Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.

He who wishes to be rich in a day will be hanged in a year.

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.

To be intimate with a married man, when my own father cheated on my mother, is not something I could forgive. I could not look at myself in the morning if I did that. I wouldn’t be attracted to a man who would cheat on his wife.

We forge the chains we wear in life.

I like actors very much, but to marry one would be like marrying your brother. You look too much alike in the mirror.

Pursue some path, however narrow and crooked, in which you can walk with love and reverence.

It’s not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential.

We all have experiences in our lives that change us, and we all learn from people, like my dad, but at the end of the day, it’s only us. And we’re only responsible to make ourselves happy.

Do you know what it means to come home at night to a woman who’ll give you a little love, a little affection, a little tenderness? It means you’re in the wrong house, that’s what it means.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

I’ve made my share of mistakes along the way, but if I have changed even one life for the better, I haven’t lived in vain.

People will try to bring you down, but you gotta go up.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

My moms always told me, ‚How long you gonna play the victim?‘ I can say I’m mad and I hate everything, but nothing really changes until I change myself.

The question of sexual dominance can exist only in the nightmare of that soul which has armed itself, totally, against the possibility of the changing motion of conquest and surrender, which is love.

I always say, decisions I make, I live with them. There’s always ways you can correct them or ways you can do them better. At the end of the day, I live with them.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I am an ordinary man who worked hard to develop the talent I was given. I believed in myself, and I believe in the goodness of others.

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it’s about earning approval and acceptance.

Military school was great and especially great for leadership and then I spent two years in Vietnam.

My wife doesn’t even want to spend 2 hours with me.

I purposely don’t talk about money, because people are already skeptical about TV preachers. But I do say that I want you to be blessed. To me, prosperity is having health, having great children, having peace, good relationships. It’s not about the money.

When I grow up, I want to be like Balvin.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

My wife has about everything I can think of.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

Secrets are things we give to others to keep for us.

There are certain things that bother me and certain things that don’t. Personal attacks on me? I think I’m just so used to it.

The relationship to one’s fellow man is the relationship of prayer, the relationship to oneself is the relationship of striving; it is from prayer that one draws the strength for one’s striving.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

We’ve got this gift of love, but love is like a precious plant. You can’t just accept it and leave it in the cupboard or just think it’s going to get on by itself. You’ve got to keep watering it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.

I always knew from that moment, from the time I found myself at home in that little segregated library in the South, all the way up until I walked up the steps of the New York City library, I always felt, in any town, if I can get to a library, I’ll be OK. It really helped me as a child, and that never left me.

I think beating myself up sometimes and knowing I am not happy when I do it makes me work harder to do a good job.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

I love getting out of my comfort zone.

Choose your life’s mate carefully. From this one decision will come 90 percent of all your happiness or misery.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

One of my big goals as a human being is to continue to write what’s really happening to me, even if it’s a tough pill to swallow for people around me… I do fear that if I ever were to have someone in my life who mattered, I would second-guess every one of my lyrics.

I try to be the same person I was yesterday.

A woman has the age she deserves.

I’m a genetic optimist.

A man is in general better pleased when he has a good dinner upon his table, than when his wife talks Greek.

Love is the wisdom of the fool and the folly of the wise.

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.

Either you’re the one erasing or you’re the one being erased.

When I was 8 years old I became a mute and was a mute until I was 13, and I thought of my whole body as an ear, so I can go into a crowd and sit still and absorb all sound. That talent or ability has lasted and served me until today.

Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity.

In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.

I shall the effect of this good lesson keeps as watchman to my heart.

‚The Story of Us‘ is about running into someone I had been in a relationship with at an awards show, and we were seated a few seats away from each other. I just wanted to say to him, ‚Is this killing you? Because it’s killing me.‘ But I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Because we both had these silent shields up.

In football, I don’t have a lot of friends. The people who I really trust, there are not many… Most of the time, I’m alone.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

Be not a slave of words.

I don’t think any country is perfect. It’s our responsibility to do the best we can do to change the things we don’t like. I think that’s part of social responsibility, and everybody is going to do that in their own way.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

Our necessities never equal our wants.