Inspirational Journal Quotes

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it.

You've got to show the world who you are before it tells you. Otherwise you become victim to someone you're not.

You don’t get to pick where you’re from, but you always have control of where you’re going.

I don't need to be inspired any longer, just supported.

Self-respect. It would make me lovable. And it's the secret to good sex.

We shall never achieve harmony with the land, anymore than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.

Another year is fast approaching. Go be that starving artist you’re afraid to be. Open up that journal and get poetic finally. Volunteer. Suck it up and travel. You were not born here to work and pay taxes. You were put here to be part of a vast organism to explore and create. Stop putting it off. The world has much more to offer than what’s on 15 televisions at TGI Fridays. Take pictures. Scare people. Shake up the scene. Be the change you want to see in the world.

Who or what inspires you?" "I must admit that I often read my own articles in scientific journals and inspire myself.

One can never ask anyone to change a feeling.

In the English language, it all comes down to this: Twenty-six letters, when combined correctly, can create magic. Twenty -six letters form the foundation of a free, informed society.

Nothing is mysterious, no human relation. Except love.

Hurl yourself at goals above your head and bear the lacerations that come when you slip and make a fool of yourself. Try always, as long as you have breath in your body, to take the hard way the Spartan way - and work, work, work to build yourself into a rich, continually evolving entity.

I am so fond of tea that I could write a whole dissertation on its virtues. It comforts and enlivens without the risks attendant on spirituous liquors. Gentle herb! Let the florid grape yield to thee. Thy soft influence is a more safe inspirer of social joy.

So tonight I reach for my journal again. This is the first time I’ve done this since I came to Italy. What I write in my journal is that I am weak and full of fear. I explain that Depression and Loneliness have shown up, and I’m scared they will never leave. I say that I don’t want to take the drugs anymore, but I’m frightened I will have to. I am terrified that I will never really pull my life together. In response, somewhere from within me, rises a now-familiar presence, offering me all the certainties I have always wished another person would say to me when I was troubled. This is what I find myself writing on the page: I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it—I will love you through that, as well. If you don’t need the medication, I will love you, too. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and Braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me. Tonight, this strange interior gesture of friendship—the lending of a hand from me to myself when nobody else is around to offer solace—reminds me of something that happened to me once in New York City. I walked into an office building one afternoon in a hurry, dashed into the waiting elevator. As I rushed in, I caught an unexpected glance of myself in a security mirror’s reflection. In that moment, my brain did an odd thing—it fired off this split-second message: “Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was so familiar. In a flash instant of course, I realized my mistake and laughed in embarrassment at my almost doglike confusion over how a mirror works. But for some reason that incident comes to mind again tonight during my sadness in Rome, and I find myself writing this comforting reminder at the bottom of the page. Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a FRIEND… I fell asleep holding my notebook pressed against my chest, open to this most recent assurance. In the morning when I wake up, I can still smell a faint trace of depression’s lingering smoke, but he himself is nowhere to be seen. Somewhere during the night, he got up and left. And his buddy loneliness beat it, too.

It is so appropriate to color hope yellow, like the sun we seldom saw. And as I begin to copy from the old memorandum journals that I kept for so long, a title comes as if inspired. 'Open the Window and Stand in the Sunshine.' Yet, I hesitate to name our story that. For I think of us more as flowers in the attic.

Can I love someone...and still think/fly? Love is flying, sown, floating. Thought is solitary flight, beating wings.

But I do feel strange-almost unearthly. I'll never get used to being alive. It's a mystery. Always startled to find I've survived.

I started out of course with Hemingway when I learned how to write. Until I realized Hemingway doesn't have a sense of humor. He never has anything funny in his stories.

We are not called upon to do all the good that is possible, but only that which we can do.

Documenting little details of your everyday life becomes a celebration of who you are.

Man is the artificer of his own happiness.

All photos speak a thousand words. This one contained a library.

In the most connected time in history, we're quickly losing touch with ourselves.

