200 Inspirational and Motivational Quotes for Life

As an artist, athlete and entrepreneur, it’s difficult to stay motivated or creative when there’s so much going on in life. That’s why I’ve compiled a list of 200 of the best inspirational quotes to keep you motivated throughout the day, week, and life. Keep these powerful reminders somewhere visible or refer back to this page if you’re feeling down and discouraged.

200 Inspirational Life Quotes

1. “All that is gold does not glitter, Not all those who wander are lost.” – J.R.R. Tolkien

2. ”Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.” – Robert Henri

3. ”Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing.” – Marc Chagall

4. ”Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” – Rumi

5. ”Weeds are flowers, too, once you get to know them.” – A.A. Milne

6. ”The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Kubler Ross

7. ”Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures.” – Henry Ward Beecher

8. ”The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, but must be felt with the heart.” – Helen Keller

9. ”The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” – Albert Einstein

10. ”Beauty is the illumination of your soul.” – John O’Donohue

11. ”We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.” – Thornton Wilder

12. ”The only journey is the one within.” – Rainer Maria Rilke

13. ”Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.” – William Wordsworth

14. ”The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” – Francis Bacon

15. ”To be an artist is to believe in life.” – Henry Moore

16. ”Are we to paint what’s on the face, what’s inside the face, or what’s behind it?” – Picasso

17. ”The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” – Paul Cezanne

18. ”Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” – Andre Gide

19. ”The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. – Gloria Steinem

20. ”Whatever you are, be a good one.” – Abraham Lincoln

21. ”Lead us not into temptation. Just tell us where it is; we’ll find it.” – Sam Levenson

22. ”You connect yourself to the viewer by sharing something that is inside of you that connects with something inside of him. All you have as your guide is that you know what moves you.” – Steven Brust

23. ”At some point everyone must decide if they are a creator or a critic, a lover or a hater, a giver or a taker.” – Unknown

24. ”The trouble with having an open mind, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.” – Terry Pratchett

25. “We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.” – John Lennon

26. ”Promise me you’ll always remember: you’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – Christopher Robin (to Pooh)

27. ”You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Gandhi

28. ”Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.” – E.E. Cummings

29. ”Now and then it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.” – Guillaume Apollinaire

30. ”Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you too can become great.” – Mark Twain

31. ”Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.” – Winston Churchill

32. ”Be silent, or say something better than silence.” – Pythagoras

33. ”The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them — words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they’re brought out. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you’ve said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That’s the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.” – Stephen King

34. ”I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent van Gogh

35. ”Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” – Plato

36. ”People are often unreasonable and self-centered.
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you.
Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous.
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
Give your best anyway.”
– Mother Teresa

37. ”Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.” – Arthur Schopenhauer

38. ”I am not here to change the world. I am changing the world because I am here.” – Lisa Wilson

39. ”What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lives within us.” – Emerson

40. ”I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” – Rita Mae Brown

41. ”The things that make me different are the things that make me.” – A. A. Milne

42. ”Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life.” – Steve Jobs

43. ”Be faithful to that which exists within yourself.” – André Gide

44. ”Don’t try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It’s the one and only thing you have to offer.” -Barbara Kingsolver

45. ”We’re fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.” – Unknown

46. ”Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs

47. ”It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not.” – André Gide

48. ”There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading to the same place, so it doesn’t matter which path you take. The only person wasting time is the one who runs around the mountain, telling everyone that his or her path is wrong.” – Hindu proverb

49. ”Poor is the soul whose pleasure depends upon the permission of another.” – Madonna

50. ”Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.” – Oscar Wilde

51. ”To create one’s own world takes courage.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

52. ”There is a voice inside of you
That whispers all day long,
‘I feel this is right for me,
I know that this is wrong.’
No teacher, preacher, parent, friend
Or wise man can decide
What’s right for you-just listen to
The voice that speaks inside.” – Shel Silverstein

53. ”The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be.” – Leo Buscaglia

54. ”We are all a little weird and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” – Dr. Seuss

55. ”Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” – Emerson

56. ”Resist much. Obey little.” – Walt Whitman

57. ”If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it’s not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That’s why it’s your path.” – Joseph Campbell

58. ”If you can’t beat them, join them. If you can’t join them, it’s probably because you just tried to beat them.” – Unknown

59. ”The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker

60. ”Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one’s definition of your life; define yourself.” – Robert Frost

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61. ”A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car.” – Kenneth Tynan

62. ”To be one, to be united is a great thing. But to respect the right to be different is maybe even greater.” – Bono

63. ”Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.” – Jack Kerouac

64. ”Do not compromise yourself. You are all you have got.” – Janis Joplin

65. ”Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

66. ”If it adapts itself to what the majority of our society wants, art will be a meaningless recreation.” – Albert Camus

67. ”Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.” – Kurt Cobain

68. ”Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.” – Anne Sexton

69. ”Creativity is essentially a lonely art. An even lonelier struggle. To some a blessing. To others a curse. It is in reality the ability to reach inside yourself and drag forth from your very soul an idea.” – Lou Dorfsman

