, not less invention, in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that book. – Pierre Boyle

A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and indisputable truth. Good maxims are the germs of all excellence; when firmly fixed on the memory, they nourish the will. – Joseph Joubert

It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what glorious height we have at last reached.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Time is of no account with great thoughts, which are as fresh today as when they first passed through their authors’ minds ages ago. – Samuel Smiles

Proverbs may be said to be the abridgment of wisdom.
Joseph Joubert

The proverb answers where the sermon fails.
W. G. Simms

Human success is a quotation from overhead.
Charles H. Parkhurst

A well-cultivated mind is, so to speak, made up of all the minds of preceding ages; it is only one single mind which has been educated during all this time.
Bernard de Bovier de Fontenelle

Maxims are the condensed good sense of nations.
Sir J. Mackintosh

Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind, than in the one where they sprung up.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family; a book of condensed thought and striking anecdote, of sound maxims and truthful apothegms. It will impress on your own mind a thousand valuable suggestions, and teach your children a thousand lessons of truth and duty. Such a book is a casket of jewels for your housebold. – Tryon Edwards

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher

The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business–or almost anywhere else for that matter.
Lee Iacocca

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.
Victor Cousins

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi

Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving.
Dennis Waitley

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.
Samuel Butler

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog

The great and glorious masterpiece of man is to know how to live to purpose.
Michel de Montaigne

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?
Robert Browning

The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.
Kahlil Gibran

Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
Aldous Huxley

If you don’t know where you are going, you’ll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before.
Polybius

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Viktor Frankl

The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize.
Richard Monckton Milnes

To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift.
Franklin Roosevelt

There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
Henry Ford

Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca

It is not enough to take steps which may some day lead to a goal; each step must be itself a goal and a step likewise.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Who aims at excellence will be above mediocrity; who aims at mediocrity will be far short of it.
Burmese Saying

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.
Author Unknown

Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark.
David Ogilvy

There are two things to aim at in life; first to get what you want, and after that to enjoy it. Only the wisest of mankind has achieved the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
Plutarch

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
William James

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Solomon Ibn Gabriol

Years teach us more than books.
Berthold Auerbach

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs, which are brief and pithy.
William Penn

The middle course is the best.
Cleobulus

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Huxley

A wise man learns by the mistakes of others, a fool by his own.
Latin Proverb

Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca

Not to know at large of things remote From use, obscure and subtle, but to know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom.
John Milton

By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.
Menander

The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom, in the heart.
William Hazlitt

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
John Tillotson

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
Catherine the Great

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens

One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little.
Alexander Chase

How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer

On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows, In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young

The man of wisdom is never of two minds; the man of benevolence never worries; the man of courage is never afraid.
Confucius

When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us.
Helen Keller

Happiness does not consist in pastimes and amusements but in virtuous activities.
Aristotle

Happiness resides not in possessions and not in gold; the feeling of happiness dwells in the soul.
Democritus

People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest.
George Matthew Allen

In the hopes of reaching the moon men fail to see the flowers that blossom at their feet.
Albert Schweitzer

Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley

There is only one person who could ever make you happy, and that person is you.
David Burns, Intimate Connections

The happiness of life is made up of minute fractions—the little soon-forgotten charities of a kiss, a smile, a kind look, a heartfelt compliment in the disguise of a playful raillery, and the countless other infinitesimals of pleasurable thought and genial feeling.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Happiness consists in activity: such is the constitution of our nature; it is a running stream, and not a stagnant pool.
John M. Good

Men spend their lives in anticipations,—in determining to be vastly happy at some period when they have time. But the present time has one advantage over every other—it is our own. Past opportunities are gone, future have not come. We may lay in a stock of pleasures, as we would lay in a stock of wine; but if we defer the tasting of them too long, we shall find that both are soured by age.
Charles Caleb Colton

Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though ’twere his own.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The chances are that you have already come to believe that happiness is unattainable. But men have attained it. And they have attained it by realising that happiness does not spring from the procuring of physical or mental pleasure, but from the development of reason and the adjustment of conduct to principles.
Arnold Bennett

Happiness is not a matter of events, it depends upon the tides of the mind.
Alice Meynell

Fortify yourself with contentment, for this is an impregnable fortress.
Epictetus

Happiness depends more on the inward disposition of mind than on outward circumstances.
Benjamin Franklin

There is only one way to happiness, and that is to cease worrying things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than attempting to satisfy them.
John Stuart Mills

You’re happiest while you’re making the greatest contribution.
Robert F. Kennedy

Great effort from great motives is the best definition of a happy life.
William Ellery Channing

