c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Maktub" (It is written.)
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
Do you really want to be happy? You can begin by being appreciative of who you are and what you've got.
— Benjamin Hoff, The Tao of Pooh
If you want to write a fantasy story with Norse gods, sentient robots, and telepathic dinosaurs, you can do just that. Want to throw in a vampire and a lesbian unicorn while you're at it? Go ahead. Nothing's off limits. But the endless possibility of the genre is a trap. It's easy to get distracted by the glittering props available to you and forget what you're supposed to be doing: telling a good story. Don't get me wrong, magic is cool. But a nervous mother singing to her child at night while something moves quietly through the dark outside her house? That's a story. Handled properly, it's more dramatic than any apocalypse or goblin army could ever be.
— Patrick Rothfuss
All great achievements require time.
— Maya Angelou
The less you associate with some people, the more your life will improve.Any time you tolerate mediocrity in others, it increases your mediocrity. Animportant attribute in successful people is their impatience with negativethinking and negative acting people. As you grow, your associates willchange. Some of your friends will not want you to go on. They will want youto stay where they are. Friends that don't help you climb will want you tocrawl. Your friends will stretch your vision or choke your dream. Those thatdon't increase you will eventually decrease you.Consider this:Never receive counsel from unproductive people. Never discuss your problemswith someone incapable of contributing to the solution, because those whonever succeed themselves are always first to tell you how. Not everyone hasa right to speak into your life. You are certain to get the worst of thebargain when you exchange ideas with the wrong person. Don't follow anyonewho's not going anywhere.With some people you spend an evening: with others you invest it. Be carefulwhere you stop to inquire for directions along the road of life. Wise is theperson who fortifies his life with the right friendships. If you run withwolves, you will learn how to howl. But, if you associate with eagles, youwill learn how to soar to great heights."A mirror reflects a man's face, but what he is really like is shown by thekind of friends he chooses."The simple but true fact of life is that you become like those with whom youclosely associate - for the good and the bad.Note: Be not mistaken. This is applicable to family as well as friends.Yes...do love, appreciate and be thankful for your family, for they willalways be your family no matter what. Just know that they are human firstand though they are family to you, they may be a friend to someone else andwill fit somewhere in the criteria above."In Prosperity Our Friends Know Us. In Adversity We Know Our friends.""Never make someone a priority when you are only an option for them.""If you are going to achieve excellence in big things,you develop the habit in little matters.Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.."..
— Colin Powell
You get in life what you have the courage to ask for.
— Oprah Winfrey
Well done is better than well said.
— Benjamin Franklin
Even if things don't unfold the way you expected, don't be disheartened or give up. One who continues to advance will win in the end.
— Daisaku Ikeda
Real magic can never be made by offering someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back.
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
Although I'm only fourteen, I know quite well what I want, I know who is right and who is wrong. I have my opinions, my own ideas and principles, and although it may sound pretty mad from an adolescent, I feel more of a person than a child, I feel quite indepedent of anyone.
— Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank
It was like the beginning of life and laughter. It was the real meaning of the sun
— Charles Bukowski, Factotum
Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.
— Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love
I've had a lot of worries in my life, most of which never happened.
— Mark Twain
If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it - then I can achieve it.
— Muhammad Ali, The Soul of a Butterfly: Reflections on Life's Journey
All I ask is one thing, and I’m asking this particularly of young people: please don’t be cynical. I hate cynicism, for the record, it’s my least favorite quality and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen.
— Conan O'Brien
I have no right to say or do anything that diminishes a man in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him but what he thinks of himself. Hurting a man in his dignity is a crime.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
— Harry Truman
Know thyself.
— Socrates
You come of the Lord Adam and the Lady Eve," said Aslan. "And that is both honour enough to erect the head of the poorest beggar, and shame enough to bow the shoulders of the greatest emperor on earth. Be content.
— C.S. Lewis, Prince Caspian
Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.
— Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
The greatest ideas are the simplest.
