100+ Wise Inspirational Quotes to Enlighten Your Mind and Soul

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

- Socrates

"True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us."

- Socrates

"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it."

- Albert Einstein

"Just as treasures are uncovered from the earth, so virtue appears from good deeds, and wisdom appears from a pure and peaceful mind. To walk safely through the maze of human life, one needs the light of wisdom and the guidance of virtue."

- Buddha

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step."

- Lao Tzu

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."

- Confucius

"Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself."

- Rumi

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

- Socrates

"The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times."

- Paulo Coelho

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."

- Aristotle

"He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe."

- Marcus Aurelius

"We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn't. Success often lies just the other side of failure."

- Leo Buscaglia

"It's not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters."

- Epictetus

"Beware of false knowledge; it is more dangerous than ignorance."

- George Bernard Shaw

"I raise up my voice—not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard… We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back."

- Malala Yousafzai

"It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop."

- Confucius

"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."

- Albert Einstein

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

- Martin Luther King Jr.

"A wise man, recognizing that the world is but an illusion, does not act as if it were real, so he escapes suffering."

- Buddha

"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts."

- Winston Churchill

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"It always seems impossible until it’s done."

- Nelson Mandela

"The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

- William Shakespeare

"I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

- Maya Angelou

"Do the one thing you think you cannot do. Fail at it. Try again. Do better the second time. The only people who never tumble are those who never mount the high wire. This is your moment. Own it."

- Oprah Winfrey

"I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

- Michael Jordan

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbour, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover."

- Mark Twain

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do."

- Steve Jobs

"If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary."

- Jim Rohn

"Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

- Albert Einstein

"You can’t put a limit on anything. The more you dream, the farther you get."

- Michael Phelps

"The more you praise and celebrate your life, the more there is in life to celebrate."

- Oprah Winfrey

"I’ve grown most not from victories, but setbacks. If winning is God’s reward, then losing is how he teaches us."

- Serena Williams

"Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you."

- Princess Diana

"Life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans."

- Allen Saunders

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain!"

- Dolly Parton

"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

"There is some good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"I am not afraid of storms for I am learning how to sail my ship."

- Louisa May Alcott

"The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live."

- Auguste Rodin

"We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each other’s happiness, not by each other’s misery."

- Charlie Chaplin

"Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Success is most often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable."

- Coco Chanel

"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for."

- John A. Shedd

"The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"The great courageous act that we must all do is to have the courage to step out of our history and past so that we can live our dreams."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself."

- George Bernard Shaw

"If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of."

- Bruce Lee

"Be where you are; otherwise you will miss your life."

- Buddha

"The purpose of life is a life of purpose."

- Robert Byrne

"One of the deep secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others."

- Lewis Carroll

"Life is tough my darling, but so are you."

- Stephanie Bennet Henry

"In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit."

- Anne Frank

"Life isn’t about waiting for the storm to pass, it’s about learning to dance in the rain."

- Vivian Greene

"The new dawn blooms as we free it. For there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it."

- Amanda Gorman

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."

- Oscar Wilde

"You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honour."

- Aristotle

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

- Seneca

"Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall."

- Confucius

"Work hard in silence, let your success be the noise."

- Frank Ocean

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

- Thomas Edison

"Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo Da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein."

- H. Jackson Brown Jr.

"Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

- Alexander Graham Bell

"Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard."

- Tim Notke

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Either you run the day or the day runs you."

- Jim Rohn

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that’s how you grow. When there’s that moment of ‘Wow, I’m not really sure I can do this,’ and you push through those moments, that’s when you have a breakthrough."

- Marissa Mayer

"Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, stupid people already have all the answers."

- Socrates

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."

- Samuel Beckett

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young. The greatest thing in life is to keep your mind young."

- Henry Ford

"We must not allow other people’s limited perceptions to define us."

- Virginia Satir

"Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves."

- Dale Carnegie

"Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day."

- Dalai Lama

"Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work."

- Stephen King

"Much of the stress that people feel doesn’t come from having too much to do. It comes from not finishing what they started."

- David Allen

"There are two primary choices in life: to accept conditions as they exist, or accept the responsibility for changing them."

- Denis Waitley

"Show me a person who has never made a mistake and I’ll show you someone who has never achieved much."

