But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

Cycling is a joy and faster than many other modes of transport, depending on the time of day. It clears the head.

At 50, I began to know who I was. It was like waking up to myself.

Off with you! You’re a happy fellow, for you’ll give happiness and joy to many other people. There is nothing better or greater than that!

But O, how bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

The advice I’ve been giving to people all my life – that you may not be interested in the dialectic but the dialectic is interested in you; you can’t give up politics, it won’t give you up – was the advice I should have been taking myself.

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.

Ordinary riches can be stolen; real riches cannot. In your soul are infinitely precious things that cannot be taken from you.

One of the wonderful things about Oprah: She teaches you to keep on stepping.

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

Since I was 16, I’ve felt a black cloud hangs over me.

At first, I was scared to show fear because you can never be sure how people will perceive you. But I dared myself to do that, to stand out. Now I’ll talk about being beaten up or robbed or making a stupid decision because of a girl or whatever.

To become ‚unique,‘ the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

People need hard times and oppression to develop psychic muscles.

I always try to do as much as I can do. I’m never a person that does not enough, because I’d regret not doing enough and think I probably could have done more. I probably go too far and have to reel myself back in, which works in some things, and other things it doesn’t work.

I felt like, for so many years – and I still even feel it – as a girl, you can’t really expect to go on stage and dress like a boy and jump around and scream with the audience and mosh and stuff, and every time that happens, I feel really proud.

If we don’t plant the right things, we will reap the wrong things. It goes without saying. And you don’t have to be, you know, a brilliant biochemist and you don’t have to have an IQ of 150. Just common sense tells you to be kind, ninny, fool. Be kind.

I’m ugly.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

Die to everything of yesterday so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigor and passion.

I’d like to believe that the people that have supported me in my work or identified with me in films, the people that feel they know me, they do and they don’t have misconceptions – they understand. I believe that.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

People who don’t know the true character of God – who don’t believe He is merciful, gracious and slow to anger – can never have a close, personal, intimate relationship with Him.

My lighter, more superficial side will always steal a march on the deeper side and therefore always win. You can’t imagine how often I’ve tried to push away this Anne, which is only half of what is known as Anne – to beat her down, hide her.

My life is mine to remember.

Do the thing you fear most and the death of fear is certain.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Without a tutor to help me in the study of Marxism-Leninism, I was no more than a theorist and, of course, had total confidence in the Soviet Union.

All you need is love.

One can find so many pains when the rain is falling.

In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm… in the real world all rests on perseverance.

I’m always cast in these strange men… that’s not me, really.

All the adversity I’ve had in my life, all my troubles and obstacles, have strengthened me… You may not realize it when it happens, but a kick in the teeth may be the best thing in the world for you.

When you fish for love, bait with your heart, not your brain.

Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Adventuring can be for the ordinary person with ordinary qualities, such as I regard myself.

I feel that I’ve done what I wanted to do, and that makes me feel fairly content.

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

Every bad situation is a blues song waiting to happen.

The human heart is the same the world over.

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.

In so many ways, segregation shaped me, and education liberated me.

There’s plenty about God that I don’t understand and can’t explain. But I come back to my core belief that God is good, that He’s for us.

We have all had the experience of finding that our reactions and perhaps even our deeds have denied beliefs we thought were ours.

It is only in his music, which Americans are able to admire because a protective sentimentality limits their understanding of it, that the Negro in America has been able to tell his story.

I hate what I look like on TV, and I want to look better, and nothing makes the mothers more jealous.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars. Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait. The grip of your hand, the irresistible surge of will and energy to execute your ideas.

Naturally, everybody has certain things they wish they hadn’t done in life. They wish they hadn’t kicked their dog when they were ten or something.

Those who weep for the happy periods which they encounter in history acknowledge what they want; not the alleviation but the silencing of misery.

Sometimes you need faith and victory spoken over your life. Words have created power. When you receive them into your spirit, they can ignite seeds of increase on the inside.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know my self, to know it completely, to know its minutiae, its characteristics, its subtleties, and its very atoms.

The joy and love that I get from playing football are unbelievable. It is such a feeling that I want to give everything that I have got. I just enjoy it, I am living a life that I never even dreamt of.

I feel the emotion that life conjures up and the songs I write get me closer to my feelings and realising who I am. It’s a natural process.

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.