A list of timeless inspirational/motivational/positivity quotes for a happy & inspired life!
No man [or woman] ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s [she] not the same man [woman].
~HERACLITUS
Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself [herself].
~LEO TOLSTOY
Every man [woman] must decide whether he [she] will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
~MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.
If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep walking.
~PROVERB
There is nothing noble about being superior to someone. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self.
~ERNEST HEMINGWAY
May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears.
~NELSON MANDELA
Wise men [women] talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
~PLATO
Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.
~HERACLITUS
You can fail at what you don’t want so you might as well take a chance doing something that you love.
~JIM CAREY
If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.
~MARCUS AURELIUS
We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.
~T.S. ELIOT
You know everything about the world, but you do know anything about yourself. This is a ridiculous way to live.
~SADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
~STEVE JOBS
Watch your thoughts, they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
~LAO TZU
And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that counts. It’s the life in your years.
~ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Life is not about finding yourself. It’s about creating yourself.
~GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
There are two mistakes that can make along the road to truth… not going all the way, and not starting.
~GUATAMA BUDDHA
The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
~MARK TWAIN
Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.
~FARAH GRAY
A rat race is for rats. As a human being, you can consciously create what you want without being driven by social compulsions.
~SADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV
Tourists leave home to escape the world, while travellers leave home to experience the world.
~UNKNOWN
What we fear doing most is usually what we most need to do.
~TIM FERRIS
Fear is not your enemy. It is a compass pointing you to the areas where you need to grow.
~STEVE PAVLINA
Learn as if you were going to live forever. Live as if you were going to die tomorrow.
~MAHATMA GANDHI
The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.
~MALCOLM FORBES
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.
~BERTRAND RUSSELL
It’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.
~GRACE HOPPER
Without a major purpose, you are drifting toward certain failure.
~NAPOLEAN HILL
So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.
~W. CLEMENT STONE
Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes.
~ANTISTHENES
You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.
~VIKTOR FRANKYL
Out beyond the ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
~RUMI
Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine days into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings.
~William Arthur Ward
We build emotional, mental and spiritual capacity in precisely the same way that we build physical capacity.
~JIM LOEHR
A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves as simply as something to aim at.
~BRUCE LEE
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
~ARISTOTLE
A superior man [woman] is honest in his speech but exceeds in his [her] actions.
~CONFUCIUS
If you want to conquer fear, don’t sit at home and think about it go out and get busy.
~DALE CARNEGIE
The bad news is that time flies. The good news is that you’re the pilot.
~MICHAEL ALTSHULER
It’s never too late to redefine self-control, to change long-ingrained habits, and do the work you’re capable of.
~SETH GODIN
The optimist sees opportunity in every danger. The pessimist sees danger and every opportunity.
~WINSTON CHURCHHILL
The truth will set you free. But first it will piss you off.
~GLORIA STEINEM
In matters of style, swim with the current. In matters of principle stand like a rock.
~THOMAS JEFFERSON
When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.
~WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be.
~ABRAHAM LINCOLN
When your shift your order of priorities from “having-doing-being” to “being-doing-having,” your destiny will be in your hands.
~SAADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV
I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dream that so they can see that it’s not the answer.
~JIM CAREY
The worst thing in life would be a death-bed regret that you’ve spent your life pursuing what someone said you should want, instead of what you really want.
~DEREK SIVERS
To be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.
~NELSON MANDELA
But there was no need to be ashamed at tears, for tears bear witness that a man had the greatness of courage, the courage to suffer.
~VIKTOR FRANKYL
An unexamined life is not worth living.
~SOCRATES
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
~BERTRAND RUSSEL
How deeply you touch another life is how rich your life is.
~SAADHGURU JAGGI VASUDEV
What we have done for ourselves dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
~ALBERT PIKE
Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.
~RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
~MAHATMA GANDHI
Each time a man [woman] stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he [she] sends forth a tiny ripple of hope.
~ROBERT F. KENNEDY
You can achieve anything you want in life if you have the courage to dream it, the intelligence to make it a realistic plan, and the will to see that plan through to the end.
~SIDNEY A. FREIDMAN
Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.
~NEALE DONALD WALSCH
Do not ask yourself with the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive, because what the world needs is people who have come alive.
