Inspiration Quotes

If that impression does not remain on this intrepid and powerful people, into whose veins all nations pour their mingling blood, it will be our immense calamity. Public action, without it, will lose the dignity of consecration. Eloquence, without it, will miss what is loftiest, will give place to a careless and pulseless disquisition, or fall to the flatness of political slang. Life, without it, will lose its sacred and mystic charm. Society, without it, will fail of inspirations, and be drowned in an animalism whose rising tides will keep pace with its wealth.

— R. S. Storrs

Life

I have heard of a monk who in his cell, had a glorious vision of Jesus revealed to him. Just then, a bell rang, which called him away to distribute loaves of bread among the poor beggars at the gate. He was sorely tried as to whether he should lose a scene so inspiring. He went to his act of mercy; and when he came back, the vision remained more glorious than ever.

— T. L. Cuyler

Wisdom

We believe that the Holy Bible was written by men divinely inspired, and is a perfect treasure of heavenly instruction; that it has God for its author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter; that it reveals the principles by which God will judge us, and therefore is, and shall remain to the end of the world, the true center of Christian union, and the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and opinions should be tried.

— Baptist Church Manual

Truth

The Bible is the treasure of the poor, the solace of the sick, and the support of the dying; and while other books may amuse and instruct in a leisure hour, it is the peculiar triumph of that book to create light in the midst of darkness, to alleviate the sorrow which admits of no other alleviation, to direct a beam of hope to the heart which no other topic of consolation can reach; while guilt, despair, and death vanish at the touch of its holy inspiration.

— Robert Hall

Love

Do not mathematics and all sciences seem full of contradictions and impossibilities to the ignorant, which are all resolved and cleared to those that understand them?

— Richard Baxter

Education

All Scripture is given by inspiration of God.

— Bible

Wisdom

Let the oracles of inspiration be cited continually, both as authority and illustration, in a manner that shall make the mind instantly refer each expression that is introduced to the venerable book whence it is taken; but let our part of religious language be simply ours, and let those oracles retain their characteristic form of expression unimitated, unparodied to the end of time.

— John Foster

Wisdom

We believe that to Christ belongs creative power—that "without Him was not any thing made which was made." We believe that from Him came all life at first. In Him life was as in its deep source. He is the fountain of life. We believe that as no being comes into existence without His creative power, so none continues to exist without His sustaining energy. We believe that the history of the world is but the history of His influence, and that the centre of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary.

— Alexander Maclaren

Life

He stands alone in unapproachable grandeur. Nineteen centuries roll away, and His character so lives that He inspires millions of men with impassioned love. Other men may seem to be children of their surroundings; He became what He was despite His surroundings, and is the only one who can say in truth and holiness, "Do as I have done." He, the ideal, the perfect one of our race, appears in an age when such an ideal could not have been developed in act—could not have been conceived in thought. In the theory of development the perfection of humanity is the final result of man's history ages hence. Christ therefore is the great miracle which more than any other establishes the fact of miracles. Christ Himself is proof of His own miracles.

— Reynolds

Love

The most destructive criticism has not been able to dethrone Christ as the incarnation of perfect holiness. The waves of a tossing and restless sea of unbelief break at His feet, and He stands still the supreme model, the inspiration of great souls, the rest of the weary, the fragrance of all Christendom, the one divine flower in the garden of God.

— Herrick Johnson

Wisdom

Christ pitied because He loved, because He saw through all the wretchedness, and darkness, and bondage of evil; that there was in every human soul a possibility of repentance, of restoration; a germ of good, which, however stifled and overlaid, yet was capable of recovery, of health, of freedom, of perfection.

— Dean Stanley

Freedom

That image or rather that Person, so human, yet so entirely Divine, has a power to fill the imagination, to arrest the affections, to deepen and purify the conscience, which nothing else in the world has.