— William Golding, Lord of the Flies
There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to outcarol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain… Or so says the legend.
— Colleen McCullough, The Thorn Birds
There is no happiness like that of being loved by your fellow creatures, and feeling that your presence is an addition to their comfort.
— Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else.
— Emily Dickinson
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
— Ronald Reagan
Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.
— Anne Lamott
If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.
— Henry David Thoreau, I to Myself: An Annotated Selection from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau
The best relationships in our lives are the best not because they have been the happiest ones, they are that way because they have stayed strong through the most tormentful of storms.
— Pandora Poikilos, Excuse Me, My Brains Have Stepped Out
So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. 	In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page:I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand fromme to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a FRIEND…	I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too.
— Elizabeth Gilbert
Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
— Samuel Beckett
Nothing will work unless you do.
— Maya Angelou
The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!
— Dolly Parton
We are all worms, But I do believe that I am a glow worm.
— Winston S. Churchill, Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill's Speeches
If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. It is true that you may fool all of the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all of the time. -Speech at Clinton, Illinois, September 8, 1854.
— Abraham Lincoln
I want to thank you, Lord, for life and all that's in it. Thank you for the day and for the hour, and the minute. 
— Maya Angelou
...Next time you're faced with a choice, do the right thing. It hurts everyone less in the long run.
— Wendelin Van Draanen, Flipped
Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.
— Vincent van Gogh
Things die. But they don't always stay dead. Believe me, I know.
— Richelle Mead, Frostbite
Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great, not what you were never made for.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance and Other Essays
Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.
— Albert Schweitzer
I remembered the fox. One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need men who can dream of things that never were.
— John Keats
The only limits for tomorrow are the doubts we have today.
— Pittacus Lore, The Power of Six
In school we learn that mistakes are bad, and we are punished for making them. Yet, if you look at the way humans are designed to learn, we learn by making mistakes. We learn to walk by falling down. If we never fell down, we would never walk.
— Robert T. Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad
I don't fit into any stereotypes. And I like myself that way.
— C. JoyBell C.
Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to sleep through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there- to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion'.
— Muhammad Ali
He who would learn to fly one day must first learn to walk and run and climb and dance
—  one cannot fly into flying.
She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.
— Anaïs Nin
Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.
— Seneca
Hope is important because it can make the present moment less difficult to bear. If we believe that tomorrow will be better, we can bear a hardship today.
— Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step: The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life
Sometimes you can see things happen right in front of your eyes and still jump to the wrong conclusions.
— Jodi Picoult, Keeping Faith
An eye is meant to see things.The soul is here for its own joy.A head has one use: For loving a true love.Feet: To chase after.Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,for learning what men have done and tried to do.Mysteries are not to be solved: The eye goes blindwhen it only wants to see why.A lover is always accused of something.But when he finds his love, whatever was lostin the looking comes back completely changed.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, Night and Sleep
If a man is to shed the light of the sun upon other men, he must first of all have it within himself.
— Romain Rolland
Stay hungry. Stay foolish.
— Steve Jobs
When you judge another, you do not define them, you define yourself.
— Wayne W. Dyer
When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this - you haven't.
— Thomas A. Edison
Each person deserves a day away in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.
— Maya Angelou, Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.
— Confucius
Nothing's perfect, the world's not perfect. But it's there for us, trying the best it can; that's what makes it so damn beautiful.
— Hiromu Arakawa, Fullmetal Alchemist, Vol. 1
Once you learn to quit, it becomes a habit.
— Vince Lombardi Jr.
If you haven’t the strength to impose your own terms upon life, then you must accept the terms it offers you.
— T.S. Eliot
The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
— Thomas A. Edison
What you are is God's gift to you, what you become is your gift to God.
— Hans Urs von Balthasar, Prayer
There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.
— Nelson Mandela
You are willing to die, you coward, but not to live.
— Hermann Hesse, Steppenwolf
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart.
