Inspirational Philosophical Quotes & Sayings

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is always right. — Abraham Lincoln

Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed? — Christopher Brennan

You don't need to know what you want. You only need to know what you don't want ... — Julia Heywood

There's only one thing you can do: Toss your pebble in the river, watch it ripple, and know you have moved the ocean. — K.M. Douglas

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense. — Russell Hoban

It saddens me beyond my tears that love is lost within the fears. — Lynn C. Tolson

When the loneliest place on earth is in your mind, move out! — Benny Bellamacina

Everyone loves something for nothing ... even if it costs everything. — Stephen King

When we merely follow another, we take a potentially creative mind out of service-our own. — William Coperthwaite

Perhaps it is a good thing that we don't live long enough to realize how redundant things seem — G.E.GRAVES

You know what turns dirt into diamonds?"
"Pressure. Weight. Heat ... "
"The geological equivalent of torture. — Laura Argiri

It is common to represent a title, but inspiring to represent a purpose. — T.F. Hodge

Some women barter their bodies like whores with wedding bands. Some use sex like a sword. But some women can touch a man and heal like Jesus. — Paula Wall

In every journey comes a moment ... one like no other. And in that moment, you must decide between who you are ... and who you want to be. — J.C. Marino

People! Please. Listen. Our life, our bodies are the most authentic clinical record ever! Why do you have to ask for any other one, alien, fake, distorted by illegible handwriting belonging to someone who has never been us and has never tried to understand us? Do you think that is right? — Igor Eliseev

Nor do we merely feel these essences for one short hour no, even as these trees that whisper round a temple become soon dear as the temples self, so does the moon, the passion posey, glories infinite, Haunt us till they become a cheering light unto our souls and bound to us so fast, that wheather there be shine, or gloom o'er cast, They always must be with us, or we die. — John Keats

Silence does not always imply consent. Sometimes it simply means that the silent one has opted out of a discussion with idiots. — Lex Allen

The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so as not to embarrass the gods and the gods crouched so as to make the small ones feel at home. — Ray Bradbury

I have a self-made quote: Celebrate diversity, practice acceptance and may we all choose peaceful options to conflict. — Donzella Michele Malone

Try to pause each day and take a walk to view nature. — Lailah Gifty Akita

At times it is so enjoyable to mire your neighbor into the filth you already got stuck in long ago! — Igor Eliseev

It always turns out this way: at first people idolize you, swear to be your faithful friend forever and then spit in your tea and in your soul, too. — Igor Eliseev

When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more. — C.S. Lewis

The only thing standing between you and your dreams is ... reluctance. — Carroll Bryant

You have to set somebody free for them to return — Candice Night

Only gravity can hold me down; only myself can hold me back." ~ Amunhotep El Bey — Amunhotep El Bey

No evil being was ever wise: they are all against every wise man's critics. — A Gentlemen

Every major technological innovation propels humanity forward to the point of no return. — Newton Lee

To exemplify, -a beautiful glossy nut, which, blessed with original strength, has outlived all the storms of autumn. Not a puncture, not a weak spot any where. -This nut ... while so many of its brethren have fallen and been trodden under foot, is still in possession of all the happiness that a hazel-nut can be supposed capable of. — Jane Austen

It is always easier to take the words of a Jesus, a Gandhi, a Marx, or a Confucius as constituting Holy Writ. This involves less reading, less study, less thought, less conflict, and less independent searching, but it also means less growth toward maturity. — William Coperthwaite

Good apprentices know that they are in the process of becoming masters and that as responsible artisans they must seek to improve upon the knowledge entrusted to them and go further. — William Coperthwaite

Some people remember the sixties better than others do. Some weren't even there, some who were there were not really there, and some who were not really there were "really there". — Tom Hays

Maybe the consequences of someone's unreason can be remedied only with a new unreason? — Igor Eliseev

You won't comprehend the vitality of literacy until you marry an illiterate. — Kshitij Shringi

To inspire is to teach life principles in the spirit of Love. — Delma Pryce

Without the quest, there can be no epiphany. — Constantine E. Scaros

Progress is heading in a forward direction and realizing what was behind is now your legacy! — K.C. Rhoads