— J. C. Shairp

Education

Oh, wonderful teacher! Oh, favored disciples! Oh, famous school—that built no marble halls, and collected no grand library, but turned all life into opportunity; made houses and streets and seaside and mountain-tops, places of discipline and recitation and delight! Oh, blest example—shining this day on the pages of history—our example, our dream, our desire!

— J. H. Vincent

Education

When the Father would give men the light of the knowledge of His glory, how does He proceed? To what does He turn men's gaze? Not to His mighty works; not to creative or providential wonders; not to geological or astronomical facts; not to the data on which Paley and Bell and other admirable writers build up their argument from design; not to the still greater wonder of mind, but to "the face of Jesus Christ," that face that was more marred than any man's; that endured the ruffian blows; down which the blood drops trickled; that looked down on a mocking crowd from an ignominious cross.

— John Hall

Success

Compassionate Saviour! We welcome Thee to our world, We welcome Thee to our hearts. We bless Thee for the Divine goodness Thou hast brought from heaven; for the souls Thou hast warmed with love to man, and lifted up in love to God; for the efforts of divine philanthropy which Thou hast inspired; and for that hope of a pure celestial life, through which Thy disciples triumph over death.

— W. E. Channing

Love

Happy those who are able in truth to say, "My Lord and my God!" Here is the true bond of union. Here is the noblest inspiration of life. Strength for work. Comfort in trouble. Hope in death. Here is what gives eternity itself its chief interest and joy. There we shall behold the King in His beauty. And when we shall see Him as He is, and shall be like Him, with what ecstasy of love and gratitude and joy shall we cry, "My Lord and my God!"

— William Forsythe

Love

Christ is known only by them that receive Him into their love, their faith, their deep want; known only as He is enshrined within, felt as a Divine force, breathed in the inspirations of the secret life.

— Horace Bushnell

Love

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. In its doctrinal largeness let it inhabit your convictions, and in its Divine lovingness let it be infused into your spirit, and let its lifesome energy inspire your character.

— James Hamilton

Life

The golden chain of affection is binding together all who compose the goodly fellowship of the saints. Calvary rather than Sinai is the typical source of the church's inspiration; and bonds of law are being supplanted by bonds of love. Indeed, the whole host of the redeemed is marching in solid phalanx against the combined forces of ignorance and error, of depravity and sin; while, high above all the regimental standards, floats the banner of the cross, blazoned with this suggestive inscription, "Every one that loveth is born of God."

— J. McC. Holmes

Love

The truest worship is a life; All dreaming we resign; We lay our offerings at Thy feet,— Our lives, O God, are Thine!

— John Weiss

Faith

While the passion of some is to shine, of some to govern, and of others to accumulate, let one great passion alone influence our breasts, the passion which reason ratifies, which conscience approves, which Heaven inspires,—that of being and doing good.

— Robert Hall

Faith

And yet the doing is ours, not His. He inspired it, we wrought it out. He quickened, but we brought forth. His the heart-beat, but ours the hand-stroke; His the influence, ours the effluence.

— George C. Lorimer

Faith

Christianity alone inspires and guides progress; for the progress of man is movement toward God, and movement toward God will ensure a gradual unfolding of all that exalts and adorns man.

— Mark Hopkins

Faith

So, from generation to generation, the spiritual church is rising upwards toward its perfection; and, though one after another the workmen pass away, the fabric remains, and the great Master-builder carries on the undertaking. Be it ours to build in our portion in a solid and substantial manner, so that they who come after us may be at once thankful for our thoroughness, and inspired by our example.

— Wm. M. Taylor

Faith

Yes, death,—the hourly possibility of it,—death is the sublimity of life.

— Wm. Mountford

Life

"God giveth His beloved sleep;" and in that peaceful sleep, realities, not dreams, come round their quiet rest, and fill their conscious spirits and their happy hearts with blessedness and fellowship. In His own time He will make the eternal morning dawn, and the hand that kept them in their slumbers shall touch them into waking, and shall clothe them when they arise according to the body of His own glory; and they, looking into His face, and flashing back its love, its light, its beauty, shall each break forth into singing as the rising light of that unsetting day touches their transfigured and immortal heads, in the triumphant thanksgiving, "I am satisfied, for I awake in Thy likeness."

