Inspiring Quotes from the Famous (Q-Z)

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QUOTES FROM THE FAMOUS (Q-Z)

 

QUESTIONS: “No man really becomes a fool until he stops asking questions.”

 

QUOTES: "The man who never reads will never be read; he who never quotes will never be quoted. He who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves that he has no brains of his own."- Charles Spurgeon

 

REACTING: "Your reactions to your enemy can hurt you more than your enemy can."

 

READING: “Reading Christians are growing Christians. 

When Christians cease to read, they cease to grow.”- John Wesley. 

"The person who won't read has no advantage over the person who can't."

"Do not deny yourself the help of good books on the subject of your lessons. Buy, borrow or beg, if necessary, but obtain somehow the help of the best thinkers, enough at least to stimulate your own thought; but do not read without thinking. If possible, talk the lesson over with an intelligent friend; collision often brings light." - John Milton Gregory

"No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance."- Atwood H. Townsend

 

REALITY: “Nothing is so tragic as the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.” 

 

REGRET: "Make it a rule of life never to regret and never to look back. Regret is an appalling waste of energy; you can't build on it, it's only good for wallowing in." - Katherine Mansfield.

"Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: ‘It might have been.’"- J.G Whittier 

 

RELATIONSHIPS: "The right to criticize must be earned, even if the advice is constructive in nature." - James Dobson in What Wives Wish their Husbands Knew about Women.

 

RELAXATION: "For fast-acting relief try slowing down.”- Lily Tomlin

 

REPENTANCE: “To do so no more is the truest repentance.”- Martin Luther

“True repentance hates the sin, and not merely the penalty; 

and it hates the sin most of all because it has discovered and felt God’s love.” - W.M. Taylor.

“True repentance is to cease from sin.” - Ambrose of Milan. 

 

REPUTATION: “Associate with men of good quality, if you esteem your own reputation; 

it is better to be alone than in bad company.”

 

RESPECTABILITY: "Though everyone has an equal right to speak, 

not all have earned an equal right to be taken seriously." Hubert Humphrey

 

RESPONSIBILITY: “Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anyone else expects of you. Never excuse yourself.” - Henry Ward Beecher.

"The price of greatness is responsibility." - Winston Churchill.

 

"This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. 

Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it Somebody got angry about that! After all, it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody, because Nobody had wound up doing what Anybody could have done!"

 

"The only thing needed for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke.

“I know God won’t give me anything I can’t handle. I just wish he didn’t trust me so much.”

- Mother Teresa

”You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” - Abraham Lincoln

 

REST: “The Master knows better than to exhaust His servants and quench the light of Israel. Rest time is not waste time. It is economy to gather fresh strength.” - Charles Spurgeon.

 

RETALIATION: "People who fight fire with fire usually end up with ashes." - A.Van Buren.

 

REVIVAL: Gypsy Smith was once asked how to start revival. He answered: 

"Go home, lock yourself in your room, and kneel down in the middle of the floor. 

Draw a chalk mark all around yourself and ask God to start a revival inside that chalk 

mark. When he has answered your prayer, the revival will be on." John Wesley was once 

asked how he got crowds: "I set myself on fire, and the people come to see me burn."

 

RISK: "The man who goes farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from the shore." - Dale Carnegie

“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the great twilight that knows not victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt.

“No man is worth his salt who is not ready at all times to risk his body, to risk his well-being, to risk his life, in a great cause.” - Theodore Roosevelt.

 

RUDENESS: “Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.” - Eric Hoffer

 

SACRIFICE: “A religion that gives nothing, costs nothing, and suffers nothing, 

is worth nothing.” - Martin Luther.

 

SECURITY: "If money is your hope for independence you will never have it (security). The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability."- Henry Ford. 

 

SELF-AWARENESS: "When Abraham Lincoln was a candidate for President of the United States, someone asked him about his aspiration to that high office. He answered that he did not fear his opponents. "But," he said, "there is a man named Lincoln of whom I am very much afraid. If I am defeated, it will be by that man." - Dillard S. Miller

 

SELF-CONFIDENCE: "You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. You must do what you think you cannot do" - Eleanor Roosevelt.

 

SELF-CONTROL: "All significant battles are waged within the self" - Sheldon Kopp. 

"I have more trouble with D.L.Moody than with any other man I have ever met." - D.L. Moody 

"Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. 

The body will always give up."- George S. Patton

“You can never have a greater or lesser dominion than over yourself.” - Leonardo DaVinci.

 

SELF-EXAMINATION: “Take heed to yourselves, lest you perish while you call upon others to take heed of perishing, and lest you famish yourselves while you prepare their food.”- Richard Baxter (“Reformed Pastor”)

 

SELF-PITY: “Never feel self-pity, the most destructive emotion there is. 

How awful to be caught up in the terrible squirrel cage of self.” - Millicent Fenwick

 

SELF SACRIFICE: “Self-preservation is the first law of nature, 

but self-sacrifice is the highest rule of grace.” - Unknown

 

SELFISHNESS: “It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others.” - John Andrew Holmes

"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, 

what respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will 

be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself 

out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose." - Charles Kingsley. 

"Selfishness is the greatest curse of the human race." - William E. Gladstone 

"The counterfeit trinity is me, myself, and I."- Edwin Louis Cole. 

 

SENSITIVITY: "Listen to the whispers, and you won't have to hear the screams." - Cherokee. 

 

SERVANTHOOD: “You can tell whether you are becoming a servant by how you act 

when people treat you like one.” - Gordon MacDonald

"The true measure of a man is not the number of servants he has, 

but the number of people he serves."- Arnold Glasgow

"I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know - the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found a way to serve."- Albert Schweitzer.

"There is no more noble occupation in the world than to assist another human being- to help someone succeed." - Alan Loy McGinnis.

 

SERVICE: “Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”

- Martin Luther King Jr. “Only a life lived for others is worth living.” - Albert Einstein.

 

SEX: "Sex has become one of the most discussed topics of modern times. The Victorians pretended it did not exist; the moderns pretend that nothing else exists."- Bishop F J. Sheen 

 

SIGNIFICANCE: "One hundred years from now it will not matter what kind of car I drove, what kind of house I lived in, how much money I had in my bank account, or what my clothes looked like. But one hundred years from now the world may be a little better because I was important in the life of a child."- Anonymous 

"If we work upon marble, it will perish; if we rear temples, they will crumble to dust. But if we work on men’s immortal minds, if we impress on them high principles, the just fear of God, and love for their fellowmen, we engrave on those tablets something which no time can efface and which will brighten and brighten to all eternity."- Daniel Webster. 

 

SIMPLICITY: "The discovery of God lies in the daily and the ordinary, not in the spectacular and the heroic. If we cannot find God in the routines of home and shop, then we will not find Him at all." - Richard J. Foster

"To simplify complications is the first essential of success." - George Earle Buckle

 

SIN: "Sin will take you farther then you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay." - Unknown

“Oh, how horrible our sins look when they are committed by someone else.” - Chuck Smith

 

SMALL THINGS "He does most in God’s great world who does his best in his own little world."- Thomas Jefferson

"He is invited to do great things who receives small things greatly." - Cassiodorus

“I long to accomplish a great and noble task, but it is my chief duty to accomplish small tasks as if they were great and noble.”- Helen Keller

 

SPIRITUALITY: "We're not just human beings having a temporary spiritual experience.  But we're spiritual beings having a temporary human experience." - Teilhard de Chardin

 

STATUS: "Too many people spend money they haven't earned, to buy things they don't want, to impress people they don't like."- Will Rogers

 

STEWARDSHIP: "I place no value on anything I have or may possess, except in relation to the kingdom of God. If anything will advance the interests of the kingdom, it shall be given away or kept, only as by giving or keeping it I shall most promote the glory of Him to whom I owe all my hopes in time or eternity." - David Livingstone.

"We deem it a sacred responsibility and genuine opportunity to be faithful stewards of all God has entrusted to us: our time, our talents, and our financial resources. We view all of life as a sacred trust to be used wisely." - Moravian Covenant for Christian Living.

 

SUCCESS: 

“Success is going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm” - Abr Lincoln

“Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. 

If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.” - Albert Schweitzer

"It takes twenty years to be an overnight success." - Eddie Cantor

"Someday I hope to enjoy enough of what the world calls success so that somebody will ask me, "What’s the secret of it?" I shall say simply this: "I get up when I fall down."- Paul Harvey 

 

"It seems to me shallow and arrogant for any man in these times to claim he is completely self-made, that he owes all his success to his own unaided efforts. Many hands and hearts and minds generally contribute to anyone’s notable achievements." - Walt Disney

"You have reached the pinnacle of success as soon as you become uninterested in money, compliments or publicity."- O.A. Battista

 

"As far as I can remember, being a celebrity has never helped me make a good picture ... or command the obedience of my daughter, or impress my wife. It doesn't even seem to help keep fleas off our dog, and if being a celebrity won't give one an advantage over a couple of fleas, then I guess there can't be that much in being a celebrity after all." - Walt Disney

 

"The desire for fame is the last weakness wise men put off." - Tacitus 

"Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value."- Einstein.

