Once I realized that right thinking is vital to victorious living, I got more serious about thinking about what I was thinking about, and choosing my thoughts carefully.

For a long time I was scared I’d find out I was like my mother.

Nobody can ever say that being negative ever helped them at all – not in any way.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

You don’t sign up for a divorce when you get married. It’s very painful. But it’s taught me a great deal about myself.

It’s a piece of cake until you get to the top. You find you can’t stop playing the game the way you’ve always played it.

Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

If I’ve got something do. I’m going to attack it. I’m going to attack that stress.

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

Money, it turned out, was exactly like sex, you thought of nothing else if you didn’t have it and thought of other things if you did.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future; men of discernment deal only with the present moment.

You’ll never do a whole lot unless you’re brave enough to try.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

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

Don’t be dependent. At all. Ever. Period.

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.

Do not trouble yourself much to get new things, whether clothes or friends… Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

I kinda live where I find myself.

Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others. Unsuccessful people are always asking, ‚What’s in it for me?‘

If you can’t make it good, at least make it look good.

The person you consider ignorant and insignificant is the one who came from God, that he might learn bliss from grief and knowledge from gloom.

I’m not a natural born performer.

I don’t worry about stress. I create it.

My goal is to entertain myself and others.

My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

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.‘

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

The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.

Nobody looks like they did when they were 20, so why not take advantage of the fact that you’re changing, emotionally as well as physically?

And we are never too old to study the Bible. Each time the lessons are studied comes some new meaning, some new thought which will make us better.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

With mindfulness, you can establish yourself in the present in order to touch the wonders of life that are available in that moment.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

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.

For me, being raised in a free America made all the difference.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

Little things affect little minds.

I’m all about evolution. I’m the first person to judge myself.

The man with insight enough to admit his limitations comes nearest to perfection.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

I carry a small sheet of paper in my wallet that has written on it the names of people whose opinions of me matter. To be on that list, you have to love me for my strengths and struggles.

The highest result of education is tolerance.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

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

There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.

Everybody wants to be somebody; nobody wants to grow.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.

If you can do a half-assed job of anything, you’re a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.