As we grow older day by day, life also becomes tougher – problems and challenges become bigger. Sometimes, we wish that we could go back to the years when we were still kids and when problems are as tiny as our little dreams.
But that is life as we make it. As we mature, we realize more responsibilities. As our knowledge and experiences increase, we stretch our dreams to a greater horizon. We strive to achieve greater things, not only for ourselves but also for the people who are close to our hearts.
But again, reaching those dreams is not quick and easy. We need to embark on a journey where we face and overcome obstacles on a daily basis. To keep moving on even in times of darkness, difficulties, and troubles, we need an abundant source of inspiration and motivation until we reach our dreams.
One of the best ways to keep lighting up the fire inside our body and soul is reading inspiring quotes and sayings from popular people or even fictional characters who have touched the lives of many people through their powerful words.
Below are 100 inspirational quotes I have personally picked and compiled. I believe they are among the best and most inspiring quotations that may help people go the extra mile to reach their goals no matter how simple or difficult they are. You may use any of these powerful quotes as your personal motto, mantra, and inspiration to motivate yourself every day.
1. “You have to be odd to be number one.” – Dr. Seuss
2. “Paths are made by walking.” – Franz Kafka
3. “Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.” – Lao Tzu
4. “Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.” – Napoleon Hill
5. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started.” – Mark Twain
6. “Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” – Jim Ryun
7. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” – Robert Frost
8. “The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” – Amelia Earhart
9. “We have to do the best we are capable of. This is our sacred human responsibility.” – Albert Einstein
10. “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle
11. “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
12. “A goal should scare you a little and excite you a lot.” – Joe Vitale
13. “Courage is grace under pressure.” – Ernest Hemingway
14. “If opportunity doesn’t knock, build a door.” – Milton Berle
15. “Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” – W. B. Yeats
16. “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” – Matthew 7:7
17. “Believe you can and you’re halfway there.” – Theodore Roosevelt
18. “In order to succeed, we must first believe that we can.” – Nikos Kazantzakis
19. “Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien
20. “Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn
21. “Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – Francis of Assisi
22. “You have to have a dream so you can get up in the morning.” – Billy Wilder
23. “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
24. “If you always put a limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.” – Bruce Lee
25. “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
26. “Nobody is gonna hit as hard as life, but it ain’t how hard you can hit. It’s how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It’s how much you can take, and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” – Rocky, Rocky Balboa
27. “If you want something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.” – Thomas Jefferson
28. “Always go with the choice that scares you the most, because that’s the one that is going to help you grow.” – Unknown
29. “A ship is always safe a shore but that is not what it’s built for.” – Albert Einstein
30. “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.” – Napoleon Hill
31. “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
32. “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs
33. “Don’t ever let somebody tell you you can’t do something, not even me. Alright? You dream, you gotta protect it. People can’t do something themselves, they wanna tell you you can’t do it. If you want something, go get it. Period.” – Chris Gardner, The Pursuit of Happyness
34. “Motivation is a fire from within. If someone else tries to light that fire under you, chances are it will burn very briefly.” – Stephen R. Covey
35. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.” – Dr. Seuss
36. “When you know what you want, and want it bad enough, you will find a way to get it.” – Jim Rohn
37. “Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung
38. “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” – Ayn Rand
39. “Don’t tell people your dreams. Show them.” – Unknown
40. “An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.” – Friedrich Engels
41. “Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it.” – Charles Swindoll
42. “When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” – Henry Ford
43. “Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears.” – Les Brown
44. “We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell
45. “I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear.” – Rosa Parks
46. “Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs.” – Farrah Gray
47. “Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat.” – Ann Landers
48. “He who has a slack hand becomes poor, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.” – Proverbs 10:4
49. “All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.” – Proverbs 14:23
50. “Work in silence. Let your success be your noise.” – Unknown
51. “Nothing will work unless you do.” – Maya Angelou
52. “Do or do not. There is no try.” – Yoda
53. “Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars.” – Les Brown
54. “How does one become a butterfly? You must want to fly so much that you are willing to give up being a caterpillar.” – Trina Paulus
55. “Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” – Vince Lombardi
56. “The measure of who we are is what we do with what we have.” – Vince Lombardi
57. “The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
58. “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
59. “It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.” – Aristotle
60. “Out of difficulties grow miracles.” – Jean de la Bruyere
61. “The flower that blooms in adversity is the most rare and beautiful of all.” – The Emperor, Mulan
62. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
63. “I gotta keep breathing. Because tomorrow the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?” – Chuck Noland, Cast Away
64. “The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
65. “To be prepared is half the victory.” – Miguel de Cervantes
66. “Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.” – Napoleon Hill
67. “The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.” – James Yorke
68. “Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” – Warren Buffett
69. “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
70. “Breakdowns can create breakthroughs. Things fall apart so things can fall together.” – Unknown
71. “You must do the things you think you cannot do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
72. “I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the water to create many ripples.” – Mother Teresa
73. “I can’t change the direction of the wind, but I can adjust my sails to always reach my destination.” – Jimmy Dean
74. “What we think, we become.” – Buddha
75. “Keep your face always toward the sunshine – and shadows will fall behind you.” – Walt Whitman
76. “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” – Oscar Wilde
77. “No man is free who is not master of himself.” – Epictetus
78. “If you do not conquer self, you will be conquered by self.” – Napoleon Hill
79. “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” – Harry S. Truman
80. “If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.” – Booker T. Washington
81. “At the end of the day it’s not about what you have or even what you’ve accomplished… it’s about who you’ve lifted up, who you’ve made better, it’s about what you’ve given back.” – Denzel Washington
82. “No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop
83. “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
84. “To handle yourself, use your head; to handle others, use your heart.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
85. “Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
86. “There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” – Edith Wharton
87. “When we seek to discover the best in others, we somehow bring out the best in ourselves.” – William Arthur Ward
88. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson
89. “Learn to say ‘no’ to the good so you can say ‘yes’ to the best.” – John C. Maxwell
90. “Always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later.” – Og Mandino
91. “What we do in life echoes in eternity.” – Maximus, Gladiator
92. “Don’t let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do.” – John Wooden
93. “The first to apologize is the bravest. The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest.” – Unknown
94. “Good, better, best. Never let it rest. ‘Til your good is better and your better is best.” St. Jerome
95. “Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
96. “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill
97. “The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender.” – Vince Lombardi
98. “Tough times never last, but tough people do.” – Robert H. Schuller
99. “It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.” – Confucius
100. “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.” – Lao Tzu
Take note that quotes and words may inspire or motivate you, but their impact on your soul may not last for long if you will not practice them. Therefore, don’t just read these sayings and be inspired for a few seconds. But understand them deeper and try to apply them practically in your daily life. Finally, remember that the best inspiration is not just a saying or a quote. The best inspiration is a vibrant evidence, and that evidence could be you.
ALSO READ: 50 Inspiring Quotes about Working Hard and Achieving Goals
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