- Joan Collins

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

- C.S. Lewis

"If I had nine hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first six sharpening my axe."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change."

- Stephen Hawking

"Leaders can let you fail and yet not let you be a failure."

- Stanley McChrystal

"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go."

- T.S. Eliot

"The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me."

- Ayn Rand

"Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing."

- Denis Waitley

"Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it."

- Henry David Thoreau

"There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure."

- Colin Powell

"First, think. Second, believe. Third, dream. And finally, dare."

- Walt Disney

"All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them."

- Walt Disney

"Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be."

- Elizabeth Gilbert

"One of the most courageous things you can do is identify yourself, know who you are, what you believe in and where you want to go."

- Sheila Murray Bethel

"Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly."

- Robert F. Kennedy

"The function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers."

- Ralph Nader

"If you set your goals ridiculously high and it’s a failure, you will fail above everyone else’s success."

- James Cameron

"When placed in command, take charge."

- Norman Schwarzkopf

"Do one thing every day that scares you."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"When I let go of what I am, I become what I want to be."

- Lao Tzu

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them; that only creates sorrow."

- Lao Tzu

"If you want to conquer the anxiety of life, live in the moment, live in the breath."

- Amit Ray

"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

"A calm and modest life brings more happiness than the pursuit of success combined with constant restlessness."

- Albert Einstein

"Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself."

- Hermann Hesse

"We should always be asking ourselves: “Is this something that is, or is not, in my control?”"

- Epictetus

"In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."

- Albert Camus

"There is hope, even when your brain tells you there isn’t."

- John Green

"What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."

- Jane Goodall

"Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning."

- Gloria Steinem

"Don’t think about making women fit the world – think about making the world fit women."

- Gloria Steinem

"Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me."

- Arianna Huffington

"I realized that I don’t have to be perfect. All I have to do is show up and enjoy the messy, imperfect and beautiful journey of my life."

- Kerry Washington

"Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, you ought to set up a life you don’t need to escape from."

- Seth Godin

"Someone once told me that ‘time’ is a predator that stalks us all our lives. But I rather believe that time is a companion who goes with us on the journey and reminds us to cherish every moment because it will never come again."

- Jean Luc Picard

"The Pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails."

- John Maxwell

"Greatness is not this wonderful, esoteric, elusive, God-like, feature that only the special among us will ever taste. It’s something that truly exists in all of us. It’s very simple. This is what I believe, and I’m willing to die for it."

- Will Smith

"I really don’t think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don’t mind the failure but I can’t imagine that I’d forgive myself if I didn’t try."

- Nikki Giovanni

"Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground."

- Theodore Roosevelt

"In a gentle way, you can shake the world."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing."

- Benjamin Franklin

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a BIG difference."

- Winston Churchill

"Focus your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition. It asks too little life of yourself. Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential."

- Barack Obama

"Remember, openness always means risks. To begin something new, you need to get rid of the old. And most of all, nothing should be taken for granted, everything is possible."

- Angela Merkel

"The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt."

- Sylvia Plath

"When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you’re not saying ‘no’ to yourself."

- Paulo Coelho

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I– I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."

- Robert Frost

"The best way out is always through."

- Robert Frost

"If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform one million realities."

- Maya Angelou

"If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude."

- Maya Angelou

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."

- Maya Angelou

"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

"I’ve learned that no matter what happens, or how bad it seems today, life does go on, and it will be better tomorrow."

- Maya Angelou

"When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us."

- Helen Keller

"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart."

- Helen Keller

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all."

- Helen Keller

"One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don’t throw it away."

- Stephen Hawking

"However bad life may seem, there is always something you can do, and succeed at. While there’s life, there is hope."

- Stephen Hawking

"If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else."

- Booker T. Washington

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."

- Anne Frank

"No one has ever become poor by giving."

- Anne Frank

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined."

- Henry David Thoreau

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

- Anaïs Nin

"Dream big and dare to fail."

- Norman Vaughan

"He that can compose himself is wiser than he that composes books."

- Benjamin Franklin

"It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"The wise know too well their weakness to assume infallibility: and he who knows most knows best how little he knows."

