Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

The spirit becomes free only when it ceases to be a support.

I was a bit challenged when I was younger to stay on the right path.

The mind is everything. What you think you become.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

For me, I used to be shy towards journalism because it wasn’t poetry. And then I realized that the events that I covered in essays that became journalism were actually great because they inspired me, and they became my muse.

There may sometimes be ungenerous attempts to keep a young man down; and they will succeed, too, if he allows his mind to be diverted from its true channel to brood over the attempted injury.

One of my proudest moments is I didn’t sell my soul for the sake of popularity.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

Whenever you are angry, be assured that it is not only a present evil, but that you have increased a habit.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

I must govern the clock, not be governed by it.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

Maxim for life: You get treated in life the way you teach people to treat you.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without courage you can’t practice any other virtue consistently. You can practice any virtue erratically, but nothing consistently without courage.

I always put myself out there. I’m not afraid to commit to something.

When you’re in hell, you forget how great you really are because you’re suffering and you forget the great things you’ve done.

A lot of people cry and complain and put their hand out and beg. It never goes well.

What you are comes to you.

My father wasn’t perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.

When you play sports like tennis, you’re alone, and that’s a good school for life, but it’s also a good school for life to bring your best and make those around you better, too – helping others in difficult moments.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

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

I was always told as a child by my mother that you always have to be impeccable, even when you go to bed.

It always remains true that if we had been greater, circumstance would have been less strong against us.

Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself.

Doubt, of whatever kind, can be ended by action alone.

He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.

Our life is frittered away by detail… simplify, simplify.

I don’t want followers.

Relationships are the hallmark of the mature person.

Being humble matters.

Education doesn’t change life much. It just lifts trouble to a higher plane of regard.

I’ve never been one to sit back and go, ‚I’d better do what the audience wants me to do, because I don’t want to lose them.‘

When I wake up in the morning, I feel just like any other insecure 24-year-old girl.

I’ve always written. There’s a journal which I kept from about 9 years old. The man who gave it to me lived across the street from the store and kept it when my grandmother’s papers were destroyed. I’d written some essays. I loved poetry, still do. But I really, really loved it then.

I figured that if I said it enough, I would convince the world that I really was the greatest.

The true identity theft is not financial. It’s not in cyberspace. It’s spiritual. It’s been taken.

The cleverest of all, in my opinion, is the man who calls himself a fool at least once a month.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

The difference between us and them, between you and success, is not that you never fail, but it’s how you recover from those failures – is that you keep getting up time and time again. You figure out what you did wrong, and then you make it right. I say that to my kids every day.

Our whole life is set up in the path of least resistance. We don’t want to suffer. We don’t want to feel discomfort. So the whole time, we’re living our lives in a very comfortable area. There’s no growth in that.

I deeply regret any harm, or any perceived harm, that I may have done to anyone by any behaviour of mine.

The superior man makes the difficulty to be overcome his first interest; success only comes later.

Short words are best and the old words when short are best of all.

You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

Grow in the root of all grace, which is faith. Believe God’s promises more firmly than ever. Allow your faith to increase in its fullness, firmness, and simplicity.

The more I grow in popularity, the lonelier it gets. Because you don’t really know me. You just know this part of me. You fell in love with that. But it’s way more intricate than what meets the surface.

It’s an offseason. These days are valuable for everybody.

I don’t regret anything.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

The hell to be endured hereafter, of which theology tells, is no worse than the hell we make for ourselves in this world by habitually fashioned our characters in the wrong way.