Inspirational Quotes and Thoughts

BOOKS AND READING HABIT
Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.
– Francis Bacon
A home without books is a body without soul.
– Marcus Tullius
To learn to read is to light a fire; every syllable that is spelled out is a spark.
– Victor Hugo
To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.
– Edmund Burke
What is wonderful about great literature is that it transforms the man who reads it towards the condition of the man who wrote.
– E.M. Forster
If I read a book and it makes my body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know its poetry.
– Emily Dickinson
If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again; there is no use in reading it at all.
– Oscar Wilde
Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
– Francis Bacon
Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.
– Aldous Huxley
A good book is the best of friends, the same today and tomorrow.
– Martin Tupper
Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflected person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.
– Epictetus
Read, not to contradict and confute; not to believe and take for granted, not to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.
– Francis Bacon
The best books elevate us into a region of disinterested thought, where personal objects fade into insignificance, and the troubles and anxieties of the world are almost forgotten.
– LordAvebury
Reading good books can be of help in the early mental stage - they prepare the mind, put it in the right atmosphere, can even, if one is very sensitive, bring some glimpses of realization on the mental plane. Afterwards the utility diminishes - you have to find every knowledge and experience in yourself.
– Sri Aurobindo
Reading contributes significantly to the success and development of an individual and it is recommended for people of all demographics. Many recent surveys done across the world have found that reading habits have diminished, especially in managers who should be reading extensively.
– Nitya Sai Souniya
The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.
–
Dr. Seuss
Study as if you were to live for ever, live as if you were to die tomorrow.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Being open to, and actively seeking new knowledge is a lesson that must be quickly learned if success and happiness are your goal.
– Greg Vance
Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counsellors and then most patient of teachers.
– Charles W. Eliot
To get the greatest amount not merely of benefit but even of enjoyment from books, we must read for improvement, rather than for amusement.
– LordAvebury
A man should be known by the books he reads and collects. There is a common trait among book lovers. They are always eager and even anxious to get more and more books, to the extent of getting irritated if they do not get the desired ones and angry if some from the collection are lost or misplaced.
Govind Talwalkar
CHANGE
Change is a gift from God, a doorway to the next spiritual level, and we are a creative force in our own lives. To no longer be the victim of change is to master change. This mastery allows you to see the hand of God at work in your life and create a future that reflects confidence, a divine plan and a higher purpose.
– Mary Carroll Moore
Change is not only inevitable; it is constant and unvarying law. Without it, everything would remain for ever as it is, and there could be neither growth nor progress.
– JamesAllen
Every change in life offers new experiences, and each new experience is an opportunity of further development. This is why, if we refuse to go forward voluntarily, life tumbles us out of our comfortable little niche and throws us into the maelstrom -that we may become wiser, more capable men and women.
– S. Harrison
There is no doubt that the timid soul shrinks from making a radical change in life, from stepping forth into the unknown; but to compel oneself to do this is to take out the finest possible insurance for the happiness of the years to come. To stay in the same rut year after year means that life passes us by. We realize when it is too late that we have never truly lived -for we have shirked life.
– S. Hal-rison
To resist change is to work against the flow of life rather than surrender to and trust it.
– Susan Taylor
We do not succeed in changing things according to our desire, but gradually our desire changes.
– Marcel Proust
A turning point is life’s way of giving you a chance to move ahead spiritually, though you must reach for the gift yourself.
– Harold Klemp
We begin the process of transforming all those things we usually consider stumbling blocks into the stepping stones they really are.
– Rick Fields
Change is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.
– Samuel Johnson
If we want to live fully, beyond the life we have today, we must take risks, stretch, ourselves, move past what we are now.
– Marsha Sinetar
Everything teaches transition, transference, metamorphosis: therein is human power. We dive and reappear in new places.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
If there is any law which governs human existence it is the law of change. We forget it at our peril. Most ancient societies forgot it and suffered.
– Paul Brunton
While we cannot change the past, with the wisdom of Spirit we can change what it remains to us and to our future.
– Susan Tylor
EDUCATION
Education is not just going to school for a few years and learning a thing or two fairly well, and a few bits and pieces of others -that is, it is not what it usually becomes in practice or is taken to be. It is a leading forward, a leading out, which is the root meaning of the word.
