The experience of pain or loss can be a formidably motivating force.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.

Mine is only one of the millions of hearts broken over the death of Whitney Houston, I will always be grateful and in awe of the wonderful performance she did on my song, and I can truly say from the bottom of my heart, ‚Whitney, I will always love you. You will be missed.‘

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.

Arrange whatever pieces come your way.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts… perhaps the fear of a loss of power.

I can imagine it’s hard to make a relationship last. I wouldn’t know.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

My body is quite tiny, but a lot of the emotions I feel are pretty explosive. They have to come out.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

I don’t think I’ve ever worked so hard on something, but working on Macintosh was the neatest experience of my life. Almost everyone who worked on it will say that. None of us wanted to release it at the end. It was as though we knew that once it was out of our hands, it wouldn’t be ours anymore.

Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

Sitting idle at home is the most painful experience for a footballer.

Someone said to me, ‚If fifty percent of the experts in Hollywood said you had no talent and should give up, what would you do?‘ My answer was then and still is, ‚If a hundred percent told me that, all one hundred percent would be wrong.‘

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.

When we’re falling in love or out of it, that’s when we most need a song that says how we feel. Yeah, I write a lot of songs about boys. And I’m very happy to do that.

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

The questions which one asks oneself begin, at least, to illuminate the world, and become one’s key to the experience of others.

Choose people who lift you up.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

Absolute silence leads to sadness. It is the image of death.

In reality, there is, perhaps, no one of our natural passions so hard to subdue as pride.

My main goal is to be a self-made man and have control over what’s mine.

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.

The difficulties you meet will resolve themselves as you advance. Proceed, and light will dawn, and shine with increasing clearness on your path.

We are ready for any unforeseen event that may or may not occur.

It’s very unnatural to be someone for so many people. But of course it’s very nice.

No man lives without jostling and being jostled; in all ways he has to elbow himself through the world, giving and receiving offence.

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.

About the time we can make the ends meet, somebody moves the ends.

Acting helped me as I was growing up. It helped me learn about myself, helped me travel, helped me understand life, express myself, all those wonderful things. So I’m very, very grateful; it’s a fun job. It’s a luxury.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

What old people say you cannot do, you try and find that you can. Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.

I allow myself to fail. I allow myself to break. I’m not afraid of my flaws.

Live your life while you have it. Life is a splendid gift. There is nothing small in it. Far the greatest things grow by God’s law out of the smallest. But to live your life, you must discipline it.

You not supposed to feel down over whatever happen to you. I mean, you’re supposed to use whatever happen to you as some type of upper, not a downer.

I didn’t try to copy my dad or fit into the pressure or the mold that everybody tried to make me fit into.

I was born in a very poor family. I used to sell tea in a railway coach as a child. My mother used to wash utensils and do lowly household work in the houses of others to earn a livelihood. I have seen poverty very closely. I have lived in poverty. As a child, my entire childhood was steeped in poverty.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

Man is not made for defeat.

A family shares hardships and a connected history.

Nothing is more intolerable than to have to admit to yourself your own errors.

I don’t know if I particularly want to be remembered for anything. I personally do not think I’m a great gift to the world. I’ve been very fortunate.

My life has been long, and believing that life loves the liver of it, I have dared to try many things, sometimes trembling, but daring still.

I used to have a real problem with self-pity. Every time the devil would throw a pity party, I would attend.

I love my friends and my past, and it’s made me who I am.

I knew ‚Crenshaw‘ had elevated me and distinguished me.

Nothing is so aggravating than calmness.

If you’ve lost your spirit, even living in the richest country in the world can’t help you become rich.

I’m an introvert somewhat. There could be a room full of people, I’ll go stand in the corner.