- Thomas Jefferson

"Turn your wounds into wisdom."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom."

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it."

- Hermann Hesse

"What happens is not as important as how you react to what happens."

- Ellen Glasgow

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."

- Chinese Proverb

"Just remember the world is not a playground but a schoolroom. Life is not a holiday but an education. One eternal lesson for us all: to teach us how better we should love."

- Barbra Jordan

"Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows."

- Ojibwe Prayer

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

- Edith Wharton

"Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is progress; working together is success."

- Henry Ford

"How dare you settle for less when the world made it so easy for you to be remarkable?"

- Seth Godin

"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."

- Joshua J. Marine

"We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them."

- Albert Einstein

"And when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it."

- Paulo Coelho

"Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant."

- Robert Louis Stevenson

"It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation."

- Herman Melville

"Don’t worry about failure, you only have to be right once."

- Drew Houston

"Never did nature say one thing and wisdom another."

- Edmund Burke

"Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm."

- Abraham Lincoln

"Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood."

- Helen Keller

"Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

- Thomas Edison

"Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game."

- Babe Ruth

"If you live long enough, you’ll make mistakes. But if you learn from them, you’ll be a better person."

- Bill Clinton

"Living might mean taking chances, but they’re worth taking."

- Lee Ann Womack

"The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them."

- Paulo Coelho

"My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness."

- Maya Angelou

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

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

- President John Quincy Adams

"The price of greatness is responsibility."

- Winston Churchill

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, so far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb."

- Winston Churchill

"Saying it is impossible to live without failing at something is impossible. Unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default."

- J.K. Rowling

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."

- Charles Darwin

"Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong, it’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength."

- G.D Anderson

"I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves."

- Mary Wollstonecraft

"A woman with a voice is by definition a strong woman. But the search to find that voice can be remarkably difficult."

- Melinda Gates

"In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders."

- Sheryl Sandberg

"Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in our absence."

- Sheryl Sandberg

"Justice is about making sure that being polite is not the same thing as being quiet. In fact, often times, the most righteous thing you can do is shake the table."

- Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"I don’t want to be thought of as the ‘girl who was shot by the Taliban’ but the ‘girl who fought for education. This is the cause I want to devote my life."

- Malala Yousafzai

"The Taliban could take our pens and books, but they couldn’t stop our minds from thinking."

- Malala Yousafzai

"A girl should be two things: who and what she wants."

- Coco Chanel

"There is a stubbornness about me that can never bear to be frightened at the will of others. My courage always rises at every attempt to intimidate me."

- Jane Austen

"We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already."

- J.K. Rowling

"The world needs strong women. Women who will lift and build others, who will love and be loved. Women who live bravely, both tender and fierce. Women of indomitable will."

- Amy Tenney

"I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for truth – and truth rewarded me."

- Simone de Beauvoir

"You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself, any direction you choose."

- Dr Seuss

"I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will."

- Charlotte Brontë

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there."

- Will Rogers

"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far."

- Swami Vivekananda

"Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment."

- Jim Rohn

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see."

- Henry David Thoreau

"For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone."

- Audrey Hepburn

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."

- Michelangelo Buonarroti

"I'd rather regret the things I've done than regret the things I haven't done."

- Lucille Ball

"Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching."

- Satchel Paige

"Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life's a Great Balancing Act."

- Dr. Seuss

"A tree is known by its fruit; a man by his deeds. A good deed is never lost; he who sows courtesy reaps friendship, and he who plants kindness gathers love."

- Saint Basil

"Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable."

- Sydney J. Harris

"Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable."

- Franz Kafka

"If you set out to be liked, you would be prepared to compromise on anything at any time, and you would achieve nothing."

- Margaret Thatcher

"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge."

- Daniel J. Boorstin

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or pause and reflect)."

- Mark Twain

"The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

- Isaac Asimov

"Hold fast to dreams, For if dreams die Life is a broken-winged bird, That cannot fly."

- Langston Hughes

"Count your age by friends, not years. Count your life by smiles, not tears."

- John Lennon

"May you live every day of your life."

- Jonathan Swift

"Any fool can know. The point is to understand."

- Albert Einstein

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."