Oh, how scary and wonderful it is that words can change our lives simply by being next to each other.

Often as writers, we are surprised by what we learn about ourselves. It runs counter to what we’ve thought about who we are. But it is closer to the truth.

If I do not know the will of my Father, and what He requires of me in a certain transaction, if I ask Him to give me wisdom concerning any requirement in my life, or in regard to my own course, or that of my friends, my family, my children, or those that I preside over, and get no answer from Him, and then do the very best that my judgement will teach me, He is bound to own and honor that transaction, and He will do so to all intents and purposes.

Pivoting is not the end of the disruption process, but the beginning of the next leg of your journey.

The people that surround us mirror who we are.

Write your dreams in journal,note book, card or on a cork. When you pen down your dreams, an a inner strength and divine power is activated for your to work towards the fulfillment of your dreams.

No obstacle is so big that one person with determination can't make a difference.

This imaginary gift is a journey for your imagination. I send you... A luxury train ride. On this train are all the inspiring people you've ever wanted to meet or talk to. You glide from car to car, sitting or lying down on velvet lounge chairs, listening and asking questions. There is also a voluminous library on the train, with every book you've ever wanted to read or look at. Kind people bring you delicious tidbits to eat and nourishing liquids to drink. If you take a nap, time stands still until you return so you never miss anything. You receive a large journal filled with photographs, drawings and descriptions of your journey to take with you when you leave. You realize that you can board this train at any time.

These empty pages are your future, soon to become your past. T will read the most personal tale you shall ever find in a book.

Je n'ai jamais osé être ce que je suis vraiment. Toujours enfermée dans ma bulle et dans ma tête, emprisonnée par mes émotions. Je n'ai peut-être jamais su qui j'étais au fond. Je n'ai jamais pris ma place, car je n'ai jamais trop su où elle était. Mais ce que je sais, c'est que je n'arrêterai jamais de la chercher. Et aujourd'hui, j'entrevois mon avenir de façon tout à fait excitante, en pensant que, quoi qu'il arrive, ma place est celle que je déciderai de prendre.

When people support you when you have done something wrong. It doesnt mean you are right, but it means those people are promoting their hate , bad behavior or living their bad lives through you.

If we spend enough time dreaming, then the dream might eventually become real.

Little changes [and] little choices add up to be revolutionary changes in your life.

Knowledge & understanding mixed with ones convictions of 'experience' is hardly impositional". ~R. Alan Woods [2012]

The grace of writing is upon me. I love writing. I write daily.

The first step toward finding God--who is truth--is to discover the truth about myself; and if I have been in error, this first step to truth is the discovery of my error

The real challenge is for each of us to determine where we feel we can make the most impact.

You know what's sexy? A person who's been through a life challenge, and comes out with insights, more depth, and a fiery passion to face forward, forward, forward!

Death is someone you see very clearly with eyes in the center of your heart: eyes that see not by reacting to light, but by reacting to a kind of a chill from within the marrow of your own life.

Lifelong learning is no longer a luxury but a necessity for employment.

Disruptors don't have to discover something new; they just have to discover a practical use for new discoveries.

The difference between successful and unsuccessful people is that successful ones know that the most unprofitable thing ever manufactured is an excuse.

I arise to face my failures every morning, but I never fail to face them.

your only barriers are what you let it be

It's a wonderful, inspiring feeling to have real friends who love and understand you. I have never had that feeling before.

No matter how bleak or menacing a situation may appear, it does not enitrely own us. It can't take away our freedom to respond, our power to take action.

At the heart of all sales and marketing is the ability to create demand even in the absence of logic.

Gratitude is not just a word; it is a way a of life.

Which is worse - to be despised, or to be ignored? — From the gleaning journal of H.S. Curie

Some books are so alive that they never leave you. They only change you

Marah will come looking for me one day, Kate had said, pressing the journal into my hands. Be with her when she reads it. And my boys… show them these words when they can’t remember me.