There is a coherence in things, a stability; something ... is immune from change and shines out ... in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a ruby. — Virginia Woolf

Sometimes I don't feel as if I'm a person at all. I'm just a collection of other people's ideas. — David Bowie

I clearly saw us from outside, like in a picture: we are not people, we are a road sign warning: "Stop and thank luck because such fate didn't befall you as befell us, and only then keep going your way". — Igor Eliseev

Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad to get what you need. — Patrick Carman

Our problem is to discover a principle of differentiation and yet relationship lucid enough to justify and to purify both scientific and philosophical knowledge by accepting their mutual independence. — Erich Fromm

With domineering hand she moves the turning wheel,
Like currents in a treacherous bay swept to and fro:
Her ruthless will has just deposed once fearful kings
While trustless still, from low she lifts a conquered head;
No cries of misery she hears, no tears she heeds,
But steely hearted laughs at groans her deeds have wrung.
Such is a game she plays, and so she tests her strength;
Of mighty power she makes parade when one short hour
Sees happiness from utter desolation grow.
(A Consolation of Philosophy, Book II, translated by V.E. Watts) — Boethius - Queen Elizabeth I Translation

Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may. — Mark Twain

We all can be only who we are, no more, no less. — Terry Goodkind

It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs. — Aristotle.

Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.'
She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall. — Eva Ibbotson

A sheep that walks amongst wolves is called dinner - rjs — Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

It is hard to take the last step, but the hardest thing is to make a choice between the unwillingness to live and the inability to die. — Igor Eliseev

If you miss your bus, just start walking. — Shan McGinley

There is an example that inspires a matter for debate. Was the pattern always there for us to find or do we create it entirely by ourselves from nothing? — Philip Dodd

You think that the world we live in is ordinary. We make noise and static to fill the empty spaces where ghosts live. We let other people grow our food, bleach our clothes. We seal ourselves in, clean the dirt from our skins, eat of animals whose blood does not stain our hands. We long ago left the ways of our ancestors, oracles and blood sacrifice, traffic with the spirit world, listening for the voices out of stones and trees. But maybe sometimes you have felt the uncanny, alone at night in a dark wood, or waiting by the edge of the ocean for the tide to come in. We have paved over the ancient world, but that does not mean we have erased it. — Sarah McCarry

There are no endings, only beginnings that have been reborn. — D.B. Patterson

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself. — Romain Rolland

The moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it:
The moon is within me, and so is the sun.
The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me; but my deaf ears cannot hear it.
So long as man clamors for the I and the Mine, his works are as naught:
When all love of the I and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done.
For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge:
When that comes, then work is put away.
The flower blooms for the fruit: when the fruit comes, the flower withers.
The musk is in the deer, but is seeks it not within itself: it wanders in quest of grass. — Kabir

Just as Man developed morals and ethical behavior over thousands of years of evolution; so, too, did he invent an authority figure to enforce these behaviors - God. — Lex Allen

Always take a compliment, even if it's not yours — Benny Bellamacina

Sometimes it feels like you and I are at the movie theater, sitting next to each other and watching the same movie. People say something, argue incessantly, even fight, but this is all somewhere far away, on the other side of the screen, and we are just passive onlookers unable to affect the course of events. — Igor Eliseev

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.
It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he's never wrong.
And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.
It's on the other side of life. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society. — James Baldwin

What if initially they had named you Faith and me Hope, but afterwards they forgot who of us had which name and swapped them around by mistake? You always believe that everything is going to be all right, and your faith helps me."
"And you hope that it will be that way. We have this close bond between us," and, after thinking a while, you added, "All people need hope, no one can live without it; and our hope is way stronger when it is warmed up by faith. So it isn't really important who is Faith and who is Hope; the main thing is that we are connected together. — Igor Eliseev

I have got only one life to live and one death to die; there better be a good cause to live and a good cause to die. — Surendra Nath

Do not be concerned with how others treat you. Be only concerned with how you treat others. — Julia Heywood

It is worthy of note that killing oneself and killing someone is not the same. For the former, one should lose one's faith, for the latter, one should never have any. — Igor Eliseev

