Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

I cook, I create, I’m incredibly excited by what I do, I’ve still got a lot to achieve.

I’ve often felt depressed; everyone feels depressed.

I don’t know driving in another way which isn’t risky. Each one has to improve himself. Each driver has its limit. My limit is a little bit further than other’s.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

The only cure for contempt is counter-contempt.

Nothing becomes so offensive so quickly as grief. When fresh it finds someone to console it, but when it becomes chronic, it is ridiculed, and rightly.

When I don’t feel free and can’t do what I want I just react. I go against it.

The basis of optimism is sheer terror.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Man is the only animal that blushes – or needs to.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

It is always your next move.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

I think I have the nicest fans in the world, and I quite like being surrounded by people if we’re all feeling the same emotion in the same room.

I know I want to always do the best I can.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

I have goals.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

It’s passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.

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.

What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.

I like being a writer.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

All violent feelings have the same effect. They produce in us a falseness in all our impressions of external things, which I would generally characterize as the pathetic fallacy.

I have had some cosmetic surgery, especially after I lost weight and stuff, and I’ve had my breasts lifted – but not injected. That would scare me to death, anyway.

Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‚yours,‘ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.

An individual step in character training is to put responsibility on the individual.

You have to be willing to go to war with yourself and create a whole new identity.

I’m not a person that socializes very well.

We become wiser by adversity; prosperity destroys our appreciation of the right.

At the end of the day, we started playing football because we loved it.

If every day you practice walking and sitting meditation and generate the energy of mindfulness and concentration and peace, you are a cell in the body of the new Buddha. This is not a dream but is possible today and tomorrow.

Do you wish people to think well of you? Don’t speak well of yourself.

I was a kind of hyper-intense person in my twenties and very impatient.

Who ever is out of patience is out of possession of their soul.

I’m always attracted to people who interest me. They’ve got to be people who are really true to themselves somehow, and who are always trying to do something that makes their life more interesting, or better, or something for somebody else. They’re interested in people.

Don’t let the incidents which take place in life bring you low. And certainly don’t whine. You can be brought low, that’s OK, but don’t be reduced by them. Just say, ‚That’s life.‘

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better.

It’s probably the worst feeling in the world, when you’re deeply and madly in love with a woman and you know she’s not feeling you the same way, and you don’t know why.

With any recovery from morbidity there must go a certain healthy humiliation.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

To me, constructive criticism is when people take ownership of their ideas. That’s why I don’t listen to anything that’s anonymous. But it’s hard; when there’s something hurtful out there, I still want to read it over and over and memorize it and explain my point of view to the person.

Every step of life shows much caution is required.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

I’m not critic-proof, and I still take it personally, but I take it less personally now.

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work, I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money, pay for food and put bread on the table.

I like to let things breathe.

I am in the fighting game. I don’t care about anything else. I don’t watch the news, I don’t care about politics, I don’t care about other sports. I don’t care about anything I don’t need to care about. This is my sport: it is my life. I study it; I think about it all the time. Nothing else matters.

Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.

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