Inspiration

Words can lift spark new ideas, lift spirits, and provide the support needed to get through tough times. Collected here are words that have helped me over the years.  I hope you will stop by when the need arises and feel free to add your own.

Inspiration by photosteve101, on Flickr

• “The enemy of great is good” – Jim Collins
• “Being a man of integrity means doing the right thing when no one else is around or watching you and NEVER being ashamed of your reflection when you look in the mirror” – Anon
• “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson
• “When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.“-Anon
• “If you’re going through Hell. keep going.” –Winston Churchill
• “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.” –Henry Ford
• “Never give in, never give in, never; never; never; never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense”-Winston Churchill
• “No army can stop an idea whose time has come”  – Victor Hugo

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you But make allowance for their doubting too, If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master, If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breath a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; If all men count with you, but none too much, If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

—Rudyard Kipling

I’d love to hear some words that have helped or motivated you.