~HOWARD THURMAN
If you hang out with chickens, you’re going to cluck and if you hang out with eagles you’re going to fly.
~STEVE MARABOLI
Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.
~GUATAMA BUDDHA
Be brave enough to live the life of your dreams are according to your vision and purpose instead of the expectations and opinions of others.
~ROY T. BENNET
Service to others is the rent you pay for your room here on Earth.
~MUHAMMAD ALI
The two kinds of people who never get ahead or those who will not do what they are told and knows who only what they are told.
~NAPOLEAN HILL
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.
~PABLO PICASSO
Lack of direction, not lack of time, is the problem. We all have twenty-four-hour days.
~ZIG ZIGLAR
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
~HELEN KELLER
You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
~Jim Rohn
Be yourself, everyone else is already taken.
~OSCAR WILDE
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
~THOMAS EDISON
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you and then you win.
~MAHATMA GHANDI
There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning.
~LOUIS L’AMOUR
Turn your words into wisdom.
~OPRAH WINFREY
You don’t learn to walk by following the rules. You learn by doing and by falling over.
~RICHARD BRANSON
None but ourselves can free our minds.
~BOB MARLEY
Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
~WILL ROGERS
God gave you the gift of 86,400 seconds today. Have you used one to say thank you?
~WILLIAM ARTHUR WARD
Change will not come if wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
~BARACK OBAMA
A ship is safe in harbour but that’s not what ships are for.
~WILLIAM G.T. SHEDD
The wound is the place where the light enters you.
~RUMI
Trees that are slow to grow bear the best fruit.
~MOLIERE
Whoever knows ‘the ALL’ but fails to know himself [herself] lacks everything.
~THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS
Judgement is but a mirror reflecting the insecurities of the person who’s doing the judging.
~JOSHUA FIELDS MILLBURN
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
Don’t wish it were easier. Wish you were better.
~JIM ROHN
Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it’s stupid.
~ALBERT EINSTEIN
The mind is in its own place, and in itself an make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.
~JOHN MILTON
Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
~GOERGE BERNARD SHAW
Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise so I am changing myself.
~RUMI
There are things known and there are things unknown and between are the doors of perception.
~ALDOUS HUXLEY
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
~MARCUS AURELIUS
The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.
~PABLO PICASSO
Do whatever is put in front of you with all my heart and soul.
~MICHAEL A SINGER
If you go out looking for friends you are going to find they are very scarce. If you go out to be a friend, you’ll find them everywhere.
~ZIG ZIGLAR
What makes the best of the best so good is a relentless focus on priorities, uncomfortable action, and zigging when other people are zagging.
~TIM FERRIS
Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
~NAPOLEAN HILL
Those who succeed in an outstanding way seldom do so before the age of 40. More often, they do not strike their real place until they are well beyond the age of 50.
~NAPOLEAN HILL
If you chase two rabbits, you won’t catch either.
~PROVERB
A man cannot directly choose his circumstances, but he can choose his thoughts, and so indirectly, yet surely, shape his circumstances.
~JAMES ALLEN
He who has a ‘why’ to live for can bear almost any ‘how’.
~NIETZSCHE
Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.
~MARK TWAIN
Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds.
~NAPOLEAN HILL
Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
~THEODORE ROOSEVELT
The secret to happiness is constancy of purpose.
~BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
~MAAHATMA GHANDI
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
~RALPH WALDO EMERSON
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.
~EINSTEIN
You are the master of your destiny. You can influence, direct and control your own environment. You can make your life what you want it to be.
~NAPOLEAN HILL
It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.
~CONFUCIUS
Only he who attempts the absurd is capable of achieving the impossible.
~MIGUEL DE UNAMUNO
Success is not to be pursued, it is to be attracted by the person you become.
~JIM ROHN
We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.
~WINSTON CHURCHILL
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
~EPICURUS
The discipline of writing something down is the first step toward making it happen.
~LEE LOCOCCA
If you can dream it, then you can achieve it. You will get all you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want.
~ZIG ZIGLAR
We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.
~JOSEPH CAMBELL
My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive, and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humour, and some style.
~MAYA ANGELOU
To be continued…
Source: these quotes are compiled in The Captain’s Log, a journal that’s perfect for getting in the habit of daily gratitude, meditation and reflection.