Personal Growth Quotes: Inspiring Words of Wisdom

Attitude

Whether you think you can or think you can't,
Either way you're right.
- Henry Ford

The whole universe is change,
And life is what you deem it.
- Marcus Aurelius

There's nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so.
- Hamlet

Authenticity

Know thyself.
- Oracle at Delphi

Do not follow where the path may lead.
Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

This above all: To thine own self be true
And it must follow as the night the day
Thou canst not be false to any man.
- William Shakespeare

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
- Robert Frost

Conviction

Wherever you go,
Go with all your heart.
- Confucius

We must become the change
We seek in the world.
- Gandhi

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Courage

Be braver.
You can't cross a chasm in two small jumps.
- Chinese proverb

Death will kill you once
But fear kills you over and over again
If you let it.
- Marcus Allen

Courage is not the absence of fear,
But rather the judgment that something else is more important.
- Ambrose Redmoon

Discipline

He that would govern others
First should be master of himself.
-Philip Massinger

Most powerful is he who has himself in his power.
- Seneca

No horse gets anywhere until he is harnessed.
No stream or gas ever drives anything until it is confined.
No Niagara is ever turned into light and power until it is tunneled.
No life ever grows great until it is
Focused, dedicated, and disciplined.
- Henry Emerson Fosdick

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Excellence

Whatever you are,
Be a good one.
- Abraham Lincoln

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then is not an act, but a habit.
- Aristotle

Goals, Importance Of

One day Alice came to a fork in the road and
Saw a Cheshire cat in a tree.
"Which road do I take?" she asked.
His response was a question:
"Where do you want to go?"
"I don't know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn't matter."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Hard Work

I know of no more encouraging fact than the
Unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life
By conscious endeavor.
- Henry David Thoreau

I'm a great believer in luck,
And I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
- Thomas Jefferson

Bite off more than you can chew
And chew like hell.
- Peter Brock

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Habits

For you see, the character that takes command in moments of crucial choices has already been determined. It has been determined by a thousand other choices made earlier in seemingly unimportant moments. It has been determined by all the "little" choices of your past - by all those times when the voice of conscience was at war with the voice of temptation - whispering the lie that "it really doesn't matter." It has been determined by the day-to-day decisions that, piece by piece, bit by bit, developed habits of discipline or of laziness;
habits of self-sacrifice or self-indulgence;
habits of duty and honor and integrity - or dishonor and shame.
- Ronald Reagan

Sometimes when I consider what tremendous
Consequences come from little things
I am tempted to think there are no little things.
- Bruce Barton

I am your constant companion. I am your greatest helper or heaviest burden. I will push you onward or drag you down to failure. I am completely at your command. Half of the things you do you might as well turn over to me and I will do them - quickly and correctly. I am easily managed - you must be firm with me. Show me exactly how you want something done and after a few lessons, I will do it automatically. I am the servant of great people, and alas, of all failures as well. Those who are great, I have made great. Those who are failures, I have made failures. I am not a machine though I work with the precision of a machine plus the intelligence of a person. You may run me for profit or run me for ruin - it makes no difference to me. Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I will place the world at your feet. Be easy with me and I will destroy you
Who am I?
I am Habit.
- Anonymous

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Humility

He who asks a question may be a fool for five minutes,
But he who never asks a question
Remains a fool forever.
- Tim Connely

Initiative

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
- Chinese Proverb

If there is no wind, row.
- Latin Proverb

Don't worry about moving slow.
Worry about standing still.
- Chinese Proverb

Integrity

The true measure of a man
Is how he treats someone
Who can do him absolutely no good.
- Ann Landers

There can be no friendship without confidence,
And no confidence without integrity.
- Samuel Johnson

There is no real excellence in all this world
Which can be separated from right living.
- David Starr Jordan

One man cannot do right in one department of life
Whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department.
Life is one indivisible whole.
- Mahatma Gandhi

It is a greater compliment to be trusted than to be loved.
- George MacDonald

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself,
And another to the multitude
Without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
- Nathaniel Hawthorne

The surest way to reveal one's character
Is not through adversity
But by giving them power.
- Abraham Lincoln

Journey

Not all those who wander are lost.
- J.R.R. Tolkein

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Overcome Adversity

Pain happens.
Suffering is an option.
- The Dalai Lama

If the inward power that rules us be true to Nature, it will always adjust itself readily to the possibilities and opportunities offered by circumstance. It asks for no predeterminate material; in the pursuance of its aims it is willing to compromise; hindrances to its progress are merely converted into matters for its own use. It is like a bonfire mastering a heap of rubbish, which would have quenched a feeble glow; but its fiery blaze quickly assimilates the load, consumes it, and flames the higher for it.
- Marcus Aurelius

Persistence

Fall seven times
Stand up eight.
- Japanese Proverb

Never give in. Never. Never. Never. Never.
- Winston Churchill

Look at a stone cutter hamming away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before.
- Jacob Riis

Success seems to be largely a matter
Of hanging on after others have let go.
- William Faulkner

Many of life's failures were people who did not realize
How close they were to success when they gave up.
- Thomas Edison

I've missed 3,000 shots.
26 times the game winning shot has been entrusted to me,
And I've missed.
I've lost over 300 games.
I've failed over and over again, and that is why I've succeeded.
- Michael Jordan

I have not failed.
I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.
- Thomas Edison

When the morning's freshness has been replaced
By the weariness of midday,
When the leg muscles quiver under the strain,
The climb seems endless,
And suddenly, nothing will go quite as you wish -
It is then you must not hesitate.
- Dag Hammarskjold

A man can fail many times,
But he isn't a failure until he begins to blame someone else.
- John Burroughs

Perspective

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes But in having new eyes.
- Marcel Proust

We must not cease from exploration
And at the end of all our exploring will be
To arrive where we began and
To know the place for the first time.
- TS Eliot

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Potential

What lies behind us and what lies before us
Are tiny matters
Compared to what lies within us.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes

There are so many gifts
Still unopened from your birthday,
There as so many hand-crafted presents
That have been sent to you by God.
The Beloved does not mind repeating,
"Everything I have is also yours."
There are so many gifts, my dear,
Still unopened from your birthday.
- Hafiz

The difference between what we are doing
And what we're capable of doing
Would solve most of the world's problems.
- Mahatma Gandhi

Possibilities

Chance is always powerful.
Let your hook be always cast;
In the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish.
- Ovid

Practice

Upon the fields of friendly strife
Are sown the fields that
Upon other fields, on other days,
Will bear the fruits of victory.
- General Douglas MacArthur

List of my Favorite Personal Growth Quotes - Continued

Priorities

Things which matter most
Must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
- Goethe

Not everything that can be counted counts,
And not everything that counts can be counted.
- Einstein

Sacrifice

Judge your success
By what you had to give up in order to get it. - Dalai Lama

A new philosophy, a new way of life, is not given for nothing.
It has to be paid dearly for
And only acquired with much patience and great effort.
- Fydor Dostoevsky

That which we obtain too easily, we esteem too lightly.
It is dearness only which gives everything it value.
Heaven knows how o put a proper price on its goods.
- Thomas Paine