Discover the best words of encouragement to use in your writing by reading our list of inspiring words. Elevate your writing and expand your vocabulary today!
Words of encouragement inspire readers and empower writers. Writers can become that driving force — if they learn to use handpicked words. Encouragement has various guises. You might encounter a wondrous mixture of gestures to this effect, verbal ones not being the least significant.
However, motivation (as individual an act as it may appear at first glance) is rooted in unconscious stereotypes human evolution has been perfecting since time immemorial. Subtleties take shape in cultural nuances; sadly, we often lack the knowledge to grasp them. If you’re interested in this, you’ll love our list of motivational words.
Psychologists have been theorizing about manifestations of enthusiasm for a long time, with no final conclusions whatsoever. For the sake of the argument, we’ll stick to one theory:
“Albert Bandura’s (1997) seminal theory on self-efficacy includes four sources of self-efficacy, one of which is verbal persuasion. Verbal persuasion (also known as social persuasion) refers to what people say to others regarding their belief about what others can or cannot do and can strengthen or dampen others’ beliefs about their capabilities.”
Y. Joel Wong
Contents
- What Are Words of Encouragement?
- Words of Encouragement Printable
- Words of Encouragement from Ancient Greece and Rome
- Words of Encouragement From the Oldest Civilizations: the Sinosphere and India
- Literary Words of Encouragement
- Words of Encouragement From Prominent Originators
- Small Minds Think Alike: Words of Encouragement for the Digital Age
- Encouragement With Style: Use Idioms!
- Author
What Are Words of Encouragement?
Any upbeat word or phrase that makes us feel better is ultimately encouraging. Still, different cultures have different ideas of what constitutes encouragement. If you asked a modern American, you might get an answer like “You’ve got this!” This phrase signifies individual achievements.
By contrast, Chinese culture cherishes the collective approach. Traditional proverbs underlining perseverance are common. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” is a powerful saying that has made it across the continents.
“It’s better to fix what you have than wait to get what you don’t have” is an omnipresent Arab proverb. Russians say that “everything is good in its time,” and the Japanese say that “the most important time in life is always the present.” Cultural diversity is a treasure trove indeed!
We bet we can conjure a fair share of words in English that can motivate people from different cultures. You might also be interested in our homophones word list.
Words of Encouragement Printable
| Accept | Find | Make hay while the sun shines |
| Accomplish | Fingers crossed | Mindfulness |
| Achieve | Flourish | Motivation |
| Act | Focused | Never say die |
| Adapt | Follow your dreams | Noble |
| Admiration | Fulfill | Nurture |
| Adventure | Get ahead | Off to a great start |
| Advice | Get the ball rolling | On cloud nine |
| Ambitious | Give (something) a shot | Optimistic |
| Attain | Go the extra mile | Overcome |
| Attractive | Go-getter | Passionate |
| Be home and dry | Goodness | Path |
| Be over the moon | Gratitude | Patience |
| Beauty | Greatness | Peaceful |
| Begin | Grin from ear to ear | Perfection |
| Believe | Hang in there | Perseverance |
| Belong | Hang on | Perspective |
| Blessed | Happiness | Proud |
| Bliss | Have the world at one’s feet | Put one’s heart (and soul) into something |
| Booming | Heart | Quality |
| Bounce off the walls | Heavy hitter | Rare |
| By all means | Honesty | Reflect |
| Change | Honor | Right |
| Classy | Hope | Role model |
| Confidence | Humility | Sail |
| Consent | Imagine | Satisfying |
| Cool as a cucumber | Improve | Seriousness |
| Count | In full sail | Skillful |
| Courage | Ineffable | Spirit |
| Creative | Inspire | Splendid |
| Creativity | Invention | Strength |
| Cross | Joyful | Strike |
| Dark horse | Jumping for joy | Strive |
| Decide | Keep up | Success |
| Desire | Kindness | Swimmingly |
| Determination | Know | Take it/something one day at a time |
| Do | Know (oneself) | Talent |
| Do the impossible | Knowledge | There’s no time like the present |
| Dream | Larger than life | Thrive |
| Dream | Laugh | Transform |
| Eager | Lead | Try |
| Eager beaver | Learn | Turn over a new leaf |
| Earnest | Life | Value |
| enthusiasm | Lift up | Vanquish |
| Esteem | Light | Versatile |
| Excellence | Light at the end of the tunnel | Wish |
| Excitement | Live | With bells on |
| Exhilaration | Look on the bright side | With flying colors |
| Faithful | Love | Wonder |
| Fate | Magic | The sky’s the limit |
Words of Encouragement from Ancient Greece and Rome
Ancient Greece left us with a philosophical legacy that is difficult to beat. Let’s face it: Romans had their moments, too! Aqueducts, anyone? That’s why it’s only fair to start with their wisdom. Check out our list of pretty words.
