Who doesn’t need an occasional inspiring quote to keep them on task (Like [Writer’s Stuff])?
[About Cat Hartliebe]
Going through my files, I found a stash of inspiration quotes. No point leaving them hidden on my flash drive.
I probably was meaning to do a weekly or even daily inspiration quote on facebook or twitter. (I think facebook and I may have gotten a few days in.) Doesn’t matter what the old plans were. Let’s just leave a bunch of quotes for people to find.
Inspiration quotes
- “Do one thing every day that scares you.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
- “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
- “When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” ― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
- “Sometimes you wake up. Sometimes the fall kills you. And sometimes, when you fall, you fly.” ― Neil Gaiman, Fables & Reflections
- “Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.”
― Langston Hughes - “What’s meant to be will always find a way” ― Trisha Yearwood
- “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” ― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
- “If you’re reading this…
Congratulations, you’re alive.
If that’s not something to smile about,
then I don’t know what is.”
― Chad Sugg, Monsters Under Your Head - “The flower that blooms in adversity is the rarest and most beautiful of all.” ― Walt Disney Company, Mulan
- “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ― Maya Angelou
- “You never have to change anything you got up in the middle of the night to write.” ― Saul Bellow
- “Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” ― Maya Angelou
- “The unexamined life is not worth living.” ― Socrates
- “I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched.” ― Edgar Allan Poe
- “It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.” ― Vincent Van Gogh
- “Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.” ― Lance Armstrong Sally Jenkins, Every Second Counts
- “The things you do for yourself are gone when you are gone, but the things you do for others remain as your legacy.” ― Kalu Ndukwe Kalu
- “It’s not the load that breaks you down, it’s the way you carry it.” ― Lou Holtz
- “I dream my painting and I paint my dream.” ― Vincent Willem van Gogh
- “And still, after all this time,
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens with
A love like that,
It lights the Whole Sky.”
― Hafiz - “Understanding is the first step to acceptance, and only with acceptance can there be recovery.” ― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire
- “You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” ― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
- “You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life so bad, work on the mind. That’s the only thing you should be trying to control.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
- “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” ― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
- “If you treat an individual as he is, he will remain how he is. But if you treat him as if he were what he ought to be and could be, he will become what he ought to be and could be.” ― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- “Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! Action will delineate and define you.” ― Thomas Jefferson
- “What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” ― Jane Goodall
- “Love is the absence of judgment.” ― Dalai Lama XIV
- “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection” ― Sharon Salzberg
- “I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.” ― Brian Andreas, Story People: Selected Stories & Drawings of Brian Andreas
- “The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected. Maybe they always have been and will be. Maybe we’ve lived a thousand lives before this one and in each of them we’ve found each other. And maybe each time, we’ve been forced apart for the same reasons. That means that this goodbye is both a goodbye for the past ten thousand years and a prelude to what will come.” ― Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook
- “Cry. Forgive. Learn. Move on. Let your tears water the seeds of your future happiness.” ― Steve Maraboli
- “Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death.” ― Rumi Jalalud-Din
- “To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.” ― Mahatma Gandhi
- “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” ― Jack London
- “Romance is the glamour which turns the dust of everyday life into a golden haze. ” ― Elinor Glyn
- “For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.” ― Neil deGrasse Tyson
- “The only thing standing between you and your goal is the bullshit story you keep telling yourself as to why you can’t achieve it.” ― Jordan Belfort
- “It was only a sunny smile, and little it cost in the giving, but like morning light it scattered the night and made the day worth living.” ― F. Scott Fitzgerald
- “The soul is healed by being with children.” ― Fyodor Dostoevsky
- “Tomorrow will be better.”
“But what if it’s not?” I asked.
“Then you say it again tomorrow. Because it might be. You never know, right? At some point, tomorrow will be better.”
― Morgan Matson, Amy & Roger’s Epic Detour - “It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.” ― George Herman Ruth
- “When someone tells me “no,” it doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it simply means I can’t do it with them.” ― Karen E. Quinones Miller
- “You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.” ― Sharon Salzberg
- “Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration’s shove or society’s kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It’s all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.” ― Susan Sontag
- “The animal merely makes a bed, which he warms with his body in a sheltered place; but man, having discovered fire, boxes up some air in a spacious apartment, and warms that, instead of robbing himself, makes that his bed, in which he can move about divested of more cumbrous clothing, maintain a kind of summer in the midst of winter, and by means of windows even admit the light and with a lamp lengthen out the day.” ― Henry David Thoreau
- “I’ve been in love before, it’s like a narcotic. At first it brings the euphoria of complete surrender. The next day you want more. You’re not addicted yet, but you like the sensation, and you think you can still control things.You think about the person you love for two minutes then forget them for three hours. But then you get used to that person, and you begin to be completely dependent on them. Now you think about him for three hours and forget him for two minutes. If he’s not there, you feel like an addict who can’t get a fix. And just as addicts steal and humiliate themselves to get what they need, you’re willing to do anything for love.”- By the River Piedra I Sat Down and Wept” ― Paulo Coelho
- “There is freedom waiting for you,
On the breezes of the sky,
And you ask “What if I fall?”