A truly great work of art breaks beyond the bounds of the period and culture in which it is created, so final judgement on a current book has to be deferred until it can be seen outside this present moment.

...it occurred to me that I could use the energy I had been putting into endurance to change my life. Yet the concept of brunt, of accepting and enduring, still seems to me to have a kind of nobility. It is, perhaps, less intelligent, but there is a stubborn selfhood about it that is dear to me. It can be, quite literally, the only way to survive.

I journal my joy, and my joy expands exponentially forevermore. So be it.

Who we are and where we want to go determines what we do now and what we accomplish over time.

You have a choice: pursue your dreams, or be hired by someone else to help them fulfill their dreams.

Every threat to the status quo is an opportunity in disguise.

All businesses -- no matter if they make dog food or software -- don't sell products, they sell solutions.

Beware of anyone who says, “I love you” without hesitation; they’ve had a lot of practice saying it.

Chaos should be regarded as extremely good news.” – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

The very centre of your heart is where life begins - the most beautiful place on earth.

Without passion man is a mere latent force and possibility, like the flint which awaits the shock of the iron before it can give forth its spark.

Captain James Kirk was named after Captain James Cook and the USS Enterprise was named after the HMS Endeavour. Star Trek’s catchphrase “to boldly go where no man has gone before” was inspired by Cook’s journal entry “ambition leads me … farther than any other man has been before me”. Enterprise and Endeavour, the first and last space shuttles, were named after the ships of Kirk and Cook. There are bound to be other links between Captain Cook, Star Trek and the US Space Program and some Australian university will no doubt award a grant to explore this issue of undisputed national significance.

Never justify someones wrong action, without them apologizing first & admitting their wrongs. If you do. You are not making them better, but you are making them worse on the bad things they do.

Peace is the gift of God. Do you want peace? Go to God. Do you want peace in your families? Go to God. Do you want peace to brood over your families? If you do, live your religion, and the very peace of God will dwell and abide with you, for that is where peace comes from, and it doesn't dwell anywhere else. . . . Some in speaking of war and troubles, will say are you not afraid? No, I am a servant of God, and this is enough, for Father is at the helm. It is for me to be as clay in the hands of the potter, to be pliable and walk in the light of the countenance of the Spirit of the Lord, and then no matter what comes. Let the lightnings flash and the earthquakes bellow, God is at the helm, and I feel like saying but little, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth and will continue his work until he has put all enemies under his feet, and his kingdom extends from the rivers to the ends of the earth.

In becoming forcibly and essentially aware of my mortality, and of what I wished and wanted for my life, however short it might be, priorities and omissions became strongly etched in a merciless light and what I most regretted were my silences. Of what had I ever been afraid? To question or to speak as I believed could have meant pain, or death. But we all hurt in so many different ways, all the time, and pain will either change, or end. Death, on the other hand, is the final silence. And that might be coming quickly, now, without regard for whether I had ever spoken what needed to be said, or had only betrayed myself into small silences, while I planned someday to speak, or waited for someone else's words. And I began to recognize a source of power within myself that comes from the knowledge that while it is most desirable not to be afraid, learning to put fear into a perspective gave me great strength. I was going to die, if not sooner then later, whether or not I had ever spoken myself. My silences had not protected me. Your silence will not protect you.

What are friends, anyways? You pick some people you have similar interests with, and you hang out and talk. You give each other pep talks and listen to each other's problems. I could replace most of Courtney's job duties as best friend with a book of inspirational slogans and a journal.

REMEMBER: Prayer is not about punishment or reward; it is about cultivating a genuine connection with God. The deep purpose of prayer is not to obtain a certain outcome; rather, it is about having an intimate conversation with your Lord.

I dont celebrate any friendship that was build on hate, because we share the common enemy.

Journalism is an act of faith in the future

Insight and drive are all the skills you need. Everything else can be hired.

You'll never know how close you are to victory if you give up.

No one who ever led a nation got there by following the path of another.

