Inspirational quotes about life help us get through good times and bad. They help inspire and motivate us. Peruse the quotes below to see if they challenge you to be your best self.
Best Inspirational Quotes About Life
- It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.
Isaac Asimov - Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings.
Ralph Blum - In the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.
Albert Careb - In prosperity, our friends know us; in adversity, we know our friends.
John Churton Collins - Times of great calamity and confusion have ever been productive of the greatest minds. The purest ore is produced from the hottest furnace, and the brightest thunderbolt is elicited from the darkest storm.
Charles Caleb Colton - The man of virtue makes the difficulty to be overcome his first business, and success only a subsequent consideration.
Confucius - A gentleman can withstand hardships; it is only the small man who, when submitted to them, is swept off his feet.
Confucius - A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Duke Ellington - Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving - Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.
Jonathan Kozol
- A good archer is known not by his arrows but by his aim.
Thomas Fuller - Adversity is the mother of progress.
Mahatma Gandhi
Pope Francis
- However dark things are, goodness always re-emerges and spreads. Each day in our world beauty is born anew.
Pope Francis - Practicing charity is the best way to evangelize.
Pope Francis - God’s forgiveness is stronger than any sin.
Pope Francis - To change the world we must be good to those who cannot repay us.
Pope Francis - A little bit of mercy makes the world less cold and more just.
Pope Francis - The secret of Christian living is love. Only love fills the empty spaces caused by evil.
Pope Francis - Dear young people, do not bury your talents, the gifts that God has given you! Do not be afraid to dream of great things!
Pope Francis - Let us ask the Lord for the grace not to speak badly of others, not to criticize, not to gossip, but rather to love everyone.
Pope Francis
Mark Twain
- Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
Mark Twain - If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember everything.
Mark Twain - To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.
Mark Twain
Henry David Thoreau
- All misfortune is but a stepping stone to fortune.
Henry David Thoreau - Distrust any enterprise that requires new clothes.
Henry David Thoreau - You cannot dream yourself into a character; you must hammer and forge yourself one.
Henry David Thoreau
Lord Byron Sayings
- Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine.
Lord Byron - Adversity is the first path to truth.
Lord Byron - There is no instinct like that of the heart.
Lord Byron
About Life Journey
Two roads diverged in a wood and I took the one less traveled by, and that made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Success in the affairs of life often serves to hide one’s abilities, whereas adversity frequently gives one an opportunity to discover them.
Horace
Adversity is wont to reveal genius, prosperity to hide it.
Horace
It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
Washington Irving
The rays of happiness, like those of light, are colorless when unbroken.
Henry W. Longfellow
Look not mournfully into the past, it comes not back again. Wisely improve the present, it is thine. Go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear and with a manly heart.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark.
David Ogilvy
Misfortunes often sharpen the genius.
Ovid
There is no excellence uncoupled with difficulties.
Ovid
Aspiring minds must sometimes sustain loss.
Plato
Noteworthy
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
All sunshine makes the desert.
Proverb
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.
Unknown
In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.
Unknown
Good fortune and bad are equally necessary to man, to fit him to meet the contingencies of this life.
Unknown
About Change
If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant. If it did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.
Charlotte Bronte
Adversity is the first path to truth.
Lord Byron
A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.
Chinese Proverb
Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity a greater.
William Hazlitt
Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.
Henry J. Kaiser
It is the surmounting of difficulties that makes heroes.
Louis Kossuth
A man can be as great as he wants to be. If you believe in yourself and have the courage, the determination, the dedication, the competitive drive and if you are willing to sacrifice the little things in life and pay the price for the things that are worthwhile, it can be done.
Vince Lombardi
Wherever we look upon this earth, the opportunities take shape within the problems.
Nelson A. Rockefeller
William Shakespeare
Sweet are the uses of adversity,
Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,
Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.
William Shakespeare
A wretched soul, bruis’d with adversity,
We bid be quiet, when we hear it cry;
But were we burthen’d with like weight of pain,
As much, or more, we should ourselves complain.
William Shakespeare
Surmounted difficulties not only teach, but hearten us in our future struggles.
James Sharp
Adversity introduces a man to himself.
Unknown
Inspirational Quotes for Yearbooks
All our dreams can come true if we have the courage to pursue them.
Walt Disney
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet. Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
W.B. Yeats
Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau
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
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
Pamela Vaull Starr
It is precisely the possibility of realizing a dream that makes life interesting.
Paulo Coelho
I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.