70. ”The chief enemy of creativity is good sense.” – Pablo Picasso

71. ”Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – G.B. Shaw

72. ”Everything’s already been said, but since nobody was listening, we have to start again.” – Andre Gide

73. ”Creativity takes courage.” – Henri Matisse

74. ”I’ll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there’s evidence of any thinking going on inside it.” – Terry Pratchett

75. ”How we spend our days is how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour and with that one, is what we are doing.” – Annie Dillard

76. ”Creativity is intelligence having fun.” – Albert Einstein

77. ”I invent nothing, I rediscover.” – Auguste Rodin

78. ”If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.” – Marc Chagall

79. ”Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth.” – Rumi

80. ”Find something only you can say.” – James Dickey

81. ”Creativity is not the finding of a thing, but the making something out of it after it is found.” – James Russell Lowell

82. ”Free your mind and your ass will follow.” – George Clinton

83. ”Art is not about thinking something up. It is the opposite-getting something down.” – Julia Cameron

84. ”Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams

85. ”I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become.” – Carl Jung

86. ”Everything that we encounter leaves traces behind. Everything contributes imperceptibly to our education.” – Goethe

87. ”The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly — without judgment, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes. Without emotional expectations. Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child.” – David Bayles

88. ”Everything in life comes to you as a teacher. Pay Attention. Learn Quickly.” – Cherokee saying

89. ”Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it.
Life is sorrow, overcome it.
Life is a song, sing it.
Life is a struggle, accept it.
Life is a tragedy, confront it.
Life is an adventure, dare it.
Life is luck, make it.
Life is life, fight for it.”
– Mother Teresa

90. ”You may not be a Picasso or Mozart but you don’t have to be. Just create to create. Create to remind yourself you’re still alive. Make stuff to inspire others to make something too. Create to learn a bit more about yourself.” – Frederick Terral

91. ”We are not on this earth to accumulate victories, things, and experiences, but to be whittled and sandpapered until what’s left is who we truly are.” -Arianna Huffington

92. ”The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.” – Cyril Connolly

93. ”Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, or evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.” – Henry Miller

94. ”The seed of your next artwork lies embedded in the imperfections of your current piece.” – David Bayles

95. ”Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.” – Jimi Hendrix

96. ”It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work, and then we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey.” – Wendell Berry

97. ”It’s better to fail in originality, than succeed in imitation.” – Herman Melville

98. ”I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” – Augusten Burroughs

99. ”Some succeed because they are destined. Some succeed because they are determined.” – Unknown

Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else. – Leonardo da Vinci

101. ”When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” – Lao Tzu

102. ”I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

103. ”Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.” – Norman Vincent Peale

104. ”I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” – Vincent van Gogh

105. ”Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

106. ”Do not fear mistakes—there are none.” – Miles Davis

107. ”Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” – Khalil Gibran

108. ”You should keep on painting no matter how difficult it is, because this is all part of experience, and the more experience you have, the better it is…unless it kills you, and then you know you have gone too far.” – Alice Neel

109. ”Fail, fail again, fail better.” – Samuel Beckett

110. ”When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen….There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly.” – Patrick Overton

111. ”Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about will come true.” – Bob Dylan

112. ”The bird of paradise alights only on the hand that does not grasp.” – John Berry

113. ”We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” – Kurt Vonnegut

114. ”Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” – Ira Glass

115. ”Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.” – Rumi

116. ”Let yourself go. Pull out from the depths those thoughts that you do not understand, and spread them out in the sunlight and know the meaning of them.” -E.M. Forster

117. ”We must be willing to let go of the life we planned in order to have the life that is waiting for us.” – Joseph Campbell

118. ”Only those that risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” – T.S. Eliot

119. ”Talent is God-given. Be humble. Fame is man-given. Be grateful. Conceit is self-given. Be careful.” – John Wooden

120. ”I have great faith in fools — my friends call it self-confidence.” – Edgar Allan Poe

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121. ”Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. We are all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up to discover what is already there.” – Henry Miller

122. ”To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.” – Soren Kierkegaard

123. ”Listen to the mustn’ts, child. Listen to the don’ts. Listen to the shouldn’ts, the impossibles, the won’ts. Listen to the never haves, then listen close to me… Anything can happen, child. Anything can be.” – Shel Silverstein

124. ”Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

125. ”To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Joseph Chilton Pearce

126. ”The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.” – Joseph Campbell

127. ”I’ve been absolutely terrified every moment of my life and I’ve never let it keep me from doing a single think that I wanted to do.” – Georgia O’Keeffe

128. ”Do not be troubled for a language, cultivate your soul and she will show herself.” – Eugene Delacroix

129. ”We do not believe in ourselves until someone reveals that deep inside us something is valuable, worth listening to, worthy of our trust, sacred to our touch. Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.” – E.E. Cummings

130. ”You are not too old and it is not too late to dive into your depths where life calmly gives out it’s own secret.” – Rilke

131. ”It’s not denial. I’m just selective about the reality I accept.” – Calvin and Hobbes

