44 Inspirational Quotes That Changed My Life
We’re living through interesting and challenging times.
Now more than ever it’s important to engage in activities that help you remain grounded, challenge your assumptions, overcome your biases, find hope in the midst of uncertainty, cultivate peace, and change your perspective.
For me, reading is one of those activities.
Reading the work of others allows me see my own circumstances in a new light. Reading helps me to say, “Wow, I never thought about it like that.” Reading opens my mind for moments of clarity and transcendence to occur.
That’s why I’ve assembled the list of quotes below: to help you expand and grow in directions you may have never even imagined or thought possible, to help you find peace in these tumultuous times, to help you evolve.
First, let’s look at the definition of inspiration and why it’s meaningful in our lives.
What is inspiration? Why is inspiration important?
Psychologists Todd M. Thrash and Andrew J. Elliot wrote, “The heights of human motivation spring from the beauty and goodness that precede us and awaken us to better possibilities.”
Possibilities. That’s what inspiration is really about, isn’t it? Recognizing that we don’t have all the answers. And that we don’t need to.
All we need to do is remain open to new ways of thinking, to new ways of looking at things, to new possibilities.
In a New York Times piece on the topic of inspiration, David Brooks wrote: “There’s a thrilling feeling of elevation, a burst of energy, an awareness of enlarged possibilities. The person in the grip of inspiration has received, as if by magic, some new perception, some holistic understanding, along with the feeling that she is capable of more than she thought.”
Thus, inspiration is energizing, evocative, enveloping. It takes hold of our mind and whisks us off to ports unknown. It expands our capabilities. It enriches us, providing clarity and hope and vigor. Inspiration excites.
According to Merriam-Webster, the word inspiration “comes from the Latin inspiratus (the past participle of inspirare, ‘to breathe into, inspire’) and in English has had the meaning ‘the drawing of air into the lungs’ since the middle of the 16th century.” The way we define and use the word inspiration today—as a source of clarity, perspective, and motivation—didn’t come into use until sometime in the 19th century. Either way, the idea that we’re breathing life into ourselves when we are inspired is a beautiful way of looking at it. In that regard, what could be more important than this breath, than inspiration itself?
What are the benefits of inspiration?
Getting inspired comes with many advantages. For example, inspiration can help you:
Be more creative
Gain mental clarity
Approach challenging circumstances differently
Expand your perspective
Achieve your goals
Truth is, there’s very little you can’t do when you’re inspired. Let’s see if these quotes can help!
44 Inspirational Quotes That Changed My Life
A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
“The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion.”
“You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”
“Ego is no more than this: identification with form, which primarily means thought forms. If evil has any reality—and it has a relative, not an absolute, reality—this is also its definition: complete identification with form—physical forms, thought forms, emotional forms. This results in a total unawareness of my connectedness with the whole, my intrinsic oneness with every “other” as well as with the Source. This forgetfulness is original sin, suffering, delusion.”
“Very unconscious people experience their own ego through its reflection in others. When you realize that what you react to in others is also in you (and sometimes only in you), you begin to become aware of your own ego.”
“Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”
A Course in Miracles by Foundation for Inner Peace
“Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety.”
A Return to Love by Marianne Williamson
“It is our failure to accept people exactly as they are that gives us pain in a relationship.”
“We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.”
“A life lived for oneself alone is not liberation, but merely another form of bondage.”
“Healing is a return to love. Illness and death are often painful lessons in how much we love, but they are lessons nonetheless. Sometimes it takes the knife that emotionally pierces our heart, to pierce the walls that lie in front of it.”
“People who have the most to teach us are often the ones who reflect back to us the limits to our own capacity to love.”
Attached by Dr. Amir Levine, M.D. and Rachel S. F. Heller, M.A.
“Attachment principles teach us that most people are only as needy as their unmet needs. When their emotional needs are met, and the earlier the better, they usually turn their attention outward. This is sometimes referred to in attachment literature as the ‘dependency paradox’: The more effectively dependent people are on one another, the more independent and daring they become.”
“True love, in the evolutionary sense, means peace of mind. ‘Still waters run deep’ is a good way of characterizing it.”
“A general word of advice: It’s always more effective to assume the best in conflict situations. In fact, expecting the worst—which is typical of people with insecure attachment styles—often acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you assume your partner will act hurtfully or reject you, you automatically respond defensively — thus starting a vicious cycle of negativity.”
