Inspirational quotes and aphorisms | The World of English

Inspirational quotes and aphorisms, phrases, ideas and thoughts by various famous authors to stimulate, encourage and support your inspiration for your best creativity.

Inspirational and motivational phrases have similar objectives but differ in shades of meaning and emotional impact. In short, while inspirational phrases ignite the imagination and encourage reflection, motivational phrases stimulate energy and movement towards a goal.

Inspirational quotes and sayings aim to stimulate deep thought and awaken emotions or intuition. They are often based on universal concepts, moral values, or the beauty of life, and help connect with a broader sense of purpose or meaning. Inspirational quotes tend to suggest a higher or spiritual view of life, encouraging inner growth and connection with ideals.

These inspirational expressions are also very close to motivational concepts, even though these generally have a more practical and direct objective and aim to stimulate more concrete actions. However, all aphorisms in general, precisely because they are flashes of intellect of a very often poetic, philosophical and pragmatic nature, are favorable to inspire the people who read them with new ideas, wise advice and motivational charges, moreover they are so numerous, that everyone can find those most suited to their character, their personality and their intentions.

The theme of death in life and life in death is fundamental for the artist. The poet in fact becomes a seer and through the confusion of the senses communicates with the afterlife where he draws his inspiration.
Carl William Brown

The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.
Albert Einstein

Consider your nature: you were not made to live as brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.
Dante Alighieri

Mastering the art of controlling your reactions to the things that trigger you is where healing begins.
Anonymous

Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.
Pablo Picasso

Nobody is going to pour truth into your brain. It is something you have to find out for yourself.
Noam Chomsky

To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
T.S. Eliot

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

The beginning of wisdom is the beginning of supernatural power.
Paracelsus

The best revenge is massive success.
Frank Sinatra

There is no substitute for hard work.
Thomas Edison

The mind is everything. What you think you become.
Buddha

The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.
Mark Twain

The dianoetic virtues for Aristotle are five: art, science, practical wisdom or prudence, intellect and knowledge. Try to meditate on this aphorism and you will surely find something that can stimulate you.
Carl William Brown

Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you.
Jesus

Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear.
George Addair

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

It doesn’t matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.
Confucius

One can acquire everything in solitude, except character.
Sthendal

Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.
Voltaire

Dreaming of the person you want to be is waiting the person you already are.
Kurt Kobain

Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.
Julia Cameron

Without goals, the very concept of intelligence is meaningless.
Steven Pinker

The ability to observe without evaluating is the highest form of intelligence.
Jiddu Krishnamurti

What worries you, masters you.
John Locke

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile.
Roger Staubach

It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.
Ann Landers

I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.
Rosa Parks

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

I can only thank bad luck and stupidity for all the material they have put at my disposal. It will certainly be a source of perennial, inexhaustible and joyful inspiration for us.
Carl William Brown

Do what you can, where you are, with what you have.
Teddy Roosevelt

It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live.
Mae Jemison

One word! Frees us of all the weight and pain of life: that word is love.
Sophocles

Observe your enemies, for they first fiknd out your faults.
Antisthenes

Only a fool fights by the ground rules that his enemy has laid down for him.
Malcom X

Whosoever is delighted in solitude, is either a wild beast or a god.
Aristotle

Take risks, if you win you will be happy; if you lose you will be wise.
Anonymous

Sometimes the way we perceive a problem, is in itself a very substantial part of the problem.
Carl William Brown

In anger we should refrain both from speech and action.
Pythagoras

Not every thought that passes through our mind must be said, but before we give life to words we had better to think at least for a while.
Carl William Brown

A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go farther than a great idea that inspires no one.
Mary Kay Ash

Inspiration comes of working every day.
Charles Baudelaire

To the artist is sometimes granted a sudden, transient insight which serves in this matter for experience. A flash, and where previously the brain held a dead fact, the soul grasps a living truth! At moments we are all artists.
Arnold Bennett