Oh but my darling,
What if you fly?”
― Erin Hanson - “The only person who can pull me down is myself, and I’m not going to let myself pull me down anymore.” ― C. JoyBell C.
- “Our wounds are often the openings into the best and most beautiful part of us.” ― David Richo
- “Why do they always teach us that it’s easy and evil to do what we want and that we need discipline to restrain ourselves? It’s the hardest thing in the world–to do what we want. And it takes the greatest kind of courage. I mean, what we really want.” ― Ayn Rand
- “Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel. I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio.” ― Hunter S. Thompson
- “The greatest disease in the West today is not TB or leprosy; it is being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread but there are many more dying for a little love. The poverty in the West is a different kind of poverty — it is not only a poverty of loneliness but also of spirituality. There’s a hunger for love, as there is a hunger for God.” ― Mother Teresa, A Simple Path: Mother Teresa
- “Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.” ― Leo F. Buscaglia
- “I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teaching my blood whispers to me.” ― Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
- “Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature — the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.” ― Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
- “So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their endings.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit or There and Back Again
- “When all is said and done, more is said than done.” ― Lou Holtz
- “I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking” ― Albert Einstein
- “There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.” ― Garth Stein, The Art of Racing in the Rain
- “All the effort in the world won’t matter if you’re not inspired.” ― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary
- “Aerodynamically, the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly, but the bumble bee doesn’t know it so it goes on flying anyway.” ― Mary Kay Ash
- “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery – celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.” [MovieMaker Magazine #53 – Winter, January 22, 2004 ]” ― Jim Jarmusch
- “The problem with people is they forget that most of the time it’s the small things that count.” ― Jennifer Niven, All the Bright Places
- “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” ― Martin Luther
- “You’ll never get ahead of anyone as long as you try to get even with him.” ― Lou Holtz
- “When you’re at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on.” ― Theodore Roosevelt
- “I ask not for any crown
But that which all may win;
Nor try to conquer any world
Except the one within.”
― Louisa May Alcott - “I’m not in search of sanctity, sacredness, purity; these things are found after this life, not in this life; but in this life I search to be completely human: to feel, to give, to take, to laugh, to get lost, to be found, to dance, to love and to lust, to be so human.” ― C. JoyBell C.
- “With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt
- “You must not ever stop being whimsical. And you must not, ever, give anyone else the responsibility for your life.” ― Mary Oliver, Wild Geese
- “Your life is an occasion. Rise to it.” ― Suzanne Weyn, Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium
- “You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.”-Dr. Suess
- “I’m selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can’t handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don’t deserve me at my best.”-Marilyn Monroe
- “Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.” -John Lennon
- “Get busy living or get busy dying.”-Stephen King
- “The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.”-Mark Caine
- “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
- “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”-Mark Twain
- “When I dare to be powerful – to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid.”-Audre Lorde
- “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow. ” – William Shakespeare
- “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.”-Eleanor Roosevelt
- “A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.”-David Brinkley
- “Those who dare to fail miserably can achieve greatly.”-John F. Kennedy
- “I can’t give you a sure-fire formula for success, but I can give you a formula for failure: try to please everybody all the time.”-Herbert Bayard Swope
- “You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough. ” -Mae West
- “Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It’s quite simple, really: Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn’t at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, so go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that’s where you will find success.”-Thomas J. Watson
- “He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals.” -Benjamin Franklin
- “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”-Theodore Roosevelt
- “I’m a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn’t have the heart to let him down.”-Abraham Lincoln
- “Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”-Lucille Ball
- “Let us always meet each other with smile, for the smile is the beginning of love.”-Mother Theresa
- “Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.”-Joshua J. Marine
- “When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one that has opened for us.” – Alexander Graham Bell
- “Love is a serious mental disease.”-Plato
- “Our greatest fear should not be of failure… but of succeeding at things in life that don’t really matter.”-Francis Chan
- “It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”-Leonardo Da Vinci
- “Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.”-H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
- “The only impossible journey is the one you never begin.” – Anthony Robbins
- “It is our choices, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.”-J. K Rowling
- “Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.”-Pablo Picasso
- “If you want to be happy, be.”-Leo Tolstoy
- “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”-Thomas A. Edison
- “If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”-Albert Einstein
- “Success is just a war of attrition. Sure, there’s an element of talent you should probably possess. But if you just stick around long enough, eventually something is going to happen.”-Dax Shepard
