Albert Einstein
When you're a writer like myself, sometimes you find it helpful to read the words of another when you're suffering from writer's block. It may seem a bit odd, but I've found that good writing begets good writing and that it's amazing how the ideas start flowing back after reading a funny Groucho Marx one-liner.
Upon this page are the words of various people who have inspired me at one time or another when I was trying to write something, or when I needed an uplifting thought. I hope that these little bits of inspiration will help you too.
First of all, you should read this essay by noted writer Douglas Adams about how he deals with his writers block. It's very funny and informative.
Next, scroll down a bit and go down the list and read some of the words here. Or if you'd like to read the words of a particular author, click on their name below to skip ahead to their personal section.
Finally, if you want to look up some other inspiring words, why not look at Bartlett's Familiar Quotations?
If you have a suggestion for a writer whose quotes should be included on the site, e-mail it to me at [email protected].
"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
"Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts."
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocre minds. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism...."
"Whoever undertakes to set himself up as judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods."
"The only source of knowledge is experience"
"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift."
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
"The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity."
"The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives."
"A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of others ."
"Only a life lived for others is a life worth while."
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler."
"Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing."
"Joy in looking and comprehending is nature's most beautiful gift."
"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
"Force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels."
"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."
"Nationalism is an infantile sickness. It is the measles of the human race."
"The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat. "
"I never think of the future. It comes soon enough."
"We have the right, and the obligation, to tell old stories in our own ways because they are our stories."
"All good technology should be used to piss off people's parents."
"All around me darkness gathers,
Fading is the son that shone.
We must speak of other matters;
You can be me when I'm gone"
"Life is what happens when you are making other plans."
"When I was about 12, I used to think I must be a genius, but nobody's noticed. ...If there is such a thing as genius....I am one, if there isn't I don't care."
"I always was a rebel...but on the other hand, I wanted to be loved and accepted...and not just be a loudmouth, lunatic, poet, musician. But I cannot be what I am not."
"My defenses were so great. The cocky rock and roll hero who knows all the answers was actually a terrified guy who didn't know how to cry. Simple."
We've got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can't just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it's going to get on by itself. You've got to keep on watering it. You've got to really look after it and nurture it."
"My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all."
"You've got the brain of a four-year-old boy, and I'll bet he was glad to get rid of it."
"Why should I care about posterity? What's posterity ever done for me? "
"Why, I'd horse-whip you if I had a horse."
"Military justice is to justice what military music is to music."
"I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member. "
"Remember men, we're fighting for this woman's honour; which is probably more than she ever did"
"Women should be obscene and not heard."
"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
"Room service? Send up a larger room."
"Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"
"He may look like an idiot and talk like an idiot but don't let that fool you. He really is an idiot."
"I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception."
"I must say that I find television very educational. The minute somebody turns it on, I go to the library and read a book."
"I have had a perfectly wonderful evening... but this wasn't it."
"Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it and then misapplying the wrong remedies."
"How do I feel about women's rights? I like either side of them."
"Anyone who says he can see through women is missing a lot."
"I didn't like the play, but then I saw it under adverse conditions... the curtain was up."
"From the moment I picked your book up until I laid it down I was convulsed with laughter. Someday I intend reading it."
"A child of five could understand this. Fetch me a child of five."
"Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others."
"Now there's a man with an open mind - you can feel the breeze from here!"
"There's one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him. If he says 'yes,' you know he is a crook."
"The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing..if you can fake that, you've got it made."
"Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms."
"I worked myself up from nothing to a state of extreme poverty."
"She got her good looks from her father. He's a plastic surgeon."
"I've been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin."
"Last night I shot an elephant in my Pajamas and how he got in my pajamas I'll never know."
"To be sure, I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses."
"The best friend will probably get the best wife, because a good marriage is based on a talent for friendship."
"This world is too small for the noble spirit; It soars upward on wings of inspiration..."
"The educational system in large states will always be mediocre at best, for the same reason that the cooking in large kitchens is at best mediocre."
"Madness is rare in individuals--but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."
"We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh."
"It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!"
"In truth, there was only one Christian, and he died on the cross."
"The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception."
"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid."
"The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad."
"I am always myself. If I am not I, who will be?"
"All genuine goodness is original and as free from cant and tradition as the air."
"Each man's necessary path, though as obscure and apparently uneventful as that of a beetle in the grass, is the way to the deepest joys he is susceptible of; though he converses only with moles and fungi and disgraces his relatives, it is no matter if he knows what is steel to his flint."
"Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence. Wherever a man separates from the multitude and goes his own way, there is a fork in the road, though the travelers along the highway see only a gap in the paling."
"The greatest compliment that was ever paid me was when one asked me what I thought, and attended to my answer."
"Do not hire a man who does your work for money, but him who does it for love of it."
"Talk about slavery! ... It exists wherever men are bought and sold, wherever a man allows himself to be made a mere thing or a tool, and surrenders his inalienable rights of reason and conscience. Indeed this slavery is more complete than that which enslaves the body alone."
"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."
"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something."
"What people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can."
"There is no remedy for love but to love more."
"Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each."
"If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see."
"Goodness is the only investment that never fails."
"The perception of beauty is a moral test."
"That man is the richest whose pleasures are the cheapest."
"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he had imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."
"You cannot kill time without injuring eternity."
"What is called resignation is confirmed desperation."
"I am disappointed to find that most that I am and value myself for is lost, or worse than lost, on my audience. I fail to get even the attention of the mass. I should suit them better if I suited myself less. I feel the public demand an average man - average thoughts and manners - not originality, nor even absolute excellence. You cannot interest them except as you are like them and sympathize with them."
"Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself. If the soul attend for a moment to its own infinity, then and there is silence. She is audible to all men, at all times, in all places, and if we will we may always hearken to her admonitions."
"Dreams are the touchstones of our character."
"Millions are awake enough for physical labor; but only one in a million is awake enough for effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundred million to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?"
"You who govern public affairs ... Love virtue, and the people will be virtuous. The virtues of a superior man are like the wind; the virtues of a common man are like the grass; the grass, when the wind passes over it, bends."
"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root."
"In the long run men hit only what they aim at. Therefore, though they should fail immediately, they had better aim at something high."
"Drive a nail home, and secure it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction."
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."
"Sometimes too much to drink is barely enough."
"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the
really great make you feel that you, too, can become great."
"In religion and politics people's beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at
second-hand, and without examination."
"For business reasons, I must preserve the outward sign of sanity."
"We are always too busy for our children; we never give them the time or interest they deserve.
We lavish gifts upon them; but the most precious gift--our personal association, which means
so much to them--we give grudgingly."
"There has been only one Christian. They caught and crucified him--early."
"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."
"Loyalty to petrified opinions never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul."
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education."
"The trouble is that the stupid people--who constitute the grand overwhelming majority of this and all other nations--do believe and are moulded and convinced by what they get out of a newspaper."
"The human race has one really effective weapon, and that is laughter."
"Faith is believing in something you know ain't true."
"What a man misses mostly in heaven is company."
"'In God We Trust.' I don't believe it would sound any better if it were true."
"Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company."
"A man is accepted into a church for what he believes and he is turned out for what he knows."
"Blasphemy? No, it is not blasphemy. If God is as vast as that, he is above blasphemy; if He is as little as that, He is beneath it."
"Of the delights of this world, man cares most for sexual intercourse, yet he has left it out of his heaven"
"So much blood has been shed by the Church because of an omission from the Gospel: "Ye shall be indifferent as to what your neighbor's religion is." Not merely tolerant of it, but indifferent to it. Divinity is claimed for many religions; but no religion is great enough or divine enough to add that new law to its code."