Ethel's Inspirational And Motivational Website...

Famous Quotations....

Short Quotations...Hope you will love it!!!

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Welcome to the Inspiring Quotes Page! I've put some of my favorite quotes here, and I try to update with new quotations often. I try to be selective in picking quotes, including only those quotes that I find challenging or inspiring or interesting.

"No one is in control of your happiness but you; therefore, you have the power to change anything about yourself or your life that you want to change."

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*Motivational Quotes*

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day.
Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.
Arthur C. Clarke


Without inspiration the best powers of the mind remain dormant. There is a fuel in us which needs to be ignited with sparks.
Johann Gottfried Von Herder

And all may do what has by man been done.
Edward Young

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


Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.
Samuel Smiles

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need.
Voltaire

If the wind will not serve,
take to the oars.
Destitutus ventis, remos adhibe
Latin Proverb

Men's best successes come after their disappointments. 
Henry Ward Beecher

You cannot plough a field by 
turning it over in your mind.
Author Unknown


The best way out is always through.
Robert Frost


Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
William B. Sprague


Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome.
Samuel Johnson


Fortune favors the brave.
Publius Terence


When the best things are not possible, the best may be made of those that are. - Richard Hooker

He who hesitates is lost.
Proverb


Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.
Albert Einstein

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 


We are still masters of our fate.
We are still captains of our souls.
Winston Churchill


Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


For hope is but the dream
of those that wake.
Matthew Prior


Constant dripping hollows out a stone.
Lucretius


Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose--
a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye.
Mary Shelley

*Leadership Quotations*

Do not follow where the path may lead. 
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Harold R. McAlindon
(also attributed to Emerson and others)

Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.
Dwight D. Eisenhower


There go the people.
I must follow them for I am their leader.
Alexandre Ledru-Rollin


What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. 
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
General Douglas MacArthur

Men are governed only by serving them; the rule is without exception.
V. Cousin

The real leader has no need to lead--
he is content to point the way.
Henry Miller


Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves.
Lao Tzu

A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte


Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don't take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world.
Noah Porter

If your actions inspire others to dream more,
learn more, do more and become more, 
you are a leader. 
John Quincy Adams 


He who has never learned to obey
cannot be a good commander.
Aristotle


The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
(from Christian Leadership World)

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm.
Publilius Syrus


A leader is a dealer in hope.
Napoleon Bonaparte


Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
George Patton 


Where there is no vision, the people perish.
Proverbs 29:18


Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points.
Horace


In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer.
Henry W. Longfellow


I light my candle from their torches.
Robert Burton


Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise.
Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed.
Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle.
Giuseppe Garibaldi


The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved.
Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose's egg.
James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small.
Edmund Spenser


He who has learned how to obey will know how to command.
Solon


When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out.
Napoleon Bonaparte


No man can stand on top because he is put there.
H. H. Vreeland


A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward.
Ovid 


It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy.
Seneca


No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
Abraham Lincoln


What you cannot enforce / 
Do not command.
Sophocles


No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place.
Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult.
Friedrich Nietzsche


It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.) 
Latin Proverb


Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.
Thomas Carlyle


A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.
Polybius 


*Inspirational Quotes*

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. 
Now put foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau


Inspiration and genius--one and the same.
Victor Hugo


To find what you seek in the road of life, 
the best proverb of all is that which says:
"Leave no stone unturned."
Edward Bulwer Lytton
If you would create something,
you must be something.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


Every artist was first an amateur.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
Horace Bushnell

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself. 
W. C. Doane


Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.
Benjamin Disraeli
Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration?
George Eliot

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


Men do less than they ought,
unless they do all they can.
Thomas Carlyle

Let thy words be few.
Ecclesiastes 5:2 from Words of Wisdom

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true.
Leon J. Suenes

The power of imagination makes us infinite.
John Muir


First say to yourself what you would be;
and then do what you have to do.
Epictetus


*Success Quotations*

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.
Euripides


They can because they think they can.
Virgil

Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude. 
Thomas Jefferson

Keep steadily before you the fact that all true success depends at last upon yourself.
Theodore T. Hunger

We are all motivated by a keen desire for praise, and the better a man is, the more he is inspired to glory.
Cicero


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


The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Frank Loyd Wright

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in on the experience.
Elbert Hubbard

There is only one success--to be able to spend your life in your own way.
Christopher Morley


Success is sweet: the sweeter if long delayed and attained through manifold struggles and defeats. 
A. Branson Alcott

The secret of success is to know something nobody else knows.
Aristotle Onassis


The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These may for the most part be summed in these two: common-sense and perseverance.
Owen Feltham

Failures do what is tension relieving, while winners do what is goal achieving.
Dennis Waitley


The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack in will.
Vince Lombardi


I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure--which is:
Try to please everybody.
Herbert Bayard Swope


Success does not consist in never making blunders, but in never making the same one a second time.
Josh Billings


The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.
Earl of Beaconsfield


Success is the good fortune that comes from aspiration, desperation, perspiration and inspiration.
Evan Esar


The surest way not to fail is to determine to succeed.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan


If you wish success in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.
Jospeph Addison

Impatience never commanded success.
Edwin H. Chapin


The talent of success is nothing more than doing what you can do, well.
Henry W. Longfellow


To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first.
Shakespeare


Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.
Albert Einstein

The man who makes a success of an important venture never wails for the crowd. He strikes out for himself. It takes nerve, it takes a great lot of grit; but the man that succeeds has both. Anyone can fail. The public admires the man who has enough confidence in himself to take a chance. These chances are the main things after all. The man who tries to succeed must expect to be criticized. Nothing important was ever done but the greater number consulted previously doubted the possibility. Success is the accomplishment of that which most people think can't be done.
C. V. White

And one quote just for fun.....

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then quit. There's no use being a damn fool about it.
W.C. Fields


*Quotes and Proverbs About Life*

Dost thou love life? 
Then do not squander time, 
for that is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing.
Helen Keller


Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
Jawaharal Nehru


Life is like the dice that, falling, still show a different face. So life, though it remains the same, is always presenting different aspects.
Alexis

Our life's a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently.
Palladas


The geat blessing of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it.
Seneca
(7 B.C. - 65 A.D.)


Govern thy life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one, and read the other.
Thomas Fuller

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


Life, in all ranks and situations, is an outward occupation, an actual and active work.
W. Humboldt

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure.
Kal Menninger


Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.
Hypocrites

After the game,
the king and the pawn go into the same box.
Italian Proverb


The acts of this life are the destiny of the next.
Eastern Proverb

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think.
La Bruyere


Life is like a library owned by the author.
In it are a few books which he wrote himself,
but most of them were written for him.
Harry Emerson Fosdick

We make our fortunes, and we call them fate.
Earl of Beaconsfield


The best way to prepare for life is to begin to live.
Elbert Hubbard

Life's a voyage that's homeward bound.
Herman Melville

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it.
Plutarch


Life is variable. 
Plautus

Life is a rich strain of music, suggesting a realm too fair to be.
George William Curtis


I made my life my monument.
Ben Johnson


The boundaries which divide life from death
are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where one ends,
and the other begins?
Edgar Alan Poe

One way to get the most out of life is
to look upon it as an adventure.
William Feather


Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult.
Rainer Maria Rilke

To live is like to love--all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
Samuel Butler


One life - a little gleam of time between two eternities.
Thomas Carlyle

Life is a pure flame,
and we live by an invisible sun within us.
Sir Thomas Brown


As I grow to understand life less and less,
I learn to love it more and more.
Jules Renard


*Personal Growth and Self Development Quotes*

The way to gain a good reputation, is to endeavor to bewhat you desire to appear. -SocratesThe fact is, that to do anything in the world worth doing, we must not stand back shivering and thinking of the cold and danger, but jump in and scramble through as well as we can.
Robert Cushing

The searching-out and thorough investigation of truth ought to be the primary study of man.
Cicero


The only journey is the journey within.
Rainer Maria Rilke


Know thyself means this, that you get acquainted with what you know, and what you can do.
Menander

Yes, know thyself: in great concerns or small,
Be this thy care, for this, my friend, is all.
Juvenal


Men soon the faults of others learn
A few their virtues, too, find out;
But is there one—I have a doubt— 
Who can his own defects discern?
Sanskrit Proverb


Collect as precious pearls the words of the wise and virtuous.
Abd-el-Kadar

If we do not plant knowledge when young, it will give us no shade when we are old.
Lord Chesterfield


If you have an hour, will you not improve that hour, instead of idling it away?
Lord Chesterfield


Follow your honest convictions, and stay strong.
William Thackeray


He that will not reflect is a ruined man.
Asian Proverb


Every day do something that will inch you closer to a better tomorrow.
Doug Firebaugh


Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.
Chinese Proverb

God ever works with those who work with will.
Aeschylus

Insist on yourself. Never imitate.
Ralph Waldo Emerson


Heaven never helps the man who will not act.
Sophocles




Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.
Aristotle


Our ideas, like orange-plants, spread out in proportion to the size of the box which imprisons the roots.
Edward Bulwer Lytton


We are sometimes as different from ourselves as we are from others.
Francois de La Rochefoucauld

In learning to know other things, and other minds, we become more intimately acquainted with ourselves, and are to ourselves better worth knowing.
Philip Gilbert Hamilton

What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself.
Hecato, Greek philosopher


We are either progressing or retrograding all the while; there is no such thing as remaining stationary in this life.
James Freeman Clarke


To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one's own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.
Plato


Everybody wants to be somebody;
nobody wants to grow.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe


The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.
Hamerton

We only become what we are by the radical and deep-seated refusal of that which others have made of us.
Jean-Paul Sartre


Change and growth take place when a person has risked himself and dares to become involved with experimenting with his own life. 
Herbert Otto


Heed the still small voice that so seldom leads us wrong, and never into folly.
Marquise du Deffand


Your real influence is measured by your treatment of yourself. 
A. Bronson Alcott

Energy and persistence conquer all things.
Benjamin Franklin


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


A man who finds no satisfaction in himself will seek for it in vain elsewhere. 
La Rochefoucauld

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


Make it thy business to know thyself, which is the most difficult lesson in the world. 
Miguel de Cervantes


The best rules to form a young man are: to talk little, to hear much, to reflect alone upon what has passed in company, to distrust one's own opinions, and value others that deserve it.
Sir William Temple


Exert your talents, and distinguish yourself, and don't think of retiring from the world, until the world will be sorry that you retire.
Samuel Johnson


*Words of Wisdom and Thoughts to Live By*

Nature and wisdom never are at strife.
Plutarch

It is easier to be wise for others than for ourselves.
Francois De La Rochefoucauld

The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
William James

The first step in the acquisition of wisdom is silence, the second listening, the third memory, the fourth practice, the fifth teaching others.
Solomon Ibn Gabriol


Years teach us more than books.
Berthold Auerbach

The wisdom of nations lies in their proverbs,
which are brief and pithy.
William Penn


The middle course is the best.
Cleobulus

The only medicine for suffering, crime, and all the other woes of mankind, is wisdom.
Thomas Huxley


A wise man learns by the mistakes of others,
a fool by his own.
Latin Proverb


Silence does not always mark wisdom.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge.


No man was ever wise by chance.
Seneca


Not to know at large of things remote
From use, obscure and subtle, but to know
That which before us lies in daily life,
Is the prime wisdom.
John Milton


By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.
Menander


The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom,
in the heart.
William Hazlitt


Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.
John Tillotson


The more a man knows, the more he forgives.
Catherine the Great


A loving heart is the truest wisdom.
Charles Dickens


One who understands much displays a greater simplicity of character than one who understands little.
Alexander Chase


How prone to doubt, how cautious are the wise!
Homer


On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows,
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.
Edward Young

The man of wisdom is never of two minds;
the man of benevolence never worries;
the man of courage is never afraid.
Confucius


*Goals and Goal Setting Quotations *

The ability to convert ideas to things is the secret to outward success.
Henry Ward Beecher


The ability to concentrate and to use your time well is everything if you want to succeed in business--or almost anywhere else for that matter.
Lee Iacocca



A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.
Francis Bacon

In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.
Victor Cousins
Winning isn't everything, but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi


Failures do what is tension relieving,
while winners do what is goal achieving. 
Dennis Waitley
(as quoted in Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog)

A man should have any number of little aims about which he should be conscious and for which he should have names, but he should have neither name for, nor consciousness concerning, the main aim of his life.
Samuel Butler

Goals are the fuel in the furnace of achievement.
Brian Tracy, Eat that Frog


The great and glorious masterpiece of
man is to know how to live to purpose.
Michel de Montaigne


Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
or what's a heaven for?
Robert Browning


The significance of a man is not in what he attains but in what he longs to attain.
Kahlil Gibran

Every ceiling, when reached, becomes a floor, upon which one walks as a matter of course and prescriptive right.
Aldous Huxley


If you don't know where you are going,
you'll end up someplace else.
Yogi Berra

Some men give up their designs when they have almost reached the goal; while others, on the contrary, obtain a victory by exerting, at the last moment, more vigorous efforts than before.
Polybius

Life can be pulled by goals just as surely as it can be pushed by drives.
Viktor Frankl


The virtue lies in the struggle, not in the prize.
Richard Monckton Milnes

To reach a port, we must sail—Sail, not tie at anchor—Sail, not drift.
Franklin Roosevelt

There is no happiness except in the realization that we have accomplished something.
Henry Ford


Our plans miscarry because they have no aim. When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.
Seneca

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.
Burmese Saying

In absence of clearly defined goals, we become strangely loyal to performing daily acts of trivia.
Author Unknown

Don't bunt. Aim out of the ballpark.
David Ogilvy

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


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