— Alexander Maclaren

Love

No man who is fit to live need fear to die. Poor, timorous, faithless souls that we are! How we shall smile at our vain alarms when the worst has happened! To us here, death is the most terrible thing we know. But when we have tasted its reality, it will mean to us birth, deliverance, a new creation of ourselves. It will be what health is to the sick man. It will be what home is to the exile. It will be what the loved one given back is to the bereaved. As we draw near to it, a solemn gladness should fill our hearts. It is God's great morning lighting up the sky. Our fears are the terror of children in the night. The night with its terrors, its darkness, its feverish dreams, is passing away; and when we awake, it will be into the sunlight of God.

— George S. Merriam

Love

Faith is the inspiration of nobleness, it is the strength of integrity; it is the life of love, and is everlasting growth for it; it is courage of soul, and bridges over for our crossing the gulf between worldliness and heavenly-mindedness; and it is the sense of the unseen, without which we could not feel God nor hope for heaven.

— Wm. Mountford

Faith

Now I saw in my dream, that the highway, up which Christian was to go, was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was called salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending; and upon that place stood a cross, and a little below, in the bottom, a sepulchre. So I saw in my dream, that just as Christian came up with the cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no more.

— John Bunyan

Hope

Above all things I entreat you to preserve your faith in Christ. It is my wealth in poverty, my joy in sorrow, my peace amid tumult. For all the evil I have committed, my gracious pardon; and for every effort, my exceeding great reward. I have found it to be so . I can smile with pity at the infidel whose vanity makes him dream that I should barter such a blessing for the few subtleties from the school of the cold-blooded sophists.

— S. T. Coleridge

Success

When in your last hour (think of this) all faculty in the broken spirit shall fade away, and sink into inanity—imagination, thought, effort, enjoyment—then will the flower of belief, which blossoms even in the night, remain to refresh you with its fragrance in the last darkness.

— Jean Paul Richter

Success

God Himself—His thoughts, His will, His love, His judgments are men's home. To think His thoughts, to choose His will, to judge His judgments, and thus to know that He is in us, with us, is to be at home. And to pass through the valley of the shadow of death is the way home, but only thus, that as all changes have hitherto led us nearer to this home, the knowledge of God, so this greatest of all outward changes—for it is but an outward change—will surely usher us into a region where there will be fresh possibilities of drawing nigh in heart, soul, and mind to the Father of us all.

— George MacDonald

Love

God's highest gifts—talent, beauty, feeling, imagination, power—they carry with them the possibility of the highest heaven and the lowest hell. Be sure that it is by that which is highest in you that you may be lost.

— F. W. Robertson

Wisdom

Be good my child, and let who will be clever; Do noble deeds, not dream them all day long; And so make life, death, and that vast forever One grand, sweet song.

— Charles Kingsley

Hope

Lincoln did but pour the soul of the nation into the monumental act of universal liberty; and that soul was inspired by the gospel.

— Edward Thomson

Freedom

A great man, I take it, is a man so inspired and permeated with the ideas of God and the Christly spirit as to be too magnanimous for vengeance, and too unselfish to seek his own ends.

— David Thomas

Wisdom

An everlasting tranquillity is, in my imagination, the highest possible felicity, because I know of no felicity on earth higher than that which a peaceful mind and contented heart afford.

— Zimmerman

Love

The joys of heaven are not the joys of passive contemplation, of dreamy remembrance, of perfect repose; but they are described thus: "They rest not day nor night." "His servants serve Him, and see His face."

— Alexander Maclaren

Happiness

Will not this be the description of our future being—"reaching forth unto those things which are before?" I believe that we shall thus live through all the eternities that are before us, growing wiser, nobler, stronger, greater; plunging deeper into God, and being more and more filled with more and more of Him. So we shall move forever as in ascending spirals that rise ever higher, and draw ever closer to the throne we compass and to Him that dwells alone; ever perfect, yet ever growing, for we have an inexhaustible Saviour to absorb into our hearts, and we have hearts that never reach the ultimate bound and term of their indefinite possibility of receiving.

