Anticipate the difficult by managing the easy.

You have to feel confident. If you don’t, then you’re going to be hesitant and defensive, and there’ll be a lot of things working against you.

The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better.

When I finish something, I want it out that day. Pop music is like the daily paper. Its got to be there then, not six months later.

Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.

Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

The one who adapts his policy to the times prospers, and likewise that the one whose policy clashes with the demands of the times does not.

I’m just going to say it: I’m pro-guilt. Guilt is good. Guilt helps us stay on track because it’s about our behavior. It occurs when we compare something we’ve done – or failed to do – with our personal values.

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.

The presence of passion within you is the greatest gift you can receive. Treat it as a miracle.

I wish everyone well, but you need to focus on yourself. You need to stop putting your hand out. Everyone wants hand outs. Everyone wants things for free. You’ve got to put in the work. You’ve got to grind. You’ve got go through the struggle, and you’ve got to get it.

Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

I think I’ve got wiser.

To reform a world, to reform a nation, no wise man will undertake; and all but foolish men know, that the only solid, though a far slower reformation, is what each begins and perfects on himself.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Oh, give us the man who sings at his work.

It is better to offer no excuse than a bad one.

He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.

I try to teach my heart not to want things it can’t have.

Look within. Within is the fountain of good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig.

Jealousy is both reasonable and belongs to reasonable men, while envy is base and belongs to the base, for the one makes himself get good things by jealousy, while the other does not allow his neighbour to have them through envy.

Whether you come from a council estate or a country estate, your success will be determined by your own confidence and fortitude.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

About half my time is spent on business operation type stuff.

I think it’s healthy for a person to be nervous. It means you care – that you work hard and want to give a great performance. You just have to channel that nervous energy into the show.

Determine never to be idle. No person will have occasion to complain of the want of time who never loses any. It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing.

Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.

Plan your work for today and every day, then work your plan.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

The highest reward for a person’s toil is not what they get for it, but what they become by it.

I don’t think there’s anyone who would say they don’t want or need more of God’s power in their life.

Stupidly it should not be. It should be also nice. One must get along with that. Is however not necessary.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

My whole thing is to inspire, to better people, to better myself forever in this thing that we call rap, this thing that we call hip hop.

I was in a terrible mess in my childhood.

There are no limitations to the mind except those we acknowledge.

The faults of a superior person are like the sun and moon. They have their faults, and everyone sees them; they change and everyone looks up to them.

Like every man of sense and good feeling, I abominate work.

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.

Respond intelligently even to unintelligent treatment.

Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.

Why should I stop working? If I do, I’ll die and it’ll all be finished.

Only if you have been in the deepest valley, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren’t any other people living in the world.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

One’s only rival is one’s own potentialities. One’s only failure is failing to live up to one’s own possibilities. In this sense, every man can be a king, and must therefore be treated like a king.

When someone is impatient and says, ‚I haven’t got all day,‘ I always wonder, How can that be? How can you not have all day?

The end of labor is to gain leisure.

To those whose talents are above mediocrity, the highest subjects may be announced. To those who are below mediocrity, the highest subjects may not be announced.

If I feel good about my parenting, I have no interest in judging other people’s choices. If I feel good about my body, I don’t go around making fun of other people’s weight or appearance. We’re hard on each other because we’re using each other as a launching pad out of our own perceived deficiency.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

Plans are nothing; planning is everything.

The formation of one’s character ought to be everyone’s chief aim.

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.

Do not look for approval except for the consciousness of doing your best.