- Aristotle

"There is neither happiness nor misery in the world; there is only the comparison of one state with another, nothing more. He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. We must have felt what it is to die, Morrel, that we may appreciate the enjoyments of life. Live, then, and be happy, beloved children of my heart, and never forget, that until the day God will deign to reveal the future to man, all human wisdom is contained in these two words, 'Wait and Hope.'"

- Alexandre Dumas

"Think before you speak. Read before you think."

- Fran Lebowitz

"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right."

- Isaac Asimov

"The best index to a person's character is how he treats people who can't do him any good, and how he treats people who can't fight back."

- Abigail Van Buren

"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths."

- Walt Disney

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style."

- Maya Angelou

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable."

- Helen Keller

"If you look at what you have in life, you’ll always have more. If you look at what you don’t have in life, you’ll never have enough."

- Oprah Winfrey

"Thinking always ahead, thinking always of trying to do more, brings a state of mind in which nothing is impossible."

- Henry Ford

"Find out who you are and do it on purpose."

- Dolly Parton

"Success is falling nine times and getting up 10."

- Jon Bon Jovi

"Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all."

- Aristotle

"When you have a dream, you’ve got to grab it and never let go."

- Carol Burnett

"He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: It goes on."

- Robert Frost

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."

- Napoleon Hill

"Everything you want is on the other side of fear."

- Jack Canfield

"Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom."

- Thomas Jefferson

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

- Bertrand Russell

"Who is wise? He that learns from everyone. Who is powerful? He that governs his passions. Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody."

- Benjamin Franklin

"A bird doesn't sing because it has an answer, it sings because it has a song."

- Maya Angelou

"We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn."

- Mary Catherine Bateson

"Good people are good because they've come to wisdom through failure."

- William Saroyan

"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn."

- Gloria Steinem

"We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained."

- Marie Curie

"Knowledge is love and light and vision."

- Helen Keller

"Wisdom is knowing what to do next. Skill is knowing how to do it. Virtue is doing it."

- Thomas Jefferson

"When one door of happiness closes, another one opens; but we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us."

- Helen Keller

"The wise person doesn't give the right answers, but poses the right questions."

- Claude Levi-Strauss

"Live in the sunshine, swim the sea, drink the wild air."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Angry people are not always wise."

- Jane Austen

"Half a man’s wisdom goes with his courage."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Once you label me you negate me."

- Soren Kierkegaard

"You could certainly say that I’ve never underestimated myself, there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious."

- Angela Merkel

"Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk."

- Dalai Lama

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh."

- Kahlil Gibran

"Let me embrace thee, sour adversity, for wise men say it is the wisest course."

- William Shakespeare

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."

- Vernon Sanders Law

"If you're reading this... Congratulations, you're alive. If that's not something to smile about, then I don't know what is."

- Chad Sugg

"I’m not going to continue knocking on that old door that doesn’t open for me. I’m going to create my own door and walk through that."

- W.P. Kinsella

"For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together."

- Vincent Van Gogh

"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."

- Archimedes

"It’s a good place when all you have is hope and not expectations."

- Danny Boyle

"If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there."

- Lewis Carroll

"To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a funnybone."

- Reba McEntire

"You have succeeded in life when all you really want is only what you really need."

- Vernon Howard

"You can never plan the future by the past."

- Edmund Burke

"A wise man makes his own decisions, an ignorant man follows public opinion."

- Chinese Proverb

"There is no perfection, only life."

- Milan Kundera

"It’s the simple things in life that are the most extraordinary; only wise men are able to understand them."

- Paulo Coelho

"He that respects himself is safe from others."

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Nothing that you have not given away will ever be really yours."

- C.S. Lewis

"To me, leadership is not about necessarily being the loudest in the room, but instead being the bridge, or the thing that is missing in the discussion and trying to build a consensus from there."

- Jacinda Ardern

"The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"The scariest moment is always just before you start. After that, things can only get better."

- Stephen King

"There is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind."

- Virginia Woolf

"There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man."

- Patrick Rothfuss

"All the sacred rights of humanity are violated by insisting on blind obedience."

- Mary Wollstonecraft

"The attempt to combine wisdom and power has only rarely been successful, and then only for a short while."

- Albert Einstein

"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives."

- Abba Eban

"When the going gets rough - turn to wonder."

