When you have to make a choice and don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

The self is hateful.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

Your entire life only happens in this moment. The present moment is life itself. Yet, people live as if the opposite were true and treat the present moment as a stepping stone to the next moment – a means to an end.

Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

What is necessary to change a person is to change his awareness of himself.

We’re always looking over our shoulders, ‚what they will think, what the press will think, what will this one – am I making the right career move?‘ When you’re young you have to do all that to survive, I suppose.

To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.

Whoever despises himself nonetheless respects himself as one who despises.

In the egoic state, your sense of self, your identity, is derived from your thinking mind – in other words, what your mind tells you about yourself: the storyline of you, the memories, the expectations, all the thoughts that go through your head continuously and the emotions that reflect those thoughts. All those things make up your sense of self.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

Tomorrow, every Fault is to be amended; but that Tomorrow never comes.

Sometimes when you’ve had a long series of disappointing things happen, you can get into the very bad habit of just expecting more of what you’ve already had.

Before you try to keep up with the Joneses, be sure they’re not trying to keep up with you.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

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.

Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our power of judgment are more completely exposed by being over praised than by being unjustly underestimated.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

What a terrible thing to have lost one’s mind. Or not to have a mind at all. How true that is.

I want to be very clear: I will not sign on to any health plan that adds to our deficits over the next decade.

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.

Men must know their limitations.

I’m not intelligent. I’m not arrogant. I’m just like the people who read my books. I used to have a jazz club, and I made the cocktails and I made the sandwiches. I didn’t want to become a writer – it just happened.

My message isn’t perfectly defined. I have, as a human being, fallen to peer pressure.

Buy the ticket, take the ride.

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

Life cannot be without relationship, but we have made it so agonizing and hideous by basing it on personal and possessive love. Can one love and yet not possess? You will find the true answer not in escape, ideals, beliefs but through the understanding of the causes of dependence and possessiveness.

Everyone has at least one story, and each of us is funny if we admit it. You have to admit you’re the funniest person you’ve ever heard of.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

As a lifestyle you always being the focal point is innately unhealthy.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

We must all suffer one of two things: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret or disappointment.

There are two kinds of people in this world. ‚I‘ people and ‚we‘ people. I’ve always tried to be a ‚we‘ person.

Decisiveness is a characteristic of high-performing men and women. Almost any decision is better than no decision at all.

The hardest thing for – not only an artist but for anybody to do is look themselves in the mirror and acknowledge, you know, their own flaws and fears and imperfections and put them out there in the open for people to relate to it.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

The more in harmony with yourself you are, the more joyful you are and the more faithful you are. Faith is not to disconnect you from reality – it connects you to reality.

If you burn your neighbors house down, it doesn’t make your house look any better.

One must marry one’s feelings to one’s beliefs and ideas. That is probably the only way to achieve a measure of harmony in one’s life.

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself; to be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Sadly, the truth is, there aren’t many people who can be put in high positions who won’t start thinking highly of themselves.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

I don’t like to read things that people write about me. I’d rather read what kids have to say about me because it’s not their profession to do that.

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

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!

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.

I think I am smart unless I am really, really in love, and then I am ridiculously stupid.

The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

When in doubt tell the truth.

First, I’m trying to prove to myself that I’m a person. Then maybe I’ll convince myself that I’m an actress.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

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.