Sources+of+Inspiration

=__**Some Examples of Inspirational Quotes, Poems, and Excerpts**__= **Best Inspirational Stories and Articles:** [|A Strong Dad Gives All to his Crippled Son - A Short, Deeply Inspirational Story] [|The Cab Ride I'll Never Forget: Her Last Journey Down Memory Lane] [|Don't Judge a Book by its Cover] [|A Deeply Inspirational Near-Death Experience] [|HeartMath Improves Lives of Top Industry Managers With a Change of Heart] [|Something For Stevie - Revealing the Beauty of Human Nature] [|Academic Mayor Transforms Bogotá] [|The Christmas Truce - Inspirational Christmas Story] [|A Little Boy's Last Wish - Inspirational Story of the Beginning of the Make-A-Wish Foundation] For a resource with even more inspirational texts click [|here.]

SOME INSPIRING QUOTES "We must build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear." //~Martin Luther King, Jr.//

"The world cares very little about what a man or woman knows; it is what a man or woman is able to do that counts." //~Booker T. Washington//

"Why not upset the apple cart? If you don't, the apples will rot anyway." //~Frank A. Clark//

"In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing. The worst thing you can do is nothing." //~Theodore Roosevelt//

“People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” //~Joseph Campbell//

**SOME INSPIRATIONAL POETRY** What lies behind us, and what lies before us are tiny matters, compared to what lies within us. //-Ralph Waldo Emerson-// **__No Struggle, No Progress__** ~F//rederick Douglass, 1857// The whole history of progress of human liberty Shows that all concessions Yet made to her august claims Have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle There is no progress.

Those who profess to favor freedom, And yet deprecate agitation, Are men [and women] who want crops Without plowing up the ground, They want rain Without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean Without the awful roar of its waters. This struggle may be a moral one; Or it may be a physical one; Or it may be both moral and physical; But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what any people Will quietly submit to And you have found the exact measure Of injustice and wrong Which will be imposed upon them, And these will continue till they are resisted. . . The limits. . . are prescribed By the endurance Of those whom. . [are] oppress[ed].

Men [and Women] may not get all they pay for in this world, but they pay for all they get. If we ever get free from the oppressions and wrong heaped on us, we must pay for their removal. We must do this by labor, by suffering, by sacrifice, and if needs be by our lives and the lives of others

You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I'll rise. Does my sassiness upset you? why are you beset with gloom? 'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I'll rise. Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops. Weakened by my soulful cries. Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines Diggin' in my own backyard. You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I'll rise. Does my sexiness upset you? does it come as a surprise That I dance like I've got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs? Out of the huts of history's shame I rise Up from a past that's rooted in pain I rise I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise
 * __Still I Rise__** ~ //Maya Angelou//

I rise I rise

Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find, me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.
 * __Invictus__** ~//William Ernest Henley//