This section of inspirational quotes below are from the archive of my “Aspire Higher Thought of the Day” mailings:

(Note: do you really have the time right now to sift through all 154 of these quotes just to find the best ones?

I didn’t think so!  For that reason, I’ve sorted them for you by what I consider to be the “Good, Better, Best“.

I hope it saves you some time…and that you agree with my choices. -Shawn)

The BEST Quotes:

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things. -Elinor Smith

True happiness is not made in getting something. True happiness is becoming something. This can be done by being committed to lofty goals. We cannot become something without commitment. -Ashton

It is terrible to speak well and be wrong. -Sophocles

I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature. -John Rockefeller

THE POWER OF A COMPELLING CAUSE RESTS IN THE SOUL OF ITS CREATOR, because a cause springs from the soul. It is a spiritual statement from one soul that cannot be the result of many. It comes from a deep place of knowing, some conviction that a richly imagined future could in some way, dramatically and positively, change the world. -Lance Secretan, author “Inspirational Leadership”

Within our dreams and aspirations we find our opportunities. -Sue Ebaugh

Your aspirations are your possibilities. -Dr. Samuel Johnson

There is no shame in having fallen. Nor any shame in being born into a lowly estate. There is only shame in not struggling to rise. And also shame for not wishing to attain the better. Or not dreaming about it and praying for it. -Samuel Amalu

Not failure, but low aim, is crime. -J.R. Lowell

Ambition is the spur that makes man struggle with destiny. It is heaven’s own incentive to make purpose great and achievement greater. -Donald G. Mitchell

Some of us have great runways already built for us. If you have one, take OFF! But if you don’t have one, realize it is your responsibility to grab a shovel and build one for yourself and for those who will follow after you. -Amelia Earhart

One never learns by success. Success is the plateau that one rests upon to take breath and look down from upon the straight and difficult path, but one does not climb upon a plateau. -Josephine Preston Peabody

Take a look at those two open hands of yours. They are tools with which to serve, make friends, and reach out for the best in life. Open hands open the way to achievement. Put them to work today. -Wilfred A. Patterson

I have always admired the ability to bite off more than one can chew and then chew it. -William DeMille

Think of yourself as on the threshold of unparalleled success. A whole clear, glorious life lies before you. Achieve! Achieve! -Andrew Carnegie

You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something. “I cannot,” never accomplished anything; “I will try,” has wrought wonders. -J. Hawes

Man ought always to have something that he prefers to life; otherwise life itself will seem to him tiresome and void. -Seume

There is a close connection between getting up in the world and getting up in the morning. -Anon.

The greatest discovery of my age is that men can change their circumstances by changing the attitude of their mind. -William James

To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself; earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence. -S. Smiles

It is not for man to rest in absolute contentment. He is born to hopes and aspirations as the sparks fly upward, unless he has brutified his nature and quenched the spirit of immortality which is his portion. -Southey

The man who is born with a talent which he is meant to use finds his greatest happiness in using it. -Johann von Goethe

Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, missed happiness as well. No one ever yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime “let out all the length of the reins.” -Mary Cholmondeley

The man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder–a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and, having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God has given you. -Carlyle

Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success. -T.T. Munger

A noble man compares and estimates himself by an idea which is higher than himself; and a mean man, by one lower than himself. The one produces aspiration; the other ambition, which is the way in which a vulgar man aspires. -H.W. Beecher

If you want the secondary greatness of recognized talent, focus first on primary greatness of character. -Stephan R. Covey

The growth of the human mind is still high adventure, in many ways, the highest adventure on earth. -Norman Cousins

Can you think of anything more permanently elating than to know that you are on the right road at last? -Vernon Howard

I am suffocated and lost when I have not the bright feeling of progression . -Margaret Fuller

Success soon palls. The joyous time is when the breeze first strikes your sails, and the waters rustle under your bows. -Charles Buxton

“If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these…” -Epictetus

The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows whither he is going. -David Starr Jordan

It is never too late to be what you might have been. -George Eliot

Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance. -Bruce Barton

He who wishes to fulfill his mission in the world must be a man of one idea, that is, of one great overmastering purpose, overshadowing all his aims, and guiding and controlling his entire life. -Julius Bate

You are here to enrich the world and you impoverish yourself if you forget that errand. -Woodrow Wilson

People are the custodians of the world’s wealth; if you want them to hand some over to you, you have to be nice to people! -Stuart Wilde

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him. -?

