the present study is an attempt to investigate the potential impact of inspirational quotes on improving english abstract vocabulary recall. to achieve this goal, a multiple choice language proficiency test of 60 items including vocabulary and grammar component was administered to a sample of 63 second-semester male and female students whose age ranged between 17 to 22 and they were studying english translation in birjand university, iran. the 40 upper-level language students were selected and randomly assigned to two groups of 20 as an experimental group and a control group. the experimental group was exposed into inspirational quotes, through which the 22 abstract target words were instructed, and the control group was instructed to the same abstract vocabulary through plain sentences. at the end of the treatment a cued recall achievement test was used to measure the participants’ immediate recall of the target words. two weeks after the treatment, the same test was administered to explore the delayed recall of participants and to estimate the effect of inspirational quotes on long term recall of abstract vocabulary by experimental group compared with that of control group. the results revealed the satisfactory effect of inspirational quotes on the participants’ immediate and delayed recall of abstract vocabulary. analysis of immediate and delayed cued recall achievement tests through two series of t-tests confirmed the hypotheses that inspirational quotes had a significant effect on both immediate and delayed recall of abstract vocabulary. based on these findings it is concluded that inspirational quotes can be utilized not only as a supportive context for teaching and learning of abstract vocabulary, but also as motivational, emotional and meaningful pedagogical sources, conveying much needed humanistic values to students in this modern technological age.