Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes

Be Curious; Be Adventurous

2026-09-09T00:30:00.000-04:00

Believe that life is worth living,
and your belief will help create the fact.
- William James

Life isn't about finding yourself.
Life is about creating yourself.
- George Bernard Shaw

The best way to predict the future is to create it.
- Peter F. Drucker

You have to leave the city of your comfort
and go into the wilderness of your intuition.
What you'll discover will be wonderful.
What you'll discover is yourself.
- Alan Alda

Be curious; be adventurous; live life full-out.
Accept the challenge, and reach for the brass ring.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Where Do You Want To Go?

Thinking as Creation

How To Cope With Life

Create Light for Others

The measure of your success is how many lives you have made better

2026-09-08T00:30:00.000-04:00

Believe in yourself,
in your vision for your future,
and in your ability to take a small step
each day toward achieving your vision.

- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

To leave the world a bit better ... to know that one life has breathed easier because you have lived.
This is to have succeeded.
- Bessie A. Stanley (commonly attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Anyone who proposes to do good
must not expect people to roll stones out of his way,
but must accept his lot calmly,
even if they roll a few stones upon it.
- Albert Schweitzer

True success is bringing joy to yourself and to others.
Success is measured in lives bettered, not in money or power.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We do not need to proselytize
either by our speech or by our writing.
We can only do so really with our lives.
Let our lives be open books for all to study.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Further reading: March On

Pay It Forward

Turn Crisis into Progress

Stand Together

Trust Measurement

2026-09-07T00:30:00.000-04:00

Always listen to the experts.
They'll tell you what can't be done and why.
Then do it.
- Robert A. Heinlein

If stock market experts were so expert,
they would be buying stock, not selling advice.
- Norman Ralph Augustine

One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions.
- Grace Hopper (United States Navy rear admiral and a pioneer of computer programming)

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
- Laurence J. Peter

An expert is someone who knows a lot about the past.
- Tom Hopkins

Further reading: Trust Reason

Use Common Sense

Take Charge of Your Life

Authority Does Not Define Morality

Exercise Your Free Will

Act on Your Convictions

2026-09-06T00:30:00.000-04:00

When you doubt your power, you give power to your doubt.
- Honore De Balzac

Action is our greatest weapon against fear.
Left to molder, fear grows upon itself,
but in the face of action,
fear is left in the dust.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak.
Strong convictions precede great actions.
- Louisa May Alcott

Make up your mind to act decidedly and take the consequences.
No good is ever done in this world by hesitation.
- Thomas Huxley

Live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation.
- Bertrand Russell

Further reading: Be an Instrument of Change

Action Beats Inaction

Gain Self Confidence

Feel Your Power

We Hide Our Emptiness

2026-09-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

Society is a masked ball,
where everyone hides his real character,
and reveals it by hiding.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our greatest pretenses are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us,
but our emptiness.
The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.
- Eric Hoffer

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.
- Kurt Vonnegut

Whoever you pretend to be, you must face yourself eventually.
- Al Stewart

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person.
Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.
- Oscar Wilde

We all have a social mask, right?
We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image.
But behind that social mask is a personal truth,
what we really, really believe about who we are and what we're capable of.
- Phil McGraw

What if we like our outrageous side best?
We "know" that the "right" thing to do is to suck it up,
put the costume and the happy face back in storage for another year,
re-dress in our frown and gray flannel suit,
and trudge back to job, chores, "responsibilities," and "duty."
Stop! Maybe TODAY is the day to put the frown and gray flannel
into that dusty storage locker, and start to LIVE.
Not just today, but EVERY DAY for the rest of your life!
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.
- William Shakespeare

Dignity is a mask we wear to hide our ignorance.
- Elbert Hubbard

Recognize the extent to which you hide your true nature from the world.
Consider revealing more of your true self.
...
Society censors our actions,
but our dreams reveal our true character.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: How To Not Care What Others Think

Need For Approval

How to Be Yourself

What lessons might Halloween hold for us?

