Inspiring Thought Quotes

The world needs all the help you can give by way of cheerful, optimistic, inspiring thought and personal example. ~ Grenville Kleiser

Blessed is the society that has oldies. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Books are like people: fascinating, inspiring, thought-provoking, some laugh, some meditate, others ache with old age, but still have wisdom: some are disease-ridden, some deceitful; but others are a delight to behold, and many travel to foreign lands; some cry, some teach, others are lots of fun, they are excellent companions and all have individuality - Books are friends. What person has too many friends? ~ Gladys M. Hunt

Sum of life; Birth, childhood, youth, adulthood, parenthood, old age and death. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

The moment an inspiring thought enters your heart, appreciate it as a dear guest visiting you that day. ~ Rumi

A reminder that for some people in this world, freedom and ordinary aren't basic rights. They're luxuries you should never take for granted. ~ Randa Abdel-Fattah

Having fun?" said George.
"Yes, Mr Lane," said Dinkesh. "Kenny has just flown out of the window."
"That's nice," said George, banishing from his mind the thought that children as young as Kenny and Dinkesh would be daft enough to take drugs in their bedrooms. ~ Mark Gorton

Over the centuries, people have placed a wall around such mastery. They have called it genius and have thought of it as inaccessible. They have seen it as the product of privilege, inborn talent, or just the right alignment of the stars. They have made it seem as if it were as elusive as magic. But that wall is imaginary. ~ Robert Greene

You act like a normal human being and you treat them [actors around] like a buddy because you're all working together. It's no different than being Governor. You put a team together and say, Guys, we all want to shine here. We all want to show that this administration is going to do things that other administrations have thought was impossible. Let's kick some ass together. ~ Arnold Schwarzenegger

I sat down and came up with a caption that I thought would fit well on the poster - something that was short and succinct but got a point across. The latest poster was a direct quote - it was exactly what the woman told me. ~ Tatyana Fazlalizadeh

They came generally from people writing theses on fantasy or on the Dark Is Rising books. They were full of questions I'd never thought about and false assumptions that I didn't want to think about. They would ask me in great detail for, say, the specific local and mythical derivations of my Greenwitch, a leaf-figure thrown over a Cornish cliff as a fertility sacrifice, and I would have to write back and say, "I'm terribly sorry; I made it all up." They told me I echoed Hassidic myth, which I hadn't read, and the Mormon suprastructure, which I'd never even heard of. They saw symbols and buried meanings and allegories everywhere. I'd thought I was making a clear soup, but for them it was a thick mysterious stew.

from "In Defense of the the Artist" in Signposts to Criticism of Children's Literature (1983) ~ Susan Cooper

Time is kinder than we think,' thought Anne. 'It's a dreadful mistake to cherish bitterness for years ... hugging it to our hearts like a treasure. ~ L.M. Montgomery

I've always thought Juliette Lewis was great. ~ Indiana Evans

When, with a smile, she let the dirt slip slowly across her curled palm and out the side of her hand onto the coffin, the gesture looked like the prelude to a carnal act. Clearly this was a man to whom she'd once given much thought. ~ Philip Roth

He said before they had the twins he thought of himself as a provider and protector, as somebody who was responsible to protect the physical world around the people he loved. But after having kids he realized that was 10 percent of the battle. What he really had to protect was the twins' identity. He said there was a primal thing in him that wanted to stand between his children and the world and fight back all the lies. ~ Donald Miller

I had Eondel teach me," Raoden said. "Back when I was trying to find ways to
prove that my father's laws were foolish. Eondel chose fencing becausehe
thought it would be most useful to me, as a politician. I never figured I'd end up using it to keep my wife from slicing me to pieces. ~ Brandon Sanderson

You know, that's what I hate: when you start talking like this, like you just pull in these things from the shit you read, and you haven't thought it out for yourself, no bearing on the world around us, and totally unoriginal. ~ Richard Linklater

The real problem with his type of OCD
chronic fear of hurting other people
was that you thought so much about not running over children, not sideswiping pedestrians, not poisoning strangers with germs on your hands
essentially not killing a world full of strangers
that you ended up hurting the people you loved most. He saw that now. ~ Cammie McGovern

In the end, everything came down to money. It came down to what a person actually did, as opposed to who they thought they were ~ Nicholas Sparks

Leaders motivate people to understand that they can do better than they've already done and go farther than they've reached. ~ Israelmore Ayivor

When you spend half a decade of your life with someone, the ending should occur in a personal fashion. Face to face, hand in hand. Words spoken out of lips kissed, tears shed on seen cheeks. It shouldn't be easy; it should be painful and honest; it should take hours instead of minutes; it should involve yells and cries and discussions, but it should be substantial. A moment thought over and worked out. Not the casual and simple act of a stranger handing over a legal envelope. ~ Alessandra Torre

He had always wanted to write music, and he could give no other identity to the thing he sought. If you want to know what it is, he told himself, listen to the first phrases of Tchaikovsky's First Concerto
or the last movement of Rachmaninoff's Second. Men have not found the words for it, nor the deed nor the thought, but they have found the music. Let me see that in one single act of man on earth. Let me see it made real. Let me see the answer to the promise of that music. Not servants nor those served; not altars and immolations; but the final, the fulfilled, innocent of pain. Don't help me or serve me, but let me see it once, because I need it. Don't work for my happiness, my brothers
show me yours
show me that it is possible
show me your achievement
and the knowledge will give me courage for mine. ~ Ayn Rand