— Alexander Maclaren

Love

Yes, thank God! there is rest—many an interval of saddest, sweetest rest—even here, when it seems as if evening breezes from that other land, laden with fragrance, played upon the cheeks, and lulled the heart. There are times, even on the stormy sea, when a gentle whisper breathes softly as of heaven, and sends into the soul a dream of ecstasy which can never again wholly die, even amidst the jar and whirl of daily life. How such whispers make the blood stop and the flesh creep with a sense of mysterious communion! How singularly such moments are the epochs of life—the few points that stand out prominently in the recollection after the flood of years has buried all the rest, as all the low shore disappears, leaving only a few rock points visible at high tide.

— F. W. Robertson

Love

The inquirer after holiness should associate with those whose intelligence will instruct him; whose example will guide him; whose conversation will inspire him; whose cautions will warn him.

— John Angel James

Wisdom

Immortality! We bow before the very term. Immortality! Before it reason staggers, calculation reclines her tired head, and imagination folds her weary pinions. Immortality! It throws open the portals of the vast forever; it puts the crown of deathless destiny upon every human brow; it cries to every uncrowned king of men, "Live forever, crowned for the empire of a deathless destiny!"

— George Douglas

Life

Brethren, we can rule our tempers, and we ought. Open the gospel, that most profound philosophy of the human soul, and yet most simple and practical directory of human duty; study it, fill your whole nature with its inspiration; set Christ before you; look upon His calm forehead and unstormed breast; think how He endured all contradiction of sinners, and endured them to the cross; and on the cross learn of Him then, for He was meek and lowly of heart.

— Henry Giles

Love

The Spirit of God first imparts love; He next inspires hope, and then gives liberty; and that is about the last thing we have in a good many of our churches at the present time.

— D. L. Moody

Love

There is no human life so poor and small as not to hold many a divine possibility.

— James Martineau

Life

Pure love is in the will alone; it is no sentimental love, for the imagination has no part in it; it loves, if we may so express it, without feeling, as faith believes without seeing.

— Fenelon

Love

Profound meditation in solitude and silence frequently exalts the mind above its natural tone, fires the imagination, and produces the most refined and sublime conceptions. The soul then tastes the purest and most refined delight, and almost loses the idea of existence in the intellectual pleasure it receives. The mind on every motion darts through space into eternity; and raised, in its free enjoyment of its powers by its own enthusiasm, strengthens itself in the habitude of contemplating the noblest subjects, and of adopting the most heroic pursuits.

— Zimmerman

Courage

One great want of the times is a commanding ministry—a ministry of a piety at once sober and earnest, and of mightiest moral power. Give us these men, "full of faith and of the Holy Ghost," who will proclaim old truths with new energy, not cumbering them with massive drapery nor hiding them beneath piles of rubbish. Give us these men! men of sound speech, who will preach the truth as it is in Jesus, not with faltering tongue and averted eye, as if the mind blushed at its own credulity—not distilling into it an essence so subtle and so speedily decomposed that a chemical analysis alone can detect the faint odor which tells it has been there—but who will preach it apostlewise, that is, "first of all," at once a principle shrined in the heart and a motive mighty in the life—the source of all morals, and the inspiration of all charity—the sanctifier of every relationship, and the sweetener of every toil. Give us these men! men of zeal untiring—whose hearts of constancy quail not although dull men sneer, and proud men scorn, and timid men blush, and cautious men deprecate, and wicked men revile.

— Wm. M. Punshon

Love

We know, and we feel, that the vast business of our redemption, arranged in the councils of the far-back eternity, and acted out amid the wonderings and throbbings of the universe, could not have been that stupendous transaction which gave God glory by giving sinners safety, if the inspired account brought its dimensions within the compass of a human arithmetic, or defined its issues by the lines of a human demarcation.

