For more than twenty years I have found direction and inspiration in quotes from various activists, business people, leaders, artists, athletes, and great thinkers. Usually, when facing a tough situation, I think back to these quotes to help provide me with the guidance I’m looking for. Since college (a LONG time ago now) I have collected these quotes in a fancy leather-bound book. However, I think there is a chance they could help someone else, maybe you, so I’m adding my favorites below. Enjoy! If you notice a quote is attributed to the wrong individual or a name is misspelled, please let me know. Thank you!
My Favorite Quotes
(In no particular order.)
If your ship doesn’t come in… swim out to it.
Johnathan Winters
A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
George Bernard Shaw
Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.
Storm Jameson
Every day, I wish to make the world more beautiful than I found it.
Madame De Pompadour
Well done is better than well said.
Benjamin Franklin
If you risk nothing, then you risk everything.
Geena Davis
Opportunities don’t knock at all. They don’t have to. They’re already all around us. It’s up to us to see where they are and take advantage of them.
Dave Thomas
If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.
Hermann Hesse
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
Reinhold Niebubr
True friends stab you in the front.
Oscar wilde
An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi
You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.
ziggy
Dance like no one is watching. Love like you’ll never be hurt. Sing like no one is listening. Live like it’s heaven on earth.
William W. Purkey
A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.
John A. Shedd
We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.
Winston Churchill
Calmness can lay great errors to rest.
Worry not that no one knows of you; seek to be one worth knowing.
Confucious
The first duty of love is to listen.
Paul Tillich
If you have made mistakes, even serious ones, there is always another chance for you. What we call failure is not the falling down, but the staying down.
Mary Pickford
Be not afraid of growing slowly. Be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese Proverb
Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer, but wish we didn’t.
Erica Jones
The first step to getting the things you want out of life is this: decide what you want.
Ben Stein
Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.
James Baldwin
The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing.
John Powell
What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. It is dearness only that gives everything its value.
Thomas Paine
If you judge people, you have no time to love them.
Mother Theresa
Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war, love is a growing up.
James Baldwin
Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
Doris Mortman
Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The supreme happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved – loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
Victor Hugo
The roots of true achievement lie in the will to become the best you can become.
Harold Taylor
Patience makes lighter what sorrow may not heal.
Horace
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
Ambrose Redmoon
Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.
Aldous Huxley
The whole world steps aside for the woman who knows where she is going.
unknown
Through patience, a ruler can be persuaded, and a gentle tongue can break a bone.
Proverbs 25:15
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
I Corinthians 13:4-8
When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everybody will respect you.
Lao-Tzu
It is good to have an end to journey toward, but it is the journey that matters in the end.
Ursula K. LeGuin
Those who bring sunshine into the lives of others cannot keep it from themselves.
James Barrie
Sometimes the heart sees what is invisible to the eye.
H. Jackson Brown Jr.
Our lives improve only when we take chances – and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.
Walter Anderson
If success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
Anna Quindlen
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
Les Brown
Let your hook always be cast. In the pool where you least expect it, will be fish.
Ovid
Never believe that a few caring people can’t change the world. For indeed, that’s all who ever have.
Margaret Mead
What would you do if you weren’t afraid?
Spencer Johnson
To be a great champion you must believe you are the best. If you’re not, pretend you are.
Muhammad Ali
They always say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
Andy Warhol
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 achieve the second.
Logan Pearsall Smith
My deepest belief is that living as if you are dying sets us free.
Anne Lamott
To change one’s life, start immediately, do it flamboyantly, no exceptions.
William James
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Theodore Roosevelt
It’s all right to have butterflies in your stomach. Just get them to fly in formation.
Dr. Rob Gilbert
Nosce Te Ipsum: Know Thyself
Socrates
If you are going through difficult times today, hold steady. It will change soon. If you are experiencing smooth sailing and easy times now, brace yourself. It will change soon. The only thing you can be certain of is change.
James C. Dobson
The grand essentials of happiness are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
Allan K. Chalmers
The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.
Mark Twain
The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.
Maureen Dowd
Why love if losing hurts so much? We love to know that we are not alone.
C.S. Lewis
Mishaps are like knives, that either serve us or cut us, as we grasp them by the blade or the handle.
James Russell Lowell
Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
William Ellery Channing
Things do not change, we change.
Henry David Thoreau
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in.
Heraclitus
What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
John Lubbock
Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all.
Dale Carnegie
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that 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
Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can’t build on it; it is only good for wallowing in.
Katherine Mansfield
Never lose your childish enthusiasm.
Federico Fellini
He who has confidence in himself will gain the confidence of others.
Leib Lazarow
Don’t wait for extraordinary opportunities. Seize common occasions and make them great.
