22 Quotes From Books That Will Inspire You

On gray, rainy days, when you need a bit of inspiration even to get out of bed in the morning, there’s no better place to turn than a book. Authors tend to be pretty nifty with words, after all, so when they’ve got something to say, they know how to say it beautifully. Reading the perfect passage from a book at the perfect time can get you through almost anything life throws at you — whether you find a quote that makes you feel grateful when things have been going wrong, or a line that makes you feel empowered when life seems hopeless. And those times do come.

In the right books, you’ll find quotes about love, quotes about sex, quotes about nature — and quotes that teach you about your own life. These 22 quotes do exactly that: They take you by the hand and guide you through your horrible rainy morning, all the way to the light at the end of the tunnel. (Aren’t books clever?!)

So when you’re struggling to see the bright side, and when all you want to do is curl up and cry — open up one of these beautiful books and let the magic of literature inspire you.

1. “I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”

— Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

2. "Each new hour holds new chances / For new beginnings. Do not be wedded forever / To fear"

— Maya Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning

3. “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”

— Neil Gaiman, Coraline

4. “And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

— Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

5. “No black woman writer in this culture can write “too much.” Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much.’”

— bell hooks, Remembered Rapture

6. “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.”

— Anne Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank

7. “‘What day is it?’, asked Winnie the Pooh. ‘It’s today,’ squeaked Piglet. ‘My favorite day,’ said Pooh.”

— A. A. Milne, The Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

8. “You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. And YOU are the one who'll decide where to go...”

— Dr. Seuss, Oh, The Places You'll Go

9. “You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.”

— Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

10. “What is the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?”

— John Green, An Abundance of Katherines

11. "The impatient idealist says: 'Give me a place to stand and I shall move the earth.' But such a place does not exist. We all have to stand on the earth itself and go with her at her pace."

— Chinua Achebe, No Longer at Ease

12. "After all, tomorrow is another day."

— Margaret Mitchell, Gone with the Wind

13. "I have been bent and broken, but — I hope — into a better shape."

— Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

14. "Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction."

— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars

15. "I don’t think that there are any limits to how excellent we could make life seem."

— Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

16. "I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be."

— Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul

17. “Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”

— L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

18. “Accept who you are; and revel in it.”

— Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

19. “And though she be but little, she is fierce.”

— William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

20. “What’s past is prologue.”

— William Shakespeare, The Tempest

21. “There is a sense in which we are all each other’s consequences.”

— Wallace Stegner, All the Little Live Things

22. "Miracles happen all the time. We're here, aren't we?"

— Marilyn Nelson, Abba Jacob and Miracles

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