— Vincent van Gogh
Feet, what do I need them forIf I have wings to fly.
— Frida Kahlo
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
Scars are just another kind of memory.
— M.L. Stedman, The Light Between Oceans
They laugh at me because I'm different
—  I laugh at them because they're all the same.
Never, ever, let anyone tell you what you can and can't do. Prove the cynics wrong. Pity them for they have no imagination. The sky's the limit. Your sky. Your limit. Now. Let's dance.
— Tom Hiddleston
Pointing to another world will never stop vice among us
—  shedding light over this world can alone help us.
Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.
— Lyndon B. Johnson
And that's when I understand that I have been stained. Whether I'm still in love with him, whether he was ever in love with me, and no matter who he's in love with now, Willem changed my life. He showed me how to get lost, and then I showed myself how to get found.
— Gayle Forman, Just One Day
...there ain't no journey what don't change you some.
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Beauty is about being comfortable in your own skin. It's about knowing and accepting who you are.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
Besides, the world isn't split into good people and Death Eaters. We've all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That's who we really are.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
We are afraid of losing what we have, whether it's our life or our possessions and property. But this fear evaporates when we understand that our life stories and the history of the world were written by the same hand.
— Paulo Coelho
I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.
— Vincent van Gogh
Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.
— Alberto Manguel, A Reading Diary: A Passionate Reader's Reflections on a Year of Books
If you have to dry the dishes (Such an awful boring chore)If you have to dry the dishes('Stead of going to the store)If you have to dry the dishesAnd you drop one on the floorMaybe they won't let youDry the dishes anymore
— Shel Silverstein, A Light in the Attic
My task, which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see.
— Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim
The strength of a woman is not measured by the impact that all her hardships in life have had on her
—  but the strength of a woman is measured by the extent of her refusal to allow those hardships to dictate her and who she becomes.
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Life's great happiness is to be convinced we are loved.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
I began to realize how important it was to be an enthusiast in life. He taught me that if you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it at full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be.
— Roald Dahl, My Uncle Oswald
And if my heart be scarred and burned,The safer, I, for all I learned.
— Dorothy Parker, Sunset Gun: Poems
Believe there is a great power silently working all things for good, behave yourself and never mind the rest.
— Beatrix Potter
I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.
— Helen Keller
As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.
— Wilfred Arlan Peterson
All men want, not something to do with, but something to do, or rather something to be.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
If you can't run, you crawl. If you can't crawl-- you find someone to carry you.
— Joss Whedon
To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.
— Charlie Chaplin
I think that one of these days," he said, "you're going to have to find out where you want to go. And then you've got to start going there. But immediately. You can't afford to lose a minute. Not you.
— J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Ask yourself these three questions, Tatiana Metanova, and you will know who you are. Ask: What do believe in? What do you hope for? What do you love?
— Paullina Simons, The Bronze Horseman
The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.
— Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory
Belief, like fear or love, is a force to be understood as we understand the theory of relativity and principals of uncertainty. Phenomena that determine the course of our lives. Yesterday, my life was headed in one direction. Today, it is headed in another. Yesterday, I believe I would never have done what I did today. These forces that often remake time and space, that can shape and alter who weimagine ourselves to be, begin long before we are born and continue after we perish. Our lives and our choices, like quantum trajectories, are understood moment to moment. That each point of intersection, each encounter, suggest a new potential direction. Proposition, I have fallen in love with Luisa Rey. Is this possible? I just met her and yet, I feel like something important has happened to me.
— David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas
Life's like a movie, write your own ending. Keep believing, keep pretending.
— Jim Henson
He not busy being born is busy dying.
— Bob Dylan
What would you do if you weren't afraid?
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Remake the world, a little at a time, each in your own corner of the world.
— Rick Riordan
We can't choose our fate, but we can choose others. Be careful in knowing that.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.
— Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
What is now proved was once only imagined.
— William Blake
Everything will turn out right, the world is built on that.
— Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
— Theodore Parker
Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape. 
— William S. Burroughs
Reality is wrong. Dreams are for the real.
— Tupac Shakur
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species
You can't connect the dots looking forward
—  you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy.
— Stephen Fry
Each suburban wife struggles with it alone. As she made the beds, shopped for groceries, matched slipcover material, ate peanut butter sandwiches with her children, chauffeured Cub Scouts and Brownies, lay beside her husband at night- she was afraid to ask even of herself the silent question-- 'Is this all?
— Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique
It only takes a split second to smile and forget, yet to someone that needed it, it can last a lifetime.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
Fair means everyone gets what they need. And the only way to get what you need is to make it happen yourself.
— Rick Riordan, The Red Pyramid
The only difference between you and God is that you have forgotten you are divine.
— Dan Brown, The Lost Symbol
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.
— Seneca
Somehow I can't believe that there are any heights that can't be scaled by a man who knows the secrets of making dreams come true. This special secret, it seems to me, can be summarized in four Cs. They are curiosity, confidence, courage, and constancy, and the greatest of all is confidence. When you believe in a thing, believe in it all the way, implicitly and unquestionable.
— Walt Disney Company
Nothing ever really goes away--it just changes into something else. Something beautiful.
— Sarah Ockler, Twenty Boy Summer
You are not a victim. No matter what you have been through, you're still here. You may have been challenged, hurt, betrayed, beaten, and discouraged, but nothing has defeated you. You are still here! You have been delayed but not denied. You are not a victim, you are a victor. You have a history of victory.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Happiness is always there. You just have to choose to see it. There's no point dwelling in the dark and ignoring the light of the stars.
— Carrie Hope Fletcher
Wasn't that the point of the book? For women to realize, We are just two people. Not that much separates us. Not nearly as much as I'd thought.
— Kathryn Stockett, The Help
LAW 4 Always Say Less Than Necessary When you are trying to impress people with words, the more you say, the more common you appear, and the less in control. Even if you are saying something banal, it will seem original if you make it vague, open-ended, and sphinxlike. Powerful people impress and intimidate by saying less. The more you say, the more likely you are to say something foolish.
— Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
I know because I read...Your mind is not a cage. It's a garden. And it requires cultivating.
— Libba Bray
Gossip is just a tool to distract people who have nothing better to do from feeling jealous of those few of us still remaining with noble hearts.
— Anna Godbersen, Splendor
We cannot be sure of having something to live for unless we are willing to die for it.
— Ernesto Che Guevara
I'm going to paraphrase Thoreau here... rather than love, than money, than faith, than fame, than fairness... give me truth. 
— Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
I don't paint dreams or nightmares, I paint my own reality.
— Frida Kahlo
I would rather make mistakes in kindness and compassion than work miracles in unkindness and hardness.
— Mother Teresa, A Gift for God: Prayers and Meditations
If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
— Thomas A. Edison
Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.
— Ray Bradbury
I don't want to live in the kind of world where we don't look out for each other. Not just the people that are close to us, but anybody who needs a helping hand. I cant change the way anybody else thinks, or what they choose to do, but I can do my bit.
— Charles de Lint
It doesn't matter if a million people tell you what you can't do, or if ten million tell you no. If you get one yes from God that's all you need.
— Tyler Perry
Do you know what you are?You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter.You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself;everything that you want, you are already that.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, Hush, Don't Say Anything to God: Passionate Poems of Rumi
Self-respect is the root of discipline: The sense of dignity growswith the ability to say no to oneself.
— Abraham Joshua Heschel
In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. 
— John Bunyan
According to Aristophanes in Plato's The Banquet, in the ancient world of legend there were three types of people.In ancient times people weren't simply male or female, but one of three types : male/male, male/female or female/female. In other words, each person was made out of the components of two people. Everyone was happy with this arrangment and never really gave it much thought. But then God took a knife and cut everyone in half, right down the middle. So after that the world was divided just into male and female, the upshot being that people spend their time running around trying to locate their missing half.
— Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore
Don't give up the fight,Stand up for your rights.
— Bob Marley
I’ve had many enemies over the years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never engage in a fight you’re sure to lose. On the other hand, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it. Bide your time and strike back when you’re in a position of strength—even if you no longer need to strike back.
— Stieg Larsson, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
I choose gentleness... Nothing is won by force. I choose to be gentle. If I raise my voice may it be only in praise. If I clench my fist, may it be only in prayer. If I make a demand, may it be only of myself.
— Max Lucado
Go and make interesting mistakes, make amazing mistakes, make glorious and fantastic mistakes. Break rules. Leave the world more interesting for your being here.
— Neil Gaiman, Make Good Art
Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark.
— Rabindranath Tagore
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.
— Reinhold Niebuhr
There is no need to search; achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all, so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world, because it is all One, you see. And the only laws are paradox, humor and change. There is no problem, never was, and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns, and relax into the world. No need to resist life, just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you imagine. You are the world, you are the universe; you are yourself and everyone else, too! It's all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up, regain your humor. Don't worry, just be happy. You are already free!
— Dan Millman, Way of the Peaceful Warrior: A Book That Changes Lives
It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.
— Jiddu Krishnamurti, The First and Last Freedom
Your sacred space is where you can find yourself over and over again.
— Joseph Campbell
Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again. That is why every man's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why every man, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of consideration. In each individual the spirit has become flesh, in each man the creation suffers, within each one a redeemer is nailed to the cross.
— Hermann Hesse, Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
Sometimes, as we're stumbling along in the dark, we hit something good.
— Susan Ee, Angelfall
A villain is just a victim whose story hasn’t been told.
— Chris Colfer, The Wishing Spell
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
— William James
And I thought that all those little kids are going to grow up someday. And all of those little kids are going to do the things that we do. And they will all kiss someone someday. But for now, sledding is enough. I think it would be great if sledding were always enough, but it isn't.
— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower
You must accept the reality of other people. You think that reality is up for negotiation, that we think it's whatever you say it is. You must accept that we are as real as you are; you must accept that you are not God.
— J.K. Rowling, The Casual Vacancy
If you can't you must, and if you must you can.
— Anthony Robbins
Awake, arise or be for ever fall’n.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost
I am who I am; no more, no less.
— Terry Goodkind, Wizard's First Rule
Indeed, learning to write may be part of learning to read. For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.
— Eudora Welty, On Writing
Only the gentle are ever really strong.
— James  Dean
Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Anything is possible. Anything can be.
— Shel Silverstein
You can’t go back and make a new start, but you can start right now and make a brand new ending.
— James R. Sherman, Rejection
I think the act of reading imbues the reader with a sensitivity toward the outside world that people who don't read can sometimes lack. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms; after all reading is such a solitary, internalizing act that it appears to represent a disengagement from day-to-day life. But reading, and particularly the reading of fiction, encourages us to view the world in new and challenging ways...It allows us to inhabit the consciousness of another which is a precursor to empathy, and empathy is, for me, one of the marks of a decent human being.
— John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things
The soul should always stand ajar, ready to welcome the ecstatic experience.
— Emily Dickinson
Be silent and safe — silence never betrays you; Be true to your word and your work and your friend; Put least trust in him who is foremost to praise you,Nor judge of a road till it draw to the end.
— John Boyle O'Reilly, Life of John Boyle O'Reilly
We should not judge people by their peak of excellence
—  but by the distance they have traveled from the point where they started.
The universe doesn’t give you what you ask for with your thoughts - it gives you what you demand with your actions.
— Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free
How should we be able to forget those ancient myths that are at the beginning of all peoples, the myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.So you must not be frightened if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloudshadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any miseries, or any depressions? For after all, you do not know what work these conditions are doing inside you.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Be soft. Do not let the world make you hard. Do not let the pain make you hate. Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness. Take pride that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be a beautiful place
— Iain Thomas, I Wrote This For You
No. Don't give up hope just yet. It's the last thing to go. When you have lost hope, you have lost everything. And when you think all is lost, when all is dire and bleak, there is always hope.
— Pittacus Lore, I Am Number Four
Anything under God's control is never out of control.
— Charles R. Swindoll
You can't outwit fate by standing on the sidelines placing little sidebets about the outcome of life. either you wade in and risk everything you have to play the game or you don't play at all. and if u don't play u can't win.
— Judith McNaught, Paradise
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
— Rabindranath Tagore
Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.
— Albert Einstein
What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.
— Richard Bach, Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah
If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.
— Jim Rohn
Written words can also sing.
— Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, Dreams in a Time of War
Don't limit a child to your own learning, for she was born in another time.
— Rabindranath Tagore
no matter how ugly the world gets or how stupid it shows me it is, I always have faith
— Gerard Way
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken!
— Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club
it is impossible to build one's own happiness on the unhappiness of others. This perspective is at the heart of Buddhist teachings.
— Daisaku Ikeda
One mistake does not have to rule a person's entire life.
— Joyce Meyer, Any Minute
You know what I can't understand? You have all these people telling you all the time how great you are, smart and funny and talented and all that, I mean endlessly, I've been telling you for years. So why don't you believe it? why do you think people say that stuff, Em? Do you think it's a conspiracy, people secretly ganging up to be nice about you?
— David Nicholls, One Day
a wind has blown the rain away & the sky away & all the leaves away, & the trees stand. i think i, too, have known autumn too long.
— E.E. Cummings
Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.
— Ludwig van Beethoven
We don't receive wisdom
—  we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.
Success is determined not by whether or not you face obstacles, but by your reaction to them. And if you look at these obstacles as a containing fence, they become your excuse for failure. If you look at them as a hurdle, each one strengthens you for the next.
— Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
The language of Friendship is not words, but meanings.
— Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
I am a flawed person. A brook with many stones, a clear blue sky with many blackbirds. I have many shortcomings. A rainbow that’s not long enough, a starry night with clouds. But I can only be thankful to the God who loves me just this way, and I can only be grateful to the people in my life who accept the clear blue sky with many blackbirds and who are patient with the rainbow that isn’t long enough. And because of this, I am taught love, because of this I love my God, and I love these people.
— C. JoyBell C.
Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you.
I try to avoid looking forward or backward, and try to keep looking upward.
— Charlotte Brontë
I wish I could've lived my life without making any wrong turns. But that's impossible. A path like that doesn't exist. We fail. We trip. We get lost. We make mistakes. And little by little, one step at a time, we push forward. It's all we can do. On our own two feet.
— Natsuki Takaya, Fruits Basket, Vol. 21
Chaos is more freedom; in fact, total freedom. But no meaning. I want to be free to act, and I also want my actions to mean something.
— Audrey Niffenegger, The Time Traveler's Wife
We dance round in a ring and suppose,But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.
— Robert Frost
Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.
— Walt Whitman
A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.
— Oscar Wilde
Whatever you think, be sure it is what you think; whatever you want, be sure that is what you want; whatever you feel, be sure that is what you feel.
— T.S. Eliot
If I've learned one lesson from all that's happened to me, it's that there is no such thing as the biggest mistake of your existence. There's no such thing as ruining your life. Life's a pretty resilient thing, it turns out.
— Sophie Kinsella, The Undomestic Goddess
There is nothing more beautiful than seeing a person being themselves. Imagine going through your day being unapologetically you.
— Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience
Done is better than perfect.
— Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead
Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings so that you shall come easily by what others have labored hard for.
— Socrates
There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance
She was a beautiful dreamer. The kind of girl, who kept her head in the clouds, loved above the stars and left regret beneath the earth she walked on.
— Robert M. Drake
When you're screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, that means they've given up on you.
