Adversity has ever been considered the state in which a man most easily becomes acquainted with himself.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week, or even a bad year!

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline… because you need to be alone to find out anything.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

There are a lot of people who don’t know me and what I am all about.

Feeling sorry for ourselves is the most useless waste of energy on the planet. It does absolutely no good. We can’t let our circumstances or what others do or don’t do control us. We can decide to be happy regardless.

When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.

What’s really hard is that you could care a lot for someone and not want to live with him anymore.

When we do the best that we can, we never know what miracle is wrought in our life, or in the life of another.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

A woman is like a tea bag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.

If I think too hard about a relationship, I’ll talk myself out of it.

People are looking for something a little more stable; people are feeling like they need to get closer to God.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

The highest result of education is tolerance.

I had this child, and it destroyed my family.

I really have no interest in myself.

If we’re really honest with ourselves, most of us will admit that we want to impress people, and this is what’s causing us to do what we do.

We have to continue to learn. We have to be open. And we have to be ready to release our knowledge in order to come to a higher understanding of reality.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

WIth football you can have up to 28 guys you consider starters, and if they can pick up the slack when some aren’t playing so well, you don’t have to turn those two game losing streaks into six-game losing streaks.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

It’s always a struggle growing up in Akron.

I think I have to trust that you end up with the person you’re supposed to end up with, and that everything in between is there to teach you stuff.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

What a liberation to realize that the ‚voice in my head‘ is not who I am. ‚Who am I, then?‘ The one who sees that.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

Keeping score is for games, not friendships.

I do understand it’s not easy to run an I-league club. I have been part of many and I know the scene.

If I could give you information of my life, it would be to show how a woman of very ordinary ability has been led by God in strange and unaccustomed paths to do In His service what He has done in her. And if I could tell you all, you would see how God has done all, and I nothing.

See, when you drive home today, you’ve got a big windshield on the front of your car. And you’ve got a little bitty rearview mirror. And the reason the windshield is so large and the rearview mirror is so small is because what’s happened in your past is not near as important as what’s in your future.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

You cannot let where you are today cause you to get stuck. I’m going to be my best right now. That’s what faith is all about.

I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.

I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.

There are no second acts in American lives.

Basically, when you get to my age, you’ll really measure your success in life by how many of the people you want to have love you actually do love you.

Judge of your natural character by what you do in your dreams.

We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

In 7th grade, I believe, I wrote my first rap song. It was about everything I was seeing, everything that was going on around me.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Man is not made for defeat.

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.

Wanting to be someone else is a waste of the person you are.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

Playing in MLS was a great experience. It has boosted my confidence and I feel I have matured as a player.

Friendship is always a sweet responsibility, never an opportunity.

When any calamity has been suffered the first thing to be remembered is, how much has been escaped.

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit.

Achievement brings its own anticlimax.

Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others.

Failure at some point in your life is inevitable, but giving up is unforgivable.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

It were a real increase of human happiness, could all young men from the age of nineteen be covered under barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible; and there left to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five.

I’m not resigned, but I’m realistic too. The statistics in my case are very poor. Not many people come through esophageal cancer and live to talk about it, or not for long. And the other wager is, the part of the wager, it’s a certainty you’ll have a terrible time and you may wish you were dying because it’s an awful process.

Not to go back is somewhat to advance, and men must walk, at least, before they dance.