— Henry Melvill

Life

We are children shut up as yet in the narrow hollow of our native valley, with all the universe, outside the closely engirdling hills, for a great wonderland, of which we dream childish dreams, as the light of morning or evening kindles from beyond. "Laws of Nature"—what dost thou know of them, O man? Look out on the great miracles of nature, blooming in flowers and stars, away to the gates of the city of God, what dost thou know of its laws and wonders?

— J. C. Geikie

Hope

If we can hear the voice of God in all sounds, see the sweep of His will in all motions, catch hints of His taste in all beauty, follow the reach of His imagination in all heights and distances, and trace the delicate ministry of His love in all the little graces and utilities that spring and blossom about us as thick as the grass, we shall tread God's world with reverent feet as if it were a temple. The pure and solemn eyes of the indwelling soul will look forth upon us from every thing which His hands have made. Nature will be to us, not some dark tissue of cloth of mystery flowing from some unseen loom, but a vesture of light in which God has enrobed Himself; and with worshipful fingers we shall rejoice to touch even the hem of His garment.

— J. H. Ecob

Nature

Thou wilt draw nigh! Father—it is no dream that Thou art near— No dream that, in my sin and misery, I may look up to Thee,— May hide beneath the shadow of Thy wings, From all the restlessness of outward things, And from my own heart's self-accusing fears— For Thou art nigh.

— Hetty Bowman

Love

"Sir," said the Duke of Wellington to an officer of engineers, who urged the impossibility of executing the directions he had received, "I did not ask your opinion, I gave you my orders, and I expect them to be obeyed." Such should be the obedience of every follower of Jesus.

— C. H. Spurgeon

Wisdom

In periods that are wanting in inspiration piety always assumes the character of caution. It degenerates from a free and joyful devotion to a melancholy and anxious slavery.

— J. H. Sellye

Happiness

Prayer, then, does not consist in sweet feelings, nor in the charms of an excited imagination, nor in that illumination of the intellect that traces with ease the sublimest truths of God; nor even in a certain consolation in the view of God; all these things are external gifts from His hand, in the absence of which love may exist even more purely, as the soul may then attach itself immediately and solely to God, instead of to His mercies.

— Fenelon

Love

In whatever light we view religion it appears solemn and venerable. It is a temple full of majesty, to which the worshiper may approach with comfort, in the hope of obtaining grace and finding mercy; but where they cannot enter without being inspired with awe. If we may be permitted to compare spiritual with natural things, religion resembles not those scenes of natural beauty where every object smiles. It cannot be likened to the gay landscape or the flowery field. It resembles more the august and sublime appearances of Nature—the lofty mountain, the expanded ocean, and the starry firmament; at the sight of which the mind is at once overawed and delighted; and, from the union of grandeur with beauty, derives a pleasing but a serious devotion.

— Blair

Happiness

It is the very nature and essence of religion to raise men, peoples, and nations above the common level of life, to break through its ordinary bounds, and express itself in a thousand ways, in poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and in every other form of ideal expression. The splendid monuments of the genius and greatness of by-gone ages are the monuments inspired by their religion.

— I. T. Hecker

Life

One must build to the praise of a Being above, to build the noblest memorial of himself. Then, Angelo may verily "hang the Pantheon in the air." Then the unknown builder, whose personality disappears in his work, may stand an almost inspired mediator between the upward-looking thought and the spheres overhead. Each line then leaps with a swift aspiration, as the vast structure rises, in nave and transept into pointed arch and vanishing spire. The groined roof grows dusky with majestic glooms; while, beneath, the windows flame, as with apocalyptic light of jewels. Angelic presences, sculptured upon the portal, invite the wayfarer, and wave before him their wings of promise. Within is a worship which incense only clouds, which spoken sermons only mar. The building itself becomes a worship, a Gloria in Excelsis, articulate in stone; the noblest tribute offered on earth, by any art, to Him from whom its impulse came, and with the ineffable majesty of whose spirit all skies are filled.