Orison Swett Marden
Maturity begins to grow when you can sense your concern for others outweighing your concern for yourself.
John MacNaughton
Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu
Never frown, even when you are sad, because you never know who is falling in love with your smile.
Christina Phan
When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot, and hang on.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Know who you are before you try and know someone else and expect them to know you.
Unknown
Maybe God wants us to meet a few wrong people before meeting the right one so that when we get the right one, we will know how to be grateful.
unknown
Don’t try so hard, the best things come when you least expect them to.
unknown
We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.
Buddha
Among those I like or admire, I can find no common denominator, but among those I love, I can. All of them make me laugh.
Wystan Hugh Auden
You can’t take life too seriously. You’ll never get out alive.
Absence is to love what wind is to fire; it extinguishes the small, it enkindles the great.
Comte de Bussy-Rabutin
Take control of your destiny. Believe in yourself. Ignore those who try to discourage you. Avoid negative sources, people, places, things, and habits. Don’t give up and don’t give in.
Wanda Carter
Shyness has a strange element of narcissism, a belief that how we look, how we perform, is truly important to other people.
Andre Dubus
If you love somebody, let them go. If they return, they were always yours. If they don’t, they never were.
The highest love of all finds its fulfillment not in what it keeps, but in what it gives.
Father Andrew
To be capable of steady friendship or lasting love, are two greatest proofs, not only of goodness of heart but of the strength of mind.
Paul Aubuchon
I do not believe the sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.
Joseph Addison
Get action. Seize the moment. Man was never intended to become an oyster.
Theodore Roosevelt
It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot, irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known, but to question it.
J. Bronowski
Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes the furthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.
Dale Carnegie
Life happens when you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon
A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.
Carlyle
Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for time is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin
The greatest mistake you can make in life is to continually be fearing you will make one.
Elbert Hubbard
It’s not whether you get knocked down; it’s whether you get up.
Vince Lombardi
While life lasts, it’s good to remember that death is coming, and it’s good that we don’t know when. It keeps us alert. It reminds us to live while we have the chance. Somebody should tell us that we are dying. Then we might live life to the limit, every minute of every day.
Michael Landon
Do not rely completely on any other human being. We meet all life’s greatest tests alone.
Agnes Macphail
You never lose by loving. You always lose by holding back.
Barbara de Angelis
You must change in order to survive.
Pearl Bailey
It seems that is madder never to abandon oneself than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded… than always to walk in armor.
Margaret Fuller
Enjoy yourself. These are the “good old days” you’re going to miss in the days ahead.
It’s taken me all my life to understand that it is not necessary to understand everything.
Rene Coty
Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion.
Leo Buscaglia
You’ve got to take the initiative and play your game… confidence makes the difference.
Chris Evert
To love is to take delight in the happiness of another, or… it is to account another’s happiness one’s own.
Gottfried Leibniz
No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.
Aesop
If you’re not failing every now and again, it’s a sign you are playing it safe.
Woody Allen
Love is like playing the piano. First, you must learn to play by the rules, then you must forget the rules and play from your heart.
The biggest mistake is believing there is one right way to listen, to talk, to have a conversation, or a relationship.
Deborah Tannen
We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.
George Eliot
Every passage has its price.
Meredith Ann Pierce
The worst thing you can do is to try to cling to something that’s gone or to recreate it.
Johnette Napolitano
It isn’t how much time you spend somewhere that makes it memorable; it’s how you spend the time.
David Brenner
The rule for traveling abroad is to take our common sense with us and leave our prejudices behind.
William Hazlitt
It’s good to have money and the things money can buy, but it’s good, too, to check up once in a while and make sure that you haven’t lost the things that money can’t buy.
George Horace Lolimer
It isn’t where you came from; it’s where you are going that counts.
Ella Fitzgerald
People in the same boat should help each other.
Chinese Proverb
The trouble with being a good sport is you have to lose to prove it.
Across the fields of yesterday, he sometimes comes to me. A little lad just back from play – the boy I used to be. He looks at me so wistfully. When once he’s crept within; it is as if he hoped to see the man I might have been.
Forget injuries, never forget kindnesses.
Confucius
Don’t go for looks, they can deceive. Don’t go for wealth, even that fades away. Go for someone who makes you smile because it only takes a smile to make a dark day seem bright.
Dream what you want to dream, go where you want to go, be what you want to be. Because you only have one life and one chance to do all the things you want to do.
There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.
Victor Hugo
There are two types of pain you will go through in life: the pain of discipline and the pain of regret. Discipline weighs ounces, while regret weighs tons.
Jim Rohn
Normal is not something to aspire to, it’s something to get away from.
Jodie Foster
