All my life I’ve been taught how to die, but no one ever taught me how to grow old.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

I remember, when I was a young guy in the SEAL teams, I was very afraid of making mistakes and looking stupid or doing dumb things and getting a bad reputation.

Words may show a man’s wit but actions his meaning.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.

If a person doesn’t change, there’s something really wrong with him.

Until you have cultivated the habit of saying some kind word of those whom you do not admire, you will be neither successful nor happy.

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.

No man is hurt but by himself.

Just because something didn’t work out your way, or somebody disappointed you, that does not change who you are.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

Vulnerability is basically uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure.

Everything in the world may be endured except continual prosperity.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

I do not want the peace which passeth understanding, I want the understanding which bringeth peace.

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

I spend a lot of time balancing between faith and disbelief.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

Especially for those of us who lived in single cells, you had the time to sit down and think, and we discovered that sitting down just to think is one of the best ways of keeping yourself fresh and able, to be able to address the problems facing you, and you had the opportunity, also, of examining your past.

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

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

I am who I am today because of my mother.

Always fall in with what you’re asked to accept. Take what is given, and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever’s going. Not against: with.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

I’m aware that, whatever the circumstances, there will always be speculation about me.

A lot of times, people feel that if they forgive the person who hurt them, then they will continue to take advantage of them or not take responsibility for what they did wrong.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

You cannot see the changes that you’re dreaming about, because they’re internal.

If we live a self-directed, self-motivated, self-centered life, always needing to get our own way, then we’re going to be miserable. In fact, many times we believe it’s our problems that are making us unhappy when, in reality, it’s because we’re focused on ourselves!

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

The first step in a person’s salvation is knowledge of their sin.

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd.

I think I have a dualistic nature.

I grew up in a funny way.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

I have had fun being who I became, so to speak.

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.

You get one life. I’m going to embrace mine.

Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual wealth of the world.

I’m still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

In general, pride is at the bottom of all great mistakes.

Children are a wonderful gift. They have an extraordinary capacity to see into the heart of things and to expose sham and humbug for what they are.

Mere humans who root through their refrigerators at three o’clock in the morning can only produce writing that matches what they do. And that includes me.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Teach me to feel another’s woe, to hide the fault I see, that mercy I to others show, that mercy show to me.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Guarding your heart and protecting your dignity are a little bit more important than clarifying the emotions of someone who’s only texting you back three words. I’ve learned that from trying to figure out people who don’t deserve to be figured out.

It’s certainly not wrong to want to be a better person. God gave us that desire.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

Spiritual people don’t float around all day on clouds of glory; they live in the real world and deal with real issues in real ways.

I’m one of the world’s most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

Why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

I haven’t changed at all. I’m the same as when I was 11.

In the long run, the sharpest weapon of all is a kind and gentle spirit.

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

I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.