Quotes to Live By

Quotes to live by gives us a compass to navigate the sometimes tricky ethical decisions of our lives. When reading quotes to live by we can ask ourselves, does my life have meaning and do I add value to the world?

It is not how much we give, but how much love we put into the giving. ~Mother Teresa

No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.~Rev. Jesse Jackson

The future depends on what we do in the present.~Mahatma Gandhi
Inspiration and genius–one and the same. ~Victor Hugo

Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. ~Ralph Blum

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories. ~Montaigne,Essays

The world has no room for cowards. We must all be ready somehow to toil, to suffer, to die. And yours is not the less noble because no drum beats before you when you go out into your daily battlefields, and no crowds shout about your coming when you return from your daily victory or defeat.
~Robert Louis Stevenson

Try not to become a man of success but a man of value.~Albert Einstein

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.
~Henry David Thoreau

To find what you seek in the road of life, the best proverb of all is that which says: “Leave no stone unturned.” ~Edward Bulwer Lytton

If you would create something, you must be something.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Every artist was first an amateur.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

The more difficulties one has to encounter, within and without, the more significant and the higher in inspiration his life will be.
~Horace Bushnell

Life has no smooth road for any of us; and in the bracing atmosphere of a high aim the very roughness stimulates the climber to steadier steps, till the legend, over steep ways to the stars, fulfills itself. ~W. C. Doane


Do we not all agree to call rapid thought and noble impulse by the name of inspiration? ~George Eliot

No great man ever complains of want of opportunities.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men do less than they ought, unless they do all they can.
~Thomas Carlyle

Men’s best successes come after their disappointments.
~Henry Ward Beecher.

Let thy words be few.
~Ecclesiastes 5:2

Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true. ~Leon J. Suenes

The power of imagination makes us infinite. ~John Muir

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.
~Epictetus

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.
~George S. Patton

If you do not hope, you will not find what is beyond your hopes.
~St. Clement of Alexandra

We are all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart, of which there is no duplicate. The world is all gates, all opportunities. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Seek the lofty by reading, hearing and seeing great work at some moment every day. ~Thornton Wilder

The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. ~Arthur C. Clarke

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

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit. ~Aristotle

Work spares us from three evils: boredom, vice, and need. ~Voltaire

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action. ~Benjamin Disraeli

You cannot plough a field by turning it over in your mind. ~Author Unknown

The best way out is always through. ~Robert Frost

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.
~William B. Sprague

Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must first be overcome. ~Samuel Johnson

Fortune favors the brave. ~Publius Terence

He who hesitates is lost. ~Proverb

Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall.
~Confucius

Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds. ~Albert Einstein

Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Willing is not enough; we must do. ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

We are still masters of our fate. We are still captains of our souls.
~Winston Churchill

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Constant dripping hollows out a stone. ~Lucretius

Nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose–a point on which the soul may fix its intellectual eye. ~Mary Shelley

Dost thou love life?
Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
~Benjamin Franklin

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. ~Helen Keller

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will. ~Jawaharal Nehru

Life is like the dice that, falling, still show a different face. So life, though it remains the same, is always presenting different aspects. ~Alexis

Our life’s a stage, a comedy: either learn to play and take it lightly, or bear its troubles patiently. ~Palladas

The geat blessing of mankind are within us and within our reach; but we shut our eyes, and like people in the dark, we fall foul upon the very thing we search for, without finding it. ~Seneca

Govern thy life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one, and read the other. ~Thomas Fuller

Most of the shadows of this life are caused by our standing in our own sunshine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Unrest of spirit is a mark of life; one problem after another presents itself and in the solving of them we can find our greatest pleasure. ~Kal Menninger

Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult. ~Hypocrites

After the game, the king and the pawn go into the same box.
~Italian Proverb

Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think. ~La Bruyere

Life is like a library owned by the author.
In it are a few books which he wrote himself,
but most of them were written for him.
~Harry Emerson Fosdick

We make our fortunes, and we call them fate.
~Earl of Beaconsfield

Life’s a voyage that’s homeward bound.
~Herman Melville

The whole of life is but a moment of time. It is our duty, therefore to use it, not to misuse it. ~Plutarch

The boundaries which divide life from death are at best shadowy and vague.
Who shall say where one ends, and the other begins?
~Edgar Alan Poe

One way to get the most out of life is to look upon it as an adventure. ~William Feather

Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

There are no classes in life for beginners: right away you are always asked to deal with what is most difficult. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

To live is like to love–all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.
~Samuel Butler

One life – a little gleam of time between two eternities.
~Thomas Carlyle

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.
~Sir Thomas Brown

As I grow to understand life less and less, I learn to love it more and more. ~Jules Renard