Words have the power to alter thinking. A good quote can redirect us towards a dream, help calm some internal friction or even inspire a new behaviour. These 25 quotes have resonated with me. Maybe they’ll work for you too.

“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” – Allen Ginsberg

“Barn’s burnt down – now I can see the moon.” – Mizuta Masahide

“I can change the story. I am the story.” – Jeanette Winterson (from The Powerbook)

“Life’s journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting ‘Holy shit…what a ride!’” – Hunter S. Thompson

“There is nothing permanent except change.” – Herodotus

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Ah come on, these streams of light are not so subtle. All along the ditch, signs of life in sinking puddles!” – Sarah Harmer (from Dandelions in Bullet Holes)

“I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion” – Jack Kerouac

“Take one step to the side and it’s all absurd.” – Leonard Cohen (from Beautiful Losers)

“Just trust yourself, then you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll still get run over if you just sit there.” – Will Rogers

“You cannot prevent the birds of sorrow from flying over your head, but you can prevent them from building a nest in your hair.” – Chinese Proverb

“Find God — he isn’t hiding from you, you’re hiding from him.” – Paramahansa Yogananda

“Don’t waste your time on jealousy, sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.” – Mary Schmich

“I am but a student… a willing student.” – Rosemary Altea

“I just wish people would realize that anything’s possible if you try; dreams are made possible if you try.” – Terry Fox

“Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.” – Anaïs Nin

“No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool. Writers, alas, have to be fools in public, while the rest of the human race can cover its tracks.” – Erica Jong

“Forgiveness is the most important thing. We all have to forgive what was done to us – the Irish people have to forgive. The African people. The Jewish people. We all have to forgive and understand the only way to stop the cycle of hate and abuse is not to allow yourself to get caught in it.” – Sinéad O’Connor

‎”And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?” – Kahlil Gibran

“Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected” – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

“To know what you prefer instead of humbly saying “Amen” to what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your soul alive.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.” – Oscar Wilde

“Good clothes open all doors.” – Thomas Fuller

“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.” – Rumi