Inspiration can come from the simplest of words, sparking motivation and fresh perspectives when we need them most. Whether you’re seeking encouragement, clarity, or a boost of creativity, thoughtful quotes have the power to uplift and guide us. Explore this carefully curated collection of the top 62 inspirational thought quotes, designed to inspire reflection and ignite your inner drive.
1. “The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure... I'm lonely... I'm a failure... I'm lonely...) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras.” - Elizabeth Gilbert
2. “The world is shaped by two things — stories told and the memories they leave behind.” - Vera Nazarian
3. “Think of negative speech as verbal pollution. And that's what I've been doing: visualizing insults and gossip as a dark cloud, maybe one with some sulfur dioxide. Once you've belched it out, you can't take it back. As grandma said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The interesting this is, the less often I vocalize my negative thoughts, the fewer negative thoughts I cook up in the first place.” - A.J. Jacobs
4. “What things there are to write, if one could only write them! My mind is full of gleaming thoughts; gay moods and mysterious, moth-like meditations hover in my imagination, fanning their painted wings. They would make my fortune if I could catch them; but always the rarest, those freaked with azure and the deepest crimson, flutter away beyond my reach.” - Logan Pearsall Smith
5. “Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those.” - Sylvia Plath
6. “What we do comes out of who we believe we are.” - Rob Bell
7. “I feel as though, if I were to extend my hand just a little toward the pool where the ideas ferment, I could grab at the idea and pull it out of the pool and onto the floor where ideas must stand before the jury of the brain. There, it must present itself, still from the pool, and a bit shivery because new ideas are not given a towel to dry off with, towels being reserved for proven theories; new ideas are simply pulled and stood up, and asked to explain themselves - not a very pleasant thing really, which is why so many people go into the room where the pool is. The exercise is exhausting not to mention a bit difficult to watch, if you are at all a sympathetic creature. What was my idea, anyways?” - Emilie Autumn
8. “It took me years to learn to sit at my desk for more than two minutes at a time, to put up with the solitude and the terror of failure, and the godawful silence and the white paper. And now that I can take it . . . now that I can finally do it . . . I'm really raring to go. I was in my study writing. I was learning how to go down into myself and salvage bits and pieces of the past. I was learning how to sneak up on the unconscious and how to catch my seemingly random thoughts and fantasies. By closing me out of his world, Bennett had opened all sorts of worlds inside my own head. Gradually I began to realize that none of the subjects I wrote poems about engaged my deepest feelings, that there was a great chasm between what I cared about and what I wrote about. Why? What was I afraid of? Myself, most of all, it seemed."Freedom is an illusion," Bennett would have said and, in a way, I too would have agreed. Sanity, moderation, hard work, stability . . . I believed in them too. But what was that other voice inside of me which kept urging me on toward zipless fucks, and speeding cars and endless wet kisses and guts full of danger? What was that other voice which kept calling me coward! and egging me on to burn my bridges, to swallow the poison in one gulp instead of drop by drop, to go down into the bottom of my fear and see if I could pull myself up? Was it a voice? Or was it a thump? Something even more primitive than speech. A kind of pounding in my gut which I had nicknamed my "hunger-thump." It was as if my stomach thought of itself as a heart. And no matter how I filled it—with men, with books, with food—it refused to be still. Unfillable—that's what I was. Nymphomania of the brain. Starvation of the heart.” - Erica Jong
9. “Are we our bodies? Is a small person less than a big person, then? If we were our bodies, then when we lost an arm, or a leg, would we be less, would we begin to fade from existence? No. We are the same person.We are not our bodies; we are our thoughts. As they form, they define who we are, and create the reality of our existence.” - Terry Goodkind