If you don’t have a conscience, create it, then always act in the best way, so that you can contribute to alleviate ignorance and fight human stupidity, otherwise you will always be a supporter of them.
Carl William Brown

When you do not know what you are doing and what you are doing is the best — that is inspiration.
Robert Bresson

Stung by the splendor of a sudden thought.
Robert Browning

Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.
Anais Nin

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility on him, and to let him know that you trust him.
Booker T. Washington

Teach thy tongue to say, “I do not know,” and thous shalt progress.
Maimonides

Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see.
Confucius

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

Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.
Les Brown

You take your life in your own hands, and what happens? A terrible thing, no one to blame.
Erica Jong

The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it.
Chinese Proverb

A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty.
Anonymous

Education costs money. But then so does ignorance.
Sir Claus Moser

Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck.
Dalai Lama

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.
Tony Robbins

Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.
Grandma Moses

It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
Abraham Lincoln

Out of the closets and into the museums, libraries, architectural monuments, concert halls, bookstores, recording studios and film studios of the world. Everything belongs to the inspired and dedicated thief…
William Burroughs

There never was a great soul that did not have some divine inspiration.
Marcus T. Cicero

I write to vent my anger; for me literary creation is a catharsis, a liberation. And that day when I no longer have inspiration, when my creative streak has run dry, well then I can finally take real revenge.
Carl William Brown

Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study.
William Congreve

Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness — I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.
Aaron Copland

The greatest inspiration is often born of desperation.
Comer Cotrell

Had it not been for you, I should have remained what I was when we first met, a prejudiced, narrow-minded being, with contracted sympathies and false knowledge, wasting my life on obsolete trifles, and utterly insensible to the privilege of living in this wondrous age of change and progress.
Benjamin Disraeli

Most of us who turn to any subject we love remember some morning or evening hour when we got on a high stool to reach down an untried volume, or sat with parted lips listening to a new talker, or for very lack of books began to listen to the voices within, as the first traceable beginning of our love.
George Eliot

I was reading Musil’s The Man Without Qualities when by divine inspiration I turned on the television, they were interviewing a magnate of thought, he was a well-known Italian politician.
Carl William Brown

The torpid artist seeks inspiration at any cost, by virtue or by vice, by friend or by fiend, by prayer or by wine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Here is the secret of inspiration: Tell yourself that thousands and tens of thousands of people, not very intelligent and certainly no more intelligent than the rest of us, have mastered problems as difficult as those that now baffle you.
William Feather

An idea ran back and forward in his head like a blind man, knocking over the solid furniture.
F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

Capability means imagination…
Napoleon Hill

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

We become what we think about.
Earl Nightingale

Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is.
Vince Lombardi

Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right.
Henry Ford

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.
Theodore Roosevelt

Fall seven times and stand up eight.
Japanese Proverb

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.
Maya Angelou

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do.
Leonardo da Vinci

It is never too late to be what you might have been.
George Eliot

Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.
Farrah Gray

Life is about making an impact, not making an income.
Kevin Kruse

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King Jr.

You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try.
Beverly Sills

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!”
Audrey Hepburn

Words, colors, light, sounds, stone, wood, bronze belong to the living artist. They belong to anyone who can use them. Loot the Louvre! A bas l’originalité, the sterile and assertive ego that imprisons us as it creates. Vive le vol-pure, shameless, total. We are not responsible. Steal anything in sight.
William Burroughs

If you are doing your best, you will not have to worry about failure.
Robert S. Hillyer

Can you think of anything more permanently elating than to know that you are on the right road at last?
Vernon Howard

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.
Nikos Kazantzakis

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.
Raymond Inmon

Before using a fine word, make a place for it!
Joseph Joubert

A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world: everyone you meet is your mirror.
Ken Keyes Jr.

Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.
Napoleon Hill

I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!
Henry Miller

By asking for the impossible, we obtain the best possible.
Giovanni Niccolini

By depending on the great, the small may rise high. See: the little plant ascending the tall tree has climbed to the top.
Saskya Pandita

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.
Pablo Picasso

You beat your Pate, and fancy Wit will come: Knock as you please, there’s no body at home.
Alexander Pope

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.
Albert Einstein

Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.
Charles Swindoll

Search and find your inspiration, your passion, then do your best to cultivate it in the best way, but above all control yourself so as not to fall into excessive excesses.
Carl William Brown

The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.
Chinese Proverb

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.
Steve Jobs

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.
Pablo Picasso

Either you run the day, or the day runs you.
Jim Rohn

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me.
Erma Bombeck

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.
Arthur Ashe

If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
Latin Proverb

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
Bill Cosby

If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.
Abigail Van Buren

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

Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.
Benjamin Franklin

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.
Gloria Steinem

You become what you believe.
Oprah Winfrey

What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do.
Bob Dylan

If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.
Booker T. Washington

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

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.
Plato

There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.
Aristotle

My sole inspiration is a telephone call from a director.
Cole Porter

Can you imagine what I would do if I could do all I can?
Prince

If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person. If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house. If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation. If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.
Chinese Proverb

Fire starts with sparks.
Ukrainian Proverb

If you want to innovate, to change an enterprise or a society, it takes people willing to do what’s not expected.
Jean Riboud

If we treat people as they are, they will stay as they are. But if we treat them for what they might be, and might become, they will become those better selves.
G.T. Smith

The dream is not the destination but the journey.
Diane Sawyer

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

Dream big and dare to fail.
Norman Vaughan

If you can dream it, you can achieve it.
Zig Ziglar

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou

The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself–the invisible battles inside all of us–that’s where it’s at.
Jesse Owens

I would rather die of passion than of boredom.
Vincent van Gogh

I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong.
Benjamin Franklin

First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Aristotle

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
Lao Tzu

This morning I feel enveloped by a particularly poetic inspiration, maybe it’s the international situation, maybe it’s my advancing age, and so, as I usually do, I think it’s right to dedicate an aphorisms to my muses. Here’s the pearl. “Death will come and it will have your eyes, and your voice too, and above all, just like you, it won’t understand a damn thing!”
Carl William Brown

By visualizing your goals, you can get your subconscious to work toward making these mental pictures come true.
Success Magazine

I have the strength for everything through him who empowers me.
The Holy Bible

The inspiration of the almighty gives man understanding.
The Holy Bible

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Henry David Thoreau

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
Wayne Gretzky

People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing. That’s why we recommend it daily.
Zig Ziglar

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy’. They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.
John Lennon

Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart.
Indian Proverb

If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.
Vincent Van Gogh

Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.
Henry David Thoreau

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.
Amelia Earhart

Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.
W.Clement Stone

Write while the heat is in you. The writer who postpones the recording of his thoughts uses an iron which has cooled to burn a hole with. He cannot inflame the minds of his audience.
Henry David Thoreau

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
Abraham Lincoln

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.
C.S.Lewis

Eighty percent of success is showing up.
Woody Allen

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

I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.
Stephen Covey

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

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

Today a reader, tomorrow a leader.
Margaret Fuller

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.
Samuel Beckett

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
Benjamin Franklin

Is it not enjoyable to learn and practise what you learn?
Confucius

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.
Joseph Addison

Do whatever you do intensely.
Robert Henri

God always strives together with those who strive.
Aeschylus

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon

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 harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore, Dream, Discover.
Mark Twain

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

Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions.
Dalai Lama

You can’t fall if you don’t climb. But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground.
Anonymous

Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful.
Joshua J. Marine

Limitations live only in our minds. But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless.
Jamie Paolinetti

A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
Albert Einstein

Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.
Eleanor Roosevelt

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.
Henry Ford

Change your thoughts and you change your world.
Norman Vincent Peale

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.
Steve Jobs