Inspiring Quotes from the Famous (D-F)

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QUOTES FROM THE FAMOUS (D-F)

 

DECISIONS: "Life is the sum of all your choices."- Albert Camus

"You make decisions and decisions will make you."- Lester Sumrall

 

DEEDS: "Some people dream of worthy accomplishments, while others stay awake and do them."

 

DENIAL: "Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."Aldous Huxley 

 

DESIRE: The author Rudyard Kipling wrote, “If you don’t get what you want, it is a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price.”

 

DESTINY: "Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice. It is not something to be wished for, it is something to be attained."- William Jennings Bryan

 

DETERMINATION: "We know how rough the road will be, how heavy here the road will be, we know about the barricades that wait along the track, but we have set our soul upon a certain goal ahead, and nothing left from hell to sky shall ever turn us back." - Vince Lombardi 

"What matters is not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."

 

DIFFICULT PEOPLE: "Every small group has at least one 'difficult' person in it. If you don't immediately recognize who that person is -- it's probably you! "- Rick Warren

 

DIFFICULTIES: "These are the times in which a genius would wish to live.  It is not in 

the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed.  

The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties.  Great necessities 

call out great virtues.  When a mind is raised, and animated by scenes that engage the heart, 

then those qualities which would otherwise lay dormant, wake into life and form the character 

of the hero and the statesman."- wife of John Adams, 2nd president of the U.S.

 

DILIGENCE: "Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows that it must run faster than the fastest lion, or be killed. Every morning in Africa a lion wakes up.  It knows that it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or starve. It doesn't matter if you are a lion or a gazelle.  When the sun comes up in the morning, you had better be running."

 

DIPLOMACY: “Never cut what you can untie.”- Joseph Joubert

 

DISAGREEMENT: "One of the marks of maturity is the ability to disagree 

without becoming disagreeable."- Charles R. Swindoll

"God reserves the right to use people who disagree with me.” - Dr. Bob Cook

 

DISAPPOINTMENT: “We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”- Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

DISCIPLINE: "A dream without the discipline to achieve that dream 

only makes us a daydreamer."- John Maxwell 

"Discipline is the refining fire by which talent becomes ability." - Roy L Smith

"We must face the fact that many today are notoriously careless in their living. This attitude finds its way into the church. We have liberty, we have money, we live in comparative luxury. As a result, discipline has disappeared. What would a violin solo sound like if the strings on the musician’s instrument were all hanging loose, not stretched tight, not ‘disciplined?’"- AW Tozer

 

DISCONTENTMENT: "From the discontent of man the world’s best progress springs."

 

DREAMS: “When you stop having dream and ideals—well, you might as well stop altogether.”

 

EDIFICATION: "Do not keep the alabaster boxes of your love and tenderness sealed up until your friends are dead. Fill their lives with sweetness. Speak approving, cheering words while their ears can hear then and while their hearts can be thrilled by them." - Henry Ward Beecher

 

EDUCATION: "Get over the idea that only children should spend their time in study. Be a student so long as you still have something to learn, and this will mean all your life."- Henry L. Doherty 

"I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday."- Abraham Lincoln 

"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance."- Derek Bok

"An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory. It’s knowing where to go to find out what you need to know, and it’s knowing how to use the information you get."

“The man who graduates today and stops learning tomorrow is uneducated the day after.”

 

EFFORT: “Always do more than is required of you.”- General George S. Patton

“I see no virtue where I smell no sweat.”- Francis Quarles

“He who finds diamonds must grapple in mud and mire because diamonds are not found 

in polished stones. They are made.”- Henry B. Wilson

“You’ll miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”- Wayne Gretzky

"Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration."- Thomas Edison 

 

EGOTISM: Every man needs a blind eye and a deaf ear, so when people applaud, 

you’ll only hear half of it, and when people salute, you’ll only see part of it. 

Believe only half the praise and half the criticism.”- Charles H. Spurgeon

"He that falls in love with himself will have no rivals."- Benjamin Franklin

 

ELOQUENCE: "True eloquence consists of saying all that should be said, and that only."

