Great Inspirational Quotes

What makes a quote a great quote? I think that if it is still around after many years, and it still inspires, it is a great quote.

The greasest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.
--Charles Lamb

It is no small thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved to have thought to have done?
--Arnold

Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and power are scattered with all its beams.
--Webster

The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
--Thackeray

Solitude is as needful to the imagination as society is whole-some for the character.
--Lowell

Life is like music; it must be composed by ear, feeling, and instinct, not by rule.
--Samuel Butler

Whem wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost.
--Unknown

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those that never come.
--Lowell

The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.
--Lao-tse

Happiness, eternal or temporal, is not the reward that mankind seeks, Happinesses are but his wayside companions. His soul is in the journey and in the struggle.
--Stevenson

When merit has been achieved, do not take it to yourself; for if you do not take it to yourself, it shall never take it from you.
--Lao-tse

To worship, to comprehend, to receive, to feel, to give, to act: this is our law, our duty, our happiness, our heaven.
--Amiel

Sweet are the thoughts that savor of content: the quiet mind is richer than a crown.
--Greene

With a few flowers in my garden, half a dozen pictures and some books, I live without envy.
--Lopa de Vega

Who is the happiest of men? He who valus the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though it were his own.
--Goethe

The secret of success in conversations is to be able to disagree without being disagreeable.
--Unknown

When we can to begin to take our failures non-seriously, it means we are ceasing to be afraid of them. It is of immense importance to learn to laugh at ourselves.
--Katherine Mansfield

A forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note, torn in two and burned up, so that it never can be shown against the man.
--Beecher

Does thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
--Franklin

Surely God endures forever.
--Lowell

Self-reverence, self knowledge, self-control, these thhree alone lead to sovereign power.
--Tennyson

Why should we be in such desparate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
--Thoreau

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it.
--Irving

The riches of scolarship, the benignities of literature, defy fortune and outlive calamity.
--Lowell

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forgst greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.
--Horace Mann

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.
--John Dryden

A really great man is known by three signs-generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.
--Bismarck

Much remains to conquer still; peace hath her victories no less than war.
--Milton

Take from our hearts the love of the beautiful, and you take away all the charm of life.
--Rousseau

I have never had a policy, I simply tried to do what seemed best each day, as each day came.
--Lincoln

Fine art is that in which the hand, and the heart of man go together.
--Ruskin

Knowledge is proud that he has learned so much; wisdom is humble that he knows no more.
--Cowper

The true test of a man's worth is not his theology but his life.
--The Talmud

Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity.
--Wordsworth

To be what we are, and to become what we are capable of becoming, is the only end of life.
--Spinoza

It is not enough merely possess virtue, as if it were an art; it should be practiced.
--Cicero

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