– Jesse Roarke
True education will nurture noble character rather than egoistic calculation, foster sharp intelligence rather than routine memory, train the student to the kind of technical work he or she likes to do and can do, and teach things of lasting value rather than force useless ones into the mind.
– Paul Brunton
Student-life should refine and develop the best qualities of human nature, enlighten the mind of the student, equip him to meet the challenges of life, and infuse in him the understanding of the ultimate reality behind all phenomena.
– Swami Sivananda
To my mind, education is the spirit of enquiry, the ability to keep one’s mind and heart open to beauty and goodness, indeed all that surrounds us, to be able to think and judge for oneself. Education should inculcate a life long habit of learning.
And today, this is all the more necessary because the corpus of knowledge is increasing at a tremendous pace, often making what one has learnt obsolete.
– Indira Gandhi
I am persuaded that the best education in the world is that which we insensibly acquire form conversation with our intellectual superiors.
– Bulwer
We learn not at school, but in life.
– Seneca
There is only one corner of the Universe you can be certain of improving and that is your own self.
– Aldous Leonard Huxley
Children should be taught to look for beauty everywhere, to read the great poem of creation in the great panorama of Nature.
– Orison Swett Mar den
Of what use is an education if it does not teach the young how to use their minds so as to promote their own welfare, instead of their own harm? All ought to be made aware of the value and need of emotional and thought control, of discriminating between des positive ones.
– Paul Brunton
The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.
– Alvin Toffler
I have never in my life learned anything from any man who agreed with me.
– Dudley Field Malone
A teacher affects eternity, he can never tell where his influence stops.
– Henry Brooks Adams
Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.
– Nelson Mandela
Human nature is fundamentally good and the spread of enlightenment will abolish all wrong. Vice is only a miss, an error. We can learn to become good. Virtue is teachable.
– Dr. S. Radhakrishnan
Acquire new knowledge while thinking over old, and you may become a teacher of others.
– Confucius
A liberally educated person meets new ideas with curiosity and fascination. An illiberally educated person meets new ideas with fear.
– James B. Stockdale
A school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the student explore, not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their own behaviour.
–J. Krishnamurti
We want that education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one’s own feet.
– Swami Vevekananda
Education’s purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one.
– Malcolm Forbes
The main goal of education is to teach people to think.
– Lord Cromer
The first duty of a university is to teach wisdom, not trade, character, not technicalities.
– Winston Churchill
In school you’re taught a lesson and then given a test. In life, you’re given a test that teaches you a lesson.
– TomBodtt
An open mind is the beginning of self-discovery and growth. We can’t learn anything new until we can admit that we don’t already know everything.
– Erwin G. Hall
Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn to do things the right way.
– Benjamin Franklin
Education develops the features of politeness, cordiality, forbearance, perseverance and discipline etc. To face the various challenges that life puts forward, knowledge is imperative and we should strive towards earning this wealth all the time.
– Gangadhar Pandey
Education at its best is a process of liberation from prejudice which frees the human heart from its violent passions. It is through education that young people can be delivered from powerlessness, from the burden of mistrust directed against themselves. And those who have learned to trust in themselves are then naturally able to believe in the latent capacities of others.
– Dr. Daisaku Ikeda
No system of Education will ever be worth what it costs until it trains the wants of our children. How to gratify the wants that are legitimate? How to restrain the wants that are unsocial? If teachers cannot do this, of what moral use is it to do anything else?
– Herbert Casson
A student gets forms, rules, and guidebooks in college, but he must get power from actual contact with the acting, living world.
– Orison SwettMarden
The great man was not great when he started his career. Neither was he wise. But he made himself great and wise by learning-learning-learning.
– Herbert Casson
Knowledge is a child with its achievements, for it has found out something, it runs about the streets whooping and shouting; Wisdom conceals her for a long time in a thoughtful and mighty silence.
– Sri Aurobindo
Surely, education has no meaning unless it helps you to understand the vast expanse of life with all to subtleties, with its extraordinary beauty, its sorrows and joys. You may earn degrees; you may have a series of letters after your name and land a very good job, but then what? What is the point of if in the process your mind becomes full, weary, stupid?
– J. Krishnamurti
Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.
– John Cotton Dana
Acquire new knowledge while thinking over old, and you may become a teacher of others.
– Confucius
I like learning, Learning is beautiful.
