In dwelling, live close to the ground. In thinking, keep to the simple. In conflict, be fair and generous. In governing, don’t try to control. In work, do what you enjoy. In family life, be completely present.

Of all acts of man repentance is the most divine. The greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

I resolved to stop accumulating and begin the infinitely more serious and difficult task of wise distribution.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

I don’t think I get angry.

Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?

Let go of yesterday.

You should never give up your inner self.

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.

I’ve always felt quite singular, even as a child. That I must stay on track to keep my purpose.

If you realize all the time what’s kind of wonderful – that is, if we expand our experience into wilder and wilder regions of experience – every once in a while, we have these integrations when everything’s pulled together into a unification, in which it turns out to be simpler than it looked before.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

I will never be happy without having someone. Going to sleep alone kills me.

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.

When I found somebody who I fell in love with, it made me feel different than I felt the rest of the day. It was electrifying. That’s what inspired the ‚Off to the Races‘ melodies. That’s one of the times when you’re feeling electrified by someone else and they make you happy to be alive.

I’ve seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are. It reveals who you are.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

Red is such an interesting color to correlate with emotion, because it’s on both ends of the spectrum. On one end you have happiness, falling in love, infatuation with someone, passion, all that. On the other end, you’ve got obsession, jealousy, danger, fear, anger and frustration.

Every spoken word arouses our self-will.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

I’m concerned that my technical skills have advanced to the point where I can get closer to what I’m aiming for, which is not such a good thing.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

Many people would be surprised that, in fact, I’m quite shy.

When you’re a chef, you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don’t actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work, the first thing I’ll do, and especially when I’m in New York, I’ll go for a run. And I’ll run 10 or 15k on my – and I run to gain my appetite.

There is no value in life except what you choose to place upon it and no happiness in any place except what you bring to it yourself.

In one way, I suppose, I have been ‚in denial‘ for some time, knowingly burning the candle at both ends and finding that it often gives a lovely light.

Every one suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.

There is a luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

We are second-hand people. We have lived on what we have been told, either guided by our inclinations, our tendencies, or compelled to accept by circumstances and environment. We are the result of all kinds of influences, and there is nothing new in us, nothing that we have discovered for ourselves: nothing original, pristine, clear.

The fact is, I was never too bright in school. I ain’t ashamed of it, though. I mean, how much do school principals make a month?

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

It makes no sense to worry about things you have no control over because there’s nothing you can do about them, and why worry about things you do control? The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

The self is hateful.

Generosity is giving more than you can, and pride is taking less than you need.

God has given us two hands – one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing.

Look at the means which a man employs, consider his motives, observe his pleasures. A man simply cannot conceal himself!

To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the making of bread.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

The people who truly know me know what I’m like. There have been people who try to say things that aren’t fair, and I check them. And then they don’t like me because I checked them.

There are so many emotions that you’re feeling, you can get stifled by them if you’re feeling them all at once. What I try to do is take one moment – one simple, simple feeling – and expand it into three-and-a-half minutes.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.

The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done.

I was saluted by Alex Ferguson when I was subbed and that made me very happy.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

In Buddhism, we talk of meditation as an act of awakening, to be awake to the fact that the earth is in danger and living species are in danger.

I am sure there’s going to be times when I do things wrong that no one’s going to like and everyone’s going to think I’m terrible and rubbish but I know I’m going to go through those times, and it’s just about understanding that that’s going to happen.

My general attitude to life is to enjoy every minute of every day. I never do anything with a feeling of, ‚Oh God, I’ve got to do this today.‘

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!