Everyone sees only their own reflection in the mirror of thought. ~ Marty Rubin

I don't want to be a critic of the world. I want to encourage it. ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Here's why I don't have time to 'play church': at the end of the day, when I was supposed to be discarded, and the tools came in to kill me, to crush my head or whatever you're supposed to do, the Lord took His hand, pushed in there, and pushed me back out of the way. And they thought they got me. But at the end of the day God had a plan for a broken situation. ~ Fred Hammond

I wish I had thought of Velcro muscles myself. I didn't have to go to the gym for all those years, all the hours wedded to the iron game, as we call it. ~ Sylvester Stallone

Money is a means of exchange. ~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Don't rush, just because you have reasons! Reason with the reasons and take definite action in the right direction, in haste, where needed, or with patience, where it is essential to do so! Mind your thought and think about your action! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Very serious, very serious," the gateman said, shaking his head also. "You can't get in without a reason." He thought for a moment and then continued. "Wait a minute; maybe I have an old one you can use." He took a battered suitcase from the gatehouse and began to rummage busily through it, mumbling to himself, "No ... no ... no ... this won't do ... no ... h-m-m-m ... ah, this is fine," he cried triumphantly, holding up a small medallion on a chain. He dusted it off, and engraved ~ Norton Juster

He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but then look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human being she had ever met. Then why did she mind what he said? Women can't write, women can't paint - what did that matter coming from him, since clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him, and that was why he said it? Why did her whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort? She must make it once more. There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters - nothing else. Could she not hold fast to that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him? ~ Virginia Woolf

You're pretty much everything I've thought of for a while now ~ Kiersten White

How to repulse a demon (an old problem)? The demons, especially if they are demons of language (and what else could they be?) are fought by language. Hence I can hope to exorcise the demonic word which is breathed into my ears (by myself) if I substitute for it (if I have the gifts of language for doing so) another, calmer word (I yield to euphemism). Thus: I imagined I had escaped from the crisis at last, when behold
favored by a long car trip
a flood of language sweeps me away, I keep tormenting myself with the thought, desire, regret, and rage of the other; and I add to these wounds the discouragement of having to acknowledge that I am falling back, relapsing; but the French vocabulary is a veritable pharmacopoeia (poison on one side, antidote on the other): no, this is not a relapse, only a last soubresaut, a final convulsion of the previous demon. ~ Roland Barthes

In general I lacked principally the ability to provide even in the slightest detail for the real future. I thought only of things in the present and their present condition, not because of thoroughness or any special, strong interest, but rather, to the extent that weakness in thinking was not the cause, because of sorrow and fear – sorrow, because the present was so sad for me that I thought I could not leave it before it resolved itself into happiness; fear, because, like my fear of the slightest action in the present, I also considered myself, in view of my contemptible, childish appearance, unworthy of forming a serious, responsible opinion of the great, manly future which usually seemed so impossible to me that every short step forward appeared to me to be counterfeit and the next step unattainable. ~ Franz Kafka

Russians had a reputation for being the best programmers on Wall Street, and Serge thought he knew why: They had been forced to learn to program computers without the luxury of endless computer time. Many years later, when he had plenty of computer time, Serge still wrote out new programs on paper before typing them into the machine. "In Russia, time on the computer was measured in minutes," he said. "When you write a program, you are given a tiny time slot to make it work. ~ Michael Lewis

The room was much as he had left it, festeringly untidy, though the effect was muted a little by a thick layer of dust. Half-read books and magazines nestled among piles of half-used towels. Half-pairs of socks reclined in half-drunk cups of coffee. What once had been a half-eaten sandwich had now half-turned into something that Arthur didn't entirely want to know about. Bung a fork of lightning through this lot, he thought to himself, and you'd start the evolution of life off all over again. ~ Douglas Adams

I missed you," I whisper against his skin and feel dizzy with the intimacy of the admission, feel more naked than when he could see every inch of me. "In the mortal world, when I thought you were my enemy, I still missed you."
"My sweet nemesis, how glad I am that you returned. ~ Holly Black

It was a sombre snowy afternoon, and the gas-lamps were lit in the big reverberating station. As he paced the platform, waiting for the Washington express, he remembered that there were people who thought there would one day be a tunnel under the Hudson through which the trains of the Pennsylvania railway would run straight into New York. They were of the brotherhood of visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic communication without wires, and other Arabian Nights marvels. ~ Edith Wharton

Love was like notches on a speaker that could be cranked up and down, the decibels of desire, the frequencies of feeling. Sometimes she thought that she might have cranked it all the way up and broken the dial before the music had even started. ~ Alice Pung

Within my body are all the sacred places of the world, and the most profound pilgrimage I can ever make is within my own body. ~ Saraha

Daydream, which is to thought as the nebula is to the star, borders on sleep, and is concerned with it as its frontier. An atmosphere inhabited by living transparencies: there's a beginning of the unknown. But beyond it the Possible opens out, immense.
Other beings, other facts, are there. No supernaturalism, only the occult continuation of infinite nature. . . . Sleep is in contact with the Possible, which we also call the improbable. The world of the night is a world. Night, as night, is a universe. . . . The dark things of the unknown world become neighbors of man, whether by true communication or by a visionary enlargement of the distances of the abyss . . . and the sleeper, not quite seeing, not quite unconscious, glimpses the strange animalities, weird vegetations, terrible or radiant pallors, ghosts, masks, figures, hydras, confusions, moonless moonlights, obscure unmakings of miracle, growths and vanishings within a murky depth, shapes floating in shadow, the whole mystery which we call Dreaming, and which is nothing other than the approach of an invisible reality. The dream is the aquarium of Night. ~ Victor Hugo

The words were like gunpowder blasts, sparking me into thought and action. ~ Kailin Gow