Patrick Henry
All men dream but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes to make it possible.
T.E. Lawrence
Inspirational for Yearbook
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
Henry David Thoreau
The end of wisdom is to dream high enough not to lose the dream in the seeking of it.
William Faulkner
Those who lose dreaming are lost.
Unknown
No one has ever achieved anything from the smallest to the greatest unless the dream was dreamed first.
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.
Lanston Hughes
The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Not to dream boldly may turn out to be simply irresponsible.
George Leonard
Commitment leads to action. Action brings your dream closer.
Marcia Wieder
Dreams are the touchstones of our character.
Henry David Thoreau
The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages; the question is what he will do with the things he has. The moment a young man ceases to dream or to bemoan his lack of opportunities and resolutely looks his conditions in the face, and resolves to change them, he lays the corner-stone of a solid and honorable success.
Hamilton Wright Mabie
The best way to make your dreams come true is to wake up.
Paul Valery
To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.
Unknown
You can do anything, but not everything.
Unknown
The ones who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
Unknown
Just when the caterpillar thought the world was ending, he turned into a butterfly.
Unknown
Life Lessons
It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness.
Chinese Proverb
We don’t know one-millionth of one percent about anything.
Thomas Edison
Anyone who has never made a mistake
has never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein
Our waking hours form the text of our lives, our dreams, the commentary.
Unknown
Hope is the dream of the waking man.
Proverb
If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true were really true,
there would be little hope of advance.
Orville Wright
I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.
Wayne Gretzky
Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Voltaire
Key learnings
Never say more than is necessary.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi
Being content creates simplicity in life.
John Heider
Seek not, my soul the life of the immortals;
but enjoy to the full the resources that are within thy reach.
Pindar
In teaching history, there should be extensive discussion of personalities who benefited mankind through independence of character and judgment.
Albert Einstein
Don’t compromise yourself. You are all you’ve got.
Janis Joplin
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right….
Martin Luther
That which does not kill you makes you stronger.
Neitzsche
We always strive after what is forbidden, and desire the things refused us.
Ovid
When one door closes another opens. But often we look so long so regretfully upon the closed door that we fail to see the one that has opened for us.
Helen Keller
There is time for everything.
Thomas A. Edison
I demolish my bridges behind me — then there is no choice but to move forward.
Firdtjof Nansen
On Character
The worst thing you can try to do is cling to something that is gone, or to recreate it.
Johnette Napolitano
You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.
Heraclitus
Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.
Leo Tolstoy
The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
Bernard M. Baruch
Be your character what it will, it will be known, and nobody will take it upon your word.
Lord Chesterfield
Nothing of character is really permanent but virtue and personal worth.
Daniel Webster
Character is like a tree and reputation is like its shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.
Abraham Lincoln
Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right path, the final forming of a person’s character lies in their own hands.
Anne Frank
Integrity
The essential thing is not knowledge, but character.
Joseph Le Conte
The great hope of society is individual character.
William Ellery Channing
A good name will shine forever.
Unknown
A fair reputation is a plant, delicate in its nature, and by no means rapid in its growth. It will not shoot up in a night like the gourd of the prophet; but, like that gourd, it may perish in a night.
Jeremy Taylor
Talents are best nurtured in solitude. Character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.
John C. Geikie
It matters not what you are thought to be, but what you are.
Publilius Syrus
In the stormy current of life characters are weights or floats which at one time make us glide along the bottom, and at another maintain us on the surface.
Hippolyte Taine
Character is what you think in the dark.
Dwight L. Moody
Character is the real foundation of all worthwhile success.
John Hays Hammond
A man’s character is like his shadow, which sometimes follows and sometimes precedes him, and which is occasionally longer, occasionally shorter, than he is.
Madame de la Rochejuquelein
Every man, as to character, is the creature of the age in which he lives. Very few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of their times.
Voltaire
It is of little traits that the greatest human character is composed.
William Winter
Character is perfectly educated will.
Novalis
Importance of Character
Character is the result of two things: Mental attitude and the way we spend our time.
Elbert Hubbard
Character and personal force are the only investments that are worth anything.
Walt Whitman
Every thought willingly contemplated, every word meaningly spoken, every action freely done, consolidates itself in the character, and will project itself onward in a permanent continuity.
Henry Giles
Character is, for the most part,
simply habit become fixed.
C. H. Parkhurst
Character is, in the long run, the decisive factor in the life of individuals and of nations alike.
Theodore Roosevelt
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
I failed my way to success.
Thomas Edison
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