Hat tip to author and blogger, Tsh Oxenreider, for the Commonplace Notebook idea. This is my own digital collection of inspiring and meaningful quotations about intentional living, faith, achievement, work, life, and more.
Please check back as I’ll continue to update this page…
Comparison is the thief of joy.
T. Roosevelt
If you really want something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.
Jim Rohn
There are no great acts, only small acts done with great love.
Mother Theresa
An opened heart is boundless; that is, unconditional in its scope. Once we are awakened to love as the lifelong purpose of our hearts, then feeling love for all the world becomes the meaning—and greatest joy—of living.
David Richo
To laugh often and much: To win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children, to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others, to leave the world a bit better whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Don’t live the same year 75 times and call it a life.
Robin Sharma
It is better to be at the bottom of the ladder you want to climb than at the top of the one you don’t.
Stephen Kellogg
The only person you should try to be better than, is the person you were yesterday.
You will never influence the world by trying to be like it.
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.
We rise by lifting others.
Robert Ingersall
Do not conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Romans 2
Live less out of habit, more out of intention.
Intentional Travelers
It is not hard to make a decision once you know what your values are.
Roy Disney
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
As I read the birth stories about Jesus, I cannot help but conclude that though the world may be tilted toward the rich and powerful, God is tilted toward the underdog.
Philip Yancey
The best is yet to come.
Gratitude turns what we have into enough.
In the world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world.
John 16:33
Think progress, not perfection.
Ryan Holiday
Be who you were created to be, and you will set the world on fire.
St. Catherine of Siena
There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man; true nobility is being superior to your former self.
Ernest Hemingway
My goal is no longer to get more done, but rather to have less to do.
Francine Jay
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.
V. Havel
Ring the bells that still can ring,
Leonard Cohen
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.
I love the thing that I most wish had not happened.
Stephen Colbert
Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: You are a part of me I do not yet know. Wonder is the wellspring for love. Who we wonder about determines whose stories we hear and whose joy and pain we share. Those we grieve with, those we sit with and weep with, are ultimately those we organize with and advocate for.
Valarie Kaur
Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.
Marie Curie
You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
C.S. Lewis
The human individual lives usually far within his limits; he possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to use. He energizes below his maximum, and he behaves below his optimum.
William James
Fall seven. Rise eight.
Japanese proverb
Too many people spend money they have not earned to buy things they do not want to impress people they do not like.
Will Smith
We get one story, you and I, and one story alone…It would be a crime not to venture out, wouldn’t it? It might be time for you to go. It might be time to change, to shine out.
Donald Miller
They deem me mad because I will not sell my days for gold; and I deem them mad because they think my days have a price.
Kkalil Gibran
If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito.
Dalai Lama
Strength doesn’t reside in having never been broken, but in the courage required to grow strong in the broken places.
Carine McCandless
The most dangerous risk of all – the risk of spending your life not doing what you want on the bet you can buy yourself the freedom to do it later.
Randy Komisar
Leave the road, take the trails.
Pythagore
Your mind is a garden. Your thoughts are the seeds. You can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.
Nobody “conquers” a mountain.
Tyler Tervooren
Some day, you will die. And the mountain will still be there.
Nobody conquers a nation.
Some day, culture will shift, and yours will be lost.
Nobody conquers the sea.
Given enough meetings, the sea will always claim victory.
The best you can hope to do is conquer your own fears. And that, alone, is a worthy enough goal.
He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.
Friedrich Nietzsche
God remembers everything violence forgets.
David Dark
A dead thing can go with the stream, but only a living thing can go against it.
G.K. Chesterton
To do the useful thing, to say the courageous thing, to contemplate the beautiful thing: that is enough for one man’s life.
T.S. Eliot
Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.
Prentis Hemphill
Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for.
Epicurus
A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
Thoreau
Attitude is the difference between an ordeal and an adventure.
Simply Intentional 
I have that Teddy Roosevelt quote outside my classroom door and talk about it all the time with students. It’s great for reminding students that their very best must be good enough and that our joy should not depend on others.