BIG UGLY
WELL OF INSPIRATION

It is my hope that the quotations cited below will challenge and inspire you. It is my fervent belief that you are capable of achieving far more than anyone has ever expected of you. I encourage you to endeavor to make your dreams real. The journey is the reward.

The 'Big Ugly Well of Inspiration' is a living, evolving document... Please feel free to email mike@bigugly.com with your thoughts, experiences, insights and contributions.

A brief note on language bias: The English language has long suffered from an insidious and pervasive bias against the fairer sex.

Several authors quoted below (particularly Thoreau!) fall victim to this bias. I believe this gender bias has resulted in harmful consequences for humanity and has served to disempower women. Nevertheless, there are many enri ching insights from which to draw inspiration.

Life is made of millions of moments, but we live only one of these moments at a time. As we begin to change this moment, we begin to change our lives.
-- Trinidad Hunt

Time spent laughing is time spent with the gods.
-- Japanese proverb

Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.
-- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
-- Ann Frank (1929-1945, German Jewish Refugee, Diarist)

"Judge not your enemy even though he may do deeds of evil, for somewhere in him there may be something redemptive. It is up to you to find that redemptive place and bring him to your cause."
-- Martin Luther King jr.

Life is not a spectator sport... If you're going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you¹re wasting your life.
-- Mickey Mantle

I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.
-- Henry David Thoreau

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestioned ability of a man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Live each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Men are born to succeed, not fail.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Always do what you are afraid to do.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Diligence is the mother of good luck.
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Live with passion!
-- Tony Robbins

Do or do not. There is no try.
-- Yoda

Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.
-- George S. Patton, General (1885-1945)

Don't be afraid to give up the good for the great.
-- Kenny Rogers

Find out what you like doing best and get someone to pay you for doing it.
-- Katherine Whitehorn

I could not have gone through the awful wretched mess of life without having left a stain upon the silence.
-- Samuel Beckett

Fortune favors the brave.
-- Terence

He that would have the fruit must climb the tree.
-- Thomas Fuller, M.D.

Come forth Lazarus! And he came fifth and he lost the job.
-- James Joyce

I like thinking big. If you're going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big.
-- Donald Trump

If you want to sing out, sing out, and if you want to be free, be free, 'cause there's a million ways to be, you know that there are...
-- Cat Stevens

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.
-- Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe

Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door.
-- Emily Dickinson

Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882)

Nothing is difficult to those who have the will.
-- Dutch Poet's Society

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.
-- Margaret Mead

One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his great surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't do.
-- Henry Ford (1863-1947)

Life cannot be written. Life can only be lived.
-- Oscar Wilde

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
-- Alan Kay

The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing that you will make one.
-- Ellen Hubbard

There was never a genius without a tincture of madness.
-- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)

Some people live and learn. Me, I just live.
-- Tony Lahaina

Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.
-- Helen Keller

Victory belongs to the most persevering.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

We are not in a position in which we have nothing to work with. We already have capacities, talents, direction, missions, callings.
-- Abraham Maslow

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)