- Desire
Always desire to learn something useful. (Sophocles)
- Fate
Fate guides the willing but drags the unwilling. (Cleanthes)
- Hope
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)
- Learn
Smart people learn from everything and everyone, average people from their experiences, and stupid people already have all the answers. (Socrates)
- Life
Life is long if you know how to use it. (Seneca)
- Noble
For a man to conquer himself is the first and noblest of all victories. (Plato)
- Perspective
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth. (Marcus Aurelius)
- Quality
Quality is not an act, it is a habit. (Aristotle)
9. Rare
All excellent things are as difficult as they are rare. (Spinoza)
10. Strength
God always strives together with those who strive. (Aeschylus)
- Strive
You have power over your mind — not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength. (Marcus Aurelius)
Words of Encouragement From the Oldest Civilizations: the Sinosphere and India
The Chinese believe that Dao (“The Way”) is the universe’s natural order. Cultivating the mind to become “a man of culture” must harmonize with the natural order. Similarly, Indian religions (Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, and Jainism) deem nirvana the ultimate liberation from the cycle of birth and rebirth. These two oldest surviving cultures have influenced Asian countries’ faith through centuries.
However, indigenous religions still surface here and there (e.g., Japanese Shintō). From this vantage point, encouragement is a different concept altogether. Let’s see what these conformist societies have to say about the matter.
- Accomplished
Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. (Laozi)
- Change
You are not here to change the world. The world is here to change you. (Shantideva)
- Cross
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. (Rabindranath Tagore)
- Excellence
The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential…these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence. (Confucius)
- Honor
You may abandon your own body, but you must preserve your honor. (Miyamoto Musashi)
- Kindness
Never by hatred is hatred appeased, but it is appeased by kindness. This is an eternal truth. (Buddha)
- Know
Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know. (Laozi)
- Know oneself
If you know the enemy and you know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. (Laozi)
- Knowledge
Share your knowledge. It is a way to achieve immortality. (Dalai Lama)
- Path
The obstacle is the path. (Zen proverb)
- Perfection
Perfection is the willingness to be imperfect. (Laozi)
- Right
Who you are is always right. (Deng Ming-Dao)
- Spirit
Though my body may decay on the island of Ezo, my spirit guards my lord in the East. (Hijikata Toshizō)
- Wish
Even the wishes of an ant reach to heaven. (Shintō proverb)
Literary Words of Encouragement
If you think it’s difficult to beat ancient wisdom, think about creative souls from all geographies who have indebted the world with their elusive wit. If you’re a fan of romance, you may find some encouragement in our round-up of famous poems about love.
However, we’re talking about prominent literature geniuses, the likes of whom we can only hope to glimpse in the future. Here are some of their notable words of encouragement, which transcend time and language barriers.
- Adapt
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. (George Bernard Shaw)
- Admiration
There is innocence in admiration: it occurs in one who has not yet realized that they might one day be admired.” (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche)
- Advice
She generally gave herself very good advice, though she very seldom followed it. (Lewis Carroll)
- Attain
To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness. (Edgar Allan Poe)
- Beauty
There’s more beauty in truth, even if it is dreadful beauty. (John Steinbeck)
- Begin
To begin, begin. (William Wordsworth)
- Blessed
Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken. (Albert Camus)
- Courage
I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. (Harper Lee)
- Creative
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others. (Ayn Rand)
- Decide
All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us. (J.R.R. Tolkien)
- Do
How do you know you’re going to do something until you do it? (J. D. Salinger)
- Excitement
In the first few seconds, an aching sadness wrenched his heart, but it soon gave way to a feeling of sweet disquiet, the excitement of gypsy wanderlust. (Mikhail Bulgakov)
- Get ahead
The secret of getting ahead is getting started. (Mark Twain)
- Goodness
It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers. (Arthur Conan Doyle)
- Happiness
He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness. (Alexandre Dumas)
- Heart
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye. (Antoine de Saint-Exupéry)
- Honesty
No legacy is so rich as honesty. (William Shakespeare)
- Laugh
I know not all that may be coming, but be it what it will, I’ll go to it laughing. (Herman Melville)
- Light
Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass. (Anton Chekhov)
- Live
If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud. (Emile Zola)
- Patience
The strongest of all warriors are these two — Time and Patience. (Leo Tolstoy)
- Strike
Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking. (William Butler Yeats)
- Transform
Nothing is lost…Everything is transformed. (Michael Ende)
- Try
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. (Samuel Beckett)
- Value
Nowadays, people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. (Oscar Wilde)
Words of Encouragement From Prominent Originators
Inventive minds will always stand out, and there’s unbridled joy in discovering the threads that link our hectic world to its once-modern state. Let’s see how notable originators used to motivate contemporaries!