There is more to life than increasing its speed.
Mahatma Ghandi

The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Henry W. Longfellow

Happiness grows at our own firesides, and is not to be picked in strangers’ gardens.
Douglas Jerrold

Happiness is where we find it, but rarely where we seek it.
J. Petit Senn

To be happy, we must not be too concerned with others.
Albert Camus

Happiness depends upon ourselves.
Aristotle

Try to be happy in this present moment, and put not off being so to a time to come,—as though that time should be of another make from this which has already come and is ours.
Thomas Fuller

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
George Santayana

No man is happy who does not think himself so.
Publilius Syrus

Our minds are as different as our faces: we are all traveling to one destination; –happiness; but few are going by the same road.
Charles Caleb Colton

he way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates

The fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Robert Cushing

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.
Cicero

The only journey is the journey within.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.
Menander

Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small, Be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all.
Juvenal

Men soon the faults of others learn A few their virtues, too, find out;
But is there one—I have a doubt—Who can his own defects discern?
Sanskrit Proverb

Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.
Abd-el-Kadar

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
Lord Chesterfield

If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
Lord Chesterfield

Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.
William Thackeray

He that will not reflect is a ruined man.
Asian Proverb

Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.
Doug Firebaugh

God ever works with those who work with will.
Aeschylus

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Heaven never helps the man who will not act.
Sophocles

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle

Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.
Edward Bulwer Lytton

In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.
Philip Gilbert Hamilton

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Hecato, Greek philosopher

We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.
James Freeman Clarke

To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Plato

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.
Hamerton

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre

Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life.
Herbert Otto

Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly.
Marquise du Deffand

Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself.
A. Bronson Alcott

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin Franklin

If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.
Thomas Edison

A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere.
La Rochefoucauld

Fear less, hope more, eat less, chew more, whine less, breathe more, talk less, say more, hate less, love more, and good things will be yours.
Swedish Proverb

Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world.
Miguel de Cervantes

The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one’s own opinions, and value others that deserve it.
Sir William Temple

Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don’t think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.
Samuel Johnson

You must look into other people as well as at them.
Lord Chesterfield

A good deed is never lost: he who sows courtesy reaps friendship; and he who plants kindness gathers love.
Basil

A man’s own good breeding is the best security against other people’s ill manners.
Lord Chesterfield

The secret of many a man’s success in the world resides in his insight into the moods of men and his tact in dealing with them.
J. G. Holland

To rejoice in another’s prosperity, is to give content to your own lot: to mitigate another’s grief, is to alleviate or dispel your own.
Thomas Edwards

Hear the meaning within the word.
William Shakespeare

Charity, good behavior, amiable speech, unselfishness — these by the chief sage have been declared the elements of popularity.
Burmese Proverb

Kind words are the music of the world.
F. W. Faber

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.
Denis Diderot

Arguing with a fool proves there are two.
Doris M. Smith

Be courteous to all, but intimate with few; and let those be well-tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington

Look to be treated by others as you have treated others.
Publius Syrus

Success in life, in anything, depends upon the number of persons that one can make himself agreeable to.
Thomas Carlyle

Never part without loving words to think of during your absence. It may be that you will not meet again in this life.
Jean Paul Richter

Let us believe neither half of the good people tell us of ourselves, nor half of the evil they say of others.
J. Petit Senn

The more you say, the less people remember.
François Fénelon

Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.
William Thackeray

The soul of conversation is sympathy.
Thomas Campbell

It is always good to know, if only in passing, charming human beings. It refreshes one like flowers and woods and clear brooks.
George Eliot

Every man is a volume if you know how to read him.
William Ellery Channing

Learn to regard the souls around you as parts of some grand instrument. It is for each of us to know the keys and stops, that we may draw forth the harmonies that He sleeping in the silent octaves.
Anonymous

If evil be said of thee, and if it be true, correct thyself; if it be a lie, laugh at it.
Epictetus

In many things it is not well to say, “Know thyself”; it is better to say, “Know others.”
Menander

The less people speak of their greatness, the more we think of it.
Lord Bacon

He who sedulously attends, pointedly asks, calmly speaks, coolly answers and ceases when he has no more to say is in possession of some of the best requisites of man.
Johann Casper Lavater

Men are more mindful of wrongs than of benefits.
Proverb

A good word is an easy obligation; but not to speak ill requires only our silence; which costs us nothing.
John Tillotson

It requires less character to discover the faults of others than is does to tolerate them.
J. Petit Senn

Do not forget small kindnesses and do not remember small faults.
Chinese Proverb

Go back a little to leap further.
John Clarke

It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt

Half of the failures in life come from pulling one’s horse when he is leaping.
Thomas Hood

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to attempt.
William Shakespeare