— R. S. Storrs

Success

What but the mighty mastership of religion has ever led a people up through civil wars and revolutions into a regenerated order and liberty? What has planted colonies for a great history but religion? The most august and beautiful structures of the world have been temples of religion, crystallizations, we may say, of worship. The noblest charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents more or less directly the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.

— Horace Bushnell

Education

Religion gives to virtue the sweetest hopes, to unrepenting vice just alarms, to true repentance the most powerful consolations; but she endeavors above all things to inspire in men love, meekness, and piety.

— Montesquieu

Love

There is rest in this world nowhere except in Christ, the manifested love of God. Trust in excellence, and the better you become, the keener is the feeling of deficiency. Wrap up all in doubt, and there is a stern voice that will thunder at last out of the wilderness upon your dream.

— F. W. Robertson

Love

It is self-love and its offspring self-deception, which shut the gates of heaven, and lead men, as if in a delicious dream, to hell.

— Christian Scriver

Love

For when man comes to front the everlasting God, and look the splendor of His judgments in the face, personal integrity, the dream of spotlessness and innocence, vanishes into thin air; your decencies and your church-goings and your regularities and your attachment to a correct school and party, your gospel formulas of sound doctrine—what is all that, in front of the blaze of the wrath to come?

— F. W. Robertson

Hope

The saddest of all failures is that of a soul, with its capabilities and possibilities, failing of life everlasting, and entering upon that night of death upon which morning never dawns.

— Herrick Johnson

Life

Learn to teach the children to look at this world as a beautiful symbol of Jesus; every thing, Jesus; Christ, all; Christ, in all. So shall you educate the imaginations of the children to receive, and their memories to retain and to use, that Christian truth; and you yourself shall be lifted up, as on angel's wings, to see with John things which are unspeakable, but which the sanctified imagination realizes.

— Stephen H. Tyng, Jr

Truth

Be not troubled by the wanderings of your imagination which you cannot restrain. How often do we wander through the fear of wandering and the regret that we have done so. What would you say of a traveler who, instead of constantly advancing in his journey, should employ his time in anticipating the falls he might suffer, or in weeping over the place where one had happened?

— Fenelon

Courage

What the world calls virtue is a name and a dream without Christ. The foundation of all human excellence must be laid deep in the blood of the Redeemer's cross, and in the power of His resurrection.

— F. W. Robertson

Hope

A youth thoughtless! when the career of all his days depends on the opportunity of a moment! A youth thoughtless! when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the chances or the passions of an hour! A youth thoughtless! when his every act is a foundation-stone of future conduct, and every imagination a fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless in any after years, rather than now—though indeed there is only one place where a man may be nobly thoughtless—his death-bed. No thinking should be ever left to be done there.

— John Ruskin

Success

us, and make the best of it, our aim must be practical and creative.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wisdom

Of all peoples, the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life the best.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Hope

imagination sought to concentrate itself.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wisdom

regulated. Nothing is more frightful than imagination without taste.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wisdom

in our imagination what we have done, and attained.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Science

Imagination, how regulated, 489.

— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Wisdom

There is but one right, and the possibilities of wrong are infinite.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Wisdom

imaginations of Hell would pale beside the vision.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Wisdom

the great towns of Yorkshire and Lancashire vanish like a dream.

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Hope

Scientific imagination, CXXXI, CXLIX;

— Thomas Henry Huxley

Wisdom

second amour-propre qu'on leur inspire.

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

On donne des conseils mais on n'inspire point de conduite.

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

imagination; ils n'ont même presque plus de part à la gloire:

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

amour-propre qu'on leur inspire.

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

est un second orgueil qu'on leur inspire.

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

qu'on leur inspire (max. 261, I 284, Ier état).

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

imagination..., comme L 102.

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

On donne des conseils, mais on n'inspire point de conduite

— François de La Rochefoucauld

Wisdom

plus sa pleine puissance d'action, mais l'imagination est encore active.

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Wisdom

possibilités de caractère.

— Gustave Le Bon

Wisdom

à une école, c’est abdiquer toute possibilité de prestige.

— Gustave Le Bon

Wisdom

est la principale cause du scepticisme que leurs propos inspirent.

— Gustave Le Bon

Wisdom

par l’ennui qu’ils inspirent.

— Gustave Le Bon

Wisdom

You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

— A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Hope

Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.

— A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Success

Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended.

— A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Hope

Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam.

— A. Whitney Griswold

Wisdom

I grew up in the '60s, which was a creative time, so it wasn't that big of a stretch to go from a baseball bat to a guitar to a film camera.

— Abel Ferrara

Wisdom

Minister and writer Barbara Kaufmann has addressed the subject of guerrilla decontextualization on both the 'Voices Compassionate Education' website and on 'Inner Michael', where she offers the kind of insights into the spiritual aspects of Michael Jackson's creative artistry that mainstream media mostly ignores.

— Aberjhani

Education

I was a great dreamer of day dreams.

— Abraham Cahan

Hope

What is wealth? A dream of fools.

— Abraham Cahan

Hope

The American dream always meant that anybody willing to put in a hard day's work could make a decent living. That's just not true anymore for people without at least some post-high school education.

— Adam Davidson

Success

I'd like to be a geneticist to be honest, but there are limits to what I can do now. For my dream to come true I'd have to be 20 years old again, heading off to a blue chip university.

— Adam Faith

Truth

I love the Bible. I read it every day. I spend 10 hours a week studying it. It has affected my life in profound ways. I am inspired when I read it.

— Adam Hamilton

Love

Mum loves me being famous! She is so excited and proud, as she had me so young and couldn't support me, so I am living her dream, it's sweeter for both of us. It's her 40th birthday soon and I'm going to buy her 40 presents.

— Adele

Hope

Communism is the corruption of a dream of justice.

— Adlai E. Stevenson

Hope

I know how men in exile feed on dreams.

— Aeschylus

Hope

The level of our success is limited only by our imagination and no act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.

— Aesop

Success

I have been fully involved in designing my stage shows; it's important to me to do something really unique and almost off-the-wall to bring the music and the visuals together. I love design and actually went to school for a bit for graphic design, so it isn't so much 'pressure' for me; it's a way to be creative, and I really enjoy it.

— Afrojack

Love

When I was in high school, I don't know that I really had big dreams.

— Alan Jackson

Hope

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.

— Alan Watts

Happiness

Run away from laziness; work hard. Touch intuition and listen to the heart, not marketing directors. Dream.

— Alber Elbaz

Love

For me, the sketching of dresses was about fantasy and dreams. In my little room at home, I felt that I was somewhere else. In Paris, for instance.

— Alber Elbaz

Hope

I barely finish one pre-collection before I must start on another. Sales start, but I am already elsewhere creatively. The men's show is being prepared, but we also need to think about accessories, perfumes and other items. In sum, I never stop.

— Alber Elbaz

Wisdom

When I was either 7 or 8 years old, I did a sketch every day of my teacher and what she wore. At the end of the year, I gave her the sketchbook. For me, the sketching of dresses was about fantasy and dreams.

— Alber Elbaz

Education

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

— Albert Einstein

Education

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.

— Albert Einstein

Happiness

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

— Albert Einstein

Education

The aspect of kind of living in your imagination and creating a more romantic vision of the world than the reality that you're given - that's definitely something I can sort of relate to.

— Alden Ehrenreich

Life

Dream in a pragmatic way.

— Aldous Huxley

Hope

Often in films, you have no idea where you're going to be six months from now. And I grew very weary of that. And television, although it wasn't necessarily as creatively diverse as filmmaking can be, it was the lifestyle choice that I needed to make.

— Alec Baldwin

Life

We've always dreamt of a TV series and working in film. When we first sat down to seriously write 'A Little Nightmare Music,' to write something for TV was our original inspiration. But all the stuff we were writing down is not going to work on stage. We had to rewrite it so it would work on the stage.

— Aleksey Igudesman

Success