Inspirational Life Quotes…

The reason I have chosen to create a site about inspirational life quotes is that just recently I have been thinking about how really important they are. In fact, looking back over my own life I came to see that just before I made a major shift, change or decision I was deeply influenced by an inspirational life quote or saying. And it occurred to me that the right words, showing up at the right time, can and do change lives.

Here is an example. Many years ago I visited our local movie house to watch the just released film “Dead Poet’s Society”. I sat in the very back row, munching on my soft, buttered popcorn totally unaware that my life was about to change forever.

The movie Dead Poets Society is set in 1959 at a conservative and autocratic boys prep school. It tells the story of an English teacher named John Keating, brilliantly played by Robin Williams, who inspires his students to change their lives of conformity through his amazing and unique teaching of poetry and literature.

There was a very special scene in this film, where Robin Williams said something that made me gasp, bolt upright in my seat, fixed spellbound on his words, which were…

“We don’t read and write poetry because it is cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”

I remember I was so stunned that I spilled what was left of my popcorn all over the floor. You see, up until this point I had been working in my day job, artfully playing the career game, striving diligently to climb the corporate ladder, while pursuing my dream of becoming an author on the weekends. I spent Saturday afternoons in local coffee shops sipping on lattes and writing inspiring poems, uplifting articles and spiritual memoirs. On Sundays, I would record what I had written and listen to it on my way to and from the office during the business week.

I realized in that split second, in that movie theatre, on that auspicious night, that I had it all wrong. I was putting the focus of my life in the wrong place. I returned the next evening to watch this film again and I sat there in that same seat, waiting anxiously to hear those most inspiring words again. They literally washed over me as I crouched there in the dark, in utter joy and delight with tears streaming down my face.

And the rest as they say is history. I left my corporate position in a telecommunications company to go after my dream.

And so it is my hope here that as this blog expands, you find some inspirational life quotes and motivational sayings that may change or alter your life in some small or lofty way.

If you have a story or example of this or even just some favorite life qoutes or sayings, please share with us in the comments section below. Thank you.