– Natalie Portman
Education is discipline for the adventure of life.
– A. North Whitehead
FAILURE
If you are willing to accept failure and learn from it, if you are willing to consider failure as a blessing in disguise and bounce back, you have got the potential of harnessing one of the most powerful success forces.
– Joseph Sugarman
Don’t be afraid to fail. Don’t waste energy trying to cover up failure. Learn from failures and go on to the next challenge. It is OK to fail. If you are not failing you are not growing.
–
H. Stanley Judd
I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that would ultimately fail.
– Woodrow Wilson
There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.
– Michel de Montaigne
Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.
–
Dale Carnagie
A life spent in making mistakes is not only more honourable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.
– George Bernard Shaw
We begin the process of transforming all those things we usually consider stumbling blocks into the stepping stones they really are.
– Rick Fields
The man who makes no mistakes does not usually make anything.
– William Connor Magee
It is when you accept failure that you are a failure. Not he who is handicapped by illness, nor he who is constantly trying in spite of repeated setbacks, but he who is physically and mentally lazy is the real failure. The person, who refuses to think, or reason, or discriminate, or use his will or creative energy, is already dead.
– Yogananda
No one can say that he has never tasted failure in life. Life means ups and downs; sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down, it is never the same. The important lesson to remember is that you should keep struggling all the time, no matter what the results are. You should continue with your struggle even when there is a success, for it is possible to improve upon the success you have so far achieved.
– Swami Lokeswarananda
FAITH
Faith is one of the forces by which men live and the total absence of it means collapse.
– William James
Faith in oneself and faith in God - these are the key to success and achievement.
– SwamiJagadatmananda
The greatest secret for eliminating the infirmity complex, which is another term for deep and profound self- doubt, is to fill your mind to overflowing faith. Develop a tremendous faith in God and that will give you a humble yet soundly realistic faith in yourself.
– Norman Vincent Peale
Faith is what gives us the power to keep going long after we know that we have been defeated. Faith is what gives us the strength to fight beyond our strength.
– M.V. Kamath
The one who has faith in himself will never doubt other things, he will build his resolve on his ideal and fling himself resolutely after it.
– Julie Seton
Faith is one of the potent factors of humanity and of all religions.
– Swarmi Vivekananda
Have faith that you are all born to do great things. Let not the barks of puppies frighten you - no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven - but stand up and work.
– Swami Vivekanand
Faith is the sustaining power in every enterprise of any magnitude; without it no great achievement would ever be possible.
– S. Harrison
Faith is an essential instrument to overcome the difficulties in pursuing right and religious path. Development of faith is of paramount importance. But one should be very cautious about rational faith and blind faith. The former is cause of progress and prosperity of all sorts, while latter leads to hell.
– Shri Ram SharmaAcharya
All the great inventions of mankind have materialized as the result of immense, unshakable faith on the part of the inventor. Only such all - conquering faith could have enabled man to persevere in the face of repeated failure and disheartening opposition.
– S. Harrison
Nothing in this world was ever accomplished without living faith.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Have enough faith in your divine heritage, take it into your common everyday life and thought, and in some way, to some people, you will become very significant and important.
– Paul Brunton
Faith can fight despair, and win, too. Look upon your difficulties not as stumbling blocks to trip you up, but as things waiting to be conquered.
– Paul Brunton
FATE
This duel experience of fate on the one hand, and freedom on the other, has given rise to the interminable controversy between the believers in fatalism and the upholders of free will.
– JamesAllen
My fate is in my own hands. If it is to be it is up to me to get on and do it. I am in control and life is a ‘do-it-to-self process, not a ‘being-done- to’ process.
– Greg Vance
Everything that is happening to us is in accordance with the law of karma. What is happening to us today is only what we did in the past returning to us. Therefore, let us hold no grudge in our heart against anyone. Let us explain to ourselves that old accounts are being settled.
– DadaJ.P. Vaswani
Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice. It is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
– W.J. Bryan
Man is architect of his own destiny. Fate or destiny is nothing more than the shadow of action and exertion. … The key to success is neither with fate nor with the astrologers, palmists, pundits, purohits and temples etc.
– Shriram Sharma Acharya
Each one of us is the maker of his own fate.