- Francois de La Rochefoucauld

 

EMOTION: “Don’t come to me with your rubbish that there is no emotion in religion. 

You cannot have real religion without emotion.”- Donald Gee

 

ENABLEMENT: "What God expects us to attempt, He also enables us to achieve."- S. Olford

 

ENCOURAGEMENT: “One of the highest of human duties is the duty of encouragement… 

It is easy to pour cold water on their enthusiasm; it is easy to discourage others. The world 

is full of discouragers. We have a Christian duty to encourage one another. Many a time a word of praise or thanks or appreciation or cheer has kept a man on his feet.”- Donald Bubna

"There are high spots in all of our lives and most of them have come through encouragement from someone else. I don’t care how great, how famous or how successful a man or woman may be, each hungers for applause."– George M. Adams 

 

"One compliment can keep me going for a whole month." - Mark Twain

"When a person is down in the world, an ounce of help is better than a pound of preaching."

“If you want to lift yourself up, lift up someone else.”- Booker T. Washington

"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into a flame by another human being. 

Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light."- Albert Schweitzer

 

ENERGY: “The real difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination- in this lies the distinction between great men and little men.”- T. Fuller

"I never remember feeling tired by work, though idleness exhausts me completely."- Sherlock Holmes

"Do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men. Do not pray for tasks equal 

to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks."- Phillips Brooks 

 

ENDURANCE: 

"Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory."- William Barclay

"Champions aren’t made in a gym; champions are made from something they have deep inside them, a desire; a dream; a vision. They have to have last minute stamina. They have to be a little faster. They have to have the skill and the will, but the will must be stronger than the skill."- Mohammed Ali 

"When you get into a tight place and it seems you can’t go on, hold on, for that’s just the place and the time that the tide will turn." - Harriet Beecher Stowe

 

ENTHUSIASM: “Every man is enthusiastic at times. One man has enthusiasm for thirty minutes, another man has it for thirty days, but it is the man who has it for thirty years who makes a success in life.”- Edward B. Butler

"Fires can’t be made with dead embers, nor can enthusiasm be stirred by spiritless men. Enthusiasm in our daily work lightens effort and turns even labour into pleasant tasks" “Enthusiasm is the greatest asset in the world. It beats money and power and influence. It is no more or less than faith in action.” - Henry Chester 

"Enthusiasm is the mother of effort, and without it nothing great was ever achieved. The world belongs to the energetic." - Ralph Waldo Emerson"

"Men are nothing until they are excited."- Michel de Montaigne

 

ENVY: "As rust corrupts iron, so envy corrupts man."- Antisthenes 

 

ETERNITY: "He who provides for this life, but takes no care for eternity is wise for a moment, but a fool forever."- Tillotson 

 

EVANGELISM: A man once testified in one of D.L. Moody's meetings that he had “lived on the Mountain of Transfiguration for 5 years. "How many souls did you lead to Christ last year?" Moody bluntly asked him. "Well,"  the man hesitated, "I don't know." "Have you saved any?" Moody persisted. "I don't know that I have," the man admitted. "Well," said Moody, "we don't want that kind of mountaintop experience. When a man gets up so high that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong." - Warren Wiersbe

 

“I would rather win souls than be the greatest king or emperor on earth; I would rather 

win souls than be the greatest general that ever commanded an army; I would rather 

win souls than be the greatest poet, or novelist, or literary man who ever walked 

the earth. My one ambition in life is to win as many as possible.” -                      R. A. Torrey

 

EXAMPLE: "When I saw the unwearied patience, that unflagging zeal, those enlightened sons of Africa, I became a Christian at his side, though he never spoke to me about it." - Stanley, on observing David Livingstone 

"There is just one way to bring up a child in the way he should go, and that is to travel that way yourself."- Abraham Lincoln 

"Your actions speak so loudly, that I cannot hear what you say."- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

"Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing." - Albert Schweitzer

"Don’t worry that your children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you."

