A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad.

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

No poet or orator has ever existed who believed there was any better than himself.

My future is righteousness.

My life is not to be somebody else’s impact – you know what I mean?

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

I think so many people live their whole life in fear and doubt and shame.

When I look back on my life as a whole, it is impossible for me not to feel blessed.

One that desires to excel should endeavor in those things that are in themselves most excellent.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

If you make listening and observation your occupation you will gain much more than you can by talk.

No one has a right to consume happiness without producing it.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

The thing to do, it seems to me, is to prepare yourself so you can be a rainbow in somebody else’s cloud. Somebody who may not look like you. May not call God the same name you call God – if they call God at all. I may not dance your dances or speak your language. But be a blessing to somebody. That’s what I think.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

She never envisioned a legal career for me, but she did think it was very important that I be able to support myself, and I think she would be pleased to see what has become of me.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

Keep your nose out the sky, keep your heart to god, and keep your face to the raising sun.

Be a player; don’t play yourself. And don’t play basketball. That’s not your sport, Jeb Bush.

In every real man a child is hidden that wants to play.

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

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

You will be as much value to others as you have been to yourself.

Marriage is a school itself. Also, having children. Becoming a father changed my whole life. It taught me as if by revelation.

I don’t follow all the 48 laws. Like, I’ve never crushed anyone totally.

Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.

Whatever one of us blames in another, each one will find in his own heart.

I cannot always control what goes on outside. But I can always control what goes on inside.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

Make a habit of two things: to help; or at least to do no harm.

What is common sense isn’t common practice.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

Once someone has spent enough time cultivating bad habits and biding their time, they are much diminished. Much of what they could have been has dissipated.

I can do whatever I want.

Correcting bad habits cannot be done by forbidding or punishment.

No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.

Where much is expected from an individual, he may rise to the level of events and make the dream come true.

My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

You have to accept whatever comes and the only important thing is that you meet it with courage and with the best that you have to give.

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

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

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else – means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

I’ll never, ever be full. I’ll always be hungry. Obviously, I’m not talking about food. Growing up, I had nothing for such a long time. Someone told me a long time ago, and I’ve never forgotten it, ‚Once you’ve ever been hungry, really, really hungry, then you’ll never, ever be full.‘

Probably the happiest period in life most frequently is in middle age, when the eager passions of youth are cooled, and the infirmities of age not yet begun; as we see that the shadows, which are at morning and evening so large, almost entirely disappear at midday.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

I think and that is all that I am.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

You don’t have to give way to careless speech or complaining. You don’t have to let your feelings get in the way of what God wants to do in your life.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

People disparage knowing and the intellectual life, and urge doing. I am content with knowing, if only I could know.

You’ll never rise any higher than the way you see yourself.

Everyone has been in love, at some point or another.

Conviction never so excellent, is worthless until it coverts itself into conduct.

Change is always tough. Even for those who see themselves as agents of change, the process of starting a new thing can cause times of disorientation, uncertainty and insecurity.

We become what we repeatedly do.

I’ve heard there are troubles of more than one kind; some come from ahead, and some come from behind. But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready, you see; now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.