My greatest blessing has been the birth of my son. My next greatest blessing has been my ability to turn people into children of mine.

The minute you start compromising for the sake of massaging somebody’s ego, that’s it, game over.

It is a true rule that love is ever rewarded, either with the reciproque or with an inward and secret contempt.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

The average Hollywood film star’s ambition is to be admired by an American, courted by an Italian, married to an Englishman and have a French boyfriend.

When people need love and understanding and support the most is when they deserve it the least.

Abundance is not something we acquire. It is something we tune into.

I’ve been blessed in that regard through and through. So I’m just thankful for this opportunity to play the game that I love and share that with the world.

Because of a great love, one is courageous.

I love sleep; it’s my favorite.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.

Success is not the key to happiness. Happiness is the key to success. If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.

Don’t get the impression that you arouse my anger. You see, one can only be angry with those he respects.

What it’s like to be me? You know, it’s good to be me. My life is good.

My grandmother used to embarrass me more, when she would pick me up from school wearing a big fuzzy hat. I didn’t like that.

Let us not be satisfied with just giving money. Money is not enough, money can be got, but they need your hearts to love them. So, spread your love everywhere you go.

When we are in love we seem to ourselves quite different from what we were before.

Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do… but how much love we put in that action.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Thanks to my fans that have been with me from the beginning, I was able to sell out arenas on my own.

And I come here as a daughter, raised on the South Side of Chicago – by a father who was a blue-collar city worker and a mother who stayed at home with my brother and me.

Women will only have true equality when men share with them the responsibility of bringing up the next generation.

I have learned that only two things are necessary to keep one’s wife happy. First, let her think she’s having her own way. And second, let her have it.

I’m healthy as can be – not an ache or a pain. A lot of my prayer is thanking the Lord that I am healthy. I pray for long life and good health.

I think about my own sons and my own daughters, and I’m sure that many parents are concerned about what their children are exposed to.

I don’t know how to have a normal relationship because I try to act normal and love from a normal place and live a normal life, but there is sort of an abnormal magnifying glass, like telescope lens, on everything that happens.

Isn’t it funny how babies laugh a lot? I read a toddler, a young child laughs 300 times a day. The average adult laughs, like, four times a day. God put it in them. He put the laugh in us, but I think sometimes we let life get us down, you know, have bad breaks, and we lose our breaks.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

It’s true; once you are a father, there’s no turning back. Your heart strings as well as your purse strings are never again the same.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

With compassion you can die for other people, like the mother who can die for her child. You have the courage to say it because you are not afraid of losing anything, because you know that understanding and love is the foundation of happiness. But if you have fear of losing your status, your position, you will not have the courage to do it.

My mother was determined to make us independent. When I was four years old, she stopped the car a few miles from our house and made me find my own way home across the fields. I got hopelessly lost.

My mother was very strong. Once, she picked up a coconut and smashed it against my father’s head. It taught me about women defending themselves and not collapsing in a heap.

Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more.

You know, nothing is more important than education, because nowhere are our stakes higher; our future depends on the quality of education of our children today.

The only way to get love is to be lovable. It’s very irritating if you have a lot of money. You’d like to think you could write a check: ‚I’ll buy a million dollars‘ worth of love.‘ But it doesn’t work that way. The more you give love away, the more you get.

My mother was a powerful influence. She made me toe the line. If I didn’t have a perfect report card, she showed her disappointment.

It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.

Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.

I think I have a certain respect for people, you know. And I guess a lot of times I expect that respect to go both ways.

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

I do not like broccoli. And I haven’t liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I’m President of the United States and I’m not going to eat any more broccoli.

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.

Without deep reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people.

Only enemies speak the truth; friends and lovers lie endlessly, caught in the web of duty.

My upbringing was solid because of the people I had around me.

Pick the day. Enjoy it – to the hilt. The day as it comes. People as they come… The past, I think, has helped me appreciate the present – and I don’t want to spoil any of it by fretting about the future.

It may be the part of a friend to rebuke a friend’s folly.

Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By virtue of Christ’s rising again, nothing any longer kills inevitably, but everything is capable of becoming the blessed touch of the divine hands, the blessed influence of the will of God upon our lives.

I used to meditate all the time in bed. That was when I was raising my daughter, and I’d get her up and off to school, and then I would go back to bed and meditate. And then I would do the same in the evening, and that was very good for that period because I had so many things to juggle as a single mother.

Marriage is an alliance entered into by a man who can’t sleep with the window shut, and a woman who can’t sleep with the window open.