The Power of Transformation

2026-09-04T00:30:00.000-04:00

Leap and the net will appear.
- John Burroughs

Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly.
- Anonymous

The only way to discover the limits of the possible
is to go beyond them into the impossible.
- Arthur C. Clarke

Come to the edge
We can't. We're afraid
We can't. We will fall. Come to the edge
And they came. And he pushed them
And they flew
- Guillaume Apollinaire

Today's affirmation:
When I Come To The Edge of the Familiar,
I Spread My Wings and Fly.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Winds of Grace

The Edge of All You Know

Live Your Life Fully

Accepting Miracles

Soar Your Spirit

Goodness of Humanity

Opportunity for Daily Thanksgiving

Patience and Gentleness

2026-09-03T00:30:00.000-04:00

A person who is a master of patience is master of everything else.
- George Savile [paraphrase]

A tree that is unbending, is easily broken.
- Lao Tzu

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions,
do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
- Saint Francis de Sales

Resistance creates suffering. Stress happens when your mind resists what is...
The only problem in your life is your mind's resistance to life as it unfolds.
- Dan Millman

The greatest weapon against stress
is our ability to choose one thought over another.
- William James

Do not attempt to conquer the world with force,
for force only causes resistance.
- Lao Tzu

Read the Aesop fable The Oak and the Reeds

Further reading: The Secret of Happiness

The River of Life

Enjoy the Journey

Naming Matters

2026-09-02T00:30:00.000-04:00

Do not say, 'It is morning,' and dismiss it with a name of yesterday.
See it for the first time as a newborn child that has no name.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Shakespeare says, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,"
but I disagree...There is great power in naming.
"Urban wall art" and "graffiti" are very different, even when they are identical.
Think of other word pairs, like "flower" and "weed" - "antique" and "used" - "freedom fighter" and "terrorist"
that greatly color our perception of the object or person being described.
Call a plant beautiful, and it becomes a flower.
Call it ugly, and it becomes a weed.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Exercise: Consider the words that you and others in your life use to describe you. If the words are not complimentary, take action to change how you refer to yourself, and encourage others to speak differently of you. For example, if you describe yourself as "shy," choose a more positive term, such as "reserved."

Further reading: It Matters What You Call Something Or Someone

Finding Balance in Life Beats Moderation

Stay Flexible, Stay Joyful

2026-09-01T00:30:00.000-04:00

Life is not always as it seems.
What you have wished for is not always best.
What you have feared may become a blessing.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.
- Lao Tzu

Change always comes bearing gifts.
- Price Pritchett

Zig as Life Zigs and Zag as Life Zags.
Stay Adaptable, Stay Joyful
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Change of any sort requires courage.
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Today's affirmation:
I choose to adapt to the circumstances in which I find myself.
I choose to be flexible in my dealings with those around me.
I understand that my way is not the only way -
that inner peace comes from respecting the ways of others,
and that, if I am open, I may gain great insights and happiness
from the ideas and traditions of others.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Go With the Flow

Be Flexible

There is a Way

Enjoy the Journey

Choose to Care About Others

2026-08-31T00:30:00.000-04:00

A man is called selfish not for pursuing his own good,
but for neglecting his neighbor's.
- Richard Whately

Each of us must decide whether
to walk in the light of creative altruism
or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.
- Martin Luther King, Jr. [paraphrase]

Personal importance, or taking things personally,
is the maximum expression of selfishness
because we make the assumption that everything is about me.
- don Miguel Ruiz

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live,
it is demanding that others live as one wishes that they live.
- Oscar Wilde [paraphrase]

Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.
- Immanuel Kant

Further Reading: Nobody is Self-Made

Be the First to Condemn Injustice

This God Called Money

Let there never be a day ...

