Only when the tide goes out do you discover who’s been swimming naked.

I don’t have much positive to say about motor neuron disease, but it taught me not to pity myself because others were worse off, and to get on with what I still could do. I’m happier now than before I developed the condition.

There is no easy walk to freedom anywhere, and many of us will have to pass through the valley of the shadow of death again and again before we reach the mountaintop of our desires.

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

I have learned that success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has had to overcome while trying to succeed.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

Life is just one damned thing after another.

We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Teach us that wealth is not elegance, that profusion is not magnificence, that splendor is not beauty.

I’ve been blessed to be somebody that’s been climbing that success mountain top for years of hard work, you know, but now it’s all connecting. And now, the whole world is watching, you know what I’m saying, and it feels good ‚cause it’s good energy. This is all positive vibes, and good vibes and good energy, so it feels incredible.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

So many objections may be made to everything, that nothing can overcome them but the necessity of doing something.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

After many years of great mercy, after tasting of the powers of the world to come, we still are so weak, so foolish; but, oh! when we get away from self to God, there all is truth and purity and holiness, and our heart finds peace, wisdom, completeness, delight, joy, victory.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

Difficulties are things that show a person what they are.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

The greatest gift is a portion of thyself.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

It is not necessary that you leave the house. Remain at your table and listen. Do not even listen, only wait. Do not even wait, be wholly still and alone. The world will present itself to you for its unmasking, it can do no other, in ecstasy it will writhe at your feet.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

My attitude has always been, if you fall flat on your face, at least you’re moving forward. All you have to do is get back up and try again.

One should always be in love. That is the reason one should never marry.

The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire; the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

In 1995, I was diagnosed with cancer, and I had to practice what I preached. I had always said to ‚believe in God‘ and ‚don’t give up‘ to little kids who had been diagnosed with cancer. I then thought if I can’t call on that same God and same strength that I told people about, I would be a liar and a phony.

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

Business is never so healthy as when, like a chicken, it must do a certain amount of scratching around for what it gets.

If you take no risks, you will suffer no defeats. But if you take no risks, you win no victories.

I can’t do nothing just a little.

There is no failure except in no longer trying.

You will find as you grow older that courage is the rarest of all qualities to be found in public life.

It is the heart always that sees, before the head can see.

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information.

I have bad reflexes. I was once run over by a car being pushed by two guys.

Will power is to the mind like a strong blind man who carries on his shoulders a lame man who can see.

I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the ‚light-hearted‘ Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the ‚deeper‘ Anne is too weak.

It take many a year, mon, and maybe some bloodshed must be, but righteousness someday prevail.

In ‚Changeling,‘ I tried to show something you’d never see nowadays – a kid sitting and looking at the radio. Just sitting in front of the radio and listening. Your mind does the rest.

There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

I can never be safe; I always try and go against the grain. As soon as I accomplish one thing, I just set a higher goal. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am.

Everything negative – pressure, challenges – is all an opportunity for me to rise.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

Let a man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim: Attacking is the only secret. Dare and the world yields, or if it beats you sometimes, dare it again and you will succeed.

The road to perdition has ever been accompanied by lip service to an ideal.

If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness, not my miscarriages or my father leaving home, but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough.

The bad fortune of the good turns their faces up to heaven; the good fortune of the bad bows their heads down to the earth.

Age doesn’t bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It’s the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.

A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

One thing Britons have always been celebrated for, and that is being able to stick it out in a tight place.

Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot in it and hang on.

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.