Your energy is a valuable resource, distribute it wisely.

Starting each day with a positive mindset is the most important step of your journey to discovering opportunity.

It is not incumbent on the world to conform to your vision of change. It is up to you to explain the future in terms that those living in the past and present can follow.

Success doesn't teach as many lessons as failure

Speed to fail should be every entrepreneur's motto. When you finally find the one idea that can't be killed, go with it.

The most important tool you have on a resume is language.

It is in vain to dream of a wildness distant from ourselves. There is none such. It is in the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigour of Nature in us, that inspires that dream. I shall never find in the wilds of Labrador any greater wildness than in some recess of Concord, i.e. than I import into it.

It's not about living a perfect life, an easy life, or getting things right all the time. It's not even about being happy, though joy often greets you along this path. Leading an intentional life is about keeping your actions aligned with your beliefs. It's about penning a story that you believe in and that you can be proud of.

By health I mean the power to live a full, adult, living, breathing life in close contact with what I love — the earth and the wonders thereof — the sea — the sun. All that we mean when we speak of the external world. A want to enter into it, to be part of it, to live in it, to learn from it, to lose all that is superficial and acquired in me and to become a conscious direct human being. I want, by understanding myself, to understand others. I want to be all that I am capable of becoming so that I may be (and here I have stopped and waited and waited and it’s no good — there’s only one phrase that will do) a child of the sun. About helping others, about carrying a light and so on, it seems false to say a single word. Let it be at that. A child of the sun.

That overzealous new natural is not intentionally trying to cause you pain. She just lovingly wants her sister to know the freedom of accepting, loving and nurturing her natural hair texture. Once that level of freedom is achieved, one can truly know that we are not our hair.

I gave him the one thing June cannot give him: honesty. I am so ready to admit what a supremely developed ego would not admit: that June is a terrifying and inspiring character who makes every other woman insipid, that I would live her life except for my compassion and my conscience, that she may destroy Henry the man, but Henry the writer is more enriched by ordeals than by peace.

Oh, very well, do you want to know why Ireally think you should keep a journal?” She nodded. “Because someday you’re going to grow into yourself, and you will be as beautiful as you already are smart. And then you can look back into your diary and realize just how silly little girls like Fiona Bennet are. And you’ll laugh when you remember that your mother said your legs started at your shoulders. And maybe you’ll save a little smile for me when you remember the nice chat we had today.

An artistic image is one that ensures its own development, its historical viability. An image is a grain, a self-evolving retroactive organism. It is a symbol of actual life, as opposed to life itself. Life contains death. An image of life, by contrast, excludes it, or else sees in it a unique potential for the affirmation of life. Whatever it expresses—even destruction and ruin—the artistic image is by definition an embodiment of hope, it is inspired by faith. Artistic creation is by definition a denial of death. Therefore it is optimistic, even if in an ultimate sense the artist is tragic. And so there can never be optimistic artists and pessimistic artists. There can only be talent and mediocrity.

But his love is greater than all our hate and he will not rest until Judas has turned to him, until Satan has turned to him, until dark has turned to him; until we can all, all of us without exception, freely return his look of love with love in our own eyes and hearts. And then, healed, whole, complete but not finished, we swill know the joy of being co-creators with the one to whom we call. Amen. Even so, come Lord Jesus.