Enjoy the Journey of Life

2026-08-30T00:30:00.000-04:00

The journey between what you once were
and who you are now becoming
is where the dance of Life really takes place.
- Barbara De Angelis

Life is a Journey - Enjoy the Journey.
Life is not a race to test
who can finish first or who can end up with the most loot.
Rather, life is best enjoyed as a meander -
watching the view to left and right - above and below -
as the days slowly move past in dress review.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

March on. Do not tarry. To go forward
is to move toward perfection.
March on, and fear not the thorns,
or the sharp stones on life's path.
- Khalil Gibran

It is better to travel well than to arrive.
- The Buddha

Further reading: Enjoy Life

Be Flexible

Choose to Love Life

The Secret of Happiness

Simple Pleasures

Love Life

Consider Trying a New Approach

2026-08-29T00:30:00.000-04:00

Sometimes success requires persistence and hard work. Sometimes an ingenious new approach is needed. Or it may be time for a whole new beginning. Think, and choose wisely whether to try harder or to try something new.

The very nature of the world is constant change. You set a goal and create a plan to achieve it; then the assumptions on which you based your plan change - they always do. The challenge is to retain your goals while adapting your tactics. Relax and stay flexible in order to reach your goals and maintain your happiness.

The phrase "tilting at windmills" (from the fictional character Don Quixote - shown in today's picture) epitomizes the hopelessness of a determined but inflexible approach. Far better to change your tactics than to fail - however nobly.

Persistence only takes you so far.
Then you need to try a different approach.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Stay committed to your decisions,
but stay flexible in your approach.
- Tony Robbins

Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.
Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
- Sun Tzu

Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
- Stephen Hawking

Further reading: Stay Adaptable

Learn to Surmount Obstacles

Begin Anew Today

Multiple Ways to Your Goal

Don't Expect People to be Logical

2026-08-28T00:30:00.000-04:00

We should not pretend to understand the world
only by the intellect.
The judgment of the intellect
is only part of the truth.
- Carl Jung

Feelings are much stronger than thoughts.
We are all led by instinct,
and our intellect catches up later.
- Bono

When dealing with people, remember you are
not dealing with creatures of logic,
but creatures of emotion.
- Dale Carnegie

Humans do have an amazing capacity
for believing what they choose,
and excluding that which is painful.
- Spock (character in Star Trek television series)

At the most basic level, the human emotions that drive all our actions
are the emotion of Love, and the emotion of Fear.
Love expresses itself through compassion, kindness, generosity, and understanding.
Fear expresses itself through self-centeredness, greed, jealousy, and exclusion.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Have compassion for those whose actions are driven by fear,
even when those actions cause serious harm to others.

Further reading: There are Only Fear and Love

Master of My Emotions

Learning To Live Together

Choose the World You Live In

Kindness is the quality that makes human life worth living

2026-08-27T00:30:00.000-04:00

Kindness is perhaps the most essential quality of being fully human.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

A part of kindness consists in loving people more than they deserve.
- Joseph Joubert

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.
- Dalai Lama

Kindness in words creates confidence.
Kindness in thinking creates profoundness.
Kindness in giving creates love.
- Lao Tzu

Kindness is the quality that makes human life worth living.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Albert Pike: What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us.

Aesop: Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail

The Cab Ride

The Myth of the "Self-Made Man"

2026-08-26T00:30:00.000-04:00

None of us got where we are solely by
pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
- Thurgood Marshall

Ingratitude often hides behind a mask of independence or self-sufficiency.
An assertion of being "self-made" is a rejection of God, one's ancestors, and society.
Your Genes, Place of Birth, and Upbringing are God's Gift to You.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Those who have succeeded at anything
and don't mention luck
are kidding themselves.
- Larry King

If I have seen further, it is
by standing on the shoulders of giants.
- Isaac Newton

The whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness
of the interdependence of all these living beings,
which are all part of one another, and all involved in one another.
- Thomas Merton

Civilization is not a spontaneous generation
with any race or nation known to history,
but the torch to be handed down from race to race from age to age.
- Kelly Millar

Success is a result of hard work,
plus being blessed with good genes, food,
a good country, an opportunity for education,
and much more which we never "earned"
or "deserved," and for which we owe
everlasting gratitude.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Debt to Those Who are Kind

Appreciating Our Blessings

Give Thanks

Gratitude for This Food

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment... not authority

2026-08-25T00:30:00.000-04:00

Science is a way of thinking
much more than it is a body of knowledge.
- Carl Sagan

The ultimate court of appeal is observation and experiment...
not authority.
- Thomas Huxley

What is a scientist after all?
It is a curious man looking through a keyhole,
the keyhole of nature, trying to know what's going on.
- Jacques Yves Cousteau

The scientist is motivated primarily by curiosity
and a desire for truth.
- Irving Langmuir

All truths are easy to understand
once they are discovered;
the point is to discover them.
- Galileo Galilei

The saddest aspect of life right now
is that science gathers knowledge faster
than society gathers wisdom.
- Isaac Asimov

Further reading: Understand More, Fear Less

Seek the Truth

Analysis AND Emotion

Stroke of Insight - Jill Bolte Taylor

Be Gentle, Be Generous

2026-08-24T00:30:00.000-04:00

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize.
The first is gentleness;
the second is frugality;
the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others.
Be gentle and you can be bold;
be frugal and you can be generous;
avoid putting yourself before others
and you can become a leader among men.
- Lao Tzu

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity
are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Further reading: Again Tomorrow

Unity with Spirit and All Creation

Perspective on Diversity

Give Thanks for the Love

Our Vision is Biased by What We Expect to See or Fear to See

2026-08-23T00:30:00.000-04:00

Choose the World You See,
and See the World You Choose.
You have a choice
about the perspective you take on life.
See tragedy, and the world is tragic -
see beauty, and the world is beautiful.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

People seem not to see that
their opinion of the world
is also a confession of character.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.
- John Lubbock

It all depends on how we look at things,
and not how they are in themselves.
- Carl Jung

Our Vision is Always Biased by What We Expect or Fear to See.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: What You See

Your Attitude is Your Window

What We Perceive

Don't trust until trust is earned

2026-08-22T00:30:00.000-04:00

It is wonderful to have Faith,
but don't confuse trust with being gullible.
Balance trust with conscious thought.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

You may be deceived if you trust too much,
but you will live in torment
if you don't trust enough.
- Frank Crane

Only a fool tests the depth of the water with both feet.
- African Proverb

Trust yourself, then you will know how to live.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters
cannot be trusted in large ones either.
- Albert Einstein

It takes years to build up trust,
and only seconds to destroy it.
- Anonymous

Further reading: What or who do you trust?

Trust in the Light

Take Nothing On Authority

Can you trust and if so who?

7 Secrets of Happy Couples

Be Patient and Gentle

2026-08-21T00:30:00.000-04:00

Nothing is softer or more flexible than water,
yet nothing can resist it.
- Lao Tzu

Choose your battles wisely.
While your core principles and your life goals are important,
most of what you let upset you is not worth an argument or lost sleep.
Take Lao Tzu's advice and become softer and more flexible.

Patience, persistence, and perseverance.
A little more each day, a little better each day.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

When you encounter difficulties and contradictions,
do not try to break them, but bend them with gentleness and time.
- Saint Francis de Sales

Patience can't be acquired overnight.
It is just like building up a muscle.
Every day you need to work on it.
- Eknath Easwaran

The key to everything is patience.
You get the chicken by hatching the egg,
not by smashing it open.
- Arnold H. Glasgow

Gentleness Surpasses Rigidity.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Tread Lightly

Be Gentle with Yourself

Aesop: Gentleness and kind persuasion win where force and bluster fail

The Oak and the Reeds - a fable by Aesop

The Challenge is to Become Your Greatest Self

2026-08-20T00:30:00.000-04:00

Only when life is difficult, are we challenged to become our greatest selves.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Fall seven times, stand up eight.
- Japanese Proverb

It is not because life is difficult
that we do not dare.
Life is difficult
because we do not dare.
- Seneca

All things at first appear difficult.
- Chinese proverb

Difficulties show men what they are.
In case of any difficulty,
remember that God has pitted you
against a rough antagonist
that you may be a conqueror,
and this cannot be without toil.
- Epictetus

Further reading: Choose to be Positive

Difficulties Offer Opportunities

Beyond Failure

Why is This Happening?