– Swami Vivekananda
Fate moves in rhythms of gain or loss, in cycles of accumulation and deprivation. The force which brings us loving friends and hating enemies is one and the same.
– Paul Brunton
There is no such thing as accident or chance or fate or luck in life excepting the results of one’s own previous actions which have all these appellations.
– Swami Omkarananda
It is man’s ignorance, which makes him feel that he is weak, and that he is ever dependent on the invisible land of fate. This ignorance will lead him only to his degradation. To utilize the present is to conquer the fate.
–
Swami Jagadatmanada
The unity between our character and our destiny is inseparable; the connection between our way of thinking and the course of events is unerring.
– Paul Brunton
The Indian explanation of fate is Karma. We ourselves are our own fate through our actions, but the fate created by us binds us; for what we have sown, we must reap in this life or another. Still we are creating our fate for the future even while undergoing old fate from the past in the present.
– SriAurobidno
FEAR
What do you have to fear? Whom do you have to fear? No one? Why? Because whoever has joined forces with God obtains three great privileges: omnipotence without power, intoxication without wine, and life without death….
– Francis ofAssissi
No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.
– Edmund Burke
Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.
– Henry David Thoreau
We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes.
– John F. Kennedy
The effect of fear on one’s general health is depressive, since it constricts breathing and the circulation of blood: the action of the heart is restricted and breathing is shallow. The whole system in consequence becomes impoverished.
– S. Harrison
Fear is a sign of weakness. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world.
– Swami Vivekananda
I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
– Thomas Edison
So long as you are dominated by fear you cannot enjoy perfect Health … And fear has just as harmful an effect on one’s efficiency as on one’s health.
– S. Harrison
To fear disease, failure or trouble is to sow seeds in the subconscious field that will bring forth a harvest of diseased conditions, troubled thoughts, confused mental states and misdirected actions in body and mind.
– Christian D. Larson
I feel quite sure that nothing makes people age faster than fear.
– Deepak Chopra
The best way to overcome the habit of fear is to assure the mental attitude of courage, just as the best way to get rid of darkness is to let in the light.
– William Walker Atkinson
Fear stands as a gloomy sentinel and will not let the spirit pass into possession of its best. The strands of failure are made from the fibres of fear; wherever fear is active, failure is its neighbour.
– Julie Seton
HAPPINESS
Neither wealth nor rank will ensure happiness. Without love and charity and peace of mind you may be rich, great and powerful, but you cannot be happy.
– LordAvebury
Happiness lies not in the mere possession of wealth. It lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
Work faithfully, and you will put yourself in possession of a glorious and enlarging happiness.
– Orison Swett Mar den
It is no one’s fault but our own if we are unhappy; it is no one’s fault but our own if we are sick, poor, or full of lack. The whole scheme of existence makes for happiness and all life is full, complete, serene, only awaiting our own awakening to that fact.
– Julia Seton
Happiness depends to some extent upon external conditions, but chiefly upon mental attitudes. In order to be happy one should have good health, a well-balanced mind, a prosperous life, the right work, a thankful heart, and, above all, wisdom or knowledge of God.
– Yogananda
So long as you persist in selfishly seeking your own personal happiness, so long will happiness elude you, and you will be sowing the seeds of wretchedness. In so far as you succeed in losing yourself in the service of others, in that measure will happiness come to you, and you will reap a harvest of bliss.
– JamesAllen
When the mind is without fear and head is held high, when knowledge flows freely, where the world is not broken up in narrower cells, where words come out of depth of the heart, there bliss follows.
– RavindraNath Tagore
Real happiness is not in the senses but above the senses.
– Swami Vivekananda
The supreme happiness of life is the conviction that we are loved, - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves.
– Victor Hugo
It is neither wealth nor splendour, but tranquillity and occupation, which give happiness.
– Thomas Jefferson
You traverse the world in search of happiness which is within the reach of every man; a contended mind confers it all.
– Horace
It is a foolish idea to suppose that another person can cause us happiness or misery.
– Buddha
True bliss is a state where adversity and sorrow do not exist, an ever contented state - it is like a medicine which in the beginning appears bitter, but in truth, purifies from within.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Happiness is that inward state of perfect satisfaction which is joy and peace, and form which all desire is culminated…. The giving up of desire is the realisation of heaven, and all delights await the pilgrim there.
– JamesAllen

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