— Randy Pausch
Grace is the face that love wears when it meets imperfection.
— Joseph R. Cooke
We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.
— Douglas Coupland
We could never learn to be brave and patient if there were only joy in the world
— Helen Keller
It's not about how to achieve your dreams, it's about how to lead your life, ... If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself, the dreams will come to you.
— Randy Pausch, The Last Lecture
Step follows step,Hope follows Courage,Set your face towards danger,Set your heart on victory.
— Gail Carson Levine, The Two Princesses of Bamarre
If nature has made you for a giver, your hands are born open, and so is your heart; and though there may be times when your hands are empty, your heart is always full, and you can give things out of that—warm things, kind things, sweet things—help and comfort and laughter—and sometimes gay, kind laughter is the best help of all.
— Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess
She had become accustomed to being lonely. She was used to walking alone and to being considered 'different.' She did not suffer too much.
— Betty  Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
There is no limit to the amount of good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.
— Ronald Reagan
Look at children. Of course they may quarrel, but generally speaking they do not harbor ill feelings as much or as long as adults do. Most adults have the advantage of education over children, but what is the use of an education if they show a big smile while hiding negative feelings deep inside? Children dont usually act in such a manner. If they feel angry with someone, they express it, and then it is finished. They can still play with that person the following day.
— Dalai Lama XIV
The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.
— Abraham Verghese, Cutting for Stone
Don't find fault, find a remedy; anybody can complain
— Henry Ford
When you take risks you learn that there will be times when you succeed and there will be times when you fail, and both are equally important.
— Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding
Laughter is carbonated holiness.
— Anne Lamott
Every person, all the events of your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.
— Richard Bach
It is worse to stay where one does not belong at all than to wander about lost for a while and looking for the psychic and soulful kinship one requires
— Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women Who Run With the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype
Love art in yourself, and not yourself in art.
— Konstantin Stanislavski, My Life In Art
Call him Voldemort, Harry. Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name increases fear of the thing itself.
— J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone
Dream, Dream DreamDreams transform into thoughts And thoughts result in action.
— A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
What we do see depends mainly on what we look for. ... In the same field the farmer will notice the crop, the geologists the fossils, botanists the flowers, artists the colouring, sportmen the cover for the game. Though we may all look at the same things, it does not all follow that we should see them.
— John Lubbock, The Beauties of Nature and the Wonders of the World We Live in
Just because you fall once, doesn't mean you're fall at everything. Keep trying, hold on, and always trust yourself, because if you don't then who will??
— Marilyn Monroe
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
Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.
— Bruce Lee
Mr. Franz, I think careers are a 20th century invention and I don't want one.
— Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild
Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time, who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done, if we are always doing.
— Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson
It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Do your best and let God do the rest.
— Ben Carson
First you jump off the cliff and build your wings on the way down.
— Ray Bradbury
Have you ever seen the stars in the night? See them closely, they will tell you, how to be open, how to love and how to shine and twinkle without any differences and jealousy of other stars.
— Santosh Kalwar, Quote Me Everyday
You should never assume. You know what happens when you assume. You make an ass out of you and me because that's how it's spelled.
— Ellen DeGeneres
So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
— Christopher McCandless
Have regular hours for work and play; make each day both useful and pleasant, and prove that you understand the worth of time by employing it well. Then youth will bring few regrets, and life will become a beautiful success.
— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.
— Anne Lamott
Believe in yourself and there will come a day when others will have no choice but to believe with you.
— Cynthia Kersey
Instead of committing suicide, people go to work.
— Thomas Bernhard, Correction
May I share with you a formula that in my judgment will help you and help me to journey well through mortality... First, fill your mind with truth; second, fill your life with service; and third, fill your heart with love.
— Thomas S. Monson
Give up to grace. The ocean takes care of each wave 'til it gets to shore. You need more help than you know.
— Jalaluddin Rumi, Words of Paradise: Selected Poems of Rumi