You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life. -James G. Bilkey

Deep within man dwell these slumbering powers; powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action. -Orison Marden

***People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can’t find them, make them. -George Bernard Shaw***

The BETTER (than good) Quotes:

Man does not drift into goodness…the chance port of an aimless voyage. He must fight ever for his destination. -William George Jordan

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it. -Jim Rohn

High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds. -Tryon Edwards

If you are not doing good with what little you have, depend upon it the more money you get the more selfish you would become…If your real desire is to do good, there is no need to wait for money before you do it. -James Allen

My strength is the strength of ten because my heart is pure. -Tennyson

Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond. -Bulwer

I would rather fail in a cause that will ultimately succeed than succeed in a cause that will ultimately fail. -Woodrow Wilson

Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life, as a dog does his master’s chaise. Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still. -Thoreau

I bargained with Life for a penny,
And Life would pay no more,
However I begged at evening
When I counted my scanty store;

For Life is a just employer,
He gives you what you ask,
But once you have set the wages,
Why, you must bear the task.

I worked for a menial’s hire,
Only to learn, dismayed,
That any wage I had asked of Life,
Life would have paid!
-Jessie Rittenhouse

Repentance is another name for aspiration. -H.W. Beecher

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. -James Barrie

The true law of the race is progress and development. Whenever civilization pauses in the march of conquest, it is overthrown by the barbarian. -Simms

To be ambitious of true honor and of the real glory and perfection of our nature is the very principle and incentive of virtue; but to be ambitious of titles, place, ceremonial respects, and civil pageantry, is as vain and little as the things are which we court. -Sir P. Sidney

Success in life is a matter not so much of talent or opportunity as of concentration and perseverance. -C.W. Wendte

The thorough man of business knows that only by years of patient, unremitting attention to affairs can he earn his reward, which is the result, not of chance, but of well-devised means for the attainment to ends. -Andrew Carnegie

If you are not financially independent by the time you are forty or fifty, it doesn’t mean that you are living in the wrong country or at the wrong time. It simply means that you have the wrong plan. -Jim Rohn

All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals. If a man was to compare the effect of a single stroke of the pick-ax, or of one impression of the spade with the general design and last result, he would be overwhelmed by the sense of their disproportion; yet those petty operations, incessantly continued, in time surmount the greatest difficulties, and mountains are levelled, and oceans bounded, by the slender force of human beings. -Johnson

You will never have a greater or lesser dominion than that over yourself. The height of a man’s success is gauged by his self-mastery; the depth of his failure by his self-abandonment. And this law is the expansion of eternal justice. He who cannot establish dominion over himself will have no dominion over others. -Leonardo Da Vinci

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. -Generally attributed to Emerson, also claimed by Elbert Hubbard

In vain do they talk of happiness who never subdued an impulse in obedience to a principle. He who never sacrificed a present to a future good, or a personal to a general one, can speak of happiness only as the blind speak of color. -Horace Mann

The great high-road of human welfare lies along the old highway of steadfast, well-doing; and they who are the most persistent, and work in the truest spirit, will invariably be the most successful; success treads on the heels of every right effort. -S. Smiles

The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit–that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory. Pounds are the sons, not of pounds, but of pence. -Charles Buxton

There never was yet a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous. -Benjamin Franklin

A mind once stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions. -Oliver Wendell Holmes

The mind, grappling with great aims and wrestling with mighty impediments, grows by a certain necessity to the stature of greatness. -Bryant

In the private sanctuary of one’s own conscience lies that spirit, that determination to cast off the old person and to measure up to the stature of true potential. -Monson

It is asked, how can the laboring man find time for self-culture? I answer that an earnest purpose finds time or makes it. It seizes on spare moments and turns fragments to golden account. A man who follows his calling with industry and spirit, and uses his earnings economically, will always have some portion of the day at command. And it is astonishing how fruitful of improvement a short season becomes when eagerly seized and faithfully used. It has often been observed, that those who have the most time at their disposal profit by it the least. A single hour a day, steadily given to the study of some interesting subject, brings unexpected accumulations of knowledge. -Channing

When confronted with iron-will determination, I can see Time, Fate and Circumstance calling a hasty conference and deciding, “We might as well let him have his dream. He’s said he’s going to get there or die trying.” -Jim Rohn

An individual who doesn’t consciously select his goals is not really in control of his life. He is controlled. Without really knowing it, he is controlled by goals imposed by outside pressures (the expectation of other), or by habits (procrastination), or by desires (the longing to be honored and admired) and so on. -??

If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success. -John D. Rockefeller

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. -Thoreau

You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. -Seneca

We are not to make the ideas of contentment and aspiration quarrel, for God made them fast friends. A man may aspire, and yet be quite content until it is time to rise; and both flying and resting are but parts of one contentment. The very fruit of the gospel is aspiration. It is to the heart what spring is to the earth, making every root, and bud, and bough desire to be more. -H.W. Beecher

There is a certain cowardice, a certain weakness, rather, among respectable folk. Only brigands are convinced–of what? That they must succeed. And so they do succeed. -Charles Baudelaire

Up, sluggard, and waste not life; in the grave will be sleeping enough . -Benjamin Franklin

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry. -Winston Churchill

The GOOD Quotes:

Our desires always increase with our possessions. The knowledge that something remains yet unenjoyed impairs our enjoyment of the good before us. -Samuel Johnson

Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not. -Nathaniel Hawthorne

He is only advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, his blood warmer, his brain quicker, and his spirit entering into living peace. -Ruskin

I want to convey how beautiful it is to close your eyes and dream. And then to open them and make that dream a reality. -Sean Combs (Puff Daddy)

It Can Be Done
The ones who miss all the fun
Are those who say, “It can’t be done.”
In solemn pride they stand aloof
And greet each venture with reproof.
Had they the power they’d efface
The history of the human race.
We’d have no radio or motor cars,
No street lit by electric stars;
No telegraph nor telephone,
We’d linger in the age of stone.
The world would sleep if things were run
By those who say, “It can’t be done.”
-Author Unknown

We do not know today whether we are busy or idle. In times when we thought ourselves indolent, we have afterwards discovered that much was accomplished, and much was begun in us. -Emerson

Perhaps perseverance has been the radical principle of every truly great character. -J. Foster

Work is as much a necessity to man as eating and sleeping. Even those who do nothing that can be called work still imagine they are doing something. The world has not a man who is an idler in his own eyes. -W. Humboldt

I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours. -Jerome K. Jerome

Other Helpful Quote Sites

Not a bad one
Pretty good one
The de facto standard….

