My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

On the other hand, you have different fingers.

Create a ladder of values and priorities in your life, reminding yourself of what really matters to you.

At the end of the day, who I really and truly am is a little girl who loved to play the piano.

God has given you one face, and you make yourself another.

Individuality is founded in feeling; and the recesses of feeling, the darker, blinder strata of character, are the only places in the world in which we catch real fact in the making, and directly perceive how events happen, and how work is actually done.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

I’m just like you – I want to be a good human being. I’m doing my best, and I’m working at it. And I’m trying to be a Christian. I’m always amazed when people walk up to me and say, ‚I’m a Christian.‘ I always think, ‚Already? You’ve already got it?‘ I’m working at it. And at my age, I’ll still be working at it at 96.

Understand this law and you will then know, beyond room for the slightest doubt, that you are constantly punishing yourself for every wrong you commit and rewarding yourself for every act of constructive conduct in which you indulge.

You may think it was a very little thing, and in these days it seems to me like a trifle, but it was a most important incident in my life. I could scarcely credit that I, the poor boy, had earned a dollar in less than a day; that by honest work, I had earned a dollar. I was a more hopeful and thoughtful boy from that time.

It is a great shock at the age of five or six to find that in a world of Gary Coopers you are the Indian.

I don’t live in the past at all; I’m always wanting to do something new. I make a point of constantly trying to forget and get things out of my mind.

I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.

God has entrusted me with myself.

The only things worth learning are the things you learn after you know it all.

If I am no longer disturbed myself, I will deal less with disturbed people, but I don’t regret having concerned myself with them because I think most of us are disturbed.

I didn’t want to just be another girl singer. I wanted there to be something that set me apart.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live.

The teacher who is indeed wise does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom but rather leads you to the threshold of your mind.

It’s so easy to settle for less than God’s best for us because we don’t always feel like taking responsibility for our behavior or putting forth some effort to do what we need to do so we can accomplish great things for God and help people. But the cost of settling for less is actually harder than being completely obedient to God’s will.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

Without being the most confident person in the world, I think I am the right person for Liverpool.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

I can’t pretend that I’m brave and that I can beat the whole world.

I can do whatever I want.

I always believed that when you follow your heart or your gut, when you really follow the things that feel great to you, you can never lose, because settling is the worst feeling in the world.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

There are a lot of things I never did, because I believe in watching those true Hollywood stories and I see how easy it is to lose track of your life.

Your success and happiness lies in you. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.

I’ve arrived at the place if I’m not taking a career risk, I’m not happy. If I’m scared, then I know I’m being challenged.

I have discovered that just because we grow weaker physically as we age, it doesn’t mean that we must grow weaker spiritually.

The best thing I did was to choose the right heroes.

I don’t want to be fake. I’m just being me. And I have the power to break stereotypes and whatever useless rules that society puts on us.

I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.

The day you stop doing the small things is the day you think you’re above everybody else.

I never wanted to write the sort of song that said, ‚Look at how abnormal and crazy and out there I am, man!‘

I don’t see myself in terms of artifice. I see myself as a real person who chooses to live my life in an open way – artistically.

There are going to be things I’m not going to be great at, times when I make mistakes, 100%.

Know thyself? If I knew myself I would run away.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

The great epochs of our life are the occasions when we gain the courage to rebaptize our evil qualities as our best qualities.

To meditate means to go home to yourself. Then you know how to take care of the things that are happening inside you, and you know how to take care of the things that happen around you.

The child in you, like all children, loves to laugh, to be around people who can laugh at themselves and life. Children instinctively know that the more laughter we have in our lives, the better.

Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

I was not a good student. I did not spend much time at college; I was too busy enjoying myself.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

If you’re going to be a winner in life, you have to constantly go beyond your best.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

I didn’t live at school, I lived where I could and studied what I enjoyed studying. I took what I wanted from that education but was making my first record at the same time. I don’t know anyone from school. I was just leading a different life. I was really interested in writing and other things.

If the freedom of speech is taken away then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.

I leave the genre labeling to other people. I really do. If I were to think too hard about it, that would stifle you creatively. If you think too hard about who other people want you to be as an artist, it stops you from being who you want to be as an artist.

All I can do is try to create my own brand and have people appreciate me for that.

The happiest people in the world are those who feel absolutely terrific about themselves, and this is the natural outgrowth of accepting total responsibility for every part of their life.

I know some people might think it odd – unworthy even – for me to have written a cookbook, but I make no apologies. The U.S. poet laureate Billy Collins thought I had demeaned myself by writing poetry for Hallmark Cards, but I am the people’s poet so I write for the people.

In my younger days, I was trying to write sophisticated prose and fantastic stories.