Adopt responsibility for your own well-being, try to put your family together, try to serve your community, try to seek for eternal truth… That’s the sort of thing that can ground you in your life, enough so that you can withstand the difficulty of life.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

Move out of your comfort zone. You can only grow if you are willing to feel awkward and uncomfortable when you try something new.

You know, most people really don’t know me.

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

A lot of dreams can turn to nightmares… if you don’t really work them.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

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

If you have the insight of non-self, if you have the insight of impermanence, you should make that insight into a concentration that you keep alive throughout the day. Then what you say, what you think, and what you do will then be in the light of that wisdom and you will avoid making mistakes and creating suffering.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

Travel teaches toleration.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

My life is my message.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

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

Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common. For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would be standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

I’m pretty positive, optimistic, so I always expect the best.

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

The same thing I did in 2013 is what I’m trying to do in 2014, which is continue to improve, continue to shock people. You know, I have several projects coming up between 2014 and 2015, and hopefully by 2015, I’ll have another hour of stand-up material where I’ll be able to go on the road and tour again.

I was bullied as a boy – lots of kids are, but hopefully most of us get on with our lives and grow up.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

I can understand how some people might resent me for having the audacity to continue playing music, but it’d take a lot more than that to stop me from doing it. I started Foo Fighters because I didn’t want to retreat.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

Every three months, I’ll say, ‚Honey, I think I should learn how to cook‘.

Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.

For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

I think a big test we all face in life on a regular basis is that discouragement test. Life’s not always fair, but I believe if you keep doing the right thing, God will get you to where you are.

I was born in London in England in 1934. I went through, as a child, the horrors of World War II, through a time when food was rationed and we learned to be very careful, and we never had more to eat than what we needed to eat. There was no waste. Everything was used.

While musical experts of the world focus on what choir members can do, I would like to focus on what choir members can be.

A shady business never yields a sunny life.

Your success, or lack of success, is your responsibility. Even when you have a chain of command that you don’t like as well, its your responsibility to work with the up chain of command.

To deal with individual human needs at the everyday level can be noble sometimes.

I’m not well-read, but when I read, I read well.

What the country needs is dirtier fingernails and cleaner minds.

With fame, you know, you can read about yourself, somebody else’s ideas about you, but what’s important is how you feel about yourself – for survival and living day to day with what comes up.

I have opinions of my own, strong opinions, but I don’t always agree with them.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

It’s amazing: I am a New Yorker. It’s strange; I never thought I would be.

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.

Without tact you can learn nothing.

I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You’ve got to just stand there and take it.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

I’ve realized that being happy is a choice. You never want to rub anybody the wrong way or not be fun to be around, but you have to be happy. When I get logical and I don’t trust my instincts – Thats when I get in trouble.

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.

I’m not a natural born performer.

I think my worst problem is actually living in the moment and understanding everything that’s going on. I feel like I’m in my own bubble.

Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.

I always kind of see how I want things to be better, and I’m generally not happy with how things are or the level of service that we’re providing for people or the quality of the teams that we built. But if you look at this objectively, we’re doing so well on so many of these things. I think it’s important to have gratitude for that.

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Have you not learned that strength comes to an ordinary soul when given an extraordinary calling?

Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

Subordination tends greatly to human happiness. Were we all upon an equality, we should have no other enjoyment than mere animal pleasure.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

I know I’m a good professional, I know that no one’s harder on me than myself and that’s never going to change, under any circumstances.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!