Inspirational and Thought Provoking Quotes

Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means.
Robert Louis Stevenson

You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him.
Leo Aikman

God grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know it's me.
Author unknown, variation of an excerpt from "The Serenity Prayer" by Reinhold Neibuhr

You've got a lot of choices. If getting out of bed in the morning is a chore and you're not smiling on a regular basis, try another choice.
Steven D. Woodhull

Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.
Albert Camus, The Fall, 1956

It's all right letting yourself go as long as you can let yourself back.
Mick Jagger

There is often less danger in the things we fear than in the things we desire.
John C. Collins

To know the road ahead, ask those coming back.
Chinese Proverb

Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk.
Joaquin de Setanti

Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.
Malcolm S. Forbes

In what you say of another, apply the test of kindness, necessity and truth, and let nothing pass your lips without a 2/3 majority.
Liz Armbruster, on www.robertbrault.com

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You will turn over many a futile new leaf till you learn we must all write on scratched-out pages.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Now that it's all over, what did you really do yesterday that's worth mentioning?
Coleman Cox

Laziness will cause you pain.
Slogan on T-shirt worn at the Vee Arnis Jitsu School of Self-Defense

If you surrender to the wind, you can ride it.
Toni Morrison

Never miss an opportunity to make others happy, even if you have to leave them alone in order to do it.
Author Unknown

Always when judging Who people are, Remember to footnote The words "So far."
Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Excess on occasion is exhilarating. It prevents moderation from acquiring the deadening effect of a habit.
W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up, 1938

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt

Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

Toss your dashed hopes not into a trash bin but into a drawer where you are likely to rummage some bright morning.
Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

Be pleasant until ten o'clock in the morning and the rest of the day will take care of itself.
Elbert Hubbard

What a strange narrowness of mind now is that, to think the things we have not known are better than the things we have known.
Samuel Johnson

To sensible men, every day is a day of reckoning.
John W. Gardner

>Face what you think you believe and you will be surprised.
William Hale White

There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go.
Tennessee Williams (Thomas Lanier)

Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince, 1943, translated from French

Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time.
Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Just remember, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything and the wrong way is to keep trying to make everybody else do it the right way.
M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

Don't look where you fall, but where you slipped.
African Proverb

The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice that which we are for what we could become.
Charles DuBois

Time you enjoyed wasting, was not wasted.
John Lennon

It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it.
Albert Einstein

We have a choice every day - to act on yesterday's good intentions or get an early start on tomorrow's regrets.
Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

I thought growing up was something that happened automatically as you got older. But it turns out it's something you have to choose to do.
From the television show Scrubs

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Yet some things you miss and some things you lose by keeping your arm outstretched.
Author Unknown

You do not have the right to quit trying. (The universe wobbles when you do.) You have the right to quit Toxic People. (They're contagious.)
Dr.SunWolf

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.
Robert Louis Stevenson

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
Henry Miller, The Books in My Life

Nature gave men two ends - one to sit on and one to think with. Ever since then man's success or failure has been dependent on the one he used most.
George R. Kirkpatrick

Think of your faults the first part of the night when you are awake, and the faults of others the latter part of the night when you are asleep.
Chinese Proverb

When you live in reaction, you give your power away. Then you get to experience what you gave your power to.
N.Smith

When "Why not do it?" barely outweighs "Why do it?" - don't do it.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook, 1960

If you hate your lot but wouldn't trade it, it's not your lot you hate.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

When you invite trouble, it's usually quick to accept.
Quoted in P.S. I Love You, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Giving up doesn't always mean you are weak. Sometimes it means that you are strong enough to let go.
Author Unknown

Don't ever take a fence down until you know why it was put up.
Robert Frost

Never confuse thoughtlessness with malice.
Robert Charles Whitehead

Now and then it is a joy to have one's table red with wine and roses.
Oscar Wilde

Don't compromise yourself. You're all you've got.
Janis Joplin

Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?
Abraham Lincoln

Lend, by your imperfections, self-esteem to others, and you will be invited everywhere.
Robert Brault, www.robertbrault.com

We must have passed through life unobservantly, if we have never perceived that a man is very much himself what he thinks of others.
Frederick W. Faber

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

You can't truthfully explain your smallest action without fully revealing your character.
Mignon McLaughlin, The Second Neurotic's Notebook, 1966

I used to believe that anything was better than nothing. Now I know that sometimes nothing is better.
Glenda Jackson

we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
Romans 5:3-4