Control thy passions lest they take vengence on thee.

Having a child, that’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.

Thought can be so seductive and hypnotic that it absorbs your attention totally, so you become your thoughts.

There are no rules when it comes to love.

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

I always tell audiences when I talk about writing: Writing isn’t something I do; writing is something that I am. I am writing – it’s just an expression of me.

How few there are who have courage enough to own their faults, or resolution enough to mend them.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

Passion rebuilds the world for the youth. It makes all things alive and significant.

No crime is so great as daring to excel.

I never fall in love.

Modesty is the color of virtue.

There is no way to prosperity, prosperity is the way.

We need to internalize this idea of excellence. Not many folks spend a lot of time trying to be excellent.

Even when a person has all of life’s comforts – good food, good shelter, a companion – he or she can still become unhappy when encountering a tragic situation.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.

I think Buddhism should open the door of psychology and healing to penetrate more easily into the Western world.

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.

Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day’s own trouble be sufficient for the day.

Vanity is great motivation, to be fair.

After getting out of the service and going into baseball I never wanted to do anything else.

At times in my life the only place I have been happy is when I am on stage.

Football is unconditional love.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

All wrong-doing arises because of mind. If mind is transformed can wrong-doing remain?

I had to come from something, come from a place that was negative and positive but the majority of it is a negative place.

The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

In my next incarnation, I want to be a writer.

Men acquire a particular quality by constantly acting in a particular way.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

When one begins to live by habit and by quotation, one has begun to stop living.

I’ve been writing since I was really young, so I considered myself a writer for a really long time.

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.

Nashville is my home, and the reason why I get to do what I love.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

I love making movies, but there’s nothing like performing live.

There is so much that people take for granted.

Wicked thoughts and worthless efforts gradually set their mark on the face, especially the eyes.

Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.

When your dream is bigger than you are, you only have two choices: give up or get help.

When new turns of behavior cease to appear in the life of the individual, its behavior ceases to be intelligent.

You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s plenty.

There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It’s always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.

I want to be an honest man and a good writer.

Fighting for one’s freedom, struggling towards being free, is like struggling to be a poet or a good Christian or a good Jew or a good Muslim or good Zen Buddhist. You work all day long and achieve some kind of level of success by nightfall, go to sleep and wake up the next morning with the job still to be done. So you start all over again.

We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.

He that would be angry and sin not, must not be angry with anything but sin.

We all get weary sometimes, and we tend to think that life is what makes us weary.

Since everything is in our heads, we had better not lose them.

Take the complications, rules, shoulds, musts, have tos, and so on out of your life. By uncomplicating your life and removing the trivial pursuits that occupy so much of it, you open a channel for the genius within you to emerge.

Most damage that others do us is out of fear, humiliation and pain. Those feelings occur in all of us, not just in those of us who profess a certain religious or racial devotion.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

Our envy always lasts longer than the happiness of those we envy.

Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.

Hatred is self-punishment.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

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.

Observe all men, thyself most.