“Out of 100 men, one will read the Bible, the other 99 will read the Christian.” - D.L. Moody

 

EXCELLENCE: "And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don’t just set out to do a good job."- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."- Aristotle

"Excellence is to do a common thing in an uncommon way."- Booker T. Washington

"If a man is called to be a street sweeper he should sweep streets 

even as Michelangelo painted or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. 

He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say 

'Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.'" - Martin Luther King Jr.

 "Excellence is not a skill. It is an attitude."- Ralph Marston 

 

EXCUSES: "Getting caught is the mother of invention."- Robert Byrne

“I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse.”- Florence Nightingale

 

EXHILARATION: "Exhilaration is that feeling you get just after a great idea hits you, 

and just before you realize what's wrong with it." - Rex Harrison

 

EXPECTATION: “The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; 

he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on 

with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”- George Bernard Shaw

"Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God."- William Carey

"Blessed is he that expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed." - Benjamin Franklin

“Blessed are the Meek for they shall inherit the earth - if that’s all right with the rest of you.”

 

EXPERIENCE: "In the business world, everyone is paid in two coins: cash and experience. Take the experience first; the cash will come later." - Harold S. Geneen

"Experience is the name everyone gives to his mistakes."- Oscar Wilde 

"It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts." - John Wooden, basketball coach 

"Experience is the hardest teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward." 

"The years teach much which the days never know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson 

“A little experience often upsets a lot of theory.”- Cadman

 

FAILURE: “Failure can be divided into those who thought and never did, 

and into those who did and never thought.”- W.A. Nance

"What is defeat? Nothing but education; nothing but the first step to something better." 

"We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction."- General Douglas MacArthur

"Failure is an event, never a person."- William D. Brown

"What does not destroy me makes me stronger."- Friedrich Nietzsche 

"Failure is the opportunity to begin again, more intelligently"- Henry Ford. "Learn from the mistakes of others; you can’t live long enough to make them all yourself."- Eleanor Roosevelt 

 

It was said that Edison had some 2,000 unsuccessful experiments before he actually got the light bulb he was developing to actually work. Someone asked him what it was like to fail 2,000 times. Edison replied, "I never failed, I only found out 2,000 ways it didn’t work." "I don't know the key to success but the key to failure is trying to please everybody" Bill Cosby. 

 

FAITH: “Preach faith till you have it; and then, because you have it, you will preach faith.”

- Peter Böhler (Moravian Missionary) speaking to John Wesley.

“Care more for a grain of faith than a ton of excitement.” and “Little faith will bring your soul 

to heaven, but great faith will bring heaven to your soul.”- Charles H. Spurgeon

 

"The African impala can jump to a height of over 10 feet and cover a distance of greater than 30 feet in that one jump. Yet these incredible creatures can be kept in an enclosure in any zoo with a 3-foot solid wall. The animals will not jump if they cannot see where their feet will fall. Faith is the ability to trust and act on God’s word when our eyes and mind can’t see us overcoming. We can jump higher then any problem confronting us if we agree with the promises of God and act on them!” - Joseph Cameneti

 

"Faith is a refusal to panic."- D. Martyn Lloyd “There is nothing, indeed, which God 

will not do for a man who dares to step out upon what seems to be the mist; 

though as he puts his foot down he finds a rock beneath him.” - F. B. Meyer

 

FAITHFULNESS: "I do not pray for success. I ask for faithfulness."- Mother Teresa 

"God has no larger field for the man who is not faithfully doing his work where he is."

 

FAMILY: "A saint abroad, and a devil at home."- John Bunyan 

 

FAMILIARITY: "Though familiarity may not breed contempt, it takes off the edge of admiration." - William Hazlitt

 

FAMOUS LAST WORDS: When the great Christian and scientist, Sir Michael Faraday, 

was dying, some journalists questioned him as to his speculations about life after death. "Speculations!" he said, "I know nothing about speculations. I'm resting on certainties. 

'I know that my redeemer liveth, and because He lives, I shall live also.'"

