125 Inspirational Quotes from Novels

“If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day




“And when it comes to relationships, we’re so demanding that we’re making them near impossible.”
― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy




“The thing is, the only real sign of life is growth. And growth requires pain. So to choose life is to accept pain.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Walk

“Holding anger is a poison...It eats you from inside...We think that by hating someone we hurt them...But hatred is a curved blade...and the harm we do to others...we also do to ourselves.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven



“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist




“There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self-mastery. From struggle comes strength.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari

“Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.” 

― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

“When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida




“Without pain, without sacrifice we would have nothing. Like the first monkey shot into space.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Eventually we all have to accept full and total responsibility for our actions, everything we have done, and have not done. ”
― Hubert Selby Jr., Requiem for a Dream

“There are men who have suffered and who have not only gone on living, but even built a new fortune on the ruins of their former happiness. From the depths into which their enemies have plunged them, they have risen again with such vigor and glory that they have dominated their former conquerors and cast them down in their turn.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo




“You mustn't ask too much of human endurance, one must be merciful.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov




"No space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused"
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)




"There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor."
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol)

“Belief, hard work, love–you have those things, you can do anything.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day




“There's nothing of any importance in life - except how well you do your work. Nothing. Only that. Whatever else you are, will come from that. It's the only measure of human value. All the codes of ethics they'll try to ram down your throat are just so much paper money put out by swindlers to fleece people of their virtues. The code of competence is the only system of morality that's on a gold standard.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“I think it's a sin to sit down and let your life go without making a try for it.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“Your "I CAN" is more important than your IQ.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

“You have to give up! you have to give up!
You have to realize that someday you will die,
Until you know that, you are useless!”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club




“It's what's in yourself that makes you happy or unhappy.”
― Agatha Christie, A Murder Is Announced





“Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“Don't give in to your fears. If you do, you won't be able to talk to your heart.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“I want to suffer and be purified by suffering!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov




"Procrastination is the thief of time, collar him."
— Charles Dickens (David Copperfield)




“… one can never go back, that one should not ever try to go back – that the essence of life is going forward. Life is really a One Way Street.”
― Agatha Christie, At Bertram's Hotel




“Everything is created twice, first in the mind and then in reality.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

“It's the job that's never started that takes longest to finish.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings




“The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari




“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth - the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“It's such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day




“But there are people who'll try to hurt you through the good they see in you--knowing that it's the good, needing it and punishing you for it. Don't let it break you when you discover that.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist




“Loving and energizing others is the best possible thing we can do for ourselves.”
― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy




“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Push yourself to do more and to experience more. Harness your energy to start expanding your dreams. Yes, expand your dreams. Don't accept a life of mediocrity when you hold such infinite potential within the fortress of your mind. Dare to tap into your greatness.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari




“Patience is yet another virtue, one that grows stronger through the practice of waiting,”
― Beverly Lewis, The Prodigal




“Make sure you marry someone who laughs at the same things you do.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye




“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to become the means by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of other men. Blood, whips and guns--or dollars. Take your choice--there is no other.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

“No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven




“Every event has a purpose and every setback its lesson. I have realized that failure, whether of the personal, professional or even spiritual kind, is essential to personal expansion. It brings inner growth and a whole host of psychic rewards. Never regret your past. Rather, embrace it as the teacher that it is.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari




“For the Present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters




  “You see, the problem in life isn't in receiving answers. The problem is in identifying your current questions. Once you get the questions right, the answers always come.”
― James Redfield, The Celestine Prophecy

“Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist




“It's not what you will get out of the books that is so enriching - it is what the books will get out of you that will ultimately change your life”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari




“It's the thinking that gets you killed.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven




“The mind is like any other muscle in your body. Use it or lose it.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold his Ferrari

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea




“I don't want to die without any scars.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club




“There is for a man two things in life that are very important, head and shoulders above everything else. Find work you like, and find someone to live with you like. Very few people get both.”
― Cormac McCarthy,The Road




“The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea




“You must learn to control your impulses.A sword wants to be used. It wants to draw blood. That is why it was forged, and it has no other purpose in the world. If you do not control it, then it will control you.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things

“You have to make the good out of the bad because that is all you have got to make it out of.”
― Robert Penn Warren, All the King's Men




"Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some."
— Charles Dickens (A Christmas Carol and Other Christmas Writings)




“If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“You must always know what it is that you want.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“The more you defend a lie, the angrier you become.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day




“The truth of God's love is not that He allows bad things to happen, it's his promise that he will be there with us--when they do.”
― Janette Oke, Love Comes Softly




“While what you say to others is important, even more important is what you say to yourself.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari





“People are afraid to pursue their most important dreams, because they feel that they don't deserve them, or that they'll be unable to achieve them.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

“Courage is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means at the point of highest reality. ”
― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters




 “Live and act within the limit of your knowledge and keep expanding it to the limit of your life.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“We are born into this world unarmed - our mind is our only weapon.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“Life has to end. Love doesn't.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

 “Take nothing on its looks; take everything on evidence. There's no better rule.”
― Charles Dickens, Great Expectations





“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote




“But how will I know who my Soulmate is?” Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life.
By taking risks’ she said to Brida. ‘ By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in you search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.”
― Paulo Coelho, Brida




 “People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I’ve learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one’s reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one’s master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person’s view requires to be faked…The man who lies to the world, is the world’s slave from then on…There are no white lies, there is only the blackest of destruction, and a white lie is the blackest of all.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"You must take life the way it comes at you and make the best of it."
— Yann Martel (Life of Pi)





“It's up to brave hearts, sir, to be patient when things are going badly, as well as being happy when they're going well ... For I've heard that what they call fortune is a flighty woman who drinks too much, and, what's more, she's blind, so she can't see what she's doing, and she doesn't know who she's knocking over or who she's raising up.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote





 “when man was put into the garden of eden, he was put there with the idea that he should work the land; and this proves that man was not born to be idle.”
― Voltaire, Candide




“How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“There is neither happiness nor unhappiness in this world; there is only the comparison of one state with another. Only a man who has felt ultimate despair is capable of feeling ultimate bliss. It is necessary to have wished for death in order to know how good it is to live.....the sum of all human wisdom will be contained in these two words: Wait and Hope.”
― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo





“I have always thirsted for knowledge, I have always been full of questions.”
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha




 “The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov




“The secret is here in the present. If you pay attention to the present, you can improve upon it. And, if you improve on the present, what comes later will also be better."
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist 

“One must lose one's life to find it. Woman can best refind herself by losing herself in some kind of creative activity of her own.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea




“Calm —indeed the calmest— reflection might be better than the most confused decisions”
― Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis




 “Everything passes, only truth remains.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.”
― Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner

 “Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure...”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance




“But hell, you've gotta work with what you've got.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84




“Here's another thing to remember: hope keeps you alive. Even when you're dead, it's the only thing that keeps you alive.”
― Lauren Oliver, Before I Fall




“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

“Power, wrongly used, defeats the oppressor as well as the oppressed.”
― Wally Lamb, I Know This Much Is True




“Where envy reigns virtue can't exist, and generosity doesn't go with meanness.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote




 “Know that soft is stronger than hard, water stronger than rock, love stronger than force."
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“Here is a commandment for you: seek happiness in sorrow. Work, work tirelessly.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov




“In the midst of your failure, you were slowly building the life that you wanted anyway”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“So this is how a person can come to despise himself ― knowing he's doing the wrong thing and not being able to stop.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon




“I usually learn more from the situations I hate than the ones I love.”
― Wally Lamb, She's Come Undone




“How else do people find happiness except in fulfilling their duty?"
There can be no happiness without fairness," she said. "Remember that, Om - don't let anyone tell you otherwise.”
― Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

The greatest secret of life is that we find exactly what we're looking for. In spite of what happens to us, ultimately we decide whether our lives are good or bad, ugly or beautiful.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Walk





“It doesn't matter what other people say about you. What is important is what you say to yourself. Do not be concerned with the judgement of others as long as you know what you are doing is according to conscience and you heart. Never be ashamed of doing that which is right; decide on what you think is good and then stick to it.”
― Robin S. Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari





 “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist





“For one thing, telling a lie is like eating peanuts. One leads to another. In no time at all, you’ve gone through a bagful.” He rinsed the razor under the tap. “Worst of all, you become a slave to something that isn’t real.”
― Jan Karon, At Home in Mitford

“Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Walk





“The greatest madness a man can be guilty of in this life, is to let himself die outright, without being slain by any person whatever, or destroyed by any other weapon than the hands of melancholy”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote




“Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis.”
― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon




“There is a price to be paid for everything, and it is a good idea to find out that price before you make the agreement.”
― John Connolly, The Book of Lost Things




" we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before--more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle."
— Charles Dickens (Great Expectations)

“Heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven




“I find there is a quality to being alone that is incredibly precious. Life rushes back into the void, richer, more vivid, fuller than before.”
― Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea




“Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged




“Only after disaster can we be resurrected. It's only after you've lost everything that you're free to do anything. Nothing is static, everything is evolving, everything is falling apart.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club




“One must fight to get to the top, especially if one starts at the bottom.”
― Franz Kafka, The Castle



“Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade—with reason, not force, as their final arbiter—it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability—and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?”
― Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged