Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

I married my best friend that happens to be a girl.

The ordinary scientific man is strictly a sentimentalist. He is a sentimentalist in this essential sense, that he is soaked and swept away by mere associations.

By indignities men come to dignities.

I can express myself.

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.

You can never really live anyone else’s life, not even your child’s. The influence you exert is through your own life, and what you’ve become yourself.

Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

Success in its highest and noblest form calls for peace of mind and enjoyment and happiness which come only to the man who has found the work that he likes best.

Love is an interesting thing. Perhaps I’ve never been in love before – I don’t really know? I think I have. I guess it’s subjective in that way.

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.

None but ourselves can free our minds.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.

Men exist for the sake of one another.

I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.

The love we give away is the only love we keep.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

I cry very easily. It can be a movie, a phone conversation, a sunset – tears are words waiting to be written.

A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ.

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that’s true of everyone, don’t you?

I’ve done many ads because that’s my new career. It’s an inspiring extension for my mind.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

I think I have always had a little humor.

It is amazing how a new child can refocus one’s direction seconds after its birth.

To witness two lovers is a spectacle for the gods.

Nurture your minds with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.

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.

People who have given us their complete confidence believe that they have a right to ours. The inference is false, a gift confers no rights.

I’m a genetic optimist.

When we make progress quickly, it feeds our emotions. Then, when there’s a period of waiting or we hit a plateau, we find out how committed we really are and whether we’re going to see things through to the finish or quit.

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

How does a nice Catholic girl end up going to prison for a year? It’s crazy. I’ve made mistakes. I have to pay for those mistakes.

The thing about Jiu Jitsu is it is also not for everybody. It can be very humiliating and humbling. If you have a hard time dealing with the fact that someone smaller than you may be able to tap you out, it is going to be difficult.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

Words are powerful; if you change your words, you can change your life.

When you are angry or frustrated, what comes out? Whatever it is, it’s a good indication of what you’re made of.

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

I grew up in a funny way.

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

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched – they must be felt with the heart.

We thought that we had the answers, it was the questions we had wrong.

One of the many lessons that one learns in prison is, that things are what they are and will be what they will be.

Books can only reveal us to ourselves, and as often as they do us this service we lay them aside.

Grief is the price we pay for love.

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

There’s only one way to have a happy marriage and as soon as I learn what it is I’ll get married again.

You can live your life angry, bitter, mad at somebody or even guilty, not letting go of your own mistakes, but you won’t receive the good things God has in store.

When you look at me, when you think of me, I am in paradise.

To be loved is very demoralizing.

I still consider myself a little, fat kid from Hawaii.

‚Victory Lap,‘ even the title. It’s the accumulation of trial and error; that’s what I represent; trial and error.

I put a lot of pressure on myself. I think something’s not good enough, and I won’t stop until I feel like I’ve made it. I’m never satisfied.

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

Whoever does not have a good father should procure one.

I don’t know why women want any of the things men have when one of the things that women have is men.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Sucking up to the biggies won’t get us anywhere.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.