Quotes

I’ve always been inspired by quotes. Emerson instructed us to: “Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your reading have been to you like the blast of triumph out of Shakespeare, Seneca, Moses, John and Paul.”

The right combinations of words, at the right time, can make all the difference. It’s a gift from those who have walked the path before us. Here are some of my favorites. Review them often, think about them, and incorporate the wisdom on your journey. Feel free to download a copy for your personal use (PDF).

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
-Patanjali

Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary rule …that the moment one definitely commits oneself, than Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never other have occurred.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.
-Johann von Goethe

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There’s always the possibility of fiasco.
But there’s also the possibility of bliss.
-Joseph Campbell

In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or to step back into safety.
-Abraham Maslow

A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: “As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. Jump. It is not as wide as you think.”
-Joseph Campbell

Success is not to be pursued; it is to be attracted by the person you become.
-Jim Rohn

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable.
-Helen Keller

Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.
-Seneca

Deep within man dwell these slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.
-Orison Swett Marden

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
-Cicero

There is a law in psychology that if you form a picture in your mind of what you would like to be, and you keep and hold that picture there long enough, you will soon become exactly as you have been thinking.
-William James

Anything less then a conscious commitment to the important is an unconscious commitment to the unimportant.
-Stephen Covey

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves come when life seems most challenging.
-Joseph Campbell

Your vision will be clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside only dreams; who looks inside, also awakens.
-Carl Jung

One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore.
-Andre Gide

Once stretched by a new idea, man’s mind never returns to its original dimensions.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

All of our life is but a mass of small habits – practical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual – that bear us irresistibly toward our destiny.
-William James

Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.
-Alan Lakein

We must be willing to get rid of the life we’ve planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.
-Joseph Campbell

What one can be, one must be.
-Abraham Maslow

Enthusiasm is one of the most powerful engines of success. When you do a thing, do it with all your might. Put your whole soul into it. Stamp it with your own personality. Be active, be energetic, be enthusiastic and faithful, and you will accomplish your object. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I know some people say “Keep your eyes on the prize,” but I disagree. When your eyes are stuck on the prize, you’re going to keep stumbling and crashing into things. If you really want to get ahead, you’ve got to keep your eyes focused on the path.
-Russell Simmons

It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.
-E.E. Cummings

The same thinking that has led you to where you are is not going to lead you to where you want to go.
-Albert Einstein

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

If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.
-Jim Rohn

Our great business is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.
-Winston Churchill

The lion who breaks the enemy’s ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.
-Rumi

There’s nothing capricious in nature, and the implanting of a desire indicate that its gratification is in the constitution of the creature that feels it.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Look at every path closely and deliberately, than ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path a have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.”
-Carlos Castaneda

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them.
-George Bernard Shaw

By believing passionately in something that does not yet exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
-Nikos Kazantzakis

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
-T.S. Elliot

It is better by noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what might happen.
-Herodotus

You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
-Martin Luther King Jr.

Your work is to discover your work and then with all your heart to give yourself to it.
-Buddha

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit.
-Aristotle

I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
-Vincent van Gogh

Do the thing you fear to do and the death of fear is certain.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I’ve missed more then 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
-Michael Jordan

The best way to predict your future is to create it.
-Peter Drucker

You can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith; for whatever the mind can conceive and believe, the mind can achieve.
-Napoleon Hill

We all must suffer one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.
-Jim Rohn

Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common then unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan ‘press on’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
-Calvin Coolidge

To have more, you must first be more.
-Goethe

Fortune favors the brave.
-Publius Terence

So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because that’s where you will find success. On the far side of failure.
-Thomas J. Watson Sr.

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary: new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or old laws will be expanded and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with license of a higher order of beings.
-Henry David Thoreau

Our life is shaped by our mind. We become what we think.
-Buddha

Far better it is to dare mighty things,
To win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure,
Than to rank with those poor spirits
Who neither enjoy nor suffer much
Because they live in that gray twilight
That knows neither victory nor defeat.
-Theodore Roosevelt

When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.
-Paulo Coelho

Cherish your visions. Cherish your ideals. Cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all heavenly environment; of these if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built.
-James Allen

The secret of success is to be ready when your opportunity comes.
-Benjamin Disraeli

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness concerning all acts of initiative and creation. There is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans; that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issue from the decision raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen events, material assistance which no one could have dreamt would have come their way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it”.
-W.H. Murray

The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get.
-Jim Rohn

Whatever obstacles appear in your path, put your head down and get past them. Those obstacles aren’t real. They’re just God’s way of testing you. He’s asking you, “Do you want to make it or not?”
-Russell Simmons

What the warrior does that the soldier doesn’t do is inner work. We need to work on ourselves and not just the enemy outside. That takes us back to the theme of spiritual discipline and meditation. Being a warrior means keeping the heart centered and clear and knowing what the real issues are. It means opening up the doors of creativity so that we can contribute the best of what we have.
-Matthew Fox

Do not go where the path may lead,
Go instead where there is not a path and leave a trail.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

As you’ll come to know, the closer you get to your goal, the more it draws you in; success feeds on success. It‘s like a gravitational pull. Once you get into a rhythm, it’s hard to stop. You achieve big visions by doing the little things every day and looking at them in a positive focus.
-Shawn Phillips

There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you’re interested in doing something, you do it only when it’s convenient. When you’re committed to something, you accept no excuses, only results.
-Ken Blanchard

A philosophy of life: I’m an adventurer, looking for treasure.
-Paulo Coelho

Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
-Winston Churchill

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

Create your future from your future, not your past.
-Werner Erhard

Every negative event contains within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.
-Napoleon Hill

The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex, overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.
-Mark Twain

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.
-Albert Einstein

One can have no smaller or greater mastery then mastery of oneself.
-Leonardo da Vinci

I’m a great believer in luck, and I find that the harder I work, the more luck I have.
-Thomas Jefferson

We gain strength, and courage, and confidence by each experience in which we really stop to look fear in the face … we must do that which we think we cannot.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

If you want to be happy, set a goal that commands your thoughts, liberates your energy, and inspires your hopes.
-Andrew Carnegie

No one ever became great or good except through many and great mistakes.
-William E. Gladstone

What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
-Oliver Wendell Holmes

It’s not the will to win that matter – everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.
-Paul “Bear” Bryant

I take rejection as someone blowing a bugle in my ear to wake me up and get going, rather than retreat.
-Sylvester Stallone

Fall down seven times, get up eight times.
-Japanese proverb

Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
-Robert Collier

The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.
-William James

None of us can change our yesterdays, but all of us can change our tomorrows.
-Colin Powell

Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
-John F. Kennedy

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.
-James Allen

There is only one journey: going inside yourself.
-Rainer Maria Rilke

The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you, and you don’t know how or why.
-Albert Einstein

Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom.
-Tao Te Ching

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
-Howard Thurman

It is a bewildering thing in human life that the things that cause the greatest fear is the source of the greatest wisdom.
-Carl Jung

It is one of the beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson