c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
When the poet Paul Valery once asked Albert Einstein if he kept a notebook to record his ideas, Einstein looked at him with mild but genuine surprise. "Oh, that's not necessary," he replied . "It's so seldom I have one.
— Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything
stand often in the company of dreamers: they tickle your common sense & believe you can achieve things which are impossible.
— Mary Anne Radmacher
I think of myself as a bad writer with big ideas, but I'd rather be that than a big writer with bad ideas.
— Michael Moorcock, Elric: The Stealer of Souls
We light the oven so that everyone may bake bread in it.
— José Martí, Nuestra America y Otros Escritos
You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place.
— Kelly Link, Pretty Monsters: Stories
Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve
— W. Clement Stone
Actually, writers have no business writing about their own works. They either wax conceited, saying things like: 'My brilliance is possibly most apparent in my dazzling short story, "The Cookiepants Hypotenuse."' Or else they get unbearably cutesy: 'My cat Ootsywootums has given me all my best ideas, hasn't oo, squeezums?
— Connie Willis, The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories
The systematic looting of language can be recognized by the tendency of its users to forgo its nuanced, complex, mid-wifery properties for menace and subjugation. Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represent the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge. Whether it is obscuring state language or the faux-language of mindless media; whether it is the proud but calcified language of the academy or the commodity driven language of science; whether it is the malign language of law-without-ethics, or language designed for the estrangement of minorities, hiding its racist plunder in its literary cheek - it must be rejected, altered and exposed. It is the language that drinks blood, laps vulnerabilities, tucks its fascist boots under crinolines of respectability and patriotism as it moves relentlessly toward the bottom line and the bottomed-out mind. Sexist language, racist language, theistic language - all are typical of the policing languages of mastery, and cannot, do not permit new knowledge or encourage the mutual exchange of ideas.- Toni Morrison, Nobel Lecture, 1993
— Toni Morrison, The Nobel Lecture In Literature, 1993
If someone loves you, they should not be envious of you pouring your heart and soul and time and energy into the things that you are passionate about, but instead....they should love you MORE because you are so involved in those things.
— Sharon Swan
If you want to be proud of yourself, then do things in which you can take pride
— Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth: The Struggle Towards Self-Realization
But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.
— Libba Bray, The Sweet Far Thing
All men are created equal. Now matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.
— Harvey Milk, The Harvey Milk Interviews: In His Own Words
They will only care when you're gone.
— Marilyn Monroe
The only way to support a revolution is to make your own.
— Abbie Hoffman
Don't belittle yourself. Be BIG yourself.
— Corita Kent
Peace of mind comes when we exercise our right to be honest, especially with ourselves.
— Jack R. Rose, The Cedar Post
Do you have any advice for your readers?Lead the life that’s yours instead of faking someone else’s.
— Sandy Nathan
No one wakes up in the morning and says, 'I want to gain 150 pounds and I will start right now!
— Tricia Cunningham, The Reverse Diet: Lose 20, 50, 100 Pounds or More by Eating Dinner for Breakfast and Breakfast for Dinner
If you think you are beaten, you areIf you think you dare not, you don't,If you like to win, but you think you can'tIt is almost certain you won't.If you think you'll lose, you're lostFor out of the world we find,Success begins with a fellow's willIt's all in the state of mind.If you think you are outclassed, you areYou've got to think high to rise,You've got to be sure of yourself beforeYou can ever win a prize.Life's battles don't always goTo the stronger or faster man,But soon or late the man who winsIs the man WHO THINKS HE CAN!
— Walter D. Wintle
I'll be inside the one who holds you. And then I won't be. 
— Francesca Lia Block, Wasteland
Music is pleasing not only because of the sound but because of the silence that is in it: without the alternation of sound and silence there would be no rhythm.
— Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island
Have you ever seen the dawn? Not a dawn groggy with lack of sleep or hectic with mindless obligations and you about to rush off on an early adventure or business, but full of deep silence and absolute clarity of perception? A dawning which you truly observe, degree by degree. It is the most amazing moment of birth. And more than anything it can spur you to action. Have a burning day.
— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Most good things have already been said far too many times and just need to be lived.
— Shane Claiborne
People who do not love themselves can adore others, because adoration is making someone else big and ourselves small. They can desire others, because desire comes out of sense of inner incompleteness, which demands to be filled. But they can not love others, because love is an affirmation of the living growing being in all of us. If you don’t have it, you cant give it.
— Andrew Matthews
Pippa's laugh is bitter, tinged with tears. 'Ha! Why do girls think being beautiful will solve every problem? Being beautiful just creates problems. It's a misery. I wish I were someone else.
— Libba Bray, A Great and Terrible Beauty
In 1965, a psychologist named Martin Seligman started shocking dogs.He was trying to expand on the research of Pavlov--the guy who could make dogs salivate when they heard a bell ring. Seligman wanted to head in the other direction, and when he rang his bell, instead of providing food, he zapped the dogs with electricity. To keep them still, he restrained them in a harness during the experiment. After they were conditioned, he put these dogs in a big box with a little fence dividing it into two halves. He figured if the dog rang the bell, it would hop over the fence to escape, but it didn't. It just sat there and braced itself. They decided to try shocking the dog after the bell. The dog still just sat there and took it. When they put a dog in the box that had never been shocked before or had previously been allowed to escape and tried to zap it--it jumped the fence.You are just like these dogs.If, over the course of your life, you have experienced crushing defeat or pummeling abuse or loss of control, you convince yourself over time that there is no escape, and if escape is offered, you will not act--you become a nihilist who trusts futility above optimism.Studies of the clinically depressed show that they often give in to defeat and stop trying. . .Any extended period of negative emotions can lead to you giving in to despair and accepting your fate. If you remain alone for a long time, you will decide loneliness is a fact of life and pass up opportunities to hang out with people. The loss of control in any situation can lead to this state. . .Choices, even small ones, can hold back the crushing weight of helplessness, but you can't stop there. You must fight back your behavior and learn to fail with pride. Failing often is the only way to ever get the things you want out of life. Besides death, your destiny is not inescapable.
— David McRaney, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself
You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn't correct. We all start with all there is, it's how we use it that makes things possible.
— Henry Ford
We are at our most powerful the moment we no longer need to be powerful.
— Eric Micha'el Leventhal
It doesn't matter how great your shoes are if you don't accomplish anything in them.
— Martina Boone, Compulsion
We see things not as they are, we see them as WE are.
— Morrie Camhi
I don't really want people looking to me for inspiration. I just want to be a sign along the way that points toward Heaven.
— Bethany Hamilton, Soul Surfer: A True Story of Faith, Family, and Fighting to Get Back on the Board
History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are. 
— David McCullough
The fact that you are still alive assures you that God has something for you to accomplish.
— Rodney A. Winters, Go Into the House
There is absolutely no greater high than challenging the power structure as a nobody, giving it your all, and winning!
— Abbie Hoffman
it is (often) the quiet gesture which carries the most significance - the one which suddenly directs the symphony.
— Mary Anne Radmacher
Hello!" He said hello and then said, "What are you up to now?" "I'm still crazy. The rain feels good. I love to walk in it. "I don't think I'd like that," he said. "You might if you tried." "I never have." She licked her lips. "Rain even tastes good." "What do you do, go around trying everything once?" he asked. "Sometimes twice.
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
Someone has to write all those stories: why not me?
— Elizabeth Gilbert
Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.
— Henry David Thoreau
Although I have the colors, only the Lord can mix them with such harmony.
— Paulo Coelho, The Fifth Mountain
Inspiration is external and motivation is internal. It is up to me to provide the switch and you to flip it on!
— Tricia Cunningham, The Reverse Diet: Lose 20, 50, 100 Pounds or More by Eating Dinner for Breakfast and Breakfast for Dinner
A man who denies his past is a man who truly denies himself a future, for he refuses to know himself, and to deny knowledge of oneself is to stumble through life as handicapped as the blind mute.
— Tobsha Learner, The Witch of Cologne
We have to live a life that is more revolutionary than that of the revolutionaries.
— Brother Andrew
World peace starts with the Creator- Jesus!!
— Mary Kate
Rule your mind or it will rule you.
— Horace
Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.
— T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood
We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities but its own talents.
— Eric Hoffer
If we are not allowed to deal with small problems, we will be destroyed by slightly larger ones. When we come to understand this, we live our lives not avoiding problems, but welcoming them them as challenges that will strengthen us so that we can be victorious in the future.
— Jim Stovall, The Ultimate Gift
Sometimes questions are more important than answers.
— Nancy Willard
People often belittle the place where they were born but heaven can be found in the most unlikely places.
— Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven
If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
— George S. Patton Jr.
Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
When you are up against a wall, put down roots like a tree, until clarity comes from deeper sources to see over that wall and grow.
— C.G. Jung
Every day is a journey filled with twists and turns. Every day, if you smile, you will feel alive, my son.
— Santosh Kalwar
We have different forms assigned to us in the school of life, different gifts imparted. All is not attractive that is good. Iron is useful, though it does not sparkle like the diamond. Gold has not the fragrance of a flower. So different persons have various modes of excellence, and we must have an eye to all.
— William Wilberforce
He ran as he'd never run before, with neither hope nor despair. He ran because the world was divided into opposites and his side had already been chosen for him, his only choice being whether or not to play his part with heart and courage. He ran because fate had placed him in a position of responsibility and he had accepted the burden. He ran because his self-respect required it. He ran because he loved his friends and this was the only thing he could do to end the madness that was killing and maiming them.
— Karl Marlantes, Matterhorn
Be like a postage stamp. Stick to it until you get there
— Bob Proctor
Echo of your thoughts are more important than your actions because that has greater impact on the world.
— Amit Ray
The stars up close to the moon were pale they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon 
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
That's the trouble with loving a wild thing: You're always left watching the door.
— Edith Pattou, East
Tears are a river that takes you somewhere…Tears lift your boat off the rocks, off dry ground, carrying it downriver to someplace better.
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés
I think fitting in is highly overrated. I’d rather just fit out... Fitting out means being who you are, even when people insist that you have to change. Fitting out means taking up space, not apologizing for yourself, and not agreeing with those who seek to label you with stereotypes.
— Golda Poretsky
Every villian is a hero in his own mind.
— Tom Hiddleston
When the creative impulse sweeps over you, grab it. You grab it and honor it and use it, because momentum is a rare gift.
— Justina Chen, North of Beautiful
Success comes in a lot of ways, but it doesn't come with money and it doesn't come with fame. It comes from having a meaning in your life, doing what you love and being passionateabout what you do. That's having a life of success. When you have the ability to do what you love, love what you do and have the ability to impact people. That's having a life of success. That's what having a life of meaning is.
— Tim Tebow
We are, all of us, exploring a world none of us understands...searching for a more immediate, ecstatic, and penetrating mode of living...for the integrity, the courage to be whole, living in relation to one another in the full poetry of existence. The struggle for an integrated life existing in an atmosphere of communal trust and respect is one with desperately important political and social consequences...Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it.-Commencement Speech, Wellesley 1969
— Hillary Rodham Clinton
Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one's own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe. This is why, Barzini says, Italians will tolerate hideously incompetent generals, presidents, tyrants, professors, bureaucrats, journalists and captain of industry, but will never tolerate incompetent opera singers, conductors, ballerinas, courtesans, actors, film directors, cooks, tailors... In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is real.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
Why give up?Why give in?
— Breaking Benjamin
Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
Call on God, but row away from the rocks.
— Hunter S. Thompson
When prescribing one of the drugs I take, my doctor warned me of a common side effect: exaggerated, intensely vivid dreams. To be honest, I've never really noticed the difference. I've always dreamt big.
— Michael J. Fox
Anyone can smile on their best day. I like to meet a man who can smile on his WORST.
— Lauren Graham, Someday, Someday, Maybe
All of us need to be in touch with a mysterious, tantalizing source of inspiration that teases our sense of wonder and goads us on to life’s next adventure.
— Rob Brezsny
let your haters be your motivators
— Nikki Carter
You did the best you could, the best you knew how at the time." It was something like that. From Oprah on an Oprah show. Then I believe my quote above was from Maya Angelou on the Oprah show, not Oprah herself. I had heard it before but it was on Oprah's show again 1-7-09 and she said Maya had said it.
— Oprah Winfrey, The Best of Oprah's What I Know For Sure
O for a Muse of fire, that would ascendThe brightest heaven of invention!
— William Shakespeare, Henry V
Just as it is knownThat an image of one's face is seenDepending on a mirrorBut does not really exist as a face,So the conception of "I" existsDependent on mind and body,But like the image of a faceThe "I" does not at all exist as its own reality.
— Nāgārjuna
Uniqueness is what makes you the most beautiful.
— Lea Michele
It is better to believe in men too rashly, and regret, than believe too meanly. Men could be more than they are, if they would try for it. He has shown them that.
— Mary Renault, The Persian Boy
There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen. More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements. Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds. Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxi cation so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.
— Mirabai Starr, Interior Castle
Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you.
— Rashi
Never curse a fall. The ground is where humility lives.
— Yasmin Mogahed
‎"You shouldn't feel so bad about being afraid of so many things." "Why not?" "Because if you weren't afraid never ever, then you couldn't be brave never ever.
— C. JoyBell C.
The soil in which the meditative mind can begin is the soil of everyday life, the strife, the pain, and the fleeting joy. It must begin there, and bring order, and from there move endlessly. But if you are concerned only with making order, then that very order will bring about its own limitation, and the mind will be its prisoner. In all this movement you must somehow begin from the other end, from the other shore, and not always be concerned with this shore or how to cross the river. You must take a plunge into the water, not knowing how to swim. And the beauty of meditation is that you never know where you are, where you are going, what the end is.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti
Inspiration is the windfall from hard work and focus. Muses are too unreliable to keep on the payroll.
— Helen Hanson
Whether I fail or succeed shall be no man's doing but my own.I am the force.
— Elaine Maxwell
If something burns your soul with purpose and desire, it’s your duty to be reduced to ashes by it. Any other form of existence will be yet another dull book in the library of life.
— Charles Bukowski
We can become inspired to shape a higher, more ideal future, and when we do, miracles happen.
— James Redfield, The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
Moods can be contagious. Don't catch or spread a bad mood.
— Marilyn Suttle
At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?
— Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie var här
Strength comes from struggle. When you learn to see your struggles as opportunities to become stronger, better, wiser, then your thinking shifts from "I can't do this" to "I must do this.
— Toni Sorenson
If [you're asked] what you think, tell. If you have a preference, voice it. If you have a question, ask it. If you want to cry, bawl. If you need help, raise your hand and jump up and down.
— Kristin Richter
Then that's what the Northern Lights are. All the lives that we're not living.
— Adi Alsaid, Let's Get Lost
We all get lots of people. And maybe we don’t always get to have them the exact way we want them, but if we can figure out a way to compromise, you know, then we can keep them all.
— John Corey Whaley, Noggin
I believe that you're great, that there's something magnificent about you. Regardless of what has happened to you in your life, regardless of how young or how old you think you might be, the moment you begin to think properly, there's something that is within you, there's power within you, that's greater than the world. It will begin to emerge. It will take over your life. It will feed you. It will clothe you. It will guide you, protect you, direct you, sustain your very existence, if you let it. Now, that is what I know for sure.
— Michael Bernard Beckwith
He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.
— Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Stay true to yourself and listen to your inner voice. It will lead you to your dream.
— James Ross
The stars up there at night are closer than you think.
— Doug Dillon
blindness is a private matter between a person and the eyes with which he or she was born.
— José Saramago, Blindness
Amateurs look for inspiration the rest of us just get up and go to work. 
— Chuck Close
Do not speak about anyone who is not physically present.
— Allan Lokos, Pocket Peace: Effective Practices for Enlightened Living
Inspiration is what keeps us well.
— James Redfield, The Tenth Insight: Holding the Vision
Men love women who are courageous for it means they can go all the way with him in his pursuit of his good dreams and intentions.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu
Money is like gasoline during a road trip. You don’t want to run out of gas on your trip, but you’re not doing a tour of gas stations.
— Tim O'Reilly
Sounds travel through space long after their wave patterns have ceased to be detectable by the human ear: some cut right through the ionosphere and barrel on out into the cosmic heartland, while others bounce around, eventually being absorbed into the vibratory fields of earthly barriers, but in neither case does the energy succumb; it goes on forever - which is why we, each of us, should take pains to make sweet notes.
— Tom Robbins
Five tender apricots in a blue bowl, a brief and exact promise of things to come.
— Frances Mayes, In Tuscany
So consider your options, make your choice and call me home.
— Kelley Armstrong, Living with the Dead
Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.
— W. Somerset Maugham, The Summing Up
Roam abroad in the world, and take thy fill of its enjoyments before the day shall come when thou must quit it for good.
— Saadi
Action creates/a taste/for itself.
— Kay Ryan
How soon country people forget. When they fall in love with a city it is forever, and it is like forever. As though there never was a time when they didn't love it. The minute they arrive at the train station or get off the ferry and glimpse the wide streets and the wasteful lamps lighting them, they know they are born for it. There, in a city, they are not so much new as themselves: their stronger, riskier selves.
— Toni Morrison
One does not surrender a life in an instant. That which is lifelong can only be surrendered in a lifetime.
— Elisabeth Elliot
Think of yourself as a brand. You need to be remembered. What will they remember you for? What defines you? If you have it in you, do something that defines you. Invent something, develop a unique skill, get noticed for something — it creates a talking point.
— Chris Arnold
You can't hide the thunderbolt. When it hits you, everybody can see it. Christ, man, don't be ashamed of it, some men pray for the thunderbolt. You're a very lucky fellow. - Calo
— Mario Puzo, The Godfather
They may try to stop you by their words and deeds, but like air you will rise above it all. You are unstoppable
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, Your Dreams Will Not Die
A Manifesto for Introverts1. There's a word for 'people who are in their heads too much': thinkers.2. Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.3. The next generation of quiet kids can and must be raised to know their own strengths.4. Sometimes it helps to be a pretend extrovert. There will always be time to be quiet later.5. But in the long run, staying true to your temperament is key to finding work you love and work that matters.6. One genuine new relationship is worth a fistful of business cards.7. It's OK to cross the street to avoid making small talk.8. 'Quiet leadership' is not an oxymoron.9. Love is essential; gregariousness is optional.10. 'In a gentle way, you can shake the world.' -Mahatma Gandhi
— Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
I could taste the salt on her lips, each kiss like a summer wave breaking on an empty beach.
— Michael Faudet
Boredom is the fear of self.
— Marie Joséphine de Suin
Read deeply. Stay open. Continue to wonder.
— Austin Kleon, Steal Like an Artist: 10 Things Nobody Told You About Being Creative
Which road, which road did you takeThat brought you here at last?No road, no road did I take.I leaped, I leaped from dream to dream.
— Franz Werfel
Maybe we all just exist, all versions of us exist at times, and we have to figure out a way to get to each of them, to find each one and tell that version that it's okay, that it's all justthe way it works, a concept too powerful to ignore but too complicated to explain.
— John Corey Whaley, Noggin
I'm sure it is," she replied. Her expression turned fierce, making her look far different from the scattered teacher I knew. "But listen to me when I say this. You are exceptional, taleneted, and brilliant young woman. Do not ever let anyone make you feel like you're less. Do not ever let anyone make you feel invisible. Do not let anyone-not even a teacher who constantly sends you for coffee-push you around." She put her glasses back on and began randomly lifting up pieces of papers. At last, she found a pen and grinned triumphantly."Now, then. What is your brother's name?
— Richelle Mead, Bloodlines
What you have learned from experience is worth much more than gold. If you have a house it may burn down. Any kind of possession can be lost, but your experience is yours forever. Keep it and find a way to use it.
— Somaly Mam, The Road of Lost Innocence: The True Story of a Cambodian Heroine
Not even waste/is inviolate./The day misspent,/the love misplaced,/has inside it/the seed of redemption./Nothing is exempt from resurrection.
— Kay Ryan
An average man is egoistic, proud and has strong self esteem. They always require partners who massage their ego not those who will drag their ego to the mud.
— Jaachynma N.E. Agu
The liberty of man is not safe in the hands of any church. Wherever the Bible and sword are in partnership, man is a slave. All laws for the purpose of making man worship God, are born of the same spirit that kindled the fires of the auto da fe, and lovingly built the dungeons of the Inquisition. All laws defining and punishing blasphemy -- making it a crime to give your honest ideas about the Bible, or to laugh at the ignorance of the ancient Jews, or to enjoy yourself on the Sabbath, or to give your opinion of Jehovah, were passed by impudent bigots, and should be at once repealed by honest men. An infinite God ought to be able to protect himself, without going in partnership with State Legislatures. Certainly he ought not so to act that laws become necessary to keep him from being laughed at. No one thinks of protecting Shakespeare from ridicule, by the threat of fine and imprisonment. It strikes me that God might write a book that would not necessarily excite the laughter of his children. In fact, I think it would be safe to say that a real God could produce a work that would excite the admiration of mankind.
— Robert G. Ingersoll, Some Mistakes of Moses
There is no tomorrow and there was no yesterday if you truly want to accomplish your goals you must engulf yourself in today. 
— Noel DeJesus
Love is forgiving, accepting, moving on, embracing, and all encompassing. And if you’re not doing that for yourself, you cannot do that with anyone else.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
How quick and rushing life can sometimes seem, when at the same time it's so slow and sweet and everlasting.
— Graham Swift, Tomorrow
I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled [poets] to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean.
— Socrates
Chapter One of My Life. I walk down the street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. I am lost. I am helpless. It isn't my fault. It still takes forever to find a way out.Chapter Two. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I pretend I don't see it. I fall in again. I can't believe I'm in the same place! But it isn't my fault. And it still takes a long time to get out.Chapter Three. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I see it there. I still fall in. It's a habit! My eyes are open. I know where I am. It is my fault. I get out immediately.Chapter Four. I walk down the same street. There's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I walk around it.Chapter Five. I walk down a different street.
— Portia Nelson, There's a Hole in My Sidewalk: The Romance of Self-Discovery
To only responsible choice I can make is to be love and happiness." Vincellent"Love the world as you love yourself".Lao Tze"The next step in mans evolution will be the survival of the wisest.
— Deepak Chopra
I imagine what would happen if everyone turned their regrets into wishes, went around shouting them.
— Nina LaCour
When you walk a life of honesty, you live a life of truth.
— Therese Benedict
Bill Gates (and his successor at Microsoft, Ray Ozzie) are famous for taking annual reading vacations. During the year they deliberately cultivate a stack of reading material—much of it unrelated to their day-to-day focus at Microsoft—and then they take off for a week or two and do a deep dive into the words they’ve stockpiled. By compressing their intake into a matter of days, they give new ideas additional opportunities to network among themselves, for the simple reason that it’s easier to remember something that you read yesterday than it is to remember something you read six months ago.
— Steven Johnson, Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation
No one rises above who he or she has been without first having fallen down. The best time - in fact, the only time - to make a real change in your life is in the moment of seeing the need for it. He who hesitates always gets lost in the hundred reasons why tomorrow is a better day to get started.
— Guy Finley
Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one's baptism on storm's promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one's foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water.
— Malcolm Lowry, Ultramarine
Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.
— Adrian Tan
Who dares, win
— Paulo Coelho
I’m not out to compete with any one, I’m here to complete, by encouraging and inspiring souls through a text at a time
— Bernard Kelvin Clive, Your Dreams Will Not Die
Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.
— Elizabeth Wein, Code Name Verity
The tension between what is, and what we dream of, is important. Not to discount what we have, but to hold onto that middle ground, because it's in there that the magic happens.
— Susan Branch
Josh had told me a long time ago that he had this theory that an entire relationship was based on what occurred over the course of the first five minutes you know each other. That everything that came after those first minutes was just details being filled in. Meaning: you already knew how deep the love was, how instinctually you felt about someone.What happened in their first five minutes?Time stopped.
— Laura Dave, London is the Best City in America
Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps.
— Kay Ryan
Doing what you wanted to do was the only training, and the only preliminary, needed for doing more of what you wanted to do.
— Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim
You have come to earth to entertain and to be entertained.
— Paramahansa Yogananda, Autobiography of a Yogi
Saw a little girl touch a big bug and shout, "I conquered my fear! YES!" and calmly walk away. I was inspired.
— Nathan Fillion
Buddha had said:"Each of us is a God. Each of us knows all. We need only open our minds to hear our own wisdom.
— Dan Brown, Angels & Demons
The death of a dream can in fact serve as the vehicle that endows it with new form, with reinvigorated substance, a fresh flow of ideas, and splendidly revitalized color. In short, the power of a certain kind of dream is such that death need not indicate finality at all but rather signify a metaphysical and metaphorical leap forward.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.
— H. Jackson Brown Jr.
It is not possible to know how far the influence of any amiable, honest-hearted duty-doing man flies out into the world, but it is very possible to know how it has touched one's self in going by.
— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Without inspiration, we’re all like a box of matches that will never be lit.
— David Archuleta, Chords of Strength: A Memoir of Soul, Song and the Power of Perseverance
No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.
— Christian Nestell Bovee
The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.
— Vik Muñiz
Play to win, not "not to lose".
— Dondi Scumaci
Come to the edge.We might fall.Come to the edge.It's too high!COME TO THE EDGE!And they cameAnd he pushedAnd they flew.
— Christopher Logue, New Numbers
They say what doesn't kill the soul will make you stronger, but you can't be a stone-hearted man.
— Anthony Green
If I do not know the will of my Father, and what He requires of me in a certain transaction, if I ask Him to give me wisdom concerning any requirement in my life, or in regard to my own course, or that of my friends, my family, my children, or those that I preside over, and get no answer from Him, and then do the very best that my judgement will teach me, He is bound to own and honor that transaction, and He will do so to all intents and purposes.
— Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, Volume 3
True beauty radiates not from outer cosmetics, but from the simple joy of making a difference for those that need your voice, passion, and time without expecting or wanting anything in return...
— Deborah Barnes
You can close your eyes to the things you don't want to see, but you can't close your heart to the things you don't want to feel.
— Jonny Depp
Inhale when I inhale. Exhale when I exhale. Breathe with me,for two beating hearts breathing one breath together become one.
— Christina Westover, Poisoning Sylvie
A too closely watched flower/blossoms the wrong color./Excess attention to the jonquil/turns it gentian. Flowers/need it tranquil to get/their hues right. Some/only open at midnight.
— Kay Ryan
The material world is all feminine. The feminine engergy makes the non-manifest, manifest. So even men (are of the feminine energy). We have to relinquish our ideas of gender in the conventional sense. This has nothing to do with gender, it has to do with energy. So feminine energy is what creates and allows anything which is non-manifest, like an idea, to come into form, into being, to be born. All that we experience in the world around us, absolutely everything (is feminine energy). The only way that anything exists is through the feminine force.
— Zeena Schreck
To study and constantly, is this not a pleasure? To have friends come from far away places, is this not a joy? If people do not recognize your worth, but this does not worry you, are you not a true gentleman?
— Confucius
I have liv'd long enough for others, like the Dog in the Wheel, and it is now the Season to begin for myself: I cannot change that Thing call'd Time, but I can alter its Posture and, as Boys do turn a looking-glass against the Sunne, so I will dazzle you all.
— Peter Ackroyd, Hawksmoor
Birth, life, and death― each took place on the hidden side of a leaf.
— Toni Morrison
He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often--he searched for a simile, found one in his work--torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people's faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?
— Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.
— Mahatma Gandhi
Everything you need is already within you. The beauty of life is that your DESTINY lies always in your hands. The time has come for you to STEP UP and BE GREAT
— Pablo
I was kind of excited to go to jail for the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.
— Quentin Tarantino
Reading, conversation, environment, culture, heroes, mentors, nature – all are lottery tickets for creativity. Scratch away at them and you’ll find out how big a prize you’ve won.
— Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life
If you believe in your heart that you are right, then you must fight with all your might to do it your way. Only dead fish swim with the stream all the time.
— Linda Ellerbee
Starting over can be the scariest thing in the entire world, whether it’s leaving a lover, a school, a team, a friend or anything else that feels like a core part of our identity but when your gut is telling you that something here isn’t right or feels unsafe, I really want you to listen and trust in that voice.
— Jennifer Elisabeth, Born Ready: Unleash Your Inner Dream Girl
[B]riefing is not reading. In fact it is the antithesis of reading. Briefing is terse, factual and to the point. Reading is untidy, discursive and perpetually inviting. Briefing closes down a subject, reading opens it up.
— Alan Bennett, The Uncommon Reader
No sooner have you feasted on beauty with your eyes than your mind tells you that beauty is vain and beauty passes
— Virginia Woolf
Don't ever ask for permission to follow your dreams. Follow them no matter fucking what. It's important. We have one life here and you are the author of your story, more than anybody else. You are much more responsible for your dreams coming true or not than anyone else in your life you have contacted with. So, dream big, work hard, and make it happen no matter what.
— Jared Leto
To be taught to read—what is the use of that, if you know not whether what you read is false or true? To be taught to write or to speak—but what is the use of speaking, if you have nothing to say? To be taught to think—nay, what is the use of being able to think, if you have nothing to think of? But to be taught to see is to gain word and thought at once, and both true.
— John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin:  Library Edition.  39 vols.
Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new film, 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.
— Jim Jarmusch
Be With Me In The Phases Of My Work Because My Brain Feels Like It Has Been Whipped And I Yearn To Make A Small Perfect Thing Which Will Live In Your Morning Like Curious Static Through A President's Elegy Or A Nude Hunchback Acquiring A Tan On The Crowded Oily Beach. 
— Leonard Cohen
I'm interested in the way in which the past affects the present and I think that if we understand a good deal more about history, we automatically understand a great more about contemporary life.
— Toni Morrison
That’s what being alive is, Thing! It’s being badly prepared for everything! Because you only get one chance, Thing!
— Terry Pratchett, Diggers
Forgetting takes space./Forgotten matters displace/as much anything else as/anything else. We must/skirt unlabeled crates/as thought it made sense/and take them when we go/to other states.
— Kay Ryan
If we have not struggled/as hard as we can/at our strongest/how will we sense/the shape of our losses/or know what sustains/us longest or name/what change costs us,/saying how strange/it is that one sector/of the self can step in/for another in trouble,/how loss activates/a latent double, how/we can feed/as upon nectar/upon need?
— Kay Ryan
Our wounds can so easily turn us into people we don't want to be, and we hardly see it happening. Protect your heart, love yourself, and be with people who love and care for you.
— Sue Fitzmaurice
All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.
— Mahatma Gandhi
It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view. When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades. The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before.Its never too late to take a moment to look.
— Sharon Salzberg, Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation
It isn't the happy ending Ingrid and I had dreamed up, but it's all a part of what I'm working through. The way life changes. The way people and things disappear. Then appear, unexpectedly, and hold you close.
— Nina LaCour, Hold Still
When I left Queen's my future seemed to stretch out before me like a straight road. I thought I could see along it for many a milestone. Now there is a bend in it. I don't know what lies around the bend, but I am going to believe that the best does. It has a fascination of its own, that bend, Marilla. I wonder how the road beyond it goes - what there is of green glory and soft, checkered light and shadows - what new landscapes - what new beauties - what curves and hills and valleys farther on.
— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
For the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and the mind is no longer in him: when he has not attained to this state, he is powerless and is unable to utter his oracles.
— Socrates
but I have no mind for business and considered staying awake to be enough of an accomplishment.
— David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day
What in hell are you really made of, Howard? After all, it's only a building. It's not the combination of holy sacrament, Indian torture, and sexual ecstasy that you seem to make of it.""Isn't it?
— Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead
The words were unexpected, but so incisively true. So much of prayer is like that - an encounter with a truth that has sunk to the bottom of the heart, that wants to be found, wants to be spoken, wants to be elevated into the realm of sacredness.
— Sue Monk Kidd, Traveling With Pomegranates: A Mother-Daughter Story
Even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lighting or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Someday stars will wind down or blow up. Someday death will cover us all like the water of a lake and perhaps nothing will ever come to the surface to show that we were ever there. But we WERE there, and during the time we lived, we were alive. That's the truth - what is, what was, what will be - not what could be, what should have been, what never can be.
— Orson Scott Card, Children of the Mind
But yield who will to their separation, My object in living is to uniteMy avocation and my vocationAs my two eyes make one in sight.
— Robert Frost
MANAGE YOUR MOOD: Name 1 thing that surprised you today...Name 1 thing that moved you...Name 1 thing that inspired you...
— Gino Norris
The first gift is Strength. May you remember to call upon it whenever you need it.
— Charlene Costanzo, The Twelve Gifts of Birth
Diversity of character is due to the unequal time given to values. Only through each other will we see the importance of the qualities we lack and our unfinished soul's potential.
— Shannon L. Alder
Facing your fears robs them of their power
— Mark Burnett, Jump In!: Even If You Don't Know How to Swim
Surround yourself with people who believe in your dreams, encourage your ideas, support your ambitions, and bring out the best in you.
— Roy  Bennett
Curiosity is the single most important attribute with which humans are born. More than a simple desire to discover or know things, curiosity is a powerful tool, like a scalpel or a searchlight. Curiosity changes us. It is also a way to effect change, perhaps even on a global level.
— Loren Rhoads, Morbid Curiosity Cures the Blues: True Stories of the Unsavory, Unwise, Unorthodox and Unusual from the magazine "Morbid Curiosity"
When darkness is at its darkest, a star shines the brightest.
— Louise Philippe
Being a role model is the most powerful form of educating...too often fathers neglect it because they get so caught up in making a living they forget to make a life.
— John Wooden, Wooden: A Lifetime of Observations and Reflections On and Off the Court
I woke up early and took the first train to take me away from the city. The noise and all its people. I was alone on the train and had no idea where I was going, and that’s why I went there. Two hours later we arrived in a small town, one of those towns with one single coffee shop and where everyone knows each other’s name. I walked for a while until I found the water, the most peaceful place I know. There I sat and stayed the whole day, with nothing and everything on my mind, cleaning my head. Silence, I learned, is some times the most beautiful sound.
— Charlotte Eriksson