I think a good rule of thumb for being true to your own convictions is this; don't do or champion anything in the name of a group that you wouldn't do or champion as an individual - for if you do so, you become a chameleon that fades into the colours of group think, and you compromise the autonomy of individuation. — James Knight - The Philosophical Muser

Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully — Isobelle Carmody

Even the brightest magnesium flare can do little against such dark except blind the eyes of the one holding it. Thus one craves what by seeing one has in fact not seen. — Mark Z. Danielewski

Learn to recognize omens, and follow them — Paulo Coelho

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end. — Kahlil Gibran

I don't mind writing philosophical thoughts. If I don't want to die like one. — Debasish Mridha

It is not what we know that scares us, it is what we do not — A.G. Phillips

It's best to locate the mind first before launching the 'missiles of contention'. — Gasmaskman

Every day the world subtracts from itself and nothing
is immune. — Luanne Castle

We live in a world where those things that we never imagine could ever do something, did the best. — Jestoni Revealed

Mme. Bonacieux looked at the young man, restrained for a minute by a last hesitation; but there was so much ardor in his eyes, such persuasion in his voice, that she felt herself constrained to confide in him. Besides, she found herself in circumstances where everything must be risked for the sake of everything. — Alexandre Dumas

Probably, sooner or later every person founds oneself to be needless. — Igor Eliseev

It only takes one person, one voice from somewhere beyond, to save a life. — Kirsten Arcadio

[The decay of Logic results from an] untroubled assumption that the particular is real and the universal is not. — C.S. Lewis

How perfectly evil spirit and beauty can combine in one person, harmonically supplementing each other. — Igor Eliseev

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which nobody will see. We have no audience but ourselves ... — Susan Cooper

The bad news is, our past defines us. However, the good news is, our future will someday be a part of that past. — Palle Oswald

The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.
There are always more. — David Mitchell

He who is concerned only with the purity of his own life ruins the great human relations. — Confucius

Death twitches my ear;
'Live,' he says...
'I'm coming. — Virgil

The Yorubas have a saying, here, my translation in English
a poor fool is a bigger fool rich. In other words, money only allows and enables you to be more of who you are. My bigger translation? You don't jump essence, you jump environs! — Dew Platt

This prophecy of a coming enlightenment is echoed in virtually every faith and philosophical tradition on Earth. Hindus call it the Krita Age, astrologers call it the Age of Aquarius, the Jews describe the coming of the Messiah, theosophists call it the New Age, cosmologists call it Harmonic Convergence and predict the actual date of December 21, 2012. — Dan Brown

Thinking is no more or no less than asking questions. To improve your thinking, improve the quality of the questions you ask. — Stephanie Mbida

Sometimes, the best thing you can do is nothing.
Catelyn — George R R Martin

Love is not a feeling of attraction between each other.But it is an open devotion between between the two. — Vyshakh Rajachandran

They said, Will You place upon it one who causes corruption therein and sheds blood, while we declare Your praise and sanctify You? — Qur'an 2 30

It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope. — J.R.R. Tolkien

As colors are formed by the combination of Red, Green and Blue : Similarly is life which is a combination of Love, Faith and Peace.. — Mahesh Shekhar

True beauty lies not upon gilded veneers,
But found in the soul within. — E.A. Bucchianeri

Never underestimate someone else's pain. — Jackie Martin

It's good to let your mind wonder, as long as you know where it's going — Benny Bellamacina

Yet if all reality is subjective, all certitude is impossible. — Robin Paul Wood

Is it so hard to offer your help and sympathy to somebody in grief? It takes a little to make one step, but, in an inexplicable manner, it stretches into thousands of kilometers. All of us are full of empathy and consolation but always prefer to express it from a distance. — Igor Eliseev

I am not apologetic. I don't define or defend my philosophical thoughts. You have to feel them, think about them, imagine them, and then try to understand them. My thoughts are my truths. They may not be your truth, and that is fine with me. — Debasish Mridha

Within us all are sages, warriors and fools; we more often that not choose the fools — Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

People are not measured by their accomplishments, but by how many times they screw up trying to achieve them. — James McGregor