- Accept
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. (C.G. Jung)
- Act
Do you want to know who you are? Don’t ask. Act! (Thomas Jefferson)
- By all means
If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced. (Vincent Van Gogh)
- Confidence
Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and, above all, confidence in ourselves. (Marie Curie)
- Consent
No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. (Eleanor Roosevelt)
- Count
Don’t count the days. Make the days count. (Muhammad Ali)
- Creativity
Creativity is intelligence having fun. (Albert Einstein)
- Enthusiasm
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm. (Winston Churchill)
- Esteem
If once you forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem. (Abraham Lincoln)
- Exhilaration
Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory. (George S. Patton)
- Find
I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. (Thomas A. Edison)
- Hang on
When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on. (Franklin D. Roosevelt)
- Invention
Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born. (Nikola Tesla)
- Love
I have decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear. (Martin Luther King, Jr.)
- Motivation
Motivation is the art of getting people to do what you want them to do because they want to do it. (Dwight D. Eisenhower)
- Reflect
May your choices reflect your hopes, not your fears. (Nelson Mandela)
- Sail
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship. (Louisa May Alcott)
- Seriousness
Repetition is the reality and the seriousness of life. (Søren Kierkegaard)
Small Minds Think Alike: Words of Encouragement for the Digital Age
By tracking the progress of humanity through powerful words alone, we arrive at the present. Chaotic, uncertain times always manifest their key points in language, and so encouragement needs to follow suit.
The context in which we need to be motivated is digitalization, which affects how we communicate — with brute force. Let’s observe the words used to keep us afloat in this discourse.
- Achieve
Leaders think they can achieve anything these days.
- Adventure
Life is an adventure, so we may as well enjoy it!
- Ambitious
She’s so ambitious! Her classmates regularly pale in comparison.
- Attractive
The prospect of taking an extended break suddenly became attractive to Maria.
- Believe
You need to believe in yourself if you want to learn to drive.
- Belong
“You belong here with me,” he said with a cheeky smile.
- Bliss
Romance can help you achieve divine bliss, or so I believe.
- Booming
The team is booming following the success of their previous project.
- Classy
There’s something classy about him, even though he reeks of nicotine all the time.
- Determination
Anne met her sister’s accusing stare with determination.
- Dream
We dream about nothing but the renovation of our dilapidated house.
- Eager
She’s eager to join the competition. That’s the spirit!
- Earnest
They’re both very earnest, and they come across as trustworthy.
- Faithful
Nothing spoke courage more than a couple of faithful friends by his side.
- Flourishing
Anyone who can flourish under pressure will rise to the top, as the manager thinks.
- Focused
You’ll be able to stay focused once you stop thinking about the neighbor’s wife.
- Fulfill
John thought he could fulfill his mission with the help of his brother.
- Gratitude
I feel much better now that my son expressed his gratitude for the costume I’d spent the entire night making.
- Greatness
His greatness as a journalist goes without saying.
- Humility
His humility and calmness make him appear a man from the past century.
- Imagine
Just imagine how splendid the outing will be!
- Improve
I’m sure you can improve if you keep learning.
- Ineffable
His sense of humor is ineffable. It’s simply impossible to rival!
- Inspire
My husband truly inspires confidence.
- Joyful
Such a joyful event is certain to cheer you up.
- Keep up
Keep up the excellent work!
- Lead
As long as you lead the way, we have nothing to fear.
- Lift up
Edgar was trying to lift up his spirit with another glass of brandy.
