The older I get, the better I understand that every day is a gift.

God has his plans and his reasons. Sometimes we are supposed to go through things so that we learn lessons.

Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

Difficulties mastered are opportunities won.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

I am not young but I feel young. The day I feel old, I will go to bed and stay there. J’aime la vie! I feel that to live is a wonderful thing.

Lost time is never found again.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

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.

I feel like I have a job to do, like I constantly have to reinvent myself. The more I up the ante for myself, the better it is in the long run. I try to interact with my fans as much as possible. It’s good that the person I’m being onstage isn’t really an act. It’s really me.

I exhort you also to take part in the great combat, which is the combat of life, and greater than every other earthly conflict.

I don’t want to make money, I just want to be wonderful.

Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

If we examine our thoughts, we shall find them always occupied with the past and the future.

I want to be just a pure spiritual leader.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express.

It’s nice, I think, when people use your music for things you didn’t think of.

True happiness is… to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future.

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

Every great person is always being helped by everybody; for their gift is to get good out of all things and all persons.

I’ve been reckless, but I’m not a rebel without a cause.

I always had faith in my creative capacity.

I’m just trying to be myself. I’m not trying to be anyone else.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

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

We can never obtain peace in the outer world until we make peace with ourselves.

Do the thing we fear, and death of fear is certain.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

Follow your honest convictions and be strong.

When men speak ill of thee, live so as nobody may believe them.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

The greatest magnifying glasses in the world are a man’s own eyes when they look upon his own person.

Talent develops in quiet places, character in the full current of human life.

The things hardest to bear are sweetest to remember.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

It’s not an easy course. It’s not designed to be. We’re not here to get you in touch with your inner child.

It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them.

Because I am a mother, I am capable of being shocked: as I never was when I was not one.

I even found it difficult to watch myself playing on TV because I couldn’t identify with the person on the screen. I couldn’t get to grips with it. It was as if it was all happening to someone else.

However great may be the work for which we are responsible, we will always do well if we pause to spend time in sacred praise.

The man who is dissatisfied with himself, what can he do?

Me not finishing school – in my head, I still have this insecurity when I’m talking to someone educated.

When I grew up, the Devil was a reason why I had a headache or the Devil was the reason I got mad today. We always blamed the Devil. I think today when I say the Enemy, I like to make it broader. Sometimes the Enemy can be our own thoughts.

What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think – or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.

I don’t regret anything.

I didn’t think it was special to be able to sing.

I am deeply grateful to the citizens of Sarajevo and the Sarajevo Canton assembly for bestowing upon me this incredible honor of citizenship. I am so proud to now be a part of such an extraordinary part of the world and fellow citizen to the people I deeply love and admire.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Every blessing ignored becomes a curse.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

We think too much and feel too little.