Motivational quotes
Short, direct and old enough to have proved themselves: quotes about starting, persisting and finishing. The originals behind many modern “inspirational” posts, credited to the people who actually wrote them.
The library has 458 quotes on this topic. Here are 60 of the most quoted, no more than four from any one writer.
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60 motivational quotes
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Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.
William Shakespeare Twelfth Night, Act II Scene 5 -
Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow A Psalm of Life, Voices of the Night -
If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
Henry David Thoreau Walden -
I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.
Henry David Thoreau Walden -
The tree which fills the arms grew from the tiniest sprout; the tower of nine storeys rose from a (small) heap of earth; the journey of a thousand li commenced with a single step.
Laozi Tao Te Ching, ch. 64 · translated by James Legge -
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson Circles, Essays: First Series -
We must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures.
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
There is a tide in the affairs of men Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
William Shakespeare Julius Caesar, Act iv. Sc. 3 -
Never leave that till to-morrow, which you can do to-day.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.
Theodore Roosevelt The Strenuous Life speech, 1899 (The Strenuous Life, 1900) -
The flighty purpose never is o’ertook, Unless the deed go with it.
William Shakespeare Macbeth, Act iv. Sc. 1 -
Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.
Henry David Thoreau Walden -
No longer talk at all about the kind of man that a good man ought to be, but be such.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book X.16 · translated by George Long -
He who ascends to mountain-tops shall find The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow; He who surpasses or subdues mankind Must look down on the hate of those below.
Lord Byron Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, Canto iii. Stanza 45 -
Nothing great, said Epictetus, is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or the fig is.
Epictetus Discourses, Book I.15 · translated by George Long -
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell; Better to reign in hell than serve in heav’n.
John Milton Paradise Lost -
For virtue’s self may too much zeal be had; The worst of madmen is a saint run mad.
Alexander Pope Satires of Horace, Sat. I, Bk. II -
Through zeal knowledge is gotten, through lack of zeal knowledge is lost; let a man who knows this double path of gain and loss thus place himself that knowledge may grow.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 282 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?
Lucy Maud Montgomery Anne of Green Gables, 1908 (Anne to Marilla) -
Idleness is only the refuge of weak minds, and the holiday of fools.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son -
He that will not when he may, When he will he shall have nay.
Robert Burton Quoted in Anatomy of Melancholy -
Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a Heaven for?
Robert Browning Andrea del Sarto, Men and Women -
The opportunity to do mischief is found a hundred times a day, and that of doing good once a year.
Voltaire -
Let us make hay while the sun shines.
Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote, Part i. Book iii. Chap. xi -
Turning, for them who pass, the common dust Of servile opportunity to gold.
William Wordsworth Desultory Stanza -
Absence of occupation is not rest, A mind quite vacant is a mind distress’d.
William Cowper Retirement, Line 623 -
Sloth makes all things difficult, but industry all easy; and he that riseth late, must trot all day, and shall scarce overtake his business at night; while laziness travels so slowly, that poverty soon overtakes him.
Benjamin Franklin Poor Richard’s Almanack -
O, sons of earth! attempt ye still to rise, By mountains piled on mountains to the skies? Heaven still with laughter the vain toil surveys, And buries madmen in the heaps they raise.
Alexander Pope Essay on Man, Epistle IV -
The keenest pangs the wretched find Are rapture to the dreary void, The leafless desert of the mind, The waste of feelings unemployed.
Lord Byron The Giaour, Line 957 -
Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day.
Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield Letters to His Son -
The desire of the moth for the star, Of the night for the morrow, The devotion to something afar From the sphere of our sorrow.
Percy Bysshe Shelley One Word is too often profaned -
An idler is a watch that wants both hands, As useless if it goes as if it stands.
William Cowper Retirement, Line 681 -
Emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of art, and emotion for the sake of emotion is the aim of life and of that practical organisation of life that we call society.
Oscar Wilde Miscellaneous Aphorisms -
He who does not rouse himself when it is time to rise, who, though young and strong, is full of sloth, whose will and thought are weak, that lazy and idle man will never find the way to knowledge.
The Buddha Dhammapada, v. 280 · translated by F. Max Müller -
Diligence is the mother of good fortune.
Miguel de Cervantes Don Quixote, Part ii. Chap. xliii -
Our acts make or mar us,—we are the children of our own deeds.
Victor Hugo -
I held it truth, with him who sings To one clear harp in divers tones, That men may rise on stepping-stones Of their dead selves to higher things.
Alfred Tennyson In Memoriam. i, Stanza 1 -
Zeal without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the dark.
Isaac Newton -
Rather than be less Cared not to be at all.
John Milton Paradise Lost, Bk. II -
But wild Ambition loves to slide, not stand, And Fortune’s ice prefers to Virtue’s land.
John Dryden Absalom and Achitophel, Part i. Line 198 -
Purposes, like eggs, unless they be hatched into action, will run into rottenness.
Samuel Smiles -
Hell is paved with good intentions.
Samuel Johnson Life of Johnson (Boswell). Vol. v, Chap. ix -
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 234 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.
James Russell Lowell Among my Books. First Series. Rousseau and the Sentimentalists -
Feeling does not act thus; it acts in a moment, and is always ready to act.
Blaise Pascal Pensées, No. 252 · translated by W. F. Trotter -
Enthusiasm is the height of man; it is the passing from the human to the divine.
Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm.
Ralph Waldo Emerson -
Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one social act to another social act, thinking of God.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VI.7 · translated by George Long -
Let us try to persuade them men. But act even against their will, when the principles of justice lead that way.
Marcus Aurelius Meditations, Book VI.50 · translated by George Long -
When we see an eager assailant of one of these wrongs, a special reformer, we feel like asking him, What right have you, sir, to your one virtue? Is virtue piecemeal?
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essays: Second Series -
The golden moments in the stream of life rush past us, and we see nothing but sand; the angels come to visit us, and we only know them when they are gone.
George Eliot -
When you are going to take in hand any act remind yourself what kind of an act it is.
Epictetus Enchiridion, ch. IV · translated by George Long -
The block of granite, which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, becomes a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
Thomas Carlyle -
For Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do.
Isaac Watts Divine Songs. Song xx -
Every production of genius must be the production of enthusiasm.
Benjamin Disraeli -
In every act observe the things which come first, and those which follow it; and so proceed to the act.
Epictetus Enchiridion, ch. XXIX · translated by George Long -
I say “try,” for if we never try, we never succeed.
Abraham Lincoln February 3 -
I also wish indeed, for it is a fine thing. But observe both the things which come first, and the things which follow; and then begin the act.
Epictetus Enchiridion, ch. XXIX · translated by George Long -
There is as much eloquence in the tone of voice, in the eyes, and in the air of a speaker, as in his choice of words.
François de La Rochefoucauld -
If that change is brought about, the potential energy of the powder passes suddenly into actual energy, and does the work of propelling the bullet.
Thomas Henry Huxley Aphorisms and Reflections, No. CCLIX