September 12, 2025
Quotations illuminate our lives. We all know them, we all read them, but I’m not sure how much we think about them. I know they played a pivotal part in my life. Whenever I found myself vexed or uncertain, depressed or concerned, I often found just the right piece of advice or solace from a simple quotation.
And so I hope to illustrate how to find quotations that help, and how they can enhance and illuminate your own life. In that we’ll go into a little bit about what makes great quotation.
Here is Winston Churchill.
“There is no finer investment for any community than putting milk into babies.”
In ten words, Churchill manages to distill the basic role of government and communal living. Those ten words point that we should look to the future, should do what we can to raise healthy citizens as a primary task.
Because without those babies growing into healthy adults, there is no future. In a time when we are all somewhat torn about government and the role of our communities, it is a thought like this that can help crystallize and distill for us the really important things to consider. Can help lift uncertainty and confusion. Taking care of the most vulnerable among us.
“If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.”
Mother Teresa
How often have you found yourself happy, only to have people tear you down and attempt make you feel guilty/unworthy/badly about it. Steal your happiness. And this of course creates self-doubt and you wonder…should I even be happy? Perhaps my gratitude is ingratitude?
And yet this most gentle and loving of all human beings, puts it in perspective for us. The purpose of life indeed is to be happy. And if you do so without unfairly harming other people, ignore them. It has been my experience, that people expressing negativity about your happiness are actually making more of a statement about the emptiness of their own lives.
“I do the very best I know how. The very best I can. And I mean to keep on doing so until the end.”
Abraham Lincoln
In a few words, he shows us how to live. How to comport ourselves. He distills a complex myriad of thoughts and emotions into one simple thought. Do and be the best you can be and keep on doing that. It is your life’s goal. And if you can, all good things can come from that.
What makes a good quotation? Why are some endlessly repeated and others fall by the wayside? After all, quotations tend to be excerpts lifted from other written work. A sentence or a part of a sentence from a larger work.
I found that great quotations have some characteristics they share. Let’s look at some of those now.
The author tends to be famous, but at least someone who has been through an experience giving their thought credibility. Any person who has endured tragedy, great disappointment, and their opposites…great success, elation, have all experienced things we can learn from vicariously. They lived it, and impart to us what they learned from it. But more, they tend to be thoughtful and they gather experience and learn, connect dots, and come to conclusions:
“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”
Plato
Then there are those who simply impart the wisdom of a long life engaged in great works:
“Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living; The world owes you nothing, it was here first.”
Mark Twain
Sometimes, they observe. Often from a place close to centers of power but they themselves do not wield it…observers. And draw conclusions from what they see:
“A leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don’t necessarily want to go but ought to be.”
Rosalyn Carter
But from the leaders, the very great who have come down through the ages we get clarity of thought:
“It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.”
Marcus Aurelius (Note my rule…make memories not regrets).
And then it is sometimes echoed and repeated in a different way:
“Death is nothing, but to live defeated is to die every day.”
Napoleon Bonaparte
We can learn from what the dead give us:
“It is only the inspiration of those who die that makes those who live realize what constitutes a useful life.”
Will Rogers
Bartlett’s used to be the source for quotations, but that has become somewhat dated. But there are no shortages of good sources. Let me offer two I use.
If you spend your time with books and literary interests, you need to sign up for www.goodreads.com. No charge, tons of good stuff…you’ll see once you’re in there. But you can search for quotations by author or subject or whatever and you will get a lot.
Another site that I use is Brainy Quote. www.brainyquote.com. There is a free app.Not only does it have hundreds of good quotations, but its easy to format them into something pleasant to send to someone else. Like so:
I tend to read quotations every day, but it is not a regimen or some such thing. I just find them fun and uplifting and it becomes part of my day.
I’ve often felt that life can be a lot easier if you just take advice from wise people who’ve been there before, who’ve perhaps faced what you’re facing.
Here you go…
Thoughts, questions, or reflections? I’d love to hear them. You can reach me anytime at anthony@workingprofit.com