Perhaps the surest test of an individual’s integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect. -Monson

What we truly and earnestly aspire to be, that in some sense we are. The mere aspiration, by changing the frame of the mind, for the moment realises itself. -Mrs. Jameson

A great mind may change its objects, but it cannot relinquish them; it must have something to pursue; variety is its relaxation, and amusement its repose. -Colton

It is better by a noble boldness to run the risk of being subject to half of the evils we anticipate, than to remain in cowardly listlessness for fear of what may happen. -Herodotus

The heights by great men reached and kept, Were not attained by sudden flight, But they, while their companions slept, Were toiling upward in the night. -Longfellow

Use what talents you possess; the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best. -Henry Van Dyke

Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One man gets only a week’s value out of a year while another gets a full year’s value out of a week. -Charles Richards

Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it. -Emerson

A truly wise person will constantly move forward, striving for self-improvement….The joys of happiness can only be realized by living lofty principles. -Ashton

It should be everyone’s interest to be virtuous who wish to be happy in this world. -Unknown

Do not write a check with your tongue that your actions cannot cash. -Maxwell

We lose the peace of years when we hunt after the rapture of moments. -Bulwer

Continue to invest in your personal development. Expand your occupational horizons by constant study….Look to your present job as a stepping-stone along your career path. Take time to think. The dimensions of most jobs are constrained only by the mind of the uncreative worker. I like what one businessman counseled: “If at first you do succeed, try something harder!” -J. Richard Clarke

A truly wise person will constantly move forward, striving for self-improvement, knowing that daily repentance is needed for progress. He will realize the good life is simply conforming to a standard of right and justice. The joys of happiness can only be realized by living lofty principles. -Ashton

Figure it out for yourself, my lad,
You’ve all that the greatest of men have had;
Two arms, two hands, two legs, two eyes,
And a brain to use if you would be wise,
With this equipment they all began–
So start from the top and say, I CAN.

Look them over, the wise and the great,
They take their food from a common plate,
And similar knives and forks they use,
With similar laces they tie their shoes;
The world considers them brave and smart,
But you’ve all they had when they made their start.

You can triumph and come to skill,
You can be great if you only will;
You’re well equipped for what fight you choose,
You have arms and legs and a brain to use;
And the man who has risen great deeds to do
Began his life with no more than you.

You are the handicap you must face,
You are the one who must choose your place.
You must say where you want to go,
How much you will study the truth to know;
God has equipped you for life, but He
Lets you decide what you want to be.

Courage must come from the soul within
The man must furnish the will to win.
So figure it out for yourself my lad,
You were born with all that the great have had;
With your equipment they all began,
Get hold of yourself and say, I CAN.”
— George Washington Carver —

Here’s one of my attempts at making quote pics, putting them into a slideshow, adding effects & music, and publishing it as a video. I find the whole process so tedious, long, boring, painful, and horrible. Video-making is not for me. 🙁  But here you go anyway.  Hopefully you’ll get something out of it:

Ironically, I’m toying with the idea of a video per day experiment this year.  Maybe I’ll learn to like it!

Be sure to watch my 4 other videos, subscribe to my channel, like and/or comment, etc. It’ll provide me with the encouragement to continue. 🙂 -Shawn

Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished. -Confucius

If any man seek greatness let him forget greatness and seek for truth; then he will find both. -Horace Mann

Beaten paths are for beaten men. -Eric Johnston

The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another, and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. -James Barrie

It is the whole history of mankind that power lacking the inner strength of self-restraint will be eventually cast down. -Adlai Stevenson

The moving-van is a symbol of more than our restlessness, it is the most conclusive evidence possible of our progress. -Louis Kronenberger

Those who believe that we have reached the limit of business progress and employment opportunity in this country are like the farmer who had two windmills and pulled one down because he was afraid there was not enough wind for both. -Morris S. Tremaine

Wise men profit more from fools than fools from wise men; for the wise men shun the mistakes of fools, but fools do not imitate the successes of the wise. -Cato the Elder, quoted in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives

He who is silent is forgotten; he who abstains is taken at his word; he who does not advance falls back; he who stops is overwhelmed, distanced, crushed; he who ceases to grow greater becomes smaller; he who leaves off, gives up; the stationary condition is the beginning of the end. -Amiel

It is right to be contented with what we have, never with what we are. -James MacKintosh

The moment a man ceases to progress, to grow higher, wider and deeper, then his life becomes stagnant. -Orison S. Marden