- Magic
If he does his magic again, we’re in for a good meeting.
- Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a contemporary concept of working overtime without suffering burnout.
- Nurture
Nurturing a sense of responsibility is what keeps them afloat.
- Optimistic
Come rain or shine, Scott always manages to stay optimistic.
- Overcome
The doctor says she will be able to overcome agoraphobia if she sticks to their sessions.
- Passionate
He’s so passionate in his endeavors that he can hardly fail this one, no matter how difficult it may appear!
- Peaceful
My roommate and I have a peaceful coexistence.
- Perseverance
Her perseverance and endless energy motivate the entire team.
- Proud
You should be proud of your achievement no matter what the boss may say.
- Role model
She’s working hard to become a role model to her daughter.
- Satisfying
This meal is so satisfying that I think I’ll never go to another restaurant!
- Skillful
He is a skillful coach, and we’re happy to have him with us.
- Splendid
She looks splendid in that blue coat.
- Success
The CEO is fired up! He’ll make this crazy undertaking a success!
- Swimmingly
Everything is going swimmingly, so stop worrying.
- Talent
His talents are wasted on this meager project.
- Thrive
My sister seems to be thriving in her new role.
- Vanquish
Vanquish that uncertainty with your outstanding wit.
- Versatile
She’s a versatile writer destined for success.
- Wonder
The wonders of the Great Pyramid of Giza left us in awe.
Encouragement With Style: Use Idioms!
To tweak your writing, use finely tuned, illustrative expressions that draw readers in. To this end, idioms may be the best option, so let’s look at some ideas!
- Be home and dry
The project is finally over. We’re home and dry!
- Be over the moon
He’s over the moon with his new car.
- Bounce off the walls
He’s bouncing off the walls in expectation of his girlfriend’s arrival. Ah, to be young!
- Cool as a cucumber
Everyone was panicking, but Maria was as cool as a cucumber!
- Dark horse
I had no idea she was this knowledgeable. She’s a dark horse indeed!
- Do the impossible
Wouldn’t it be fun to do the impossible? Let’s give it a try.
- Eager beaver
Nobody works more diligently than Mark. He is such an eager beaver.
- Fingers crossed
Just be your usual self, and everything will be fine. Here, fingers crossed.
- Follow your dreams
I don’t believe it’s impossible to follow your dreams. If you are persistent, anything is possible.
- Get the ball rolling
Why are you already depressed when we have yet to get the ball rolling?
- Give (something) a shot
You’ll never know how the project will turn out if you don’t give it a shot in the first place.
- Go the extra mile
Robyn is always ready to go the extra mile for her friends.
- Go-getter
The employer is only interested in go-getters as they want their teams to be actively involved in the company’s development.
- Grin from ear to ear
He may look silly, grinning from ear to ear, but I am happy his mood has improved.
- Hang in there
I know you’re having a difficult time, but hang in there! The business trip will be over in a day.
- Have the world at one’s feet
After ten years of continual education, Anna has the world at her feet.
- Heavy hitter
Judging by his previous experience, he’s a heavy hitter!
- In full sail
Our idea is in full sail thanks to everyone’s support. Way to go!
- Jumping for joy
When he heard his sister had won the match, he was jumping for joy.
- Larger than life
Looking at the actress close up, John thought she was larger than life.
- Light at the end of the tunnel
I think you’re being overly sensitive. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, so calm down first.
- Look on the bright side
“Life of Brian” features one of my all-time favorite songs, “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.“
- Make hay while the sun shines
This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so make hay while the sun shines.
- Never say die
His never-say-die attitude has helped him move on after his wife left him for the postman.
- Off to a great start
With so many resources, we’re off to a great start.
- On cloud nine
Maria was on cloud nine when her next-door neighbor asked her out.
- Put one’s heart (and soul) into something
If you put your heart (and soul) into the task, you can never fail.
- Take it/something one day at a time
As things stand now, we have no other choice but to take things one day at a time.
- The sky’s the limit
I feel like I’m invincible today. The sky’s the limit!
- There’s no time like the present
Even though you’re afraid of what the boss may say, there’s no time like the present.
- Turn over a new leaf
After leaving his job and his girlfriend, Mark decided to turn over a new leaf.
- With bells on
I’m coming to your place shortly — with bells on!
- With flying colors
He passed the exam with flying colors and is over the moon!
Looking for more? Check out our list of high-frequency words for writers!