I do not write every day. I write to the questions and issues before me. I write to deadlines. I write out of my passions. And I write to make peace with my own contradictory nature. For me, writing is a spiritual practice. A small bowl of water sits on my desk, a reminder that even if nothing is happening on the page, something is happening in the room--evaporation. And I always light a candle when I begin to write, a reminder that I have now entered another realm, call it the realm of the Spirit. I am mindful that when one writes, one leaves this world and enters another. My books are collages made from journals, research, and personal experience. I love the images rendered in journal entries, the immediacy that is captured on the page, the handwritten notes. I love the depth of ideas and perspective that research brings to a story, be it biological or anthropological studies or the insights brought to the page by the scholarly work of art historians. When I go into a library, I feel like I am a sleuth looking to solve a mystery. I am completely inspired by the pursuit of knowledge through various references. I read newpapers voraciously. I love what newspapers say about contemporary culture. And then you go back to your own perceptions, your own words, and weigh them against all you have brought together. I am interested in the kaleidoscope of ideas, how you bring many strands of thought into a book and weave them together as one piece of coherent fabric, while at the same time trying to create beautiful language in the service of the story. This is the blood work of the writer. Writing is also about a life engaged. And so, for me, community work, working in the schools or with grassroots conservation organizations is another critical component of my life as a writer. I cannot separate the writing life from a spiritual life, from a life as a teacher or activist or my life intertwined with family and the responsibilities we carry within our own homes. Writing is daring to feel what nurtures and breaks our hearts. Bearing witness is its own form of advocacy. It is a dance with pain and beauty.

Want to know one of the most rewarding and holistic ways to heal & make significant life choices that will fully align? Learning to slow down, breath, think, journal, talk, and process before reacting. Knowing you have worked through the issue, be it mentally, emotionally or spiritually, before taking action lets you write the script of your life how you want. Which in turn gives you the best chance of achieving your dreams

The truth is that The Wild One -- despite an admittedly fictional treatment -- was an inspired piece of film journalism. Instead of institutionalizing common knowledge, in the style of Time, it told a story that was only beginning to happen and which was inevitably influenced by the film. It gave the outlaws a lasting, romance-glazed image of themselves, a coherent reflection that only a very few had been able to find in a mirror, and it quickly became the bike rider's answer to The Sun Also Rises. The image is not valid, but its wide acceptance can hardly be blamed on the movie. The Wild One was careful to distinguish between "good outlaws" and "bad outlaws," but the people who were most influenced chose to identify with Brando instead of Lee Marvin whose role as the villain was a lot more true to life than Brando's portrayal of the confused hero. They saw themselves as modern Robin Hoods ... virile, inarticulate brutes whose good instincts got warped somewhere in the struggle for self-expression and who spent the rest of their violent lives seeking revenge on a world that done them wrong when they were young and defenseless.

You see, Monsieur, it's worth everything, isn't it, to keep one's intellectual liberty, not to enslave one's powers of appreciation, one's critical independence? It was because of that that I abandoned journalism, and took to so much duller work: tutoring and private secretaryship. There is a good deal of drudgery, of course; but one preserves one's moral freedom, what we call in French one's quant a soi. And when one hears good talk one can join in it without compromising any opinions but one's own; or one can listen, and answer it inwardly. Ah, good conversation--there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing. And so I have never regretted giving up either diplomacy or journalism--two different forms of the same self-abdication." He fixed his vivid eyes on Archer as he lit another cigarette. "Voyez-vous, Monsieur, to be able to look life in the face: that's worth living in a garret for, isn't it? But, after all, one must earn enough to pay for the garret; and I confess that to grow old as a private tutor--or a `private' anything--is almost as chilling to the imagination as a second secretaryship at Bucharest. Sometimes I feel I must make a plunge: an immense plunge. Do you suppose, for instance, there would be any opening for me in America-- in New York?

Our lives are lived in season of more, seasons of less, seasons of triumph, seasons of loss. Each season sees our needs change. We live, learn, and adapt. So, too, must our definition of meaning. Things that grow in one season rot in another. If we blindly hold on to the past, we'll be forced to sustain ourselves with the expiring beliefs from seasons gone by. No wonder we're often left feeling unsatisfied, empty, starving for substance. In order to live fulfilling lives, we have to embrace the shifting nature of our experience by making our search for meaning an ongoing practice.

