Whatever fortune has raised to a height, she has raised only to cast it down.

The Medici created and destroyed me.

He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or mischief.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

There’s always a bittersweet kind of thing, but I feel like everything had to work out the way it is. Everything that had to happen, happened.

Friends and acquaintances are the surest passport to fortune.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

We are continually shaped by the forces of coincidence.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

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

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

Sometimes it’s the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination.

If God had wanted me otherwise, He would have created me otherwise.

I do believe in the old saying, ‚What does not kill you makes you stronger.‘ Our experiences, good and bad, make us who we are. By overcoming difficulties, we gain strength and maturity.

The men who have guided the destiny of the United States have found the strength for their tasks by going to their knees. This private unity of public men and their God is an enduring source of reassurance for the people of America.

I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year, and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‚Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.‘

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

At the end of the day, I understand that life has road blocks, and life is like school – you’ll be tested; we gotta pass it.

Bottom line: God will not allow any person to keep you from your destiny. They may be bigger, stronger, or more powerful, but God knows how to shift things around and get you to where you’re supposed to be.

Character is destiny.

I don’t blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they’ll realize there’s more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

Of the love or hatred God has for the English, I know nothing, but I do know that they will all be thrown out of France, except those who die there.

A great fortune is a great slavery.

No memory of having starred atones for later disregard, or keeps the end from being hard.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

You will never fulfill your destiny doing work you despise.

So I’ve seen life as one long learning process. And if I see – you know, if I fly on somebody else’s airline and find the experience is not a pleasant one, which it wasn’t in – 21 years ago, then I’d think, well, you know, maybe I can create the kind of airline that I’d like to fly on.

There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.

I believe the destiny of your generation – and your nation – is a rendezvous with excellence.

Every person above the ordinary has a certain mission that they are called to fulfill.

And in real life endings aren’t always neat, whether they’re happy endings, or whether they’re sad endings.

There could be no fairer destiny for any physical theory than that it should point the way to a more comprehensive theory in which it lives on as a limiting case.

Now, you lose something in your life, or you come into a conflict, and there’s gonna come a time that you’re gonna know: There was a reason for that. And at the end of your life, all the things you thought were periods, they turn out to be commas. There was never a full stop in any of it.

A shady business never yields a sunny life.

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Experience is something you don’t get until just after you need it.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

If you are first you are first. If you are second you are nothing.

God wants us to prosper financially, to have plenty of money, to fulfill the destiny He has laid out for us.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.

I try to sprinkle a little gems and jewels in the music that people could use in their own life.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

I still learn, but I think it’s the best thing in life to have a kid.

Remember you are just an extra in everyone else’s play.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish by acting.

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don’t resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Autobiographies are only useful as the lives you read about and analyze may suggest to you something that you may find useful in your own journey through life.