Have Your Mac Tell You Inspirational Quotes

crontab

 # Say a quote every hour on the half hour.
 30 * * * * /path/to/quotes.sh

quotes.sh

#!/usr/bin/env bash
#
# Say a Quote
# Have your Mac say something inspirational.

# Add necessary commands to the PATH.  You may need to install GNU 
# coreutils for gsort to work.
PATH="/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

# Set variables.
DEFAULT_VOICE="Samantha"
FILE="/path/to/quotes.txt"
SPEED=180 # Words/minute

# Get a random quote.
LINE=`gsort -R $FILE | head -n 1`

# Separate the Voice and Quote from the line.
VOICE=`echo $LINE | cut -d '|' -f1`
QUOTE=`echo $LINE | cut -d '|' -f2`

# If a voice was not specified, both values will be the same, so use the
# default voice.
if [[ "$VOICE" == "$QUOTE" ]]; then
  VOICE=$DEFAULT_VOICE
fi

# Say the quote.
say -r $SPEED -v $VOICE $QUOTE

quotes.txt

"Do or do not.  There is no try." - Yoda
Alex|"If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." - Carl Sagan