- Parker Palmer

"If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it."

- Margaret Fuller

"Women have discovered that they cannot rely on men’s chivalry to give them justice."

- Helen Keller

"It is impossible to love and to be wise."

- Francis Bacon

"Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light for my path."

- Psalm 119:105

"There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart."

- Charles Dickens

"Be wise like serpents and harmless like doves."

- Matthew 10:16

"The reason people find it so hard to be happy is that they always see the past better than it was, the present worse than it is, and the future less resolved than it will be."

- Marcel Pagnol

"It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it."

- Maurice Switzer

"The older I get, the greater power I seem to have to help the world; I am like a snowball - the further I am rolled the more I gain."

- Susan B. Anthony

"I don’t go by the rule book…I lead from the heart, not the head."

- Princess Diana

"The young man knows the rules, but the old man knows the exceptions."

- Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

"With each generation, women’s ability to live the lives they choose reaches a place their grandmothers never thought possible. But that doesn’t mean everything is perfect or that our work is finished."

- Cathy McMorris Rodgers

"I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness."

- Mother Teresa

"I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him."

- Hudson Taylor

"The bad news is time flies. The good news is you’re the pilot."

- Michael Altshuler

"A dead end is just a good place to turn around."

- Naomi Judd

"Prayer is the raising of one's mind and heart to God or the requesting of good things from God."

- St. John Damascene

"And you, you scare people because you are whole all by yourself."

- Lauren Alex Hooper

"Perhaps instead of bombarding God with requests for what is not, we might try, instead, asking God to open our eyes to see what is."

- Margaret Silf

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."

- Mark Twain

"Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason."

- Pope Francis

"[My mother] told me that fear was not an option. I was always told that women are stronger, so I believed it."

- Diane Von Furstenberg

"Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life."

- Jackie Robinson

"Lost time is never found again."

- Benjamin Franklin

"It’s always better to shock people and change people’s expectations than to give them exactly what they think you can do."

- Jonah Hill

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you."

- Anne Lamott

"Everyone is a complicated human being, and everyone is strong and weak and funny and scared."

- Laverne Cox

"The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn. We are filled with popular wisdom of several centuries just past, and we are terrified to give it up."

- Gloria Steinem

"You have to learn to get up from the table when love is no longer being served."

- Nina Simone

"We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life."

- William Osler

"Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced."

- Soren Kierkegaard

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all."

- Oscar Wilde

"If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on."

- Sheryl Sandberg

"Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see."

- Mark Twain

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."

- Mae West

"If something is wrong, fix it now. But train yourself not to worry, worry fixes nothing."

- Ernest Hemingway

"No need to hurry. No need to sparkle. No need to be anybody but oneself."

- Virginia Woolf

"A strong woman understands that gifts such as logic, decisiveness, and strength are just as feminine as intuition and emotional connection. She values and uses all of her gifts."

- Nancy Rathburn

"To feel fulfilment and have a deeper level of understanding, personally, this is the most important thing."

- Alicia Keys

"Those who say it cannot be done, should not interrupt those doing it."

- Chinese Proverb

"We pass through this world but once."

- Stephen Jay Gould

"Decide that you want it more than you are afraid of it."

- Bill Cosby

"Life isn’t a matter of milestones, but of moments."

- Rose Kennedy

"When writing the story of your life, don’t let anyone else hold the pen."

- Drake

"A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it."

- Alistair Cook

"There’s love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look."

- Kurt Vonnegut

"Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing."

- Georgia O’Keeffe

"Whatever we are, whatever we make of ourselves, is all we will ever have—and that, in its profound simplicity, is the meaning of life."

- Philip Appleman

"If life were predictable it would cease to be life, and be without flavor."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition."

- Indira Gandhi

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it."

- Winston S. Churchill

"The trouble with most of us is that we would rather be ruined by praise than saved by criticism."

- Norman Vincent Pearl

"The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish."

- Charlie Chaplin

"If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all."

- Noam Chomsky

"Character is how you treat those who can do nothing for you."

- Malcolm Forbes

"Living an experience, a particular fate, is accepting it fully."

- Albert Camus

"The first resistance to social change is to say it’s not necessary."