132. ”It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

133. ”As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” – Goethe

134. ”The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath

135. ”One of the secrets of life is that all that is really worth the doing is what we do for others.” – Lewis Carroll

136. ”Give what you have. To someone else it may be better than you dare to think.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

137. ”Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.” – Buddha

138. ”No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” – Aesop

139. ”At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.” – Albert Schweitzer

140. ”The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget yourself, and think of others.” – Norman Vincent Peale

141. ”To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.” – Jasper Johns

142. ”We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men; and among those fibers, as sympathetic threads, our actions run as causes, and they come back to us as effects.” – Herman Melville

143. ”When you learn, teach, when you get, give.” – Maya Angelou

144. ”Talent is a gift that brings with it an obligation to serve the world, and not ourselves, for it is not of our making.” – Jose Marti

145. ”He neither serves nor rules, he transmits. His position is humble and the beauty at the crown is not his own. He is merely a channel.” – Paul Klee

146. ”Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.” – Jack Kerouac

147. ”This world is but a canvas to our imagination.” – Thoreau

148. ”There are always flowers for those who want to see them.” – Henri Matisse

149. ”The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.” – Pablo Picasso

Reality is whatever refuses to go away when I stop believing in it. – Philip K. Dick

151. ”I shut my eyes in order to see.” – Paul Gauguin

152. ”To imagine is everything, to know is nothing at all.” – Anatole France

153. ”You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice; it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” – Kafka

154. ”Silence is the mother of truth.” – Benjamin Disraeli

155. ”It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Thoreau

156. ”No artist tolerates reality.” – Nietzsche

157. ”Who looks outside, dreams… who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung

158. ”Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it.” – Banksy

159. ”Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” – Erica Jong

160. ”We work in the dark, we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” – Henry James

161. ”Those who danced were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” – Nietzsche

162. ”Being crazy isn’t enough.” – Dr. Seuss

163. ”Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” – Allen Ginsberg

164. ”The only difference between an artist and a lunatic is, perhaps, that the artist has the restraint or courtesy to conceal the intensity of his obsession from all except those similarly afflicted.” – Osbert Sitwell

165. ”When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There’s a thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the biggest idiot on earth.” – Cynthia Heimel

166. ”Not everyone is capable of madness; and of those lucky enough to be capable, not many have the courage for it.” – August Strindberg

167. ”The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy, only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.” – Willa Cather

168. ”One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand.” – George Orwell

169. ”Being an author is having angels whisper in your ear – and devils, too.” – Graycie Harmon

170. ”Many people hear voices when no-one is there. Some of them are called mad and are shut up in rooms where they stare at the walls all day. Others are called writers and they do pretty much the same thing.” – Meg Chittenden

171. ”What I give form to in daylight is only one per cent of what I have seen in darkness.” – M.C. Escher

172. ”Create like a god, command like a king, work like a slave.” – Constantin Brancusi

173. ”You can’t wait for inspiration. Sometimes you have to go after it with a club.” – Jack London

174. ”I’m killing time while I wait for life to shower me with meaning and happiness.” – Calvin and Hobbes

175. ”Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need – a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.” – Jerome K. Jerome

176. ”I don’t wait for moods. You accomplish nothing if you do that. Your mind must know it has got to get down to work.” – Pearl S. Buck

177. ”Talent is cheap; dedication is expensive. It will cost you your life.” – Irving Stone

178. ”I am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all my heart.” – Vincent van Gogh

179. ”To see far is one thing, going there is another.” – Constantin Brancusi

180. ”Failure is the path of least persistence.” – Unknown

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181. ”Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.” – Salvador Dali

182. ”Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl.” – Benjamin Jowett

183. ”You ask me why I spend my life writing? Do I find entertainment? Is it worthwhile? Above all, does it pay? If not, then, is there a reason?… I write only because there is a voice within me. That will not be still.” – Sylvia Plath

184. ”You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” – Madeleine L’Engle

185. ”We do not write as we want, but as we can.” – W. Somerset Maugham

186. ”One of the things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. Something more will arise for later, something better.” -Annie Dillard

187. ”How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” – Thoreau

188. ”The writer, when he is also an artist, is someone who admits what others don’t dare reveal.” – Elia Kazan

189. ”It’s much more important to write than to be written about.” -Gabriel Garcia Marquez

190. ”So the writer who breeds more words than he needs, is making a chore for the reader who reads.” – Dr. Seuss

191. ”Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word.” – Stephen King

192. ”True storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it.” – Hannah Arendt

193. ”I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them both well.” – Don Marquis

194. ”A little talent is good to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is the ability to remember every scar.” – Stephen King

195. ”Writing is a struggle against silence.” – Carlos Fuentes

196. ”Every author in some way portrays himself in his works, even if it be against his will.” – Goethe

197. ”A writer is someone who can make a riddle out of an answer.” – Karl Kraus

198. ”Fiction is the truth inside the lie.” – Stephen King

199. ”Words are things. A small drop of ink, falling like dew upon a thought, produces that which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think.” – Byron

I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center. – Kurt Vonnegut

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100 Famous Life Quotes