The Top 125 Inspirational Sayings and Quotes of All Time

Today I’d like to simply share what I think are some of the most inspirational sayings and quotes of all time.

A distilled and concise collection packed with maximum motivational power from the people who walked this earth before us (and some from people who are still here).

I hope these quotes and sayings will help you when you’re having a rough day or week.

When you need to renew that motivation to keep moving towards your goals and dreams.

Or when you just need a new perspective on a situation in your own life no matter if that’s at work, in a relationship or perhaps with your health or personal finances.

This is the best of the best divided into 5 categories: happiness, success, love for the people in your life, staying strong and loving yourself.

The Best Inspirational Sayings and Quotes on Happiness

“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.”
Buddha

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.”
Epictetus

“If you want happiness for an hour — take a nap.'
If you want happiness for a day — go fishing.
If you want happiness for a year — inherit a fortune.
If you want happiness for a lifetime — help someone else.”
Chinese Proverb

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
Mahatma Gandhi

“There are more things to alarm us than to harm us, and we suffer more often in apprehension than reality.”
Seneca

“Optimism is a happiness magnet. If you stay positive, good things and good people will be drawn to you.”
Mary Lou Retton

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.”
Groucho Marx

“Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.”
Brian Tracy

“Happiness consists of living each day as if it were the first day of your honeymoon and the last day of your vacation.”
Leo Tolstoy

“Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
Joseph Campbell

“Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow. It only saps today of its joy.”
Leo Buscaglia

“If you are too busy to laugh, you are too busy.”
Proverb

“Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It means you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.”
Unknown

“Happiness is not something ready-made. It comes from your own actions.”
Dalai Lama

“The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny.”
Albert Ellis

“Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Abraham Lincoln

“And remember, no matter where you go, there you are.”
Confucius

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven? And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?
When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see in truth that you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”
Kahlil Gibran

“The first recipe for happiness is: avoid too lengthy meditation on the past.”
Andre Maurois

“Learn to let go. That is the key to happiness.”
Buddha

“Everyone wants to live on top of the mountain, but all the happiness and growth occurs while you're climbing it.”
Andy Rooney

“Enjoy your own life without comparing it with that of another.”
Marquis de Condorcet

“We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.”
Frederick Keonig

“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 the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”
Mark Twain

The Best Inspirational Sayings and Quotes on Success

“Success means doing the best we can with what we have. Success is the doing, not the getting; in the trying, not the triumph. Success is a personal standard, reaching for the highest that is in us, becoming all that we can be.”
Zig Ziglar

“Success is simple. Do what's right, the right way, at the right time.”
Arnold H. Glasgow

“You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction.”
George Lorimer

“You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.”
Albert Einstein

“Success is not measured by what you accomplish, but by the opposition you have encountered, and the courage with which you have maintained the struggle against overwhelming odds.”
Orison Swett Marden

“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.”
Winston Churchill

”Spend eighty percent of your time focusing on the opportunities of tomorrow rather than the problems of yesterday.”
Brian Tracy

“Success means having the courage, the determination, and the will to become the person you believe you were meant to be.”
George Sheehan

“Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.”
Charles F. Kettering

“Success does not consist in never making mistakes but in never making the same one a second time.”
George Bernard Shaw

“The secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.”
Benjamin Disraeli

“Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle.”
Abraham Lincoln

“The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus.”
Bruce Lee

“Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism.”
David M. Burns

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”
Herman Cain

“Don't wait until everything is just right. It will never be perfect. There will always be challenges, obstacles and less than perfect conditions. So what. Get started now. With each step you take, you will grow stronger and stronger, more and more skilled, more and more self-confident and more and more successful.”
Mark Victor Hansen

“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it's always your choice.”
Wayne Dyer

“Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.”
Zig Ziglar

“For success, attitude is equally as important as ability.”
Harry F. Banks

“If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.”
Jim Rohn

“The best way to succeed in this world is to act on the advice you give to others.”
Unknown