- Gloria Steinem

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

- George Orwell

"So, what if, instead of thinking about solving your whole life, you just think about adding additional good things. One at a time. Just let your pile of good things grow."

- Rainbow Rowell

"There is no traffic jam along the extra mile."

- Roger Staubach

"Cultivate an optimistic mind, use your imagination, always consider alternatives, and dare to believe that you can make possible what others think is impossible."

- Rodolfo Costa

"There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person."

- Anais Nin

"The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience."

- Frank Herbert

"Worrying is like a rocking chair, it gives you something to do, but it gets you nowhere."

- Glenn Turner

"I have been bent and broken, but – I hope – into a better shape."

- Charles Dickens

"The fear of being laughed at makes coward of us all."

- Mignon McLaughlin

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."

- Maya Angelou

"We must understand that sadness is an ocean, and sometimes we drown, while other days we are forced to swim."

- R.M. Drake

"An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox."

- Lao Tzu

"A strong woman looks a challenge dead in the eye and gives it a wink."

- Gina Carey

"It is better to conquer our grief than to deceive it."

- Seneca

"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another."

- William James

"The whole future lies in uncertainty: live immediately."

- Seneca

"Life without liberty is like a body without spirit"

- Khalil Gibran

"The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on."

- Charles Dickens

"A loving heart is the truest wisdom."

- Charles Dickens

"There will be little rubs and disappointments everywhere, and we are all apt to expect too much; but then, if one scheme of happiness fails, human nature turns to another; if the first calculation is wrong, we make a second better: we find comfort somewhere."

- Jane Austen

"We suffer more in imagination than in reality."

- Seneca

"When you feel overwhelmed, start eliminating all the non-essential things from your life. Clarity brings calm."

- Darius Foroux

"For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business."

- T.S. Eliot

"The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and to endure very much."

- William Hazlitt

"Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency."

- Natalie Goldberg

"To do great things is difficult, but to command great things is more difficult."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Without music, life would be a mistake."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare."

- Spinoza

"As those move easiest who have learned to dance."

- Alexander Pope

"There are no facts, only interpretations."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents."

- Bob Ross

"If a nation loses its storytellers, it loses its childhood."

- Peter Handke

"Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not."

- Oscar Wilde

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness."

- Mark Twain

"Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard."

- Anne Sexton

"Poor eyes limit your sight; poor vision limits your deeds."

- Franklin Field

"Half woman, half warrior. Delicate and strong."

- R.H. Sin

"The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations [ahem]."

- Benjamin Disraeli

"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one."

- Albert Einstein

"Wisdom is a good purchase, though we pay dearly for it."

- Dutch Proverb

"Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive."

- Elbert Hubbard

"Never laugh at live dragons."

- J.R.R. Tolkien

"If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with."

- Michael Jackson

"If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be."

- Yogi Berra

"Knowledge in youth is wisdom in age."

- Proverb

"Wisdom hears one thing and understands three things."

- Chinese Proverb

"Arrogance diminishes wisdom."

- Arabian Proverb

"The wisest of the wise may err."

- Aeschylus

"Wisdom at times is found in folly."

- Horace

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man."

- Henry David Thoreau

"The wise are only once betrayed."

- German Proverb

"We learn by example and by direct experience because there are real limits to the adequacy of verbal instruction."

- Malcolm Gladwell

"Our heritage and ideals, our code and standards – the things we live by and teach our children – are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings."

- Walt Disney

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

- H. L. Mencken

"One doesn’t recognize the really important moments in one’s life until it’s too late."

- Agatha Christie

"You begin saving the world by saving one man at a time; all else is grandiose romanticism or politics."

- Charles Bukowski

"The secret to getting ahead is getting started."

"I never dreamed about success, I worked for it."

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

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

"Success seems to be connected with action. Successful people keep moving. They make mistakes but they don’t quit."

"It’s kind of fun to do the impossible."

"Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle."

"The art of leadership is saying no, not yes. It is very easy to say yes."

"Wise men are not always silent, but they know when to be."

"Speak less, say more."

"A strong woman stands up for herself. A stronger woman stands up for everybody else."

- Unknown

"Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."

"Stress is the inability to decide what’s important."

"Healing is not linear."