Open Mind, Clean Hands, Loving Heart

2026-08-19T00:30:00.000-04:00

God looks at the clean hands, not the full ones.
- Publilius Syrus

You can learn a lot from people who view the world differently than you do.
- Anthony J. D'Angelo

Better keep yourself clean and bright;
you are the window through which
you must see the world.
- George Bernard Shaw

Today's affirmation:
I approach life with an Open Mind,
Clean Hands, and a Loving Heart.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Art of Seeing

Choose the World You See

Each Other's Eyes

Simply Marvelous

Life operates in subtleties rather than in absolutes

2026-08-18T00:30:00.000-04:00

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past
have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
- George S. Patton

Life only appears complicated when one is worrying.
Relax, and life becomes simple again.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The contradictions are what make human behavior
so maddening and yet so fascinating,
all at the same time.
- Joan D. Vinge

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am,
then I can change.
- Carl Rogers

Actions are always more complex and nuanced than they seem.
We have to be willing to wrestle with paradox in pursuing understanding.
- Harold Evans

I think wholeness is God's design for us;
and that often amounts to embracing contradictions.
- Bono

Life operates in subtleties rather than in absolutes.
Life plays out in shades of gray rather than in blacks and whites.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Overflowing Cup of Tea - Zen Koan

Maybe So, Maybe Not. - Ancient Taoist Proverb

Yin-Yang

Balance in All Things

Seek Balance In All Things

2026-08-17T00:30:00.000-04:00

To everything there is a season,
and a time to every purpose under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die.
- Ecclesiastes 3:1-2

We have an obligation to live in harmony with God's creation.
- Bruce Babbitt

One has to find a balance between
what people need from you
and what you need for yourself.
- Jessye Norman

A time for everything: a time to relax and a time to be busy,
a time to frolic and a time to lay up food for the winter,
a time to receive and a time to give,
a time to begin and a time to finish.
A time for work, a time for play -
balance in all things.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Change must always be balanced with some degree of consistency.
- Ron D. Burton

The ending of a job or a relationship
may appear as the darkest night,
but it is merely the Winter season -
the time of renewal and rebirth
that precedes the new planting -
the beginning of the next great cycle.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Further reading: Balance vs. Moderation: Eight Ways to Balance Your Life

Live in Harmony

Creating Balance

Renew Yourself

A List of Gratitudes

Yin-Yang

Man does not live to produce bread

2026-08-16T00:30:00.000-04:00

Make your work to be in keeping with your purpose.
- Leonardo da Vinci

All labor that uplifts humanity has dignity and importance
and should be undertaken with painstaking excellence.
- Martin Luther King, Jr.

The world is moved along, not only
by the mighty shoves of its heroes,
but also by the aggregate of tiny pushes
of each honest worker.
- Helen Keller

Everything that is really great and inspiring
is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.
- Albert Einstein

The end of labor is to gain leisure.
- Aristotle

Man does not live to produce bread,
he produces bread to live.
Work is not the purpose of life.
- Robert G. Lewis

"Man does not live, therefore, to produce bread. He produces bread to live. The distinction is enormously important and relevant. Obviously man must have food, and so far as our experience goes, he must work to produce It, But work is not the purpose of life. Production is not the purpose of life. Instead, human lives are the entire purpose and the reason for all work and for all production.
- Robert G. Lewis - speaking about the issues of family farms at the annual meeting of the Interorganization Committee on Problems for Rural Youth in 1957

Further reading: A Balanced Life

Take Time For Yourself

Called to be a Street Sweeper