“The best place to succeed is where you are with what you have” - Charles M Schwab.

 

"Be awful nice to ‘em going up, because you’re going to meet them coming down" - Durante

"If you achieve success, you will get applause, and if you get applause, you will hear it. 

My advice to you concerning applause is this: Enjoy it but never quite believe it."

 

"The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary." - Vidal Sassoon 

"Success can make you go one of two ways. It can make you a prima donna – or it can smooth the edges, take away the insecurities, let the nice things come out." - Barbara Walters

 

STRESS: “Did you know that some stress can be good? Think of a violin. Each string is tightened to a certain level of tension or stress, and when the stress is just right, it makes beautiful music. Overtighten, and it goes out of tune. Under-tighten, and it goes out of tune. There is a balance in which the right amount of stress tells us we’re living life at its proper speed. On one hand, we’re not being lazy, and on the other hand, we’re not being overworked.”

"Most stress is caused by people who overestimate the importance of their problems."

 

SUPREMACY OF CHRIST: “Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but upon what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force! But Jesus Christ founded His upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.” - Napoleon. 

 

SURRENDER: "In our competitive world we’re taught to never quit trying, never give up, and never give in - so we don’t hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable. Even Christians would rather talk about winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering than yielding, submitting, obeying, and surrendering. But surrendering to God is the heart of worship." - Rick Warren.

 

TACT: “The original meaning of the word tact referred to the sense of touch (as in ‘tactile’), and came to mean skill in dealing with persons or sensitive situations. Tact is defined as: ‘intuitive perception, especially a quick and fine perception of what is fit and proper and right.’ It alludes to one’s ability to conduct delicate negotiations and personal matters in a way that recognizes mutual rights, and yet leads to a harmonious solution.”- Oswald Sanders.

"Tact is like a girdle. It enables you to organize the awkward truth more attractively." 

"Tact is the ability to describe others as they see themselves." - Abraham Lincoln.

"If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail."

 

TEACHABLE: "Some people will never learn anything, because they understand everything too soon."- Alexander Pope.

 

TEACHING: "A teacher who is attempting to teach, without inspiring the pupil 

with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron." - Horace Mann. 

 

TEAMWORK: “No man will make a great leader, who wants to do it all himself, 

or to get all the credit for doing it.” - Andrew Carnegie

"No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing."- R W Emerson

"In order to have a winner, the team must have a feeling of unity; 

every player must put the team first – ahead of personal glory’ - Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant. "Some people believe you win with your five best players, 

but I found out that you win with the five who fit together best."- Red Auerbach

 

"Generally speaking, individual performances don’t win basketball games" - John Wooden

"The greatest players fit with the team. They play within the team’s style, rather than asking the team to change its style."- Patrick Ewing

"There are people with a lot more talent than I have who have been weeded out of the league because they couldn’t put their egos aside to fill a role."- Kurt Rambis

 

TELEVISION: "I must say I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a good book." - Groucho Marx

"Television: The device that brings into your living room characters you would never allow 

in your living room." - Red Skelton

 

THOUGHT: “What comes to mind when we think about God is the most important thing about us.”- A.W. Tozer

"We should not only use all the brains we have, but all that we can borrow."- Woodrow Wilson

"If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking." - General George S. Patton, Jr.

"Thinking like we (always) have is what got us where we are. It is not going to get us where we are going." - Albert Einstein.

 

TIME: "In primitive societies, no one has a watch, but everyone has time. 

In advanced societies, everyone has a watch, but no one has any time." - Gerhard Geschwandtner. 

"Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of."-B Franklin

 

TRAINING: "The only thing worse than training employees and losing them, 

is not training them and keeping them."- Zig Ziglar.

 

TOLERANCE: “If thou art a master, sometimes be blind; if a servant, sometimes be deaf.”

"God reserves the right to use people who disagree with me."- Robert A. Cook 

 

TREATMENT OF WOMEN: "Man cannot degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he can not elevate her without at the same time elevating himself." - A. Walker. 

 

TRUST: "When the train goes through a tunnel and the world gets dark, do you jump out?  Of course not.  You sit still and trust the engineer to get you through."- Corrie ten Boom 

"All God’s giants have been weak men who did great things for God, because they reckoned on His being with them."- J. Hudson Taylor 

 

TRUTH: “There is no wisdom save in truth. Truth is everlasting, but our ideas about truth are changeable. Only a little of the first fruits of wisdom, only a few fragments of the boundless heights, breadths, and depths of truth, have I been able to gather.”- Martin Luther

“Peace if possible, but truth at any rate.”- Martin Luther

 

UNHAPPINESS is not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it."- Don Herald 

 

UNITY: "The best moments any of us have as human beings are those moments when for a little while it is possible to escape the squirrel-cage of being me into the landscape of being us."

 

VALOUR: "It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how 

the strong man stumbled, 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 the dust 

and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again... 

who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and 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 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. 

 

VICTORY: Martin Luther was asked one time how he overcame the devil. 

He replied: "Well, when he comes knocking upon the door of my heart, and asks, 

'Who lives here?' The dear Lord Jesus goes to the door and says, 

'Martin Luther used to live here but he has moved out. Now I live here.' 

The devil, seeing the nail-pierced hands, and the nail-pierced side, takes flight immediately." 

"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat."- Queen Victoria 

 

VISION: "Vision is the world’s most desperate need. There are no hopeless situations, only people who think hopelessly."- Winifred Newman 

"Make no little plans: They have no magic to stir men's blood."- Daniel H Burnham

"A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, 

bearing within him the image of a cathedral."- Antoine De Saint-Exupery 

 

WILLINGNESS: "The world is a better place as a result of Michelangelo’s not having said, ‘I don’t do ceilings.’"- Edward McCabe 

 

WILLPOWER: “Technique and ability alone do not get you to the top—it is the willpower to that is the most important. This will power rises from your heart.”- Junko Tabei (First woman on Mt. Everest)

 

WINNING: "There is something that can happen to every athlete and every human being; the instinct to slack off, to give in to pain, to give less than your best; the instinct to hope you can win through luck or through your opponent not doing his best, instead of going to the limit and past your limit where victory is always found.  Defeating those negative instincts that are out to defeat us, is the difference between winning and losing - and we all face that battle every day."- Jessie Owens, winner of four gold medals at 1936 Berlin Olympics

 

WISDOM: “The chief aim of wisdom is to enable one to bear with the stupidity of the ignorant.”- Winston Churchill

 

"From the example of the past, the man of the present acts prudently so as not to imperil the future."- Titian

 

“Wisdom is knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech.”- Evangel

 

WONDER: "He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed."- Albert Einstein 

 

WORD OF GOD: “Out flashed the sword of the Spirit: our Lord will fight with no other weapon. He could have spoken new revelations, but he chose to say, ‘It is written.’ There is a power in the Word of God which even the devil cannot deny.”- Charles Spurgeon.

 

WORDS: "Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words makes them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful. Kind words also produce their image on men’s souls; and a beautiful image it is. They smooth, and quiet, and comfort the hearer."- Blaise Pascal 

“Words are the most powerful drug used by mankind.”- Rudyard Kipling

 

WORK: “Working too long without a break is a form of pride.”- Dave Williams.

“It is not work that kills men; it is worry. Work is healthy; you can hardly put more upon a man than he can bear. Worry is rust upon the blade. It is not the revolution that destroys the machinery, but the friction. Fear secretes acids; but love and trust are sweet juices.”- Henry Ward Beecher

 

"Whatever your work, dignify it with your best thought and effort.”- Esther Baldwin York

“The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. 

The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50% of their capacity, and stands 

on its head for those few and far between souls who devote 100%.- Andrew Carnegie

 

“I found that the men and women who got to the top were those who did the jobs they had in hand, with everything they had of energy and enthusiasm and hard work.”- Harry Truman

 

"The highest reward for man’s toil is not what he gets for it but what he becomes by it."

“I don’t know anything about luck. I’ve never banked on it, and I’m afraid of people who do. Luck to me is something else: hard work—and realizing what is opportunity and what isn’t.” - Lucille Ball

 

WORKAHOLISM: “They intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.”- Aldous Huxley 

 

WORKS: Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, to all the souls you can, 

in every place you can, with all the zeal you can, as long as you ever can.- John Wesley 

 

WORRY: "I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened."- Mark Twain 

“Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow; it empties today of its strength.”

 - Corrie Ten Boom

 

WORTH: "A true measure of a man’s worth includes all the benefits others have gained from your success.”- Cullen Hightower

 

YIELDEDNESS: “There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence.” - John Calvin