Click Here for More Motivational Quotes by Topic

This section below has 40 proverbs/sayings that I recently (well, not anymore) shared on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc:

(Note: these 40 are all pretty random; I admit they might not all be winners!) 🙂

To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist. -Gail Sheehy

Failure is more frequently from want of energy than want of capital. -Daniel Webster (1782-1852)

Don’t just read the easy stuff. You may be entertained by it, but you will never grow from it. -Jim Rohn

It is a rarity to find someone who can weigh other people’s faults without putting his own thumbs on the scale. -Paraguayan Proverb

The surest cure for loneliness, the quickest way to happiness, is found in this, a simple creed: Go serve someone in greater need. -W Ward

Don’t let the negativity given to you by the world disempower you. Instead give to yourself that which empowers you. -Les Brown

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do. -Walter Bagehot

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none. -Thomas Carlyle

If A equals success, then the formula is A equals X plus Y and Z, with X being work, Y play, and Z keeping your mouth shut. -Einstein

The Possible’s slow fuse is lit by the imagination. -Emily Dickinson

It is through cooperation, rather than conflict, that your greatest successes will be derived. -Ralph Charell

I can imagine no more comfortable frame of mind for the conduct of life than a humorous resignation. -W. Somerset Maugham

When we argue for our limitations, we get to keep them. -Peter McWilliams

Set too many goals and keep adding more goals. Goals have a tendency to be realized all at once. -Mark Victor Hansen

We should not let our fears hold us back from pursuing our hopes. -John F. Kennedy

Life is a great big canvas, and you should throw all the paint you can on it. -Danny Kaye

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -Kurt Vonnegut

Have confidence that if you have done a little thing well, you can do a bigger thing well too. -David Storey

Each day can be one of triumph if you keep up your interests. -George Adams

“Take a chance! All life is a chance. The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare.” -Dale Carnegie

I discovered a long time ago that if I helped people get what they wanted, I would always get what I wanted… -Anthony Robbins

If you do not think about your future, you cannot have one. -John Galsworthy

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Edward Sagan

Greatness is not found in possessions, power, position, or prestige. It is discovered in goodness, humility, service & character. -W Ward

The secret of success is consistency of purpose. -Benjamin Disraeli

“Not to be occupied and not to exist amount to the same thing.” -Voltaire

“Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.” -Unknown

Opportunities are usually disguised by hard work, so most people don’t recognize them. -Ann Landers

“If you don’t have a plan of life, you’ll never have order.” -Josemaria Escriva

Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others. -Aristotle

There is no pleasure in life equal to that of the conquest of a vicious habit. -David Starr Jordan

The man who moves a mountain begins by carrying away small stones. -Confucius

Nothing is predestined: The obstacles of your past can become the gateways that lead to new beginnings. -Ralph Blum

Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish. -Ovid

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. -Samuel Ullman

Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. -Thomas Edison

The minute a man ceases to grow, no matter what his years, that minute he begins to be old. -William James

Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines, practiced every day… -Jim Rohn

“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” -David Brinkley

Let your heart soar as high as it will. Refuse to be average. -A.W. Tozer

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Just for reading so far, here’s a gift for you.  If you haven’t done so already, you can download a copy of AS A MAN THINKETH by James Allen.

To get your free copy of “As A Man Thinketh“, right click on the link and choose “Save Target As” or “Save link as”.

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-Shawn
PS: I have to ask….if you enjoy this page, would you take a second and use one of the share buttons below or at the top? It’s a quick easy thing for you to do, but it’s a MASSIVE favor to me.

Basically, the idea is to share this across your favorite social network…or multiple networks. Something on this page deserves to be seen by more people, so let’s work together to get it seen. 🙂  Thanks!

PPS: What did you think of my classifications of the Good, Better, Best?  Also,  if you have any earth-shattering (or really good) quotes that you think should be added to this page, please share them in the comments section below.