“People who succeed have momentum. The more they succeed, the more they want to succeed, and the more they find a way to succeed. Similarly, when someone is failing, the tendency is to get on a downward spiral that can even become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Tony Robbins

“After every difficulty, ask yourself two questions: “What did I do right?” and “What would I do differently?”
Brian Tracy

“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.”
Albert Einstein

“Nothing in the world can take the place of perseverance. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost legendary. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Perseverance and determination alone are omnipotent.”
Calvin Coolidge

The Best Inspirational Sayings and Quotes on Love

“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
Buddha

“Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
James Baldwin

“If I know what love is, it is because of you.”
Herman Hesse

“The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.”
Gilbert K. Chesterton

“It takes courage to love, but pain through love is the purifying fire which those who love generously know. We all know people who are so much afraid of pain that they shut themselves up like clams in a shell and, giving out nothing, receive nothing and therefore shrink until life is a mere living death.”
Eleanor Roosevelt

“When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.”
Blaise Pascal

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
Maya Angelou

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you… I could walk through my garden forever.”
Alfred Tennyson

“I love you not because of who you are, but because of who I am when I am with you.”
Roy Croft

“The most important thing in life is to learn how to give out love, and to let it come in.”
Morrie Schwartz

“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.' Mature love says ‘I need you because I love you.'”
Erich Fromm

“True love comes quietly, without banners or flashing lights. If you hear bells, get your ears checked.”
Erich Segal

“Love is that condition in which the happiness of another person is essential to your own.”
Robert A. Heinlein

“Loving people live in a loving world. Hostile people live in a hostile world. Same world.”
Wayne Dyer

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Rumi

“To love is nothing. To be loved is something. But to love and be loved, that’s everything.”
T. Tolis

“A woman knows the face of the man she loves as a sailor knows the open sea.”
Honore de Balzac

“'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.”
Alfred Lord Tennyson

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”
Charles Schulz

“Every person has to love at least one bad partner in their lives to be truly thankful for the right one.”
Unknown

“Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead.”
Oscar Wilde

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.”
Lao Tzu

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life: That word is love.”
Sophocles

“And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”
Paul McCartney

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.”
A. A. Milne

The Best Inspirational Sayings and Quotes for When You Need to Stay Strong

“Sometimes you don’t realize your own strength until you come face to face with your greatest weakness.”
Susan Gale

“Tough times never last, but tough people do.”
Robert H. Schuller

“Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.”
Dale Carnegie

“A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”
George Bernard Shaw

“You can't really be strong until you can see a funny side to things.”
Ken Kesey

“Life is very interesting. In the end, some of your greatest pains become your greatest strengths.”
Drew Barrymore

“A hero is an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure in spite of overwhelming obstacles.”
Christopher Reeve

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.”
Albert Camus

“It takes more courage to reveal insecurities than to hide them, more strength to relate to people than to dominate them, more ‘manhood' to abide by thought-out principles rather than blind reflex. Toughness is in the soul and spirit, not in muscles and an immature mind.”
Alex Karras

“Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.”
Ann Landers

“Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines.”
Robert Schuller

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
Mahatma Gandhi

“Things work out best for those who make the best of how things work out.”
John Wooden

“When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, till it seems as though you could not hang on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.”
Harriet Beecher Stowe

“The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart.”
R. G. Ingersoll

“What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.”
Margaret Thatcher

“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 and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, 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 he fails while daring greatly.
So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt

“Strength does not come from winning. Your struggles develop your strengths. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
Arnold Schwarzenegger

“Sometimes our light goes out, but is blown again into instant flame by an encounter with another human being.”
Albert Schweitzer

“When a resolute young fellow steps up to the great bully, the world, and takes him boldly by the beard, he is often surprised to find it comes off in his hand, and that it was only tied on to scare away the timid adventurers.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson

“If one dream should fall and break into a thousand pieces, never be afraid to pick one of those pieces up and begin again.”
Flavia Weedn

“Most great people have attained their greatest success one step beyond their greatest failure.”
Napoleon Hill

“We can easily manage if we will only take, each day, the burden appointed to it. But the load will be too heavy for us if we carry yesterday's burden over again today, and then add the burden of the morrow before we are required to bear it.”
John Newton

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.”
Mary Anne Radmacher

The Best Inspirational Sayings and Quotes on Loving Yourself

“Don't rely on someone else for your happiness and self-worth. Only you can be responsible for that. If you can't love and respect yourself – no one else will be able to make that happen. Accept who you are – completely; the good and the bad – and make changes as YOU see fit – not because you think someone else wants you to be different.”
Stacey Charter

“Until you value yourself, you won't value your time. Until you value your time, you will not do anything with it. ”
M. Scott Peck

“A healthy self-love means we have no compulsion to justify to ourselves or others why we take vacations, why we sleep late, why we buy new shoes, why we spoil ourselves from time to time. We feel comfortable doing things which add quality and beauty to life.”
Andrew Matthews

“Because one believes in oneself, one doesn't try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn't need others' approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
Lao-Tzu

“Love yourself first and everything else falls into line. You really have to love yourself to get anything done in this world.”
Lucille Ball

“I found in my research that the biggest reason people aren't more self-compassionate is that they are afraid they'll become self-indulgent. They believe self-criticism is what keeps them in line. Most people have gotten it wrong because our culture says being hard on yourself is the way to be.”
Kristen Neff

“You're always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.”
Diane Von Furstenberg

“People who want the most approval get the least and the people who need approval the least get the most.”
Wayne Dyer

“Low self-esteem is like driving through life with your hand-break on.”
Maxwell Maltz

“Our self-respect tracks our choices. Every time we act in harmony with our authentic self and our heart, we earn our respect. It is that simple. Every choice matters.”
Dan Coppersmith

“One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself.”
Shannon L. Alder

“Did your mom ever tell you, ‘If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything’? She was right–and talking nicely also applies when you’re talking to yourself, even inside your head.”
Victoria Moran

“Don't waste your energy trying to change opinions … Do your thing, and don't care if they like it.”
Tina Fey

“You have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn't worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.”
Louise L. Hay

“People may flatter themselves just as much by thinking that their faults are always present to other people's minds, as if they believe that the world is always contemplating their individual charms and virtues.”
Elizabeth Gaskell

“It ain't what they call you, it's what you answer to.”
W.C. Fields

“When you adopt the viewpoint that there is nothing that exists that is not part of you, that there is no one who exists who is not part of you, that any judgment you make is self-judgment, that any criticism you level is self-criticism, you will wisely extend to yourself an unconditional love that will be the light of the world.”
Harry Palmer

“Love yourself enough to set boundaries. Your time and energy are precious. You get to choose how you use it. You teach people how to treat you by deciding what you will and won’t accept.”
Anna Taylor

“One's dignity may be assaulted, vandalized and cruelly mocked, but it can never be taken away unless it is surrendered.”
Michael J. Fox

“The better you feel about yourself, the less you feel the need to show off.”
Robert Hand

”If you don’t love yourself, nobody will. Not only that, you won’t be good at loving anyone else. Loving starts with the self.”
Wayne Dyer

“Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the face.”
Helen Keller

“Lighten up on yourself. No one is perfect. Gently accept your humanness.”
Deborah Day

“Self-love is an ocean and your heart is a vessel. Make it full, and any excess will spill over into the lives of the people you hold dear. But you must come first.”
Beau Taplin

“If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
Fred Rogers

What is your favorite quote of all time? Feel free to share the best one(s) you have found in this article or in your life in the comments section below.

 

by Henrik Edberg via The Positivity Blog – Practical Happiness Tips