Every failure brings with it the seed of an equivalent success.
Napoleon Hill

Failure is blindness to the strategic element in events; success is readiness for instant action when the opportune moment arrives.
Newell D. Hillis

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich

We learn wisdom from failure much more than success. We often discover what we will do, by finding out what we will not do.
Samuel Smiles

I was never afraid of failure, for I would sooner fail than not be among the best.
John Keats

It is foolish to fear what you cannot avoid. Stultum est timere quod vitare non potes.
Publius Syrus

He that is down needs fear no fall.
John Bunyan

Never let the fear of striking out get in your way.
George Herman “Babe” Ruth

One who fears failure limits his activities. Failure is only the opportunity to more intelligently begin again.
Henry Ford

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be afraid you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving

Our greatest glory consist not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.
Oliver Goldsmith

Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
Nelson A. Rockefeller

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?
Vincent van Gogh

The greatest men sometimes overshoot themselves, but then their very mistakes are so many lessons of instruction.
Tom Browne

Experience teaches slowly, and at the cost of mistakes.
James A. Froude

It is the want of diligence, rather than the want of means, that causes most failures.
Alfred Mercier

A man’s life is interesting primarily when he has failed–I well know. For it’s a sign that he tried to surpass himself.
Georges Clemenceau

He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.
Napoleon Bonaparte

There is no failure except in no longer trying.
Elbert Hubbard

There is no impossibility to him who stands prepared to conquer every hazard.
The fearful are the failing.
Sarah J. Hale

Disappointments are to the soul what thunderstorms are to the air.
Johann C. F. von Schiller

Failure teaches success.
Japanese Saying

Don’t waste your life in doubts and fears: spend yourself on the work before you, well assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours or ages that follow it.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

No longer forward nor behind, I look in hope and fear; But grateful take the good I find, The best of now and here.
John G. Whittier

It is not work that kills men, it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more on a man than he can bear. But worry is rust upon the blade. It is not movement that destroys the machinery, but friction.
Henry Ward Beecher

Be just, and fear not.
Let all the ends thou aim’st at be thy country’s, Thy God’s and truth’s.
William Shakespeare

Never let life’s hardships disturb you … no one can avoid problems, not even saints or sages.
Nichiren Daishonen

Ask yourself this question:
“Will this matter a year from now?”
Richard Carlson

Surely there is something in the unruffled calm of nature that overawes our little anxieties and doubts; the sight of the deep-blue sky and the clustering stars above seems to impart a quiet to the mind.
Jonathan Edwards

Do not anticipate trouble, or worry about what may never happen. Keep in the sunlight.
Benjamin Franklin

Imagine every day to be the last of a life surrounded with hopes, cares, anger and fear. The hours that come unexpectedly will be much the more grateful.
Horace

The mind that is anxious about future events is miserable.
Seneca

Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.
William Shakespeare

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never happen.
James Russel Lowell

How much pain have cost us the evils that have never happened.
Thomas Jefferson

It is the trouble that never comes that causes the loss of sleep.
Chas. Austin Bates

Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
Henry David Thoreau

We also deem those happy, who from the experience of life, have learned to bear its ills and without descanting on their weight.
Junvenal

Thus each person by his fears gives wings to rumor, and, without any real source of apprehension, men fear what they themselves have imagined.
Lucan

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.
Albert Einstein

It is idle to dread what you cannot avoid.
Publius Syrus

He either fears his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, Who dares not put it to the touch. To gain or lose it all.
Marquis of Montrose

The rose is fairest when ‘t is budding new,
and hope is brightest when it dawns from fears.
Walter Scott

Adversity is the diamond dust that heaven polishes its jewels with.
large sailing ship moving onward
Leighton

A smooth sea never made a skillful mariner.
Anonymous

The storm also beats on the house that is built on the rock.
Anonymous

Don’t ask for a light load, but rather ask for a strong back.
Anonymous

Who indeed can harm you if you are committed deeply to doing what is right?
I Peter

It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those timid souls who hiker on snowy mountain know neither victory nor defeat.
Theodore Roosevelt

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Accept challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.
George S. Patton

Adventure is worthwhile.
Amelia Earhart

Challenges are what make life interesting; overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
Joshua J. Marine

Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing

In order to be walked on, you have to be lying down.
Brian Weir

It is not good for all our wishes to be filled; through sickness we recognize the value of health; through evil, the value of good; through hunger, the value of food; through exertion, the value of rest.
Greek Proverb

We are like tea bags – we don’t know man lying on sidewalk as people pass by our own strength until we’re in hot water.
Sister Busche

Count it all joy, my brethren, when you meet various trials, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
James 1:24, RSV

There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties, or you alter yourself to meet them.
Phyllis Battome