Inspiring Quotes for a Complete and Balanced Life

Mahatma Gandhi: I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love.

Lance Secretan: If there is any point at all to life, surely it is to live out our dreams, to serve, to follow our bliss, to release the music within us, play it with joy and to share it with others? Surely we have a responsibility to finally listen to - and honor - the siren calls of our souls, which have been silenced by our egos throughout our lives? How else can we connect with our essence, the source of our calling?

Oprah Winfrey: Unless you choose to do great things with it, it makes no difference how much you are rewarded or how much you have.

Rosalynn Smith Carter: You must accept that you might fail; then, if you do your best and still don't win, at least you can be satisfied that you've tried. If you don't accept failure as a possibility, you don't set high goals, and you don't branch out, you don't try-you don't take the risk.

Walt Whitman: To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.

Gary Player, Professional Golfer: The harder I practice, the luckier I get.

Jack Nicklaus: I never hit a shot, not even in practice, without having a very sharp in-focus picture of it in my head.

Elizabeth Berg: There is incredible value in being of service to others. I think if most of the people in therapy offices were dragged out to put their finger in a dike, take up their place in a working line, they would be relieved of terrible burdens.

Buddha: Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.

Kahlil Gibran: I prefer to be a dreamer among the humblest, with visions to be realized, than lord among those without dreams and desires.

Buddha: If a man's mind becomes pure, his surroundings will also become pure.

Warren G. Bennis: There are two ways of being creative. One can sing and dance. Or one can create an environment in which singers and dancers flourish.

Robert F. Bennett: Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.

Virginia Hanson: We must determine whether we really want freedom--whether we are willing to dare the perils of...rebirth... For we never take a step forward without surrendering something that we may have held dear, without dying to that which has been.

Glenn Cunningham: People can't understand why a man runs. They don't see any sport in it, argue that it lacks the sight-thrill of body contact, the color of rough conflict. Yet the conflict is there, more raw and challenging than any man versus man competition. In track it is man against himself, the cruelest of all opponents. The other runners are not the real enemies. His adversary lies deep within him, in his ability, with brain and heart, to control and master himself and his emotions.

Steve Prefontaine: To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.

Neil Kendall: Some people follow their dreams, others hunt them down and beat them mercilessly into submi.

Stephen R. Covey: I am personally convinced that one person can be a change catalyst, a "transformer" in any situation . . . It requires vision, initiative, patience, respect, persistence, courage, and faith to be a transforming leader.

Carlos Castaneda: A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately . . . Then ask yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.

Richard David Bach: The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.

W. Somerset Maugham: The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

Christopher Darlington Morley: There is only one success ... to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.

Vince Lombardi: The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory.

Michael Jordan: Success isn't something you chase. It's something you have to put forth the effort for constantly. Then maybe it'll come when you least expect it. Most people don't understand that.

Richard Devos: If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, here comes number seventy-one!

Alexander Graham Bell: The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion... It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider - and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation - persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

Richard Devos: If I had to select one quality, one personal characteristic that I regard as being most highly correlated with success, whatever the field, I would pick the trait of persistence. Determination. The will to endure to the end, to get knocked down seventy times and get up off the floor saying, here comes number seventy-one!

Alexander Graham Bell: The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion... It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider - and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation - persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

Helen Adams Keller: Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experiences of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired and success achieved.

Orison Swett Marden: We must give more in order to get more. It is the generous giving of ourselves that produces the generous harvest.

Joseph Campbell: We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be shed before the new one can come.

William James: The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes of mind.

Theodore Roosevelt: 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 and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and 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 . . .

Buddha: The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Sri Swami Sivananda: A desire arises in the mind. It is satisfied immediately when another comes. In the interval which separates two desires a perfect calm reigns in the mind. It is at this moment freed from all thought, love or hate. Complete peace equally reigns between two mental waves.

H. G. Wells: We must not allow the clock and the calendar to blind us to the fact that each moment of life is a miracle and mystery.

James Allen: To begin to think with purpose, is to enter the ranks of those strong ones who only recognize failure as one of the pathways to attainment.

John Mason Brown: The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.

Walt Disney: If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember this whole thing was started by a mouse.

Joan Baez: You don't get to choose how you're going to die, or when. You can decide how you're going to live now.

George Shinn: Growth means change and change involves risk, stepping from the known to the unknown.

T. S. Eliot: Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

Jim Webb: Before all else, each of us must take a fundamental risk -- to be true to ourselves.

Barbara J. Winter: When you come to the end of everything you know and are faced with the darkness of the unknown, faith is knowing one of two things will happen. Either there will be something solid for you to stand on, or you will be taught how to fly.

Swami Sivanada: If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

Nicholas Murray Butler: Businesses planned for service are apt to succeed; businesses planned for profit are apt to fail.

Harrison Ford: [On being an actor]...nothing more than a worker in a service occupation. It's like being a waiter or a gas station attendant, but I'm waiting on 6 million people in a week if I'm lucky.

Og Mandino: The only certain means is to render more and better service than is expected of you, no matter what your task may be.

Jim Rohn: Whoever renders service to many puts himself in line for greatness--great wealth, great return, great satisfaction, great reputation, and great joy.

Kahlil Gibran: We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Dee Wallace Stone: We create our lives a thought at a time. And sometimes, it comes down to changing a thought such as "Why did this happen to me?" into "There is a divine plan and there is a reason for this, and my choice is to create the most positive reaction I can.

Ronald Reagan: To grasp and hold a vision, that is the very essence of successful leadership -- not only on the movie set where I learned it, but everywhere.

Patanjali: When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project...Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive and you discover yourself to be a greater person than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

Peter Nivio Zarlenga: To come to be you must have a vision of Being, a Dream, a Purpose, a Principle. You will become what your vision is.

George Bernard Shaw: This is the true joy in life, being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; being a force of nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Wayne Dyer: The nature of gratitude helps dispel the idea that we do not have enough, that we will never have enough, and that we ourselves are not enough.

Winston Churchill: To every person there comes that moment when (s)he is figuratively tapped on the shoulder to do a very special thing unique to (him/her). What a tragedy if that moment finds (him/her) unprepared for the work that would be (his/her) finest hour.

Martin Luther King, Jr.: If a (wo)man is called to be a streetsweeper, (s)he should sweep streets even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. (S)he should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say, 'Here lived a great streetsweeper who did (his/her) job well.

Mother Teresa: When we see God in each other we will be able to live in peace.

Chief Arvol Looking Horse: Each of us is put here in this time and this place to personally decide the future of humankind. Did you think the Creator would create unnecessary people in a time of such terrible danger? Know that you yourself are essential to this World.

Pierre Pradervand: It is impossible to bless and to judge at the same time. So hold constantly as a deep, hallowed, intoned thought that desire to bless, for truly then shall you become a peacemaker, and one day you shall, everywhere, behold the very face of God.

Robert F. Kennedy: Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

Count Leo Tolstoy: I know that my unity with all people cannot be destroyed by national boundaries and government orders.

Voltaire: Man is free at the moment he wishes to be.

Tao Te Ching: Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength; mastering yourself is true power. If you realize that you have enough, you are truly rich.

Lao-Tzu: When you are content to be simply yourself and don't compare or compete, everybody will respect you.

Albert Einstein: The true value of a human being can be found in degrees to which he has attained liberation from the self.

Tina Turner: The real power behind whatever success I have now was something I found within myself - something that's in all of us, I think, a little piece of God just waiting to be discovered.