Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

My life has been very full.

Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It’s because I’m not quite an atheist and it worries me. There’s that little bit that holds on: ‚Well, I’m almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.‘

But God can only smile because only God can know what is coming next.

No one can give you better advice than yourself.

Within us there is someone who knows everything, wills everything, does everything better than we ourselves.

We clearly see in God’s Word that anything He tells us to do, He will give us the ability to do it. But do we really believe it? Do we want to believe it? It’s easier to come up with excuses for why we can’t do things that are hard or that we really don’t want to do.

I’m trying to keep a level head. You have to be careful out in the world. It’s so easy to get turned.

Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive. Forgive everybody.

A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

I look at where I’m at today and realize that most of my success is owed to the mentors that was in my life.

Why should we think upon things that are lovely? Because thinking determines life. It is a common habit to blame life upon the environment. Environment modifies life but does not govern life. The soul is stronger than its surroundings.

We were born to die and we die to live. As seedlings of God, we barely blossom on earth; we fully flower in heaven.

The young think that failure is the Siberian end of the line, banishment from all the living, and tend to do what I then did – which was to hide.

Coaching wouldn’t be for me. No, certainly not.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

Forget the past.

I don’t write so much now. I’m getting on 33, pot belly and creeping dementia.

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

I don’t want to be something that just comes and goes.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner.

Prayer doesn’t just change things – it changes us. If we are diligent in seeking God, slowly and surely we become better people.

A career is born in public – talent in privacy.

Many a man’s reputation would not know his character if they met on the street.

All I know is that, thanks to a sort of habit which has always been ingrained in me, I have never, at any moment of my life, experienced the least difficulty in addressing myself to God as to a supreme Someone.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

Man is an imperceptible atom always trying to become one with God.

Indeed, it is as important to learn how to receive a blessing as it is to be willing to give one.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

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.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

Confine yourself to the present.

We know what we are, but know not what we may be.

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

Every time somebody speaks of my honesty, there is someone who quivers inside me.

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 really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

Sometimes you have to take two steps back to take ten forward.

It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.

When I was a kid, I had a tendency to criticize. But when I did, my mum would whisk me off to the bathroom to stand in front of a mirror. Ten minutes, never less. To think about how criticism is a poor reflection on the one who criticizes.

While I know myself as a creation of God, I am also obligated to realize and remember that everyone else and everything else are also God’s creation.

You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

I never knew a more presumptuous person than myself. The fact that I say that shows that what I say is true.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our education system.

I like to take every day just searching my own heart, making sure that I’m on course, and I’m doing what God wants me to do. I’m real good with not looking to the critics and looking straight ahead.

No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.

My crown is called content, a crown that seldom kings enjoy.

Remembering what you’ve been through and how that has strengthened your mindset can lift you out of a negative brain loop and help you bypass those weak, one-second impulses to give in. Even if you’re feeling low and beat down by life right now, I guarantee you can think of a time or two when you overcame odds and tasted success.

At one point I learned transcendental meditation. This was 30-something years ago. It took me back to the way that I naturally was as a child growing up way in the country, rarely seeing people. I was in that state of oneness with creation and it was as if I didn’t exist except as a part of everything.

Libraries raised me.

What a wee little part of a person’s life are his acts and his words! His real life is led in his head, and is known to none but himself.

If you wish to achieve worthwhile things in your personal and career life, you must become a worthwhile person in your own self-development.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

Have you ever asked yourselves what you are going to do when you grow up? In all likelihood you will get married, and before you know where you are, you will be mothers and fathers; and you will then be tied to a job, or to the kitchen, in which you will gradually wither away. Is that all that your life is going to be?