Who doesn’t love a good, inspirational quote? I, myself, am borderline obsessed. Just kidding. It’s much worse than that. I’d probably marry a quote if given the opportunity. That was a weird analogy. It’s late, let’s pretend like I never said that, k? 😉 But really, I love how deep a quote can cut you, uplift you, and inspire you. Some quotes have made me feel much less alone in the world — poetic reminders that others feel the same things as I do, deep down. Others are funny, dry, and rough — yet they still sting (in a good way) because they remind us of things we’re unable to voice ourselves. Since junior high, I’ve been collecting quotes in Word documents, notebooks, and even on this blog. Today, I thought we’d keep things simple and share some of our favorites. Below, you can read some that have touched me lately. I’d also LOVE to know which ones mean something to you, too. Feel free to share them in the comments below — let’s brew some inspiration together today! Come back later to read what everyone shared and gush about the beauty of words.

+ “Nothing has transformed my life more than realizing it’s a waste of time to evaluate my worthiness by weighing the reaction of the people in the stands.”  ― Brene Brown

+ “Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” ― Ira Glass

+ “You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts. You have to pay your own electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.” – Dear Sugar, The Rumpus

+ “Why do we wrestle with our fears? Do we all crave security, a promise from the universe that everything is good and always will be? The truth is – there is no such thing as security. Or better said, the only real security that exists is the knowledge that whatever comes, you will find the strength to deal with it.” ― Stephanie Levy

+ “The boy was beginning to understand that intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul into the universal current of life, where the histories of all people are connected, and we are able to know everything, because it’s all written there.” ― Paulo Coelho

+ “When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much.” ― Jonathan Safran Foer

+ “In a sense, it is the coming back, the return, which gives meaning to the going forth. We really don’t know where we’ve been until we come back to where we were – only where we were may not be as it was because of who we’ve become, which, after all, is why we left.”

+ “In a sense, each of us is an island. In another sense, however, we are all one. For though islands appear separate, and may even be situated at great distances from one another, they are only extrusions of the same planet, earth.” ― J. Donald Walters

What are your favorite quotes? Share ’em below and peruse everyone else’s favorites to get some inspiration for your day — then USE it! 🙂

p.s. Here is a collection of some of my other, all-time favorites (it’s long!). 

p.p.s. My favorite quotes from Harry Potter.

p.p.p.s. Creative ways to display quotes.