10. “We are not trapped by our thoughts. What we generally do, however, is create thoughts that trap us.” (p.162)” - Joshua David Stone
11. “What chance combination of shadow and sound and his own thoughts had created it?” - Patricia Highsmith
12. “I realize that some people will not believe that a child of little more than ten years is capable of having such feelings. My story is not intended for them. I am telling it to those who have a better knowledge of man. The adult who has learned to translate a part of his feelings into thoughts notices the absence of these thoughts in a child, and therefore comes to believe that the child lacks these experiences, too. Yet rarely in my life have I felt and suffered as deeply as at that time.” - Hermann Hesse
13. “We went to the New York World's Fair, saw what the past had been like, according to the Ford Motor Car Company and Walt Disney, saw what the future would be like, according to General Motors. And I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep.” - Kurt Vonnegut
14. “She turned to examine Dr. Breed, looking at him with helpless reproach. She hated people who thought too much. At that moment, she struck me as an appropriate representative for almost all mankind.” - Kurt Vonnegut
15. “Your hand can seize today, but not tomorrow; and thoughts of your tomorrow are nothing but desire. Don’t waste this breath, if your heart isn’t crazy, since "the rest of your life" won’t last forever.” - Omar Khayyám
16. “Life is too hard, too much to handle. Nobody told me there’d be days like these. How could nobody tell me there’d be days like these? How could they let me grow up like that—happy and pink and stupid?” - Karen Marie Moning
17. “I was thinking lots of things, but most of them needed to stay thoughts, not words.” - Maggie Stiefvater
18. “She’s never where she is,' I said. 'She’s only inside her head.” - Janet Fitch
19. “Don't worry. Worry is useless. I worried anyway” - John Green
20. “Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.” - David Abram
21. “And what do I think about? What thoughts do I have! - What thoughts! a whole host, multitude, and world of thoughts, I keep devising new ones and reworking old ones, some of the old ones are concluded and are only thought of as conclusions, whole worlds of new ones come crashing into my fingers, and it never ends.” - Jack Kerouac
22. “For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it.” - George Eliot
23. “The purpose of a chronicler of moods and deeds does not require him to express his personal views upon the grave controversy above given.” - Thomas Hardy
24. “Ang liit at laki ay nasa isip lang. Bakit kami nina Bubuyog at Gagamba, may naipundar din kami kahit papano. Nasa pagsisikap lang 'yan ng tao!” - Bob Ong
25. “A positive attitude is most easily arrived at through a deliberate and rational analysis of what’s required to manifest unwavering positive thought patterns. First, reflect on the actual, present condition of your mind. In other words, is the mind positive or not? We’ve all met individuals who perceive themselves as positive people but don’t appear as such. Since the mind is both invisible and intangible, it’s therefore easier to see the accurate characteristics of the mind through a person’s words, deeds, and posture. For example, if we say, “It’s absolutely freezing today! I’ll probably catch a cold before the end of the day!” then our words expose a negative attitude. But if we say, “The temperature is very cold” (a simple statement of fact), then our expressions, and therefore attitude, are not negative. Sustaining an alert state in which self-awareness becomes possible gives us a chance to discover the origins of negativity. In doing so, we also have an opportunity to arrive at a state of positiveness, so that our words and deeds are also positive, making others feel comfortable, cheerful, and inspired.” - H.E. Davey
26. “The seed of every sin known to man is in my heart”.” - Robert Murray McCheyne
27. “Reflect your thoughts and watch others mirror them back to you.” - Stephen Richards
28. “My ideas aren't afraid of height.” - Leena Ahmad Almashat
29. “In my brain were stored a thousand pictures.” - Hermann Hesse
30. “Your thoughts do not create reality. They either permit it or they do not.” - Alan Cohen
31. “Sometimes it's the tiniest things that can mean the difference between life and death.” - Anthony Horowitz
32. “A single thought, he considered, could do all sorts of harm. Harm to what, he wasn't sure, but he identified it as harm.” - Adam P. Knave
33. “Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.” - Eckhart Tolle
34. “Can I love someone...and still think/fly? Love is flying, sown, floating. Thought is solitary flight, beating wings.” - Susan Sontag
35. “Mostly, when Jess didn't want to talk about her ideas in class, Colleen thought that Jess was showing off, making sure that she would be coaxed and pleaded with, but how could Jess have explained in a coherent way that she was scared? Once you let people know anything about what you think, that's it, you're dead. Then they'll be jumping about in your mind, taking things out, holding them up to the light and killing them, yes, killing them, because thoughts are supposed to stay and grow in quiet, dark places, like butterflies in cocoons.” - Helen Oyeyemi
36. “Sometimes I feel that our bright blue sky is like a pregnant women’s belly.” - Santosh Kalwar
37. “Burning the witch Giordano Bruno is one more wound inflicted on Christ’s body.” - Dejan Stojanovic
38. “History will be erased in the universal purgatory.” - Dejan Stojanovic
39. “He had an answer to almost everything and he retired at an early age.” - Dejan Stojanovic
40. “A word into the silence thrown always finds its echo somewhere where silence opens hidden lexicons.” - Dejan Stojanovic
41. “When all is lost, there is still a memory.” - Dejan Stojanovic
42. “Use the wings of the flying Universe, Dream with open eyes; See in darkness.” - Dejan Stojanovic
43. “Some people complain there are too many people on earth, Some people complain about secret societies, Some people accuse others of not being able to wake up early. Almost all people complain about something.” - Dejan Stojanovic
44. “Dream by making and make by dreaming.” - Dejan Stojanovic
45. “If you are only what you are, You at least have a chance Not to outsmart, But be on a par with yourself And that is worth trying.” - Dejan Stojanovic
46. “Busy with the ugliness of the expensive success We forget the easiness of free beautyLying sad right around the corner, Only an instant removed, Unnoticed and squandered.” - Dejan Stojanovic
47. “There is only as much space, only as much time, Only as much desire, only as many words, Only as many pages, only as much ink To accept all of us at light-speed Hurrying into the Promised Land Of oblivion that is waiting for us sooner or later.” - Dejan Stojanovic
48. “To keep the air fresh among words is the secret of verbal cleanliness.” - Dejan Stojanovic
49. “I imagined I was God for a millisecond And became speechless for a long time.” - Dejan Stojanovic
50. “It is beautiful to talk about beautiful things and even more beautiful to silently gaze at them.” - Dejan Stojanovic
51. “In an endless silence even screams sound silent.” - Dejan Stojanovic
52. “The world cannot be translated; It can only be dreamed of and touched.” - Dejan Stojanovic
53. “There are no clear borders, Only merging invisible to the sight.” - Dejan Stojanovic
54. “Vandals listen only when others are stronger.If vandals are equal or strongerTheir word is the last word.” - Dejan Stojanovic
55. “Deliver thunder, GodIf you choose not to talk.” - Dejan Stojanovic
56. “Neither alive nor dead; No one lets up, No one wins.” - Dejan Stojanovic
57. “What you gain here, you lose on the other side.” - Dejan Stojanovic
58. “Long ago we conquered our passions looking at ourselves in the mirror of eternity.” - Dejan Stojanovic
59. “Flat muscled and honey coloured. Sea secrets in his eyes. A silver raindrop in his ear.” - Arundhati Roy
60. “I had to sever my emotional cord to escape the anger and shame that silently slithered through my head, disconnecting myself from the stares and whispers that followed me down the hall.” - Rebecca Donovan
61. “War of words. We are influenced by the western media. But is what we hear the truth or just PR campaigns for governments?” - Anne-Rae Vasquez
62. “Then there are the simple things. The way she fits against my side when we’re sitting together. How she can silence my addled thoughts with one look. The sound of my name from her lips. The way she can make a moment, any moment, a thousands times better when she is there. How the simplest pleasures in life become exciting with the promise of sharing the experience with her.” - Erik Tomblin
