Breathing in, I am aware of my heart. Breathing out, I smile to my heart and know that my heart still functions normally. I feel grateful for my heart.

I’ve watched a lot of people who became famous who completely change and I think it’s because they tend to believe all the hype that’s out there. I don’t think there’s that much hype about me.

I really have no interest in myself.

How far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

Almost every man wastes part of his life attempting to display qualities which he does not possess.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

Life is precious.

There are some days when I think I’m going to die from an overdose of satisfaction.

I’m addicted to exercising and I have to do something every day.

It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness.

The world can criticize me, but l can always criticize it back.

We all want to win more, but it’s all about being blessed and embracing your blessings. We have life.

One mustn’t close one’s eyes to difficulty and to shortcomings; the more one recognizes them, the less they upset one.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

The Nation of Islam’s main focus was teaching black pride and self-awareness. Why should we keep trying to force ourselves into white restaurants and schools when white people didn’t want us? Why not clean up our own neighborhoods and schools instead of trying to move out of them and into white people’s neighborhoods?

For me, time is the greatest mystery of all. The fact is that we’re dreaming all the time. That’s what really gets me. We have a fathomless lake of unconsciousness just beneath our skulls.

I don’t have to chase extraordinary moments to find happiness – it’s right in front of me if I’m paying attention and practicing gratitude.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

I hate pain, despite my ability to tolerate it beyond all known parameters, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Association with human beings lures one into self-observation.

Tell me what you like and I’ll tell you what you are.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

There’s a difference in thinking you are a champion and knowing that you are.

I’m not confused. I’m just well mixed.

Living big and joyful and content is almost always the result of our finding satisfaction in life’s ordinary day-to-day pleasures. And God must be fond of them, too, for He made so many of them for us to enjoy.

Open your eyes, look within. Are you satisfied with the life you’re living?

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

Anybody can become angry – that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not within everybody’s power and is not easy.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

It is wrong to assume that men of immense wealth are always happy.

Of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.

Remind yourself that the greatest technique for bringing peace into your life is to always choose being kind when you have a choice between being right or being kind.

I don’t think I get angry.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

Tomorrow is nothing, today is too late; the good lived yesterday.

Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.

For what Harley Street specialist has time to understand the body, let alone the mind or both in combination, when he is a slave to thirteen thousand a year?

You don’t need anybody to tell you who you are or what you are. You are what you are!

This is love: the flowering of love is meditation.

As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

Don’t ever play yourself.

It’s been proven by quite a few studies that plants are good for our psychological development. If you green an area, the rate of crime goes down. Torture victims begin to recover when they spend time outside in a garden with flowers. So we need them, in some deep psychological sense, which I don’t suppose anybody really understands yet.

An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself.

The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.

No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Be of love a little more careful than of anything.

In such a porcelain life, one likes to be sure that all is well lest one stumble upon one’s hopes in a pile of broken crockery.

Be content to seem what you really are.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

To keep oneself safe does not mean to bury oneself.