If you're like me, you use the start of a new year to set intentions and tap into the inspiration needed to realize those intentions. But what about the middle of the year? What about the time when that energy fades while your head is down and you're doing the work? What do you do then?

The middle of the year is a great time to get inspired again. Yes, the warm weather brings energy and optimism--but you also need to recharge the internal motivation that keeps you going. Highly successful people know how to go back to the well of motivation.

I've compiled a list of inspiring quotes that should spark your energy generator, inspire you, and help you get ready for the second half of the year.

Quotes

  1. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life." --Steve Jobs
  2. "You have the capacity to leave a lasting impact and indelible impression upon this world.... Claim the sacred spaces of your minds, nurture and cultivate a vision of fulfillment, and move toward that destiny with patience, perseverance, and prayer."  --Mahershala Ali
  3. "Nothing will work unless you do." --Maya Angelou
  4. "Don't let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning." --Robert Kiyosaki
  5. "The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny." --Albert Ellis
  6. "If you don't value your time, neither will others. Stop giving away your time and talents. Value what you know and start charging for it." --Kim Garst
  7. "Embrace what you don't know, especially in the beginning, because what you don't know can become your greatest asset. It ensures that you will absolutely be doing things different from everybody else." --Sara Blakely
  8. "Don't give up. Don't ever give up." --Jimmy Valvano
  9. "I've missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I've been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." --Michael Jordan
  10. "What other people label or might try to call failure I have learned is just God's way of pointing you in a new direction." --Oprah Winfrey
  11. "From what we get, we can make a living; what we give, however, makes a life."  --Arthur Ashe
  12. "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening the ax." - -Abraham Lincoln
  13. "I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took an excuse." --Florence Nightingale
  14. "Don't wait. The time will never be just right." --Napoleon Hill
  15. "Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek." --Barack Obama
  16. "There's a tremendous bias against taking risks. Everyone is trying to optimize their ass-covering." --Elon Musk
  17. "Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure." --Marianne Williamson
  18. "I am learning to understand rather than immediately judge or to be judged. I cannot blindly follow the crowd and accept their approach. I will not allow myself to indulge in the usual manipulating game of role creation. Fortunately for me, my self-knowledge has transcended that and I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. To be certain, every day there can be a revelation or a new discovery. I treasure the memory of the past misfortunes. It has added more to my bank of fortitude." --Bruce Lee
  19. "Your work is discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it." --attributed to theBuddha
  20. "Happiness is not something you postpone for the future; it is something you design for the present." --Jim Rohn
  21. "Fearlessness is like a muscle. I know from my own life that the more I exercise it, the more natural it becomes to not let my fears run me." --Arianna Huffington
  22. "Never be ashamed! There's some who will hold it against you, but they are not worth bothering with." --J.K. Rowling
  23. "When you have a dream, you've got to grab it and never let go." --Carol Burnett
  24. "In real life, the act of creation is defying death. I think it's just that dumb and simple." --Rick Owens
  25. "If you truly love life, don't waste time, because time is what life is made of." --Bruce Lee
  26. "Success is empty if you arrive at the finish line alone. The best reward is to get there surrounded by winners." --Howard Schultz
  27. "Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them." --Marcus Aurelius
  28. "In the real world, the smartest people are people who make mistakes and learn. In school, the smartest people don't make mistakes." --Robert Kiyosaki
  29. "If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else, it will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." --Bruce Lee
  30. "Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --H. Jackson Brown's mother
  31. "Like the wind that carries one ship east and another west, the law of autosuggestion will lift you up or pull you down according to the way that you set your sails of thought." --Napoleon Hill