 

Martin Luther: "Our God is the God from whom cometh salvation: 

God is the Lord by whom we escape death."

John Knox said: “Live in Christ, live in Christ, and the flesh need not fear death.”

 

John Wesley said: "The best of all is, God is with us. Farewell! Farewell!"

Charles Wesley said: "I shall be satisfied with Thy likeness -- satisfied, satisfied!"

Adoniram Judson said: "I am not tired of my work, neither am I tired of the world; yet when Christ calls me home, I shall go with the gladness of a boy bounding away from school."

 

John Pawson said: "I know I am dying, but my deathbed is a bed of roses. 

I have no thorns planted upon my dying pillow. Heaven is already begun!"

 

When Benjamin Franklin was about to die, he asked that a picture of Christ on the Cross should be so placed in his bedroom that he could look, as he said, "upon the form of the Silent Sufferer." He wrote in advance the epitaph to be on his gravestone: "The body of Benjamin Franklin, Printer, like the cover of an old book, it's contents torn out and stripped of its lettering and gilding, lies here...Yet the Work itself shall not be lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more beautiful edition, corrected and amended by the Author."

 

FANATICISM "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject."

- Winston Churchill. "Wherever there’s light, there’s bugs."- Harry Ironside.

 

FATIGUE: "An exhausted man easily falls prey to the adversary.”- Oswald Sanders.

"Fatigue makes cowards of us all."- Vince Lombardi.

 

FEAR: "The most drastic and usually the most effective remedy for fear is direct action." 

"It is never safe to look into the future with eyes of fear."- E. H. Harriman. 

"Never take counsel of your fears. - Andrew Jackson. 

"He who is afraid of a thing gives it power over him." - Moorish Proverb. 

 

FINISHING: “Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.”

"The Greeks had a race in their Olympic games that was unique. The winner was not 

the runner who finished first. It was the runner who finished with his torch still lit. 

I want to run all the way with the flame of my torch still lit for Him." Fan The Flame, J. Stowell. 

 

FLEXIBILITY: "He that is flexible will not get bent out of shape."- Unknown.

 

FOCUS: "It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time." - Sir Winston Churchill. 

"Look outside, be distressed. Look inside, be depressed. Look at Jesus, be at rest." - Corrie Ten Boom

 

FORGIVENESS 

“He who cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.”- Lord Herbert.

"When you forgive someone, you set a prisoner free… and then you find that the prisoner was you." - Lewis Smedes

 

Patti Davis, daughter of Ronald Reagan, said that her dad made a lasting impression on her the day after the assassination attempt of 1982. She says, "The following day my father said he knew his physical healing was directly dependent on his ability to forgive John Hinckley. By showing me that forgiveness is the key to everything, including physical health and healing, he gave me an example of Christ-like thinking."

 

Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was reminded one day of a vicious deed that someone had done to her years before. But she acted as if she had never even heard of the incident. "Don’t you remember it?" her friend asked. 

"No," came Barton’s reply, "I distinctly remember forgetting it."

“A Christian will find it cheaper to pardon than to resent. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred, the waste of spirits.” - Hannah More

 

FORESIGHT "Business more than any other occupation is a continual dealing with the future; it is a continual calculation, an instinctive exercise in foresight."- Henry R Luce

 

FRIENDSHIP: "Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; 

be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them."- W. Clement Stone

"Friendship doesn’t make you wealthy, but true friendship will reveal the wealth within you."

"I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar."- Robert Brault

"A real friend is one who walks in when the rest of the world walks out."- Walter Winchell

"So live that your friends can defend you but never have to."- Arnold Glasow 

"A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud."- Emerson 

 

FREEDOM: "No man is free who is not a master of himself."- Epictetus 

 

FUN: "When people aren’t having any fun, they seldom produce good work. Kill the grimness with laughter. Encourage exuberance. Get rid of sad dogs that spread gloom."- David Ogilvy

 

FUTURE: “The future is purchased by the present.” - Samuel Johnson 

"The best thing about the future is that it comes only one day at a time."- Abraham Lincoln