Inspirational Quotes

I'd just killed some of the best riders in the world - and I was clean. I'd taken nothing - no EPO, no cortisone, no testosterone, no painkillers, no caffeine. I had justified to myself that I was a great rider without drugs - yet perversely given myself the green light to dope again. I'd proved what I could do clean - how much more could I do if I was doped?

~ David Millar

G. I. Gurdieff, Beelzebub's Tales to His GrandsonSo-and-so-and-so-must-be; do-not-do-what-must-not-be. Mullah's favorite saying. p. 598

~ Gurdieff

You can't fulfill your calling inside your comfort zone.

~ Johnathan Key

What liberated our souls, we live to serve.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Liberation of sacred souls connects to specific service.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Calling is connection: Uncovering our calling is a deliberate choice to serve others and to make a difference in the world. Our calling is made manifest in service to others...it is paradoxical but true; we are more likely to receive the meaning and fulfillment we seek when we enable others to achieve the meaning and fulfillment they seek, as well.

~ David Shapiro

So that's it. I've told you everything I know. Think clearly and think for yourself. Learn to use language to express those thoughts. Love somebody with all your heart. And with everyone, whether you love them or not, find out if you can be helpful. But really, it's even simpler than that. After all this time, and all these talks in public and in private, I think I get it now. If I were taking my friend Arnold's suggestion and spoke from my deathbed, I think I know what I'd say. I see now that I had my meaning all along, I just had to notice it. The meaning of life... is life. Not noticing life is what's meaningless, even down to the last second.

~ Alan Alda

As each situation in life represents a challenge to man and presents a problem for him to solve, the question of the meaning of life may actually be reversed. Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

Meaning can be found in action.

~ Andy Harglesis

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

~ Cheryl Strayed

When a person can't find a deep sense of meaning, they distract themselves with pleasure.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

All I know of heaven and all I know of death is in this park: an elegant universe in ceaseless motion, teeming with ruined ruins and screaming children.

~ John Green

It is through the filter of our ego that we give meaning to everything we see, touch, hear, taste and feel.

~ Gyalwa Dokhampa

Everybody pretends to feel and tries to describe with the taste and elegance of him who first defined what picturesque beauty was. I detest jargon of every kind, and sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in but what was worn and hackneyed out of all sense and meaning.

~ Jane Austen

Meaning is often found embedded in the silent moments of our lives when we can hear and see what matters most, the things audible and visible only to the spirit.

~ Toni Sorenson

There is no mystery to happiness. Unhappy men are all alike. Some wound they suffered long ago, some wish denied, some blow to pride, some kindling spark of love put out by scorn - or worse, indifference - cleaves to them, or they to it, and so they live each day within a shroud of yesterdays.The happy man does not look back. he doesn’t look ahead. he lives in the present. but there’s the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The ways of happiness and meaning are not the same. to find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment.But if he wants meaning - the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life - a man must reinhabit his past, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them. What have you chosen: happiness or meaning?'The interpretation of murder

~ Jed Rubenfeld.

We’re all the same. We all have the means to save ourselves and carry ourselves home.

~ T.a. Miles

Was Du erlebst, kann keine Macht der Welt Dir rauben. (What you have experienced, no power on earth can take from you.) Not only our experiences, but all we have done, whatever great thoughts we may have had and all we have suffered, all this is not lost, though it is past; we have brought it into being. Having been is a kind of being, and perhaps the surest kind.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

Given the ease with which health infuses life with meaning and purpose, it is shocking how swiftly illness steals away those certainties…Time unused and only endured still vanishes, as if time itself is starving, and each day is swallowed whole, leaving no crumbs, no memory, no trace at all.

~ Elisabeth Tova Bailey

Not every conflict is necessarily neurotic; some amount of conflict is normal and healthy. In a similar sense suffering is not always a pathological phenomenon; rather than being a symptom of neurosis, suffering may well be a human achievement, especially if the suffering grows out of existential frustration... Existential frustration is neither pathological or pathogenic.

~ Viktor E. Frankl

At every given moment we are absolutely perfect for what is required for our journey.

~ Steve Maraboli

I’m nothing great. But I’m a rose… I’m a rose whether I’m admired or not, I’m a rose whether anyone’s crazy about me or not… Like I said, nothing great. Just a rose… But, do you know what it means to be a rose, my friend? Being a rose means ‘freedom.’ It means not existing by the praises of Others or not ceasing to exist by their disapproval.

~ Serdar Özkan

Okay listen, you think I'm so inconsequential? Then try this on for size. All those who see unworthiness when they look at me and are given thereby to denying me value - to you I say, I'm not talking about being AS GOOD as you. I hereby declare myself BETTER than you.

~ Sidney Poitier

You all have your own distinct personal backgrounds. Of course some of you come from rich families, some from poor families. But circumstances beyond your control like that shouldn’t determine who you are. You must all realize what you’re worth on your own.

~ Koushun Takami

Your value is in your individuality.

~ Dorla Rudd Jenkins

When you express purity which is the truth about yourself, you feel a love for yourself that is expressed by self-respect, self-esteem, and self-confidence!

~ Tae Yun Kim

You do not need to pay attention to those voices within you that create pain, or make you feel less competent, smart or able.

~ Sanaya Roman

In the story of Ugly Duckling, when did the Ugly Duckling stop feeling Ugly? When he realized that he was a Swan. Each of us has something Special, a swan of some sort, hidden inside somewhere. But until we recognize that it's there, what can we do but splash around, treading water? The Wise are Who They Are. They work with what they've got and do what they can do.

~ Benjamin Hoff

If you don't feel you have any choice in a situation, self-esteem and confidence plummet. But once you understand that you do have a choice, self-esteem will improve. You aren't a helpless victim anymore. You decide how you deal with a situation. You aren't just reacting to life; you're creating your life.

~ Theresa Cheung

Respect is a kind of magic too, you know.

~ Jefferson Smith

Don’t fall into the trap of sacrificing your self-esteem for affection and acceptance. No matter what your size, you are a sexy goddess. Remember that.

~ Ashley Graham

The irony is that food gives me a sense of control, even though it makes me totally out of control. Food is something I can choose, order, have delivered. I sit down, eat, and feel really good in the moment. At its essence, food is nourishing. There is truth in that. The trick is understanding and respecting the line where it crosses over into something unhealthy.

~ Ashley Graham

The bond between food and me is like other relationships in my life: complicated, evolving, demanding, and in need of constant work. But together we’ve come so far, moving from my childhood obligation to clean my plate, to a mindless need to fill up, to a truly nourishing and pleasurable exchange. That’s the real reward.

~ Ashley Graham

If people spend years trying to prove that you are less than it's because you are more than enough and they feel threatened. You are more than people's opinions.

~ P.a. Bitez

The only thing for what you are bound is to be in your limit.

~ Haseeb Ch

Make room for who you are by knowing who you’re not.

~ Abby Fabiaschi

Acknowledge, accept, and honor that you deserve your own deepest compassion and love.

~ Nanette Mathews

No one will give a damn about you and your excellence unless you give a damn about yourself.

~ Abhijit Naskar

​Let your pretence of arrogance grow big as a Dinosaur, so that the fake intellectuals start to realize their true inferiority in front of you.

~ Abhijit Naskar

The reason that the little things are more important than the big ones, turns out to be very simple: one can fake the big things in one’s behaviour, but not the little things. The little things lack the three “f’s”: feigning, fabrication, fakeness. Plus the most important “c”: contrivance.

~ Nicos Hadjicostis