I’ve never been pregnant, so I just feel God didn’t mean for me to have kids so that everybody else’s children could be mine.

Trials teach us what we are; they dig up the soil, and let us see what we are made of.

I am never satisfied with myself and that is what keeps me going – I have no post-satisfaction.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.

If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

My friends, there are no friends.

What the heck is true love? I remember feeling, back when I was 12 and ‚going‘ with this girl, ‚Is this true love?‘

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

I love our daughters more than anything in the world – more than life itself. And while that may not be the first thing that some folks want to hear from an Ivy-league-educated lawyer, it is truly who I am. So for me, being Mom-in-Chief is, and always will be, job number one.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

When I inspire myself, I want to spread the word because its important to be healthy. I don’t think they’re teaching us enough about that. I think we should eat better and exercise. Look who’s saying that – a guy who was 300 pounds – but I’m doing a lot better than I used to. I’m letting people know its important because it makes you feel better.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

If you start to think of your physical and moral condition, you usually find that you are sick.

I brought myself down. I impeached myself by resigning.

We rarely confide in those who are better than we are.

When you’re 40, you can’t ride the fence anymore. You gotta make definite decisions about your life.

In my later years, I have looked in the mirror each day and found a happy person staring back. Occasionally I wonder why I can be so happy. The answer is that every day of my life I’ve worked only for myself and for the joy that comes from writing and creating. The image in my mirror is not optimistic, but the result of optimal behavior.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

The training of children is a profession, where we must know how to waste time in order to save it.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

But I was the most unashamed lone parent you were ever going to meet.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.

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

One travels more usefully when alone, because he reflects more.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Don’t judge other people. For example, if you want God’s anointing to be on you for parenting, you need to be careful not to criticize other parents.

One cannot violate the promptings of one’s nature without having that nature recoil upon itself.

You can’t put your feet on the ground until you’ve touched the sky.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

What comes out when life squeezes you? When someone hurts or offends you? If anger, pain and fear come out of you, it’s because that’s what’s inside.

I used to have insecurity about my finances, then I announced that I had debt, and now I don’t have any insecurities.

Relish everything that’s inside of you, the imperfections, the darkness, the richness and light and everything. And that makes for a full life.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?

Weak minds sink under prosperity as well as adversity; but strong and deep ones have two high tides.

As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.

I hope not to define myself by suffering.

I got teased my entire school life. What they were picking on I don’t even understand.

Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what’s going to happen in my life.

The people of Northern Ireland have sorted out my whole life.

Around every corner, always protect the engine that powers you.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

Try and leave this world a little better than you found it, and when your turn comes to die, you can die happy in feeling that at any rate, you have not wasted your time but have done your best.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

Everything I do, I hope, is that I represent something, and I represent the right things to my children and give them the right sense of what they’re capable of and the world as it should be seen.

I put Catholic guilt to work pretty good for a rich rock star.

I have always been regretting that I was not as wise as the day I was born.

When you are offended at any man’s fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.

The display of grief makes more demands than grief itself. How few men are sad in their own company.