- “The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”-Elie Wiesel
- “Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.” – Charles Swindoll
- “The good news is that the moment you decide that what you know is more important than what you have been taught to believe, you will have shifted gears in your quest for abundance. Success comes from within, not from without.”-Elie Wiesel
- “I never knew how to worship until I knew how to love.”-Henry Ward Beecher
- “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”-Harriet Tubman
- “It is impossible to escape the impression that people commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.”-Sigmund Freud
- “A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.”-Jim Morrison
- “All that we see and seem is but a dream within a dream.” – Edgar Allan Poe
- “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”-Harriet Tubman
- “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.”-Babe Ruth
- “Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Life is trying things to see if they work.”-Ray Bradbury
- “Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.”-David Rockefeller
- “The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – Dalai Lama
- “The No. 1 reason people fail in life is because they listen to their friends, family, and neighbors.”-Napoleon Hill
- “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.”-Steve Jobs
- “Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.”-George S. Patton
- “You will face many defeats in life, but never let yourself be defeated.”-Maya Angelou
- “May you live all the days of your life.”-Jonathan Swift
- “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on.” – Robert Frost
- “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”-Winston Churchill
- “You’re not obligated to win. You’re obligated to keep trying. To the best you can do everyday.”-Jason Mraz
- “If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor.”-Eleanor Roosevelt
- “If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”-Jim Rohn
- “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”-Ayn Rand
- “Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.” – Forrest Gump
- “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”-Thomas A. Edison
- “The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”-Bruce Lee
- “A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.”-Bob Dylan
- “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, today is a gift of God, which is why we call it the present.”-Bil Keane
- “Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”-George Bernard Shaw
- “The whole secret of a successful life is to find out what is one’s destiny to do, and then do it.”-Henry Ford
- “Success? I don’t know what that word means. I’m happy. But success, that goes back to what in somebody’s eyes success means. For me, success is inner peace. That’s a good day for me.”-Denzel Washington
- “A kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become superfluous.”-Ingrid Bergman
- “You miss 100 percent of the shots you never take.”-Wayne Gretzky
- “Life itself is the most wonderful fairy tale.” – Hans Christian Andersen
- “In order to write about life first you must live it.”-Ernest Hemingway
- “Do not go where the path may lead; go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”-Aristotle
- “Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”-Oscar Wilde
- “The big lesson in life, baby, is never be scared of anyone or anything.”-Frank Sinatra
- “If you aren’t going all the way, why go at all?” – Joe Namath
- “To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.”-David Viscott
- “Love is an irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.”-Robern Frost
- “Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.”-Kurt Vonnegut
- “I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country.”-Nathan Hale
- “The person who reads too much and uses his brain too little will fall into lazy habits of thinking.”-Albert Einstein
- “Life would be tragic if it weren’t funny.” – Stephen Hawking
- “Better to have loved and lost, than to have never loved at all.”-St. Augustine
- “Every child is an artist, the problem is staying an artist when you grow up.”-Pablo Picasso
- “Have no fear of perfection, you’ll never reach it.”-Salvador Dali
- “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.”-Søren Kierkegaard
- “Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.”-Leo Burnett
- “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
- “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.”-George Bernard Shaw
- “The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.”-Lao Tzu
- “Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not, and a sense of humor was provided to console him for what he is.”-Oscar Wilde
- “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.”-Ralph Waldo Emerson
- “Spread love everywhere you go: first of all in your own house. Give love to your children, to your wife or husband, to a next door neighbor. Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile, kindness in your warm greeting.”-Mother Theresa
- “Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life.” – Omar Khayyam
- “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”-Gandhi
- “Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.”-Albert Einstein
- “Keep your face to the sunshine and you can never see the shadow.”-Helen Keller
- “The best way out is always through.”-Robern Frost
- “The dream crossed twilight between birth and dying.”-T. S. Eliot
- “People are just as happy as they make up their minds to be.” – Abraham Lincoln
- “Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.”-Ray Bradbury
- “Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, the just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.”-Steve Jobs
- “Sing like no one’s listening, love like you’ve never been hurt, dance like nobody’s watching, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” – Mark Twain
- “The power of imagination makes us infinite.”-John Muir
- “Doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.”-Oprah Winfrey
- “Originality is nothing but judicious imitation.”-Voltaire
- “Life is made of ever so many partings welded together.”-Charles Dickens
- “Love is like the wind, you can’t see it, but you can feel it.” – Nicholas Sparks
Was that enough quotes for you? Should I find more? Which one is your favorite?
[Writer’s Stuff] [About Cat Hartliebe]