Codependent No More by Melody Beattie
“We don’t have to take things so personally. We take things to heart that we have no business taking to heart. For instance, saying ‘If you loved me you wouldn’t drink’ to an alcoholic makes as much sense as saying ‘If you loved me, you wouldn’t cough’ to someone who has pneumonia. Pneumonia victims will cough until they get appropriate treatment for their illness. Alcoholics will drink until they get the same. When people with a compulsive disorder do whatever it is they are compelled to do, they are not saying they don’t love you—they are saying they don’t love themselves.”
“I know when to say no and when to say yes. I take responsibility for my choices. The victim? She went somewhere else. The only one who can truly victimize me is myself, and 99 percent of the time I choose to do that no more. But I need to continue to remember the key principles: boundaries, letting go, forgiveness after feeling my feelings—not before, self-expression, loving others but loving myself, too.”
Ecce Homo by Nietzche
“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati [love of one’s fate]: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity.”
Everything Is F***ed by Mark Manson
“This is our challenge, our calling: To act without hope. To not hope for better. To be better. In this moment and the next. And the next. And the next.”
“The only logical way to improve the world is through improving ourselves.”
How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk by John Van Epp, Ph.D.
“A couple must have five times as many interactions or verbal exchanges that generate positive emotions for every one that results in some negative feelings.”
“The good doesn’t always last, and the bad usually gets worse… your dating experience with a particular partner is as good as it gets in a marriage with that partner.”
“Time is the ultimate proof of a promise to change.”
Inward by Yung Pueblo
“Love is not: ‘I will give this to you if you do this for me.’ Love is: ‘I will give this to you so that you may shine.’”
Stillness Is the Key by Ryan Holiday
“Remember, there’s no greatness in the future. Or clarity. Or insight. Or happiness. Or peace. There is only this moment.”
“So much of the distress we feel comes from reacting instinctually instead of acting with conscientious deliberation. So much of what we get wrong comes from the same place. We’re reacting to shadows. We’re taking as certainties impressions we have yet to test. We’re not stopping to put on our glasses and really look.”
The Art of Loving by Eric Fromm
“Immature love says: ‘I love you because I need you.’ Mature love says: ‘I need you because I love you.’”
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
“I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”
The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman
“People tend to criticize their spouse most loudly in the area where they themselves have the deepest emotional need.”
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly, what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
The Science of Happily Ever After by Ty Tashiro, Ph.D.
“This reluctance to let go of partners who are clearly not going to provide any return on the emotional effort invested in them obviously sounds like a poor rationale for continuing a relationship. Yet how many people do you know who have stayed in unhealthy relationships based on a fear of sunken costs?”
The Tao of Love by Ivan Hoffman
“Love means letting each other be free and we cannot let the other be free if we ourselves are in chains… Love is the expression of a person at peace with himself or herself.”
The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukav
“When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of its soul, that is authentic empowerment. This is the goal of the evolutionary process in which we are involved and the reason for our being. Every experience that you have and will have upon the Earth encourages the alignment of your personality with your soul. Every circumstance and situation gives you the opportunity to choose this path, to allow your soul to shine through you, to bring into the physical world through you its unending and unfathomable reverence for and love of Life.”
The Second Mountain by David Brooks
“Very often the people who have the most incandescent souls have taken on the heaviest burdens.”
“A life of commitment means saying a thousand noes for the sake of a few previous yeses.”
The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*** by Mark Manson
“The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience.”
The Universe Has Your Back by Gabby Bernstein
“All obstacles that are perceived with love can be transformed into the greatest life lessons.”
The Untethered Soul by Michael A. Singer
“Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it.”
“As you grow spiritually, you will realize that your attempts to protect yourself from your problems actually create more problems.”
“The events that happen in the moment belong to the moment. They don’t belong to you. They have nothing to do with you. You must stop defining yourself in relationship to them.”
“When consciousness stops identifying itself as the ray, it comes to know itself as the sun.”
Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty
“We should plant trees under whose shade we do not plan to sit.”
“Life begins with breath, breath carries you through all your days, and life and breath end together.”
You. Are. The. One. by Kute Blackson
“Fear is a sign that you are at your edge. You are about to transcend your limits.”
How do you stay inspired? Which of these quotes are your favorites? Tell me in the comments below—or Tweet me @crackliffe.
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