I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

My thought is me: that is why I cannot stop thinking. I exist because I think I cannot keep from thinking.

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

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

Do you know the only value life has is what life puts on itself?

My father, who was jailed for stealing on more than one occasion, just abandoned his fatherly responsibilities and disappeared. I grew up working from the time I was nine years of age. Money was a big issue everywhere I lived.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

I found it hard to be young. When I was married in my twenties, I hated being regarded as ‚the little wife.‘ You don’t know what it was like then! I’d never even written a cheque. I had to ask my husband for money for groceries.

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.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author’s soul.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

I’m kind of fascist with myself, you know.

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

Many people think of perfectionism as striving to be your best, but it is not about self-improvement; it’s about earning approval and acceptance.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Courage – you develop courage by doing small things like just as if you wouldn’t want to pick up a 100-pound weight without preparing yourself.

You have to like the present; if not your life becomes secondhand, if you think it was better before. Or that it will be better in the future.

People like to build their own story about my life. I don’t know if it makes them feel better, or if it makes it okay for them to not like me, but the last thing I grew up as was rich.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

I am an over-achiever, and I want to be known for the good things in my life.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that’s fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that’s fine. And it might not be right, because I’m the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It’s the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

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.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Apply yourself both now and in the next life. Without effort, you cannot be prosperous. Though the land be good, You cannot have an abundant crop without cultivation.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

He who knows that enough is enough will always have enough.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

I like to recede away from classifications. You might say that indicates a fundamental lack of commitment. I suppose that’s true to some degree.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

If anything is good for pounding humility into you permanently, it’s the restaurant business.

Remember, you can always stoop and pick up nothing.

You may make some mistakes – but that doesn’t make you a sinner. You’ve got the very nature of God on the inside of you.

First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

The question isn’t, ‚What do we want to know about people?‘, It’s, ‚What do people want to tell about themselves?‘

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

It was completely fruitless to quarrel with the world, whereas the quarrel with oneself was occasionally fruitful and always, she had to admit, interesting.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Bring your desires down to your present means. Increase them only when your increased means permit.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

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

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.

Why don’t you start believing that no matter what you have or haven’t done, that your best days are still out in front of you.

Every human has four endowments – self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom… The power to choose, to respond, to change.

The more people I reach, the more people there are that have opinions about me. Not everyone loves me, but I have to be okay no matter what they think about me.

I’ve never doubted that apartheid – because it was of itself fundamentally, intrinsically evil – was going to bite the dust eventually.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

Today is life-the only life you are sure of. Make the most of today. Get interested in something. Shake yourself awake. Develop a hobby. Let the winds of enthusiasm sweep through you. Live today with gusto.

Start your diet during a period of optimism and happiness.