A magical quality exists within words. Mere letters join hands to form words, and, in turn, these words come together to create sentences and phrases that have the power to touch our hearts, reach into our souls, move, and inspire us. When words are placed within the hands of the great masters, their wisdom radiates through like the rays of the sun. These sayings and quotations take up residence within the very core of our beings, and we are forever changed.
The following are a number of memorable sayings that have emerged from the minds of several of the world's greatest thinkers, writers, poets, philosophers, leaders, and teachers. Their words have been passed down through the ages, and have stood the test of time; remaining as true and applicable today as when they were first spoken.
~ On life
- "The unexamined life is not worth living." - Socrates
- "We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give." - Sir Winston Churchill
- "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." - Friedrich Nietzsche
- "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." - Robert Frost
- "It is not length of life, but depth of life." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "May you live every day of your life." - Jonathan Swift
- "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." - Henry David Thoreau
- "While there's life, there's hope." - Marcus Tullius Cicero
- "Your life is what your thoughts make it." - Marcus Aurelius
~ On love
- "I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love." - Mother Theresa
- "It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
- "Love conquers all." - Virgil
- "Love does not dominate; it cultivates." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
- "Love is a single soul inhabiting two bodies." - Aristotle
- "Love is my religion - I could die for it." - John Keats
- "Love is the beauty of the soul." - Saint Augustine
- "Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity." - Henry Van Dyke
- "Where there is love there is life." - Mohandas Gandhi
~ On death
- "For death is no more than a turning of us over from time to eternity."- William Penn
- "You can be a king or a street sweeper, but everybody dances with the Grim Reaper." - Robert Alton Harris
- "Death is more universal than life; everyone dies but not everyone lives." - A. Sachs
- "While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die." -Leonardo da Vinci
- "The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time." - Mark Twain
- "The fear of death is more to be dreaded than death itself." - Publilius Syrus
~ On faith
- "Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." - Mother Theresa
- "Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe." - Voltaire
- "Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
- "In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't." - Blaise Pascal
- "The faith that stands on authority is not faith." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
~ On success
- "Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other." - Abraham Lincoln
- "Defeat is not the worst of failures. Not to have tried is the true failure." - George Edward Woodberry
- "Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success." - Dale Carnegie
- "Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Sir Winston Churchill
- "Success is blocked by concentrating on it and planning for it... Success is shy - it won't come out while you're watching." - Tennessee Williams
- "Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome." - Booker T. Washington
- "The most important single ingredient in the formula of success is knowing how to get along with people." - Theodore Roosevelt
- "The thermometer of success is merely the jealousy of the malcontents." - Salvador Dali
~ On experience
- "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so." - Douglas Adams
- "Nothing is a waste of time if you use the experience wisely." - Auguste Rodin
- "The only source of knowledge is experience." - Albert Einstein
- "The years teach much which the days never know." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
- "Experience is the teacher of all things." - Julius Caesar
~ On wisdom
- "All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man." - Henry David Thoreau
- "By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest." - Confucius
- "Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- "Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom." - Thomas Jefferson
- "It requires wisdom to understand wisdom: the music is nothing if the audience is deaf." - Walter Lippmann
- "Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers." - Alfred Lord Tennyson
- "The doors of wisdom are never shut." - Benjamin Franklin
- "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing." - Socrates
- "The wisdom of the wise and the experience of the ages are perpetuated by quotations." - Benjamin Disraeli