I write this sitting in the kitchen sink. That is, my feet are in it; the rest of me is on the draining-board, which I have padded with our dog's blanket and the tea-cosy. I can't say that I am really comfortable, and there is a depressing smell of carbolic soap, but this is the only part of the kitchen where there is any daylight left. And I have found that sitting in a place where you have never sat before can be inspiring - I wrote my very best poem while sitting on the hen-house. Though even that isn't a very good poem. I have decided my best poetry is so bad that I mustn't write any more of it. Drips from the roof are plopping into the water-butt by the back door. The view through the windows above the sink is excessively drear. Beyond the dank garden in the courtyard are the ruined walls on the edge of the moat. Beyond the moat, the boggy ploughed fields stretch to the leaden sky. I tell myself that all the rain we have had lately is good for nature, and that at any moment spring will surge on us. I try to see leaves on the trees and the courtyard filled with sunlight. Unfortunately, the more my mind's eye sees green and gold, the more drained of all colour does the twilight seem. It is comforting to look away from the windows and towards the kitchen fire, near which my sister Rose is ironing - though she obviously can't see properly, and it will be a pity if she scorches her only nightgown. (I have two, but one is minus its behind.) Rose looks particularly fetching by firelight because she is a pinkish person; her skin has a pink glow and her hair is pinkish gold, very light and feathery. Although I am rather used to her I know she is a beauty. She is nearly twenty-one and very bitter with life. I am seventeen, look younger, feel older. I am no beauty but I have a neatish face. I have just remarked to Rose that our situation is really rather romantic - two girls in this strange and lonely house. She replied that she saw nothing romantic about being shut up in a crumbling ruin surrounded by a sea of mud. I must admit that our home is an unreasonable place to live in. Yet I love it. The house itself was built in the time of Charles II, but it was grafted on to a fourteenth-century castle that had been damaged by Cromwell. The whole of our east wall was part of the castle; there are two round towers in it. The gatehouse is intact and a stretch of the old walls at their full height joins it to the house. And Belmotte Tower, all that remains of an even older castle, still stands on its mound close by. But I won't attempt to describe our peculiar home fully until I can see more time ahead of me than I do now. I am writing this journal partly to practise my newly acquired speed-writing and partly to teach myself how to write a novel - I intend to capture all our characters and put in conversations. It ought to be good for my style to dash along without much thought, as up to now my stories have been very stiff and self-conscious. The only time father obliged me by reading one of them, he said I combined stateliness with a desperate effort to be funny. He told me to relax and let the words flow out of me.

In 2003, Meryl Streep won a career achievement César Award, the French equivalent of an Oscar. Streep’s words (my translation) acknowledged the enduring interest of French audiences in women’s lives and women’s stories: "I have always wanted to present stories of women who are rather difficult. Difficult to love, difficult to understand, difficult to look at sometimes. I am very cognizant that the French public is receptive to these complex and contradictory women. As an actress I have understood for a long time that lies are simple, seductive and often easy to pass off. But the truth—the truth is always very very very complicated, often unpleasant, nuanced or difficult to accept." In France, an actress can work steadily from her teens through old age—she can start out in stories of youthful rebellion and end up, fifty years later, a screen matriarch. And in the process, her career will end up telling the story of a life—her own life, in a sense, with the films serving, as Valeria Bruni Tedeschi puts it, as a “journal intime,” or diary, of one woman’s emotions and growth. No wonder so many French actresses are beautiful. They’re radiant with living in a cinematic culture that values them, and values them as women. And they are radiant with living in a culture—albeit one with flaws of its own—in which women are half of who decides what gets valued in the first place. Their films transcend national and language barriers and are the best vehicles for conveying the depth and range of women’s experience in our era. The gift they give us, so absent in our own movies, is a vision of life that values emotional truth, personal freedom and dignity above all and that favors complexity over simplicity, the human over the machine, maturity over callowness, true mysteries over false explanations and an awareness of mortality over a life lived in denial. In the luminous humanity of their faces and in the illuminated humanity of their characters, we discover in these actresses something much more inspiring than the blank perfection and perfect blankness of the Hollywood starlet. We discover the beauty of the real.