In the hectic pace of our lives, jobs, and relationships, we often forget to slow down, take a breath, and reflect for a couple of moments—to "stop and smell the roses."If you need help feeling grounded, to feel comforted, or to simply feel inspired today, a motivational quote or two should do the trick. Read on to find the words of wisdom that will motivate you to achieve your goals, overcome your fears, and create success.
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#1 Ali Ibn Abu Talib
"One moment of patience, in a moment of anger, can save a thousand moments of regret."
— Ali Ibn Abu Talib
#2 Jake the Dog
"The master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried" Or, the more simplified version: "Sucking at something is the first step towards being sorta good at something"
— Jake the Dog
#3 Winnie the Pooh
“How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.”
— Winnie the Pooh
#4 Calvin Coolidge
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan Press On! has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.”
— Calvin Coolidge
#5 Yellowstone Park Ranger
"There is considerable overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bears and the dumbest tourists."
— Yellowstone Park ranger
#6 Neil Gaiman
“Have you ever been in love? Horrible, isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life… You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it.
They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness. So a simple phrase like, "Maybe we should just be friends," or, "How very perceptive," turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Kindly Ones
#7 Words of Wisdom
"It's okay to go through awful places, just don't stop and unpack."
— Unknown
#8 Words to Live By
“Blowing out someone else’s candle doesn’t make yours shine brighter.”
—Unknown
#9 Andy Bernard
“I wish there was a way to know you're in 'the good old days' before you've actually left them.”
— Andy Bernard, The Office
#10 A Great Quote
"A boat doesn’t sink because it’s in water, it sinks when it lets the water in."
— Unknown
#11 The Space Cloud
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
— The space cloud, Futurama
#12 Theodore Roosevelt
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt
#13 Louis C.K.
"The only reason you should look into your neighbor’s bowl is to make sure they have enough to eat."
— Louis C.K.
#14 Oscar Wilde
"Everything in moderation, including moderation."
— Oscar Wilde
#15 Clive Barker
"Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep."
— Clive Barker
#16 Mark Twain
“Often, the less there is to justify a traditional custom, the harder it is to get rid of it.”
— Mark Twain
#17 Gordon Ramsay
You doughnut. Of course you don't microwave a salad!
— Gordon Ramsay
#18 Nelson Mandela
"It always seems impossible until it's done."
— Nelson Mandela
#19 Socrates
"Be as you wish to seem."
— Socrates
#20 George Watsky
"If the world breaks your legs, you go and beat it with your crutch"
— George Watsky
#21 Grandmother's Words
For when you're speeding when you're running late: "Better late in this life than early in the next." My grandmother who passed away of breast cancer told me this once not long before she died. It has really stuck with me for whatever reason.
#22 Ex Co-Worker
"Never quit, make them fire you." — A guy I used to work with
I was new to the job, having a tough time, and I was really feeling like I wasn't cut out for the work and considering quitting. This guy, who'd been on the job a lot longer, told me that, and while it was simple, it stuck with me. They hadn't fired me yet, so clearly I wasn't screwing up as badly as I thought I was. No sense in beating myself up over something even before the bosses do. If not for him, I probably would have quit and never given myself the chance to actually get better.
#23 George Carlin
"Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?"
— George Carlin
#24 Optimus Prime
“Fate rarely calls upon us at a moment of our choosing.”
— Optimus Prime
#25 This Is True
"If you have a problem, and then you spend a bunch of energy worrying and fretting about it, then you have two problems."
— Unknown
#26 A. A. Milne
"People say nothing is impossible but I do nothing every day."
— A. A. Milne
#27 Walter Payton
"When you are good at something, you will tell everyone. When you are great, everyone will tell you."
— Walter Payton
#28 Doctor Who
“A straight line may be the shortest distance between two points, but it is by no means the most interesting.”
— Doctor Who
#29 Carl Jung
"Loneliness does not come from having no people about one, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to oneself, or from holding certain views which others find inadmissible."
— Carl Jung
#30 Katrina
"And remember that bad times... are just times that are bad."
— Katrina, Animal Crossing
#31 Captain Jean Luc Picard
"It is possible to make no mistakes and lose. That is not failure, that is life."
— Captain Jean Luc Picard
#32 Spider-Man
#33 Conan O'Brien
"Eventually, all our graves go unattended."
— Conan O'Brien
#34 C.S. Lewis
“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown-up."
— C.S. Lewis
#35 Faramir
“I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend.”
— Faramir, Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
#36 Valery Legasov
Something more recent I remember from HBO’s Chernobyl series: “Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later that debt is paid.”
— Valery Legasov
#37 Sir Anthony Hopkins
When the great library burned, the first 10,000 years of stories were reduced to ash. But those stories never really perished, they became a new story, the story of the fire itself, of man's urge to take a thing of beauty and... strike the match.
— Sir Anthony Hopkins, Westworld
#38 Aristotle
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
— Aristotle
#39 Sun Tzu
“Even the finest sword plunged into salt water will eventually rust.”
— Sun Tzu
#40 Albus Dumbledore
“It is not our abilities that show who we truly are. It is our choices.”
— Albus Dumbledore
#41 Muhammad Ali
“If they can make penicillin out of moldy bread, they can make something out of you.”
— Muhammad Ali
#42 George Carlin
"Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
— George Carlin
#43 John Greenleaf Whittier
"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these, 'It might have been.'"
— John Greenleaf Whittier
#44 Iroh
"Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not."
— Iroh
#45 Seneca
"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."
— Seneca