Inspiring Quotes

I love collecting quotes, a wise word can really touch the soul and invite reflection on an area of your life where you may need a little illumination. Here are some of my favourites, quotes about creativity, wisdom, compassion and life!

Here's an idea! Pick a number at random from 1 -85 and see which one you have picked, how does it relate to you at this point in your life?

Johann Gottfried Von Herder


2. “You are seen,
You are known,
You are loved.”

Sark


3. “Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them.”

A. A. Milne (Eeyore, from Winnie the Pooh)


4. “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.”

Maya Angelou


5. “Let the beauty we love be what we do.”

Rumi


6. “I paint my own reality.”

Frida Kahlo


7. “There is no greater insight into the future than recognising when we save our children, we save ourselves.”

Margaret Mead


8. “Be who you are and say what you feel, because those that mind don’t matter and those that matter don’t mind.”

Dr Seuss


9. “For my part know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.”

Vincent Van Gogh


10. “When I die, I can think I go where all those who were daring go.”

Vincent Van Gogh


11. “A child in the cradle if you watch it at leisure, has the infinite in its eyes.”

Vincent Van Gogh


12. “Just as we take a train... we take death to reach a star. Death holds no terror for me.”

Vincent Van Gogh


13. “The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for staying ashore.”

Vincent Van Gogh


14. “To understand everything is to forgive everything.”

Vincent Van Gogh


15. “I’ll always see through my own eyes and tackle things originally.”

Vincent Van Gogh


16. “Find things beautiful as much as you can, most people find too little beautiful, poetry surrounds us everywhere.”

Vincent Van Gogh


17. “It’s not good to know one thing, it stultifies you, one shouldn’t rest until one also knows the opposite.”

Vincent Van Gogh


18. “The way is long if one follows precepts, but short if one follows patterns.”

Seneca


19. “Happiness is not something ready made, it comes from following actions.”

The Dalai Lama


20. “Live the life you have imagined.”

Henry David Thoreau


21. “Take the first step. You don’t have to see the whole staircase just take the next step.”

Martin Luther King


22. “The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.”

Nietzsche


23. “The opposite of play is not work, it is depression.”

Brian Sutton Smith


24. “No fate is worse than a life without love.”

Mexican Proverb


25. “Celebrate what you want to see more of.”

Tom Peters


26. “We don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

Anais Nin


27. “One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries.”

A.A. Milne


28. “Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight; always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?”

Sir James M. Barrie


29. “One day our ancestors will think it is incredible that we paid so much attention to things like the amount of melanin in our skin or the shape of our eyes or our gender instead of the unique identities of each of us as complex human beings.”

Franklin Thomas


30. “There is nothing as dark as night
But nothing so strong as light
Here is the choice
To let it burn out or bright
In a world where the fear or force
Have buried the silent source
Can you deny the need
For a light like yours?”

Christine Kane


31. “...with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things.”

William Wordsworth


32. “Desire is half of life, indifference is half of death.”

Kahlil Gibran

33. “ Ring the bell that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There’s a crack in everything,
That’s what lets the light get in.”

Leonard Cohen


34. “Surely the greatest work of art any of us can ever create is our own soul. In the slow delicate layering, there are necessary places of waiting, incubation and integration.”

Sue Monk Kidd


35. “To live a creative life we must lose our fear of being wrong.”

Joseph Chiltern Pearce


36. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy.”

Marcel Proust


37. “"One can’t believe impossible things" Alice said “I dare say you haven’t had much practice” said the Queen, “When I was your age I always did it for half an hour every day. Why sometimes I’ve believed in as many as six impossible things before breakfast.””

Lewis Caroll


38. “Within your heart, keep one still, secret spot where dreams may go.”

Louise Driscoll


39. “Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth.”

Pema Chodron


40. “To be fully alive, fully human and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”

Pema Chodron


41. “Do I prefer to grow up and relate to life directly, or do I choose to live and die in fear?”

Pema Chodron


42. “Compassion is not a relationship between the healer and the wounded. It’s a relationship between equals. Only when we know our own darkness well can we be present with the darkness of others. Compassion becomes real when we recognise our shared humanity.”

Pema Chodron


43. “There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.”

Martha Graham


44. “Not all who wander are lost.”

J.R.R. Tolkien


45. “No act of kindness however small is ever wasted.”

Aesop


46. “Make visible what, without you, might perhaps never have been seen.”

Robert Bresson


47. “Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess we may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

Agnes de Mille


48. “In ordinary life creativity means making something for the soul out of everyday experience.”

Thomas Moore


49. “Creativity is an act of love, an act of connection and sharing. Creativity requires risk just as loving does.”

Julia Cameron


50. “It may be that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey.”

Wendall Berry


51. “Great things are done by a series of small things put together”

Vincent Van Gogh


52. “The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect, but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the object it loves.”

C. G. Jung


53. “We cannot live in a world that is interpreted by others. An interpreted world is not a hope, part of the terror is to take back our own listening, to use our own voice, to see our own light.”

Hildegarde Von Bingen


54. “Do not ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive and go out and do it. Because the world needs more people who have come alive.”

Howard Thomas


55. “ Be careful how you interpret the world, it is like that.”

Erich Heller


56. “Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure.”

Maria Rainer Rilke


57. “It is the marriage of the soul with Nature that makes the intellect fruitful, and gives birth to the imagination.”

Henry David Thoreau


58. “We still do not know one thousandth of one percent of what nature has revealed to us.”

Albert Einstein


59. “Nature does nothing uselessly.”

Aristotle


60. “Always forgive your enemies, nothing annoys them more.”

Oscar Wilde


61. “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

Oscar Wilde


62. “Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.”

Bob Dylan


63. “Creativity is a learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.”

Arthur Koestler


64. “...you have so many extraordinary gifts; how can you expect to live an ordinary life... go and embrace your liberty, and see what wonderful things come of it.”

Louisa M Alcott (Marmee talking to Jo in Little Women)


65. “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.”

Jimi Hendrix


65. “If there is light in the soul, there will be beauty in the person,
If there is beauty in the person, there will be harmony in the house,
If there is harmony in the house, there will be order in the nation,
If there is order in the nation, there will be peace in the world.

Chinese proverb


67. “Life shrinks or expands according to your courage.”

Anais Nin


68. “I’ve had such a wonderful life, I just wish I’d known it sooner.”

Colette


69. “You yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.”

Buddha


70. “The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.”

C. G. Jung


71. “Oh I’m scared all the time. I just act as if I’m not.”

Katherine Hepburn


72. “I, an artist... I am here to live out loud.”

Emile Zola


73. “What is done in love is done well.”

Vincent Van Gogh


74. “On with the dance, let joy be unconfined.”

Lord Byron


75. “Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds you plant.”

Robert Louis Stevenson


76. “Promise me you’ll always remember you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

A. A. Milne


77. "May your heart always be joyful. May your song always be sung"

Bob Dylan

78. "The personal life deeply lived expands into something beyond itself."

Anais Nin


79. "Your life should reach others. Your blissfulness. your ecstasy should not be contained within you like a seed. It should open like a flower and spread its fragrance to all and sundry."

Osho


80. "Even though the world changes like cloud formations, all that is fulfilled returns home to the changeless one."

Rainer Maria Rilke


81. "Creativity is contagious, pass it on"

Albert Einstein


82. "May the long time sun shine upon you
All love surround you
And the pure light within you
Guide your way home."

Celtic Blessing


83."Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it."

Maya Angelou


84. "We must slow down to a human tempo and we'll have time to listen."

Thomas Merton


85. "The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can't make something out of a little